Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think the point that the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) was making was just that he wanted to extend the date to accommodate the amendment that has been tabled, but I understand—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is talking while I am talking, which makes it difficult for me to hear, but she has made her point.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

rose—

[Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Robinson]

Can I express my profound disappointment that, at the start of two days in Committee, the Secretary of State has already indicated that he wishes to resist one of the most inoffensive but constructive amendments, which has cross-party support across this Chamber, is not to one side’s benefit or another’s, and would assist the families of the Omagh victims in achieving the answers they deserve, most notably from the Irish Republic and the Irish Government? There is no point lamenting that two days are not enough if the Secretary of State has already made his mind up and has no interest in discussing the substance of any of the amendments before us this afternoon.

[Chris Bryant]

I think that is a slightly ungenerous interpretation. I am happy to listen to the debate, and will respond to it at the end of the day. I am trying to proceed as much as I can on a cross-party basis. I was asked about an amendment and I am simply expressing a view, which is that most legislators in this country have tended use the date of the Good Friday agreement as the cut-off date.

[Gavin Robinson]

rose—

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That is one part of what we might do, but it might be more convenient for everybody concerned if we simply said that certain clauses would not be commenced until such time as both parties had agreed. In addition, I have tabled an amendment, which is remarkably similar to one tabled by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), in relation to issuing a written ministerial statement to clarify how consistent the Irish Government have been with their obligations. I hope that, between all those different elements, we will manage to land on working in lockstep.

I think that all hon. Members would expect me, while first of all congratulating the Irish Government when they have provided important material, and wanting to co-operate with them entirely and fully, to be robust in pushing them where we feel that that has sometimes fallen short. For instance, one issue that was raised with me last week was the evidence that has been given to the Omagh inquiry. Some questions have already been asked by the leading counsel, and I have put those to Jim O’Callaghan, who I expect will be responding to me. Then there is the issue of gelignite. I am also conscious that, only a few weeks ago, I stood in a field where people were digging to see whether they could find the body of a man who was murdered some 30 years ago. Some of the answers to those issues will also lie with the Irish Government, rather than in our paperwork.

[Gavin Robinson]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way, but I need to make a bit of progress.

[Gavin Robinson]

I am grateful yet again, but I make the point that there is not one defined cut-off point for the troubles. Everyone in this House accepts that the Omagh atrocity was the largest atrocity of them all, and it happened outside the Secretary of State’s defined date for the troubles. If he does not like amendment 23, then he should look to amendment 24, which has the date 12 April 2010. Why was that picked? It is because this House legislated for the troubles-related pension entitlement going to that date. It is therefore just wrong to indicate to this Committee that there is one agreed date. Legislators have chosen a number of dates, and all we are asking is at least to include the largest atrocity of the troubles in its totality.

[Chris Bryant]

I am happy to listen to the speech that the right hon. Member will doubtlessly make—if he manages to catch your eye, Ms Ghani, though I am fairly confident he will—and I will respond towards the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lillian Jones (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab)]

I would like to place on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for taking the time to meet me and a formidable local veteran from Ayrshire, Alan Middleton, who does fantastic work with the local Army Cadet Force under the West Lowland Battalion. My right hon. Friend has worked tirelessly and, most importantly, has listened to those of us who feel strongly about this legislation and to the veterans who have concerns, which deserve to be heard.

When the Bill was first introduced, many veterans feared that the new legacy framework would simply become another route to the repeated investigations that have caused so much anxiety, frustration and trauma over recent decades, so I welcome the fact that the Government have listened and that the amendments they have tabled significantly strengthen the Bill.

New clause 32, for instance, recognises the unique context in which members of the armed forces operated during the troubles. Amendments 192 and 195 help ensure that investigations are rigorous and evidence-led, with clear statutory duties on the director of investigations before cases progress further. Perhaps most importantly, new clause 45 protects veterans from unexpected or intrusive contact by investigators years or, in some cases, decades after their service has ended. It places safeguards in law, including the involvement of the Secretary of State, and helps to ensure that veterans are treated with the absolute dignity and respect they deserve.

Taken together, these changes have made the Bill more balanced and, as a result, have secured my support. Nobody is asking for immunity; nobody should be above the law, but equally, there should be no witch hunt against those who served our country honourably. Investigations should be driven by genuinely new evidence, not by the endless revisiting of matters that have already been examined time and again.

The conversations I have had with veterans in Ayrshire, including those who served during some of the most difficult periods of the troubles, have left me in no doubt about the anxiety that the repeated investigations, or even the prospect of such investigations, have caused for them even decades after their service has ended. What they seek is not special treatment, nor to be placed beyond the reach of the law; rather, they seek a process that is fair, proportionate and focused on genuinely new evidence.

