Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I will keep my remarks brief, because many valued voices are yet to be heard in this debate. I welcome the Bill. Northern Ireland has a special place in my heart. It gave me my mum and treasured memories of time with family, and it will always feel part of me, but it also left the younger version of me with many questions, such as why kerbstones were painted red, white and blue in some places, and why the police had guns and their cars looked like tanks.

As I said after the Secretary of State’s statement last December,

“Nothing can be allowed to jeopardise the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland.”—[Official Report, 4 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 425.]

I have seen that progress at first hand. The streets of Belfast are a fundamentally different place compared not just with the stories my mum tells of her youth, but with what I remember from mine. However, progress is not finished and peace should never be taken for granted.

We must make sure that we get this right, so I welcome the measures in the Bill to build a clear, robust and fair system with which justice and closure can be sought. Creating a reformed Legacy Commission with strengthened governance, giving the Legacy Commission the powers that it needs so that answers can be provided to families— including those of servicemen and women—and taking a new approach to inquests and coronial cases will all help to provide answers that are sought and needed by grieving families.

However, we must also ensure that the system itself is not used as a weapon. I genuinely believe that, as a package, the Bill’s six measures to protect veterans should provide significant reassurance to those who served. There can be no equivalence drawn in this or any other process between those who served in our armed and security forces to protect life and promote security and stability, and terrorists, whether loyalist or republican.

The thing that was too often forgotten during the troubles were the ordinary people—those who found themselves caught in the middle and who, on too many occasions, lost their lives because of it. We must not forget them now. I thank those who served to protect people —our veterans, who found themselves in communities not too dissimilar from the ones they grew up in, having to do an immensely difficult job. I also thank those who saw that peace was the way forward. As we debate this Bill, it is incumbent on us all to remember where we have been and just how fragile progress can be. Let us get this right and provide justice for grieving families and protections for those who served.

Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Troubles

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He played a distinguished role during his time as Secretary of State. He knows, as I know and we all know, the importance of trying to build a consensus to move forward. He raises the question of Omagh; I raised that with Micheál Martin only yesterday. I welcome very much the commitment that the Irish Government have given to co-operate with the Omagh inquiry, and I know that the inquiry looks forward to receiving that co-operation in the months ahead.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the decisive action that he has announced today and for bringing it to us in the House. Nothing can be allowed to jeopardise the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland. Will he confirm that the thread running through this action, and any future action, is the Government’s firm commitment to the victims and families, and to getting them the answers that they so richly deserve and finally need?

[Hilary Benn]

I am very happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. I have talked tonight about a lot of process, future legislation, remedial orders and so on. That is why I said at the end of my statement that, in the end, this is about the families—the families, whom many Members in the House will have met, who still do not know what happened and who carry the incredible pain from what they have been through with them to this day. The very least we can do is to try really, really hard to find a way of giving them the answers that they have been seeking.