Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Kenova

Colum Eastwood Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and for the spirit and the tone in which he delivers them in relation to this extremely serious matter. I do indeed acknowledge—as I think I have already indicated—what he said about the nature of the collusion that has been discovered, and what it was and what it was not, for instance in respect of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Those are very, very important findings.

It is for the Irish Government to determine what information they reveal, but they have given commitments to me, to the UK Government and, indeed, to all of us about the co-operation that they will provide. The Tánaiste has said to me that the legislation to allow witness testimony to be given to the Omagh bombing inquiry will be in place by March, and we look forward to seeing, in due course, the outline of the Irish Government’s legislation that will implement the rest of the commitments when it comes to co-operation with the new legacy commission that we are seeking to establish by means of the legislation currently before the House.

I am always happy to return to the House to provide further information and to answer further questions, but we are waiting for the Thompson judgment, which is absolutely about the “neither confirm nor deny” policy. That is why, when I wrote to Sir Iain Livingstone on, I think, 13 August, I said to him what I quoted in my original answer to the question from the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson).

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Let me say first that the people responsible for the murder of innocent people in Northern Ireland over many decades were the people who carried out those murders, and the organisations of which they were members. However, it is also clear, from these reports and from previous investigations, that elements within the British state worked hand in glove with loyalist paramilitaries as they murdered scores, indeed hundreds, of innocent people in the north of Ireland, and also that the IRA were riddled with informers, including, clearly, at the very highest levels. Now that we know all that, has the Secretary of State made an assessment of how many lives could have been saved, and how much earlier we could have had peace in Ireland, if the British Government had acted properly?

[Hilary Benn]

I should say to my hon. Friend that I have not made such an assessment, but Operation Kenova itself had something to say in relation to the activities of the alleged agent Stakeknife. Its view was that the balance—I hate to use the term “balance sheet”—of lives lost and lives saved was not quite as it had been described by others. What I think is particularly important about the report published today is its confirmation of a point made by Jon Boutcher when he published the interim report: he said that in the absence of information about what happened, people form a view about what they think happened, and as a result what is finally produced—there is an example of this in relation to the final Operation Kenova report—may turn out to be not quite what everybody thought it was, and that is the argument for trying to be as open as possible about what happened. However, I wanted to make clear in coming to the House today that what has been revealed is, as I have said, disturbing and deeply shocking and should not have happened, and it is really important that we learn the lessons.