Supreme Court Dillon Judgment

Alison Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his comments, not least because of his service. As he will know, we have been engaged in very close discussion and consultation with many organisations representing veterans. The honest answer to his question is that people will make a judgment when they see the detail of the amendments that the Government are committed to bringing forward, and those amendments will then be carefully scrutinised and debated in the House. Again, we have to strike a balance that is fair and proper, but I assure him that the Government are extremely seized of their obligations to make sure that the arrangements that we put in place are fair to veterans.

What is not fair is to pretend that somehow the immunity provisions contained in the legacy Act were ever going to work. We now know that they were not going to work, they have been found to be incompatible, they had no support in Northern Ireland and they were never commenced by the last Government. We do no service to our veterans by continuing to argue, as some have done, that that is the alternative—it is not.

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

The Opposition say that we are somehow letting terrorists off the hook, but is the Secretary of State able to tell the House how many prosecutions there were for terrorist offences during the troubles and how many live prosecutions there are now?

[Hilary Benn]

The estimates are that between 25,000 and 35,000 paramilitaries were convicted for offences, including murder, bombings and other things, during the course of the troubles. There were four soldiers convicted of troubles-related offences during that time, one of whom was freed on appeal. Since the Good Friday agreement, there has been one conviction of a member of the armed forces, who received a suspended sentence. There are currently 10 live prosecutions, eight of which relate to paramilitaries, including people accused of killing members of the police and our armed forces. That lays to rest the argument that I have heard from some that the paramilitaries are not being pursued any more—that is not the case. Of the two other cases, one relates to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and one relates to members of our armed forces. That gives a very clear indication of where the balance of evidence and effort currently lies.