Peter Bone
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Immunity for Soldiers
Peter Bone Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry, but if this is sub judice we should not be pursuing it.
Mr Francois
It is not sub judice. I am sorry, Mr Bone: I completely understand your intervention, but this is not before a court and the case is in the public domain. Very quickly, David Griffin has no comfort letter—he has no comfort of any kind and is in utter limbo, although he is a Chelsea pensioner. He is very worried. Why do our Government allow this to happen?
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. Two right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak. I will start to call Front-Bench speakers slightly before 7 o’clock, so I ask that they bear that in mind. I call Owen Paterson.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) has every right to not give way, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. She has indicated that she does not want to give way.
Carol Monaghan
We must have confidence in the police and the judiciary in Northern Ireland, and it is for Stormont to reform those institutions if they are not serving Northern Ireland well. I certainly hope—I hope hon. Members will join me in this—that Stormont will function fully again in the future.
That said, none of us wants former or current members of the armed forces to be treated unfairly when accusations of wrongdoing are made. I hope that we all support the idea of justice being done, and that includes fairness to our armed forces personnel, who are entitled to due process in answering allegations made.
Our armed forces have our gratitude for defending us and our values in traumatic and highly stressful situations. The then Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement to the House on 15 June 2010, the day the Saville report was published. He said that
“the conclusions of this report are absolutely clear: there is no doubt; there is nothing equivocal; there are no ambiguities. What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.” —[Official Report, 15 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 739.]
The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) talked about the yellow card—he has his yellow card here—and about the rules of engagement that had to be adhered to during any conflict. However, Prime Minister Cameron went on to quote the report’s finding that
“none of the casualties shot by soldiers of Support Company was armed with a firearm…in no case was any warning given before soldiers opened fire.”