Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

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

1. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on retail registrations by car dealerships in Northern Ireland.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sarah Owen)]

Ministers and officials are in regular contact with the Department for Transport on dual approvals for passenger vehicles and Northern Ireland’s automotive sector. The Government remain committed to ensuring that vehicle supply remains as seamless as possible across the whole of the UK. This was shown when the Government secured fairness on the tax treatment of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, supporting dealerships and car buyers.

[Mr Campbell]

Northern Ireland car dealers pay their taxes to the UK Treasury and they must be able to compete on equal terms with dealerships across the rest of the country. At present, they cannot. Action is needed, not just complaints from others. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister meet representatives of Northern Ireland car dealers and talk to their Cabinet colleagues to ensure that cars approved for sale in Great Britain can also be sold new by Northern Ireland dealerships? How soon can this be delivered?

[Sarah Owen]

We are continuing to engage with Northern Ireland car market representatives, as well as the broader UK automotive industry, on issues faced by Northern Ireland car dealers. We want to see the sector go from strength to strength, and I am happy to meet with anybody who shares that mission. I also want to address the fact that the hon. Gentleman has raised the lack of response to a particular letter from the National Franchised Dealers Association. I will ensure that that is rectified by the end of the week, and it will get a response.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Tuesday 20th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. By the time we finish considering the Bill today, I cannot see any legitimate reason why the Irish state would continue with its inter-state case at all. I have already made that point robustly to my counterparts in Dublin. I very much hope that they will look again and think again and decide that not only did we win the case in the Dillon judgment, but the legislation that we are advancing today is fully human rights-compliant, and that there is therefore no argument for them maintaining their inter-state case.

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

The Secretary of State says that he very much hopes that the Dublin Government would move at the conclusion of today’s consideration. Has he had that conversation with them, and have they given him the assurance that that is what they intend to do?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, to the first part. As I have just said, I have said this very robustly to Jim O’Callaghan and Helen McEntee on several occasions. They have kept their own counsel for the moment, but it seems to me inconceivable that, by the time the Bill gets to the House of Lords, there could be an argument for them maintaining the inter-state case, and I therefore hope that they will withdraw it. I am being as clear as I can with the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, he and I agree on many, many things, not least the fact that it is good to have power sharing in Northern Ireland and that I should not be running Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Davis]

I am trying to do as much damage as possible. [Laughter.]

I stand to speak principally to amendment 51 and, to some extent, to amendment 49, which would stop existing paused inquests going forward. Amendment 51 would address directly the paused inquest relating to Loughgall. I picked that event out because it is the most controversial and central to what the IRA were trying to achieve. It is emblematic of many of the reasons why we should not pursue any of these inquests, but should put them in their proper place with the legacy commission, which could deal with them dispassionately.

Before I go any further, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and not just this year but in previous years. They relate to the fact that I was the trustee of the SAS Regimental Association for well over a decade—I cannot remember how many years.

All parties in the debate so far, yesterday and today, have quite properly focused on the need to get closure for victims and, at the same time, to deliver justice for our veterans. Nobody can argue with those two aims. I am focusing mostly on getting justice for veterans by preventing them being punished by the process, but, before I pursue that line in detail, I will address some of the words and definitions that we are using, particularly the definition of “victim” in the operation of inquests in Northern Ireland.

We all have in our minds a fairly clear idea of what a victim is, but unfortunately it is a little different in Northern Ireland. The difference arises from a deliberate decision taken by the Blair Government in article 3 of the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, which changed the definition of “victim” and ruled that anyone affected by the troubles through loss, trauma or injury would be classed as a victim. That means that proven murderers killed in an attempt to carry out another murder count as victims. I know of nowhere else in the world where the law treats killers as victims.

This issue is still relevant. In September last year, the Democratic Unionist party used a motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly to try to restore some moral clarity by adding the word “innocent” before “victims”. Most of us would think of that as a tautology, but the motion was defeated by Sinn Féin, supported by Alliance. That is incredibly central to this matter, because the word “innocent” exposes the truth and draws a line between terrorists and their victims.

In response to the point made earlier by the hon. Member for Sunderland Central, “veterans” and “victims” are not mutually exclusive terms, but “terrorists” and “victims” are. That is the significance of the amendments I am talking about. In the IRA active service unit killed at Loughgall, there were any number of people to whom that applied. The clearest example was Jim Lynagh, who was guilty of at least 20 murders and probably more than 30. His nickname was “the executioner”. He was not an innocent victim by any rational judgment of the word.

Why Loughgall? It was the greatest single defeat of the IRA—the one that they are most sore about and still feel the scars of. Why is that? Because it involved the defeat of what they considered their most successful unit, the East Tyrone brigade. What was the measure of that success? That so-called brigade killed 250 innocent people. The defeat at Loughgall was seen as a humiliation for the IRA, and that means that they are now desperate to rewrite history and cast their murderers as heroes and British soldiers as amoral killers. That is why they want a coroner’s inquest, rather than a legacy commission.

