Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Debate between Sorcha Eastwood and Matthew Patrick

Committee of the whole House
Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Patrick (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I support this Bill for victims and veterans. I support this Bill for truth, justice and the rule of law. I support this Bill for Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and peace. I welcome the amendments from the Government. I know they have come about following deep and constructive engagement with many people in the House and outside it, and I think they strengthen what we have before us.

The Good Friday agreement is rightly one of the proudest achievements of the last Labour Government. It changed the course of history. While praise is understandably lavished on the politicians who negotiated its terms, they would be the first to tell us that its success is not theirs to own, but that it is owned by the people of Northern Ireland, who, day in and day out, make that progress possible. They do so without fanfare and they embrace it. It is not that they have forgotten the pain and suffering—how could they?—but they chose a different future, and in so doing they wrote a different story for Northern Ireland.

What a story the people are writing! The economy is exciting, and the creative industries, the defence sector and technology are booming. They have the lowest unemployment in the whole of the UK and the highest growth. Excellent schools are helping to equip the next generation—a generation not growing up knowing the sound of a bomb, and not growing up to fear a Protestant or a Catholic. Brilliant charities and community groups are helping a generation to see that they have more in common with one another. I believe that, if we are to protect that progress, we need a legacy process that commands confidence, and I think that is helped by these amendments.

None of that, of course, is to pretend that there are not problems in modern day Northern Ireland. Recent weeks have shown us that the peace we have is not a replacement for the pain, and it has not changed what happened in the past—that can never be changed, and we should never ignore it. Let us be clear: that pain will also be known by those who served in Northern Ireland, whether in the Army or the police, and by their families. The amendments that I support, including stopping repeat investigations, matter a great deal to them, and I will always be in admiration of those who stood in harm’s way to keep people safe. They lost far too much; the way they were tested in their service of our country, I would wish on no person.

Whenever the issue has been debated before in this House, there has been a contingent of veterans in the Public Gallery. Each time, I have learnt so much by going to speak to them. I have learnt about the horrors they encountered. I have learnt how rightly proud they are of their service, and how frustrated they are about the injustices that they, their friends and their comrades faced. Our conversations often turned to whether they would want immunity for that period; they do not. They told me that they fought to defend the rule of law, not to be above it. They simply want equality before it.

Surely, we in this House agree that it is all those people—those who have helped to make Northern Ireland what it is today and to make peace possible—who we should put first. If the Bill helps a father in his late 80s end the torture of not knowing what happened to his daughter in her final moments, can we say that he is not worth our support? Should we tell him how glad we are that he never allowed his grief and devastation to stop his commitment to a peaceful Northern Ireland, but we cannot pass those provisions for him? If the Bill helps a widow of a veteran murdered by a terrorist group get the justice that she has been denied for decades, can we say that that is not worth our support? Should we tell her that her pain and anguish—her children having to grow up without knowing their father—is really awful, and we are sorry, but we cannot do this for her?

It is clearly not right that those brave veterans who helped contain the worst of the violence should be forced into the dock to relive the worst day of their life, when they have already been cleared by an investigation that looked into all of the evidence. They were asked by our state to act; they do not deserve to be tried again and again until a different result is found. That is precisely why the protection from repeat investigations is so important. It is why I welcome the amendment set out by the Secretary of State that strengthens that very protection. That is how we honour the sacrifice of people who went out to defend the rule of law, without cruelly and needlessly making them relive the very worst moment of their lives.

I do not think this Bill will be as totemic as the Good Friday agreement. It will not go down in the history books in quite the same way. But it can deliver with fairness for all those who I mentioned at the start of my speech. This Bill might bring answers—maybe even justice—to people who have lived with very deep pain for many, many years and put their country first. They put peace first. Those are the people who make progress possible, each and every day. I am proud to support them, and I am proud to support the Bill.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I want to make some remarks on the amendments that I have tabled, and some more general remarks, given the debate so far. I will discuss amendments 39 to 42, which, in my opinion, the Government amendments have not addressed.

Amendments 39 to 42 provide for judicial panel members to be appointed by the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission, not the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Judicial appointments should remain within NIJAC’s remit to maintain independence and public confidence in the process, as well as to safeguard against future politicisation. It is disappointing, therefore, that the Government’s amendments make no provision to address this, despite concerns raised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and UN experts. Indeed, the Committee on the Administration of Justice also notes that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland appointing judges would reverse the process put in place after the Good Friday agreement reforms, which created NIJAC as an independent body to appoint the judiciary.

The Secretary of State’s broad powers mean that a future Secretary of State for Northern Ireland opposed to an independent rule of law legacy investigation could make further appointments to frustrate the legacy commission’s purpose. One example would be appointing judicial commissioners to write the findings of legacy commission reports after investigations. Indeed, there is precedent for the risk: the irregular appointment of the second police ombudsman was followed by a lowering of the office’s independence in legacy investigations, leading to an independent inspection and suspension of the historic function of that office.

I will now turn to some of my greatest concerns in the amendments we are discussing today—there are also concerns about what we will discuss tomorrow. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) has already started to tease out some of the issues with the national security veto, as has the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne). This issue really bothers me, and I feel that it should bother other Members. The veto can hide state involvement in killings. Indeed, it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge and start to deal with that aspect of our past. The Bill lets the Secretary of State redact legacy commission reports to families on national security grounds. That is not limited to protecting lawful covert methods; it can conceal the role of state agents and informants in killings currently attributed solely to non-state actors.

