Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Julian Lewis

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Let me begin by addressing the issues raised by the right hon. Members for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon). We will return to this theme, so they will forgive me if my response today may be more truncated than I would prefer if there were more time. There can never be a question of moral equivalence between a member of our armed forces and somebody engaged in terrorism on behalf of a paramilitary organisation. We need to make that very clear. Whatever our disagreements, the agreement over the lack of moral equivalence is absolute and we should not be drawn down that track. That said, I am extremely uneasy about the approach taken by both right hon. Members.

The right hon. Member for New Forest East referred to our international commitments. One of our commitments is as a state party to the International Criminal Court and the treaties thereof. Article 29 of the Rome statute makes it clear that crimes that fall within the jurisdiction of the Court cannot be subject to a state-imposed statute of limitations. That is an absolute condition of the Rome statute. The right hon. Gentleman looks puzzled. I invite him to check that.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the ICC, having been set up long after the troubles, does not have retrospective application, even if the hon. Gentleman’s interpretation of the law is correct.

[Tony Lloyd]

I did not necessarily automatically assume that the right hon. Gentleman was looking for retrospective legislation. That is an interesting point. The reality, however, is that for this state to now adopt retrospectively something that is imposed would be in contravention of article 29 of that statute.

I pray in aid the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), who made a point about the role of the police. The role of the police and of the armed forces is very similar. George Hamilton, the outgoing chief constable of the PSNI, has made it clear that he does not believe in any form of statute of limitations. He said:

“There cannot be different rules for different citizens.”

That is a fundamental challenge. The Police Federation for Northern Ireland made the point that it would be an insult to police officers who were killed or injured on duty. This is the real point: in the end, we ask our armed forces to sign an oath to uphold the Queen and Her Majesty’s laws—except for the Royal Navy, ironically, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who served in the Royal Navy, knows. We are talking not about the massive and overwhelming majority who serve faithfully in our armed forces, but about the small minority who transgress the law.

The right hon. Member for Sevenoaks drew a distinction between terrorists and those who are lawfully armed, but those who are lawfully armed and misuse those arms do not deserve any protection. I say to the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for New Forest East that I am not minded to support their amendment, but we will continue to debate this.

The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) raised an interesting question about the definition of victims, but it is probably too difficult to debate the whole point today. When I have spoken to victims of terrorism—for example, those in organisations such as WAVE—they have made it clear to me that they want to move on. They believe that, after this amount of time, pragmatism says, “Let’s get on and ensure that those who have been denied those pensions now receive them.” I have a lot of sympathy for that view. They have waited a long time for some form of recognition.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Julian Lewis

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd]

That is not a difficult question to answer. The European Union would insist on a border across the island of Ireland. There is no doubt about that. There can be no question of Northern Ireland acting as some kind of back door for smugglers. I am old enough to remember the days when gates were left open on the border and cattle would wander across, by morning and night. Those days have not entirely gone, and we know that smuggling still takes place between Ireland and Northern Ireland, but the European Union would not allow the institutionalisation of any facility that made the smugglers’ lives easier.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My question is along similar lines. Let me just probe a little further. I once asked the Prime Minister this question nine times in a seven-minute session without getting a satisfactory answer. If there were to be this dreaded hard border, who would actually construct it? The British would not construct it, and the Irish Republic would not construct it. The shadow Secretary of State says that the EU would insist on it, so would the EU construct it? If so, how would it do so?

[Tony Lloyd]

The construction industry would itself suffer from a hard Brexit. The border would be constructed, and there is absolutely no doubt that there would have to be controls to prevent smuggling. This is a simple phenomenon.

Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Tony Lloyd and Julian Lewis

Money resolution: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification, which leads me to begin to bring my remarks to a conclusion.

I stand strongly with the Secretary of State on the fact that the consultation process is already abroad. That consultation process now should be allowed to come to its full conclusion. That is the right way forward both for this House tonight and more generally for this country. In the context of Northern Ireland, it is important to take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks that the possibility of seeing a wider amnesty will defeat the ambitions of victims of the violence during the troubles and those who were left bereaved by that violence. It could, of itself, allow off the hook those whom we would all want to see—even these years on—brought before our justice system and the courts. Within that, it is right and proper that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks recognises the force of the argument that this is the wrong vehicle. It is the wrong occasion for this and it will almost certainly lead to the wrong kind of rules—temporary at very best. I do hope that he will consider very seriously whether this is the right approach on this occasion.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I believe some form of consensus is emerging that a statute of limitations might be the correct way forward, especially if it could be applied in a wider context than just the Northern Ireland scenario. I know that the Conservative manifesto at the last election talked about protecting troops from malicious charges such as had been posed most irresponsibly and on an industrial scale in relation to Iraq by invoking the law of armed conflict for future conflicts and ensuring that the criteria of the civil law could not be applied to them. That is where a problem might creep in in connection with Northern Ireland, because there is no way in which the law of armed conflict could be said to apply to that situation, which was internal to the United Kingdom.

We heard from the Secretary of State that, earlier today, the Defence Secretary made the very welcome announcement that a dedicated unit is being set up inside the Ministry of Defence to try to grip this problem, and I think that it will try to grip it at every level—not just for Northern Ireland, but for these wider conflicts. However, for this evening, I will obviously concentrate on the Northern Ireland situation. I wish to start by making brief reference to the report previously produced by the Defence Committee, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) in his very strong contribution to this debate a little while ago.

Our report entitled “Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel”, HC 1064, was published on 26 April 2017. The Government response, HC 549, was published on 13 November 2017, and there was a Westminster Hall debate on these reports on 25 January 2018, all of which bear future study. The Defence Committee has put in our entire report as evidence under a covering letter to the consultation process that is going on.