I am afraid that in Northern Ireland a coroner’s inquest is in many ways public theatre; it is just different. The shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), made this point, but I will reiterate it. In the rest of the United Kingdom, an inquest is not allowed to pursue a case if it becomes at all apparent that it may lead to a criminal prosecution, such as the finding of an unlawful killing, but in Northern Ireland the reverse is true.

Even Northern Irish judges recognise the ludicrous nature of that situation. We saw that in the Coagh case with Soldier B, where there was judicial review attempt after judicial review attempt, which led to the judge talking about the

“ludicrous nature of this challenge, funded as it is by legal aid.”

The judge in that sequence talked about having to make views or judgments in slow motion or freeze frame on decisions. Those were life-and-death decisions, for the individuals concerned, and they were made in fractions of a second. That is the central reason for my objection.

Why are operations such as Loughgall, Clonoe, Coagh or any of the others challenged by supporters of the IRA and others? The peculiar circumstances of Northern Ireland made this sort of operation necessary. How is that? The IRA knew how to frustrate justice. They would murder or intimidate not just anybody who thought that they might be a witness, but their families. If I were in that circumstance in Northern Ireland, I would baulk at giving evidence if I felt that my family might be murdered as a result of doing so, and I would baulk at serving on a jury for the same reason. That is why we ended up with Diplock trials, which had judges without juries, because that was simply not viable. When Diplock recommended those trials, he gave the example of a man who was executed in front of his young son the day before he was due to give evidence in a terrorist trial. That is the background and the circumstances.

However, the IRA did not stop there. They understood that, as well as witnesses, the other thing that matters in court cases is forensics. That is why they wore a strange uniform of boiler suits, rubber gloves, shoe coverings or wellingtons and balaclavas, because they knew that they had to deny the evidence, but that was not all. When they had carried out their crime, the cars used were frequently abandoned and burned to destroy the evidence. There are plenty of examples—I think Clonoe was one of them—where a crowd prevented the authorities from getting close to a car until it had burned out, for the very simple reason that it destroyed the evidence. Even in the case of the murder of a previous Speaker at Stormont, Norman Stronge, and his son, the IRA set fire to the house, with the same aim.

[Mr Campbell]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the IRA’s determination to deal with forensics, does he know that they also blew up the forensics laboratory in south Belfast, where the forensic information had been gathered?

[David Davis]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. That serves to focus our minds on the fact that this was a very deliberate strategy. This did not happen by accident, and the IRA did not just take to wearing boiler suits as uniforms; this was a deliberate strategy.

The IRA’s strategy faced the state with a conundrum. Doing nothing and sitting back does not work—if the jury processes and other judicial processes do not work, that is not an option. Why do I say that? Let me go back and take the East Tyrone brigade as an example. It killed 250 people before Loughgall. During the late ’80s, it was killing people at a rate of 10 or 15 a year. Doing nothing meant that 10 or 15 innocent people would die every year because the state was not fulfilling its duty, so the only way to stop it was to catch the East Tyrone brigade in flagrante—in the act of carrying out a crime—and try to arrest them. Of course, the first aim of the state is always to act with minimum force if possible, but the circumstances did not always allow that. This was an armed set of terrorists, probably in the process of trying to kill somebody, who might then turn to kill you, and you had to stand up and say, “Excuse me, you’re under arrest.” We saw from many of these events how dangerous that was. At Coagh—the case that went through all those judicial reviews—an SAS soldier effectively had to dress up as a UDR man to be the target, and they had to wait until he had been shot at before they moved.

At Clonoe, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar mentioned, there was another problem: the intelligence was wrong, which made it even more difficult. There they were facing a double-barrelled dushka machine gun, .50 calibre and capable of bringing down light armour or aircraft. A three-second burst of fire from that and the whole patrol would have been dead. That was the sort of thing we were asking our soldiers to do. I will come back to the Loughgall example, which is even worse in many ways. That was the sort of thing that we said to our soldiers, “You must do this to attempt to achieve an arrest, or at least a stop if you have to.” This is not theoretical; in the specific context of the special forces, which is what these three cases relate to, hundreds of soldiers died in Northern Ireland. If Members want to look into this, I recommend that they look up the example of Lance Corporal David Jones, who was shot at the moment of challenge, or that of Captain Westmacott. There are others, but those cases give the Committee clear examples of the sorts of risks that had to be taken—and were taken—by our brave, honourable, decent and law-abiding soldiers.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Monday 19th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)]

In the seven years that I have been a Member of this House, I do not think that I have been in a more respectful, positive and high-quality debate. There have been some absolutely outstanding contributions from across the House. I am not going to reach that standard, but I am proud to participate in the debate. I particularly acknowledge the contributions made by colleagues from Northern Ireland. Having visited a number of times recently, I can attest that they do politics pretty well there; there is a standard of speech-making that reflects the seriousness of politics there, and we have all benefited from that this evening.