If you will briefly indulge me, Madam Chair, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) and his amendment 4, which I will support—as I have done already. We discussed that amendment within the realms of paramilitary offenders—the hon. Member eloquently articulated that point—but there were also state agents who were paedophiles and operated with impunity. We were told after the fact that they were involved in saving numerous lives. That is obviously a question of hindsight, and very conveniently difficult to disaggregate. However, on record there are paedophiles who were used by the state. Indeed, it is often a mirror image, but they were there to serve a purpose. We knew about the paedophilia and child abuse, but we let that go because we felt there was a security value. I will just let that sit with Members for a moment.

The relevant Secretary of State could be marking their own homework. The joint framework suggests that the Home Secretary and Defence Secretary could also redact reports, even though MI5 and Military Intelligence are potential subjects of the investigations in question. That has already been found unlawful, but the Government have pressed ahead anyway. The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland found the equivalent provisions in the legacy Act 2023 incompatible with the ECHR—in the Dillon judgment. The Government’s appeal is before the Supreme Court but undetermined, yet they have still included the provisions and certified the Bill as ECHR-compatible on the strength of an “expectation” of winning.

There is a conflict with international and ECHR standards. UN special rapporteurs warned that the veto could curtail victims’ right to know the truth and be incompatible with international law. The Government’s “neither confirm nor deny” stance—earlier this year much maligned, to the stage of being mocked, with the Stakeknife case—showed that the involvement of agents at all should not be disclosed. This cannot be squared with the ECHR duty to hold effective investigations capable of establishing state agents’ involvement in a death. No comparable jurisdiction gives Ministers that power over transitional justice reports.

I want to draw attention to a theme that has been present throughout this debate and many others. We live with this every day in Northern Ireland. That is not to say that those veterans who live in England or further afield do not either—but this dictates our policy in Northern Ireland of how we do things today. It is still there. As other Members have alluded to, those members who served for Northern Ireland did not get to leave. They did not go away; they served their tour of duty on their home patch.

The reverse is true as well: many victims of paramilitary violence will still see the perpetrators today. Many of them will know things through hearsay, rumour or gossip, but they are not quite sure. If the Bill provides a way to try and give those people the knowledge and understanding of who pulled the trigger, and where and when, then I will support it.

I thank the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn); I am glad that he is in his place. I want to get something off my conscience that has bothered me since the day and hour that I set foot in this House and took part in these debates: we have not done justice to all the victims through these debates—we just haven’t—and it hurts, and I think it is shameful. I stand here as somebody who has veterans in her house. I am proud of them; I do not try to diminish or do away with that. But I also stand here as part of a family who have suffered from paramilitary violence, through nothing other than sectarianism. I am not going to pretend that that was an unusual happening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sorcha Eastwood and Matthew Patrick

Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Patrick]

My hon. Friend is right: no person has a monopoly on good ideas, and no Government do either. I want the best for the whole United Kingdom. Where Northern Ireland leads the way, we can try to roll that out across the rest of the UK, but where it needs support—for instance on the digitising of prescriptions—we will provide that too. This is about working with the Executive to improve patient outcomes.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will not thank me for saying this, but whenever we have these discussions about the transformation of public services in Northern Ireland, it seems like we can have either good public finances or an unreformed Stormont, but we cannot have both. With three parties in Northern Ireland supporting reform proposals in the last number of weeks, when will the Government get serious about giving Northern Ireland the means to govern itself, and when will they get round the table to start discussions about the reform of Stormont?

[Matthew Patrick]

Those conversations are ongoing. We had a recent Westminster Hall debate about those issues, and we will have further conversations with party leaders. I will gently say, however, that those conservations cannot be a substitute for improving services now. Improvements can be made. The hon. Member and I have talked about cancer waiting times; we can do those things now, and they do not have to wait for conversations about reform.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sorcha Eastwood and Matthew Patrick

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Patrick]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He is right to highlight that, just recently, England had the second best monthly fall in waiting lists for 15 years. In Northern Ireland, the 70,000-appointments target has been surpassed and we have hit 200,000 additional appointments. I am pleased with the work of the Northern Ireland Health Minister Mike Nesbitt on that. The UK Government are committed to sharing best practice with those in the Northern Ireland Executive to continue that work.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

Health is a devolved matter, but the fight against cancer is not. Will the Minister join me in praising the work of the All-Island Cancer Research Institute, which is led by Queen’s and others, and ensure that our efforts to address cancer are done not just in Northern Ireland or the four nations, but between these islands?

[Matthew Patrick]

It was my privilege to see some of the work being done there. Any efforts to bring down waiting times for cancer patients should be adopted. I will encourage this Government to do anything they can to share best practice from their own 10-year cancer plan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sorcha Eastwood and Matthew Patrick

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Patrick]

I pay tribute to the great work done by the voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. I know that this has been a difficult time, which is why our engagement with the sector has been so important. I can assure my hon. Friend that that engagement will continue to be important, especially as we launch the local growth fund, which provides £45.5 million a year to support growth in Northern Ireland.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

As we have just heard, Northern Ireland is operating under considerable budgetary constraints, and the local growth fund will cause huge damage. What can the Minister do to assure my constituents in Lagan Valley and people across Northern Ireland that he will listen to our concerns and act on them?

[Matthew Patrick]

We have put a record settlement of £19.3 billion into Northern Ireland. Obviously, that money can be used to support people. The local growth fund has been built for a year; it has been set aside to make sure that we can support the groups mentioned, and I will continue to engage with them.