Fatalities in Northern Ireland and British Military Personnel

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. This has been a very interesting and thoughtful debate on the fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel. I am grateful to the chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), for his detailed explanation of the Committee’s deliberations. It would need the wisdom of Solomon to come up with a true solution to this problem, and I do not envy the Minister, who has to sum up the debate.

We have heard many examples of how stressful the process has been for the individuals and families involved. Many have been left in limbo while investigations drag on. As we know, the legacy investigation branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is currently reviewing all deaths attributable to the security situation that occurred in Northern Ireland between 1968 and the Good Friday/Belfast agreement in 1998. Any decision by the legacy investigation branch to prosecute is of course referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland. That is an independent process, without UK Government involvement.

We must have confidence in the institutions of the police and the judiciary in Northern Ireland to serve the people. It is for Stormont to reform them if they are not serving them well, and I certainly hope that we can see Stormont functioning again fully in the future. That said, none of us wants former or, for that matter, current members of the armed forces to be treated unfairly when accusations of wrongdoing are made. We all know that the huge backlog of cases with the Iraq Historic Allegations Team meant that serving and former service personnel faced extended periods of uncertainty over the accusations that had been made. We must have adequate resources for investigating allegations so that that does not happen again, or in this case. We all support the idea of justice being done, but that includes fairness to our armed forces personnel, who are entitled to due process in answering allegations made within a reasonable timeframe.

The Select Committee has very helpfully suggested to the Government four possible options and has itself made a recommendation in favour of option one, namely enacting a statute of limitations. I note that the Committee did not recommend the fourth option, which is to cease investigations into former service personnel and stop complying with the European Court of Human Rights interpretation of our obligations under the European convention on human rights. It is important for me to state the Scottish National party position on this question. We fully support the Human Rights Act 1998 and will oppose any attempts to abolish it. Any derogation from article 2 of the European convention on human rights as a response to the situation would blur rather than define the high standards that we rightly expect and overwhelmingly see delivered by our armed forces, so I am grateful that the Committee does not recommend that course of action. It would send entirely the wrong message to the rest of the world about our commitment to human rights.

In conclusion, our service personnel should rightly be held to the high standards of behaviour that we expect, but they should also be fully supported by the Ministry of Defence when allegations are made.