Ultimately, this legislation must command confidence among victims and their families, the wider public, and those who served their country honourably. I believe that the changes made to the Bill will help us move closer to that objective. They strike the right balance between accountability and fairness. For those reasons, I will be supporting the Government’s approach, and I urge Members across the House to do so too.

[Gavin Robinson]

I thank you, Ms Ghani, for calling me so early. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones), though I hope I might convince her not to follow the whole of the Government’s approach in respect of some of the amendments. I hope her ears are open, as well as her heart, to the arguments that we will make.

I indicated earlier in my interventions and, indeed, in the debate on the programme motion that the way in which we are considering these amendments today is far from optimal. In fact, we have had some good speeches and contributions already, and yet they did not touch on the amendments at all—that was subject to the Chair’s indulgence, of course—but were delivered in more general terms.

Amendment 52 was tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton), and signed by me, my colleagues and those around me. Similarly, amendments 21 and 22 were tabled by me and my colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party, and signed by those around us. Amendment 2 was tabled by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) on a similar thread, and amendment 1 was tabled by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister). There is a recurrent theme, yet whenever the Government table their own amendments to try to deal with the issues outlined in new clauses 33 and 34 they are totally deficient.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

To be clear, I do not resist the idea that sexual violence was part of the troubles. Indeed, one problem with previous legacy legislation was that it made it impossible for such things to be investigated anywhere. We are making it possible for such matters to be investigated by the police. All police forces in the United Kingdom have suitable teams that are able to deal with the specifics of those kinds of incidents, and it would be inappropriate for the legacy commission to take on that piece of work without being able to set up a whole new team specifically to look at that. However, the legislation does allow police forces to take forward those crimes, and if there is clear evidence that that was related to a death as well, or to serious injury, it would be able to be investigated.

[Gavin Robinson]

I disagree fundamentally with the Secretary of State. Let us put it like this: sexual violence was used to pursue the same aims by the same depraved people who were prepared to take life, and they did. Whenever we listen to Máiría Cahill, and her experience, we must remember that this was continual trauma inflicted by people who were exerting coercive control in her community, and who threatened her continually and repeatedly that she could not dishonour the virtuous— in their view—republican name. Yet she was repeatedly raped by the same people who were committing murder on our streets. On the notion that we can argue the toss and say, “Well she can go to the police”, is there no concept or understanding in this Committee that people like Máiría grew up in republican west Belfast or other places where going to the police is still an alien concept? This is being portrayed as the Human Rights Act and article 2-compliant mechanism that people can go to for truth and justice, but not if they happen to be a victim of one sort of crime—sexual crime—rather than the other sort of crime. That is shameful.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Máiría Cahill has been a doughty campaigner on this issue for many years. At the weekend, she responded to a former Member of this House, Michelle Gildernew, who represented the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Máiría Cahill indicated that she had reported that sexual violence to that former Member of this House —a Sinn Féin MP—who did absolutely nothing about it

[Gavin Robinson]

My hon. Friend is right. Máiría Cahill was defending me from outrageous suggestions directed towards me in a tweet by Michelle Gildernew, who had the temerity to do so knowing that Máiría Cahill had confided in her in the 1990s and she did nothing. I thank Máiría for her steadfastness and her courage over many years on the issues that she has raised.

New clause 21 is another attempt by the official Opposition, among many others on the amendment paper, to ensure that any process understands the context of operations, the environment in which people served, the rules of engagement, the pressure and the threats. How often do we hear people talk of Bloody Sunday and never mention the days that preceded it—I say that not as an excuse or a challenge for what happened—and the two police officers who were murdered? Those two police officers, patrolling that city on a cross-community basis, were murdered on the streets.

I often remember a gentleman who was in the end very senior in the Reserve Forces and Cadets Association for Northern Ireland saying to me, “Gavin, I remember one day being out the top of the Land Rover. I heard a clink, turned around and thought I was going to be shot because two of my friends had been killed the day before. I nearly shot until I realised it was an elderly lady putting out two milk bottles.” What he was trying to indicate to me was that as a young, 20-year-old man he was so perplexed, scared and petrified—knowing he had lost friends yesterday, wondering whether he would get home that afternoon and not knowing the answer—that when he heard that clink first thing in the morning, he thought he was next and he nearly shot an unarmed civilian. Thank God he did not, but he shared that story with me so that I could understand. So I support new clause 21 entirely when it talks about “contemporaneous Rules” and the environment in which people operated.

