Armed Forces: Historical Cases

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

May I put on record right at the start the Scottish National party’s acknowledgement and appreciation of the efforts of our police and armed forces personnel wherever they serve? Our safety is a luxury bought with their dedication to duty and constant vigilance.

I can appreciate that my opinion on that is not always shared by everyone and that there are people in many places who feel that they have good reason to disagree with those sentiments, but may I say at this point—this has been mentioned—that the planting of a bomb outside a police officer’s house is completely unacceptable? Not only was the officer’s life threatened yesterday, but the lives of others were touched by it, too. Given the nature of the area in which the officer lives, I expect that children play in that street, and it is beyond unforgivable to haunt a bairn’s life.

I cannot get inside the mind of anyone who wants a return to violence in Northern Ireland, and I cannot believe that there will be any great support for such people anywhere. Great praise is, instead, due to the politicians and community activists who have brought Northern Ireland away from those dark shadows and headed it towards a better future. Many I will not have heard of, and some are no longer with us, but it must have taken great courage for enemies to lay aside their greatest enmity and begin the co-operation that we see now.

I have huge respect for those I have met who serve here, those I have met who serve in Stormont, and the few I have met who are councillors and community leaders, who have the courage, the vision and the belief in the future to be able to say to their opponents, “I know what you have to do and where you have to stand to serve your community, and I appreciate that you give me the same courtesy. Where can we find common ground?” There is a future to be had when the people’s servants have that attitude—not that everyone is lovely to each other, I hasten to add, but they are leaders enough to know where that fertile future lies.

I think there is a certainty that the people and the politicians of Northern Ireland can craft a future that will stand as a testament to the courage shown and the personal risks taken in the past couple of decades. In that vein, I think that the SNP’s position is clear. We believe that the people of Northern Ireland have the capacity, the intelligence and the gumption to make a better fist of things there than we can. We have confidence in the institutions of the police and judiciary to serve the people, and confidence in Stormont to reform them if they are not serving well. We also have confidence in the people of Northern Ireland to reform the pants off of any politician who does not have the ability, courage or energy to serve them well.

I appreciate why the motion is before us today, and I certainly appreciate the concerns of soldiers who served in Operation Banner and are now retired. There is no form of polite words, trite phrases or empty platitudes that will put any of this nicely to bed. The resolution to those concerns lies in the institutions in Belfast.

The Ministry of Defence has a duty—which I think it has promised to live up to—to ensure that any of its current or former employees who face legal action as a result of what they did during their service are adequately represented. I was pleased that the Secretary of State was able to reassure us that the commitment given by the MoD at the end of last year remains in place, and I welcomed his assurance that taxpayer-funded legal support will be provided when it is needed.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the institutions in Northern Ireland. Does she accept that had it not been for the bravery and the sacrifice of British troops throughout the Operation Banner period, who helped, in effect, to hold the ring so that one day a peaceful solution could be arrived at, those institutions would not be available to us today?

[Deidre Brock]

I placed on record at the beginning of my speech our acknowledgement and appreciation of the tremendous efforts made by police and armed forces personnel wherever they serve, and their contribution to peace has certainly played a big part in where we are today.

The investigation of incidents in other theatres is a matter for service law and for courts martial, and I have no particular knowledge of those systems, but the duty to ensure fairness and impartiality lies with the MOD. I welcomed the Secretary of State’s comments about legal requirements for fairness, balance and proportionality. The duty to ensure fairness and impartiality in any proceedings in Northern Ireland will lie with the new Stormont Ministers, with the Attorney General, and with judges who sit in the courts there. We must trust them to take due cognisance of all the circumstances in which they find themselves and of the evidence presented to them, and we must trust them to make decisions that are in the best interests of the people whom they serve. If we do not trust them, we will be denying the legacy of all those who worked and laboured to craft a better future for Northern Ireland, and to drag the communities there away from the violence that had plagued them before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dodds]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that bears emphasis in the House and further afield. It is important that these issues are made clear to people who might, as time passes and we no longer hear direct reports from Northern Ireland, begin to think that a different narrative had occurred there. That is why it is so important that the institutions that were proposed under the Stormont House agreement—my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley mentioned the historical investigations unit—are set up so that we can have a balanced, fair and proportionate approach to all this.

We need to highlight the fact that 3,000 murders remain unsolved in Northern Ireland and that acts of terrorism were carried out by people such as Sean Kelly, the Shankill bomber, and Michael Caraher, who was part of the south Armagh sniper team that murdered Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick in 1997—one of the last members of the armed forces to die in that period. Michael Caraher received a sentence totalling 105 years, yet he walked free having served just over three.

My right hon. Friend has rightly detailed the efforts made by the then Labour Government, under John Reid and then Peter Mandelson, to go to extraordinary lengths to provide concessions to IRA terrorists with no regard whatever to any kind of proportionality or to doing anything for the security forces. Secret deals were done on on-the-runs, for example. Such concessions had a major debilitating impact on those who were facing down terrorism in Northern Ireland, and our duty now is to convince people that that will not happen again. I share my right hon. Friend’s view that this Government will not repeat those mistakes and that there will be no amnesty and no secret deals to allow terrorists off the hook.

In conclusion, it is important that we get the Stormont House agreement institutions up and running as quickly as possible, that we begin to get back some kind of fair and proportionate system for investigating legacy cases and that we do not—

[Mr Francois]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I apologise for interrupting his peroration. I congratulate him and his colleagues on bringing this important matter before the House this afternoon. Many references have been made to IHAT, and as parliamentarians we all need to learn the difficult lessons from what has happened in that regard. We also have to appreciate the effect that it has had on the armed forces and on our veterans. Surely, after all we have been through with IHAT and given the lessons that we must learn, the last thing we should sanction is a politically motivated witch hunt in Northern Ireland against our own brave servicemen.

[Mr Dodds]

I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman was able to make that powerful point. I agree with him entirely. The stakes are high, and there is a responsibility on us in this House to ensure that we build a society that values fairness, elevates justice, treats our veterans properly and upholds the proud traditions of our military and our commitment to democracy. We must go forward on that basis.