Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the proposal by the Victims Commissioner to issue payments to the relatives of those killed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, whether the scheme will apply in respect of paramilitaries who were killed.

Support for victims is a devolved matter for consideration by a restored Northern Ireland Executive.

This Government has always made clear, in successive manifestos, that it will never accept any moral equivalence between those who defended democracy and the rule of law in Northern Ireland, and those who sought to destroy both.