The Government have tried to meet us on equivalence in some ways in their new clause 31, which replicates amendment 56 tabled in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and amendment 10 tabled in the name of the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim. New clause 9 has been proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart), who has put in efforts about “on the runs” and putting those beyond the pale. I understand that the Government have moved their position on that, but they could engage and support rather than always tabling their own new clauses.

New clause 5 deals with support for former members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. I make no apologies for saying that support for the Royal Ulster Constabulary should be before this House. We talk all the time about veterans, and rightly so. My grandfather served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, although not during the troubles. He served his community. Some 302 officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary served their community and paid the ultimate sacrifice. It is was right that they were honoured with the George Cross, but it was wrong that they were so disgracefully dishonoured through the changes that were brought about in policing. Yet here we are, just weeks away from celebrating or acknowledging 25 years of renewed policing in Northern Ireland, with questions around support for the police.

I listened very carefully to the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn). I acknowledge that he has engaged with many victims, but while he was speaking I received a text message from a member of a victims’ group who had hoped for a visit from him when he was Secretary of State. He did not visit, although he sent a junior Minister. I remember visiting that same victim on the main street in Omagh. He served as a police officer on 15 August 1998. He showed me the shop where he was laying bodies that day—28 people lost their lives, as well as two unborn children. He then took me into the entry next door, where he had had to bring other bodies because there simply was not sufficient room in the front of the shop. He and his colleagues have been demonised for years, but this RUC man was weeping when he was sharing with me the pain he still had, although that was not his intention, and the pain he still harboured from those days. He has asked the Government to support him and his colleagues whenever they engage with the Omagh inquiry. He has lamented the fact that the Omagh inquiry is but a partial piece of the jigsaw.

The Omagh inquiry has only the terms of reference that allow it to answer the question, “What could the British state authorities have done to prevent Omagh?” What could we have done to prevent an act of terror? Omagh was blown up because dissident republicans from the Republic of Ireland sought vehicles in the Republic of Ireland, moved through the Republic of Ireland and came to Northern Ireland to destroy that market town. And so they did. But our inquiry will answer only what we could have done to prevent that. Time after time we have raised the issue about the legacy commission’s dates. Why are we, as a House of Commons, still prepared to pass legislation that says that the troubles ended in April 1998, when we know the Omagh attack occurred on 15 August 1998?

Whenever we raise these issues, it is, “Oh, you are just having a go at the Irish. The Irish have promised that they are going to give information,” but no, they have not. As the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said earlier, this issue was raised at the Omagh inquiry last week in evidence given by John Ware, a “Panorama” journalist. He made reference to a call that was received by the Finner Irish army camp in Ballyshannon on 14 August 1998. Colleagues may remember me raising this last week, and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim raised it as well. The reason John Ware made those comments was that he and core participants felt that the details he was about to outline in the inquiry were with them mistakenly, and that had he not read them out—and had the Irish Government realised they had let them slip—they would have been rescinded. That is why I got a call four weeks ago giving me the details on a similar basis, so that they could not be rescinded.

[Jim Allister]

Further to that, much was publicised and lauded about a memorandum of understanding with the Dublin Government on how they were going to co-operate in the Omagh inquiry, yet we find they were sitting on information and when 50-plus questions were sent to them, they answered two.

[Gavin Robinson]

There is a recurring theme. We were told that the Irish Government would have a Garda legacy unit and that they would answer this mythical telephone, but they do not answer. They do not provide answers, they do not respond to emails and they still have an inter-state case against our Government—they expect much of us but give nothing in return.

On 14 August 1998, a telephone call was made to the Finner camp. According to an Irish army document—handwritten—the call came in at half-past 10, and a male caller,

“who sounded reasonable and did not appear to be drunk”,

said:

“Pay attention to the back roads around Kinlough”—

border control checkpoints 197 and 198—

“Inform the GS and NISF”—

Garda Síochána and Northern Ireland Security Forces—

“road leads to Enniskillen, Irvinestown and Clogher.”

Then he stopped and said:

“Forget Clogher, Omagh, Omagh, Omagh”.

Garda Síochána spoke to the barracks orderly sergeant and the barracks detachment staff, whose names are redacted, on 16 August, when they decided for themselves that it was not a warning—it was—with the most devastating consequences. Ten days later, there was another effort to try to retrofit the call. But why am I mentioning any of this? I am mentioning these things because there was Government knowledge, Garda Síochána knowledge and intelligence service knowledge of the call that came in on 14 August, yet Baroness O’Loan in the other place, who was the first Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, conducted an inquiry into Omagh. For two years, she investigated the Omagh bomb. Was she aware of those calls? No, she was not. The revelation last week was a revelation to her.