My observation about the Bill and the amendments brought forward by the Government is that they essentially still fail on a core moral principle, which I will come to. The amendments that have been adduced as improving the Bill and addressing the concerns that have been raised do not, I am afraid, offer new protections. Many of them relate to measures that are already in force and could be applied, particularly those on the opportunities for anonymity and remote hearings.

The amendments and the new clauses are mostly simply important moral statements of what should be obvious. In particular, new clause 32 states that there is no equivalence between terrorist action and legal actions. It is extraordinary that it needs to be said that “a relevant person” in an inquest or proceedings

“must have regard to…the fact that force may lawfully be used to prevent unlawful violence”.

And what a thing to need to say that lawful action is not equivalent to terrorism! Why would that have to be stated in law, unless the Bill might be thought to suggest the opposite—that the law as it stands, and the Bill, could imply that equivalence?

At the heart of why the Bill remains inadequate is the essential imbalance in the legal procedures that the legacy of Northern Ireland applies. I pay tribute to a group of veterans I met recently—some special forces and some others—led by Dr Robert Parr, an academic at Oxford who was a Royal Marine and in special forces. He has written a very powerful paper that makes the simple point that the legal system—this is not addressed by the Bill; in fact, the Bill consolidates it—

“privileges the claims of former paramilitaries over those of the men and women who served the Crown”.

Of course, that is not intentional—the intention is to provide equity and parity—but the problem is structural.

The fact is that only a 10th of the deaths that happened during the troubles were caused by the security services, but it is men and women in uniform who must bear almost the whole institutional burden under the law as it stands, and that will not change under this Bill. The IRA and other paramilitary organisations got letters of comfort, early release and pardons. They had their weapons decommissioned without any forensic testing being done. Meanwhile, the British Army kept its records—indeed, it operated under the chain of command. It had accountability built into the work that it did; in fact, it had all the elements that made its decisions as safe as possible, as a military operating under the laws of a democracy. It is those elements that are now used against the Army, and that is the structural imbalance we face. That was apparent right at the beginning, when the Good Friday agreement was being implemented.

A letter has been released recently from John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary in 2001. He was writing to Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and he made it clear that the proposed arrangement, in which an amnesty would be offered to terrorists but not to British veterans, was asymmetric and unjust, but that for reasons of political necessity, that is how it had to be. As Dr Parr has pointed out, the asymmetric exclusion of the security forces was therefore not the product of principled legal reasoning or an honest assessment of comparative culpability; it was the price of republican acquiescence in a political settlement. Just consider the insult that that represents to our soldiers.

I pay tribute to and honour the point that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) made. Our soldiers beat the IRA to a standstill. They fought it to the negotiating table, and then they had to take the final indignity, which is that they, not the IRA, would face the threat of the law and of prosecution.

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

The hon. Member pays tribute to the armed forces of the time. Does he agree that we enjoy peace today partly because of the work that many of our special forces did in penetrating paramilitaries, to the point that we found out only later about people such as Stakeknife? That was the reason why the paramilitaries were forced to the peace table; it was not that they voluntarily sought peace.

[Danny Kruger]

That is absolutely right.

There was a question from the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) earlier about who won. The answer is that, in so far as this was a military conflict, we know who won: it was the British Army, particularly with the help of special forces, but it had to suffer that indignity in consequence. It accepted as the price of peace the indignity and injustice of being exposed to the principle of liability and the threat of prosecution, while the IRA was indemnified. That was a bitter enough pill, but the actual practice of repeat prosecutions on the scale that we have seen—not the threat, but the reality—is unacceptable. That is not what was expected or accepted at the time, but back in those days, people reckoned without the European convention on human rights, the consequences of the Human Rights Act 1998, and the lawfare that the convention has brought into reality in our time, in this century. In particular, article 2 of the ECHR applies retrospectively to the investigations, based on the inadequacy of the investigations under standards that did not apply back in those days. That is the essential injustice of the law as it stands and of this Bill; there is a fundamental violation of the principle of legal certainty. Let me quote Dr Parr again. He says that

“the requirement that individuals be able to foresee the legal consequences of their actions at the time of those actions”

is itself

“a foundational element of the rule of law to which the ECHR is ostensibly committed.”

In passing, let me turn to one other indignity and injustice that, I am afraid, has been consolidated by this Bill. No accountability has ever been forthcoming from the Irish state, elements of which were arguably responsible for enabling, colluding with and covering up the actions of terrorists during the troubles, and none is expected in the future, despite the warm words of the Secretary of State. Thanks to this Bill, though, the Irish Government will play a crucial role in our own justice system. That is wrong.

What is happening is that the Government—and I honour them for doing this—are trying to reconcile common sense and decency, and the obvious appeal for justice on behalf of veterans, with the human rights framework that we have. I am afraid to say that that simply cannot be done, so I will end with a few thoughts about the future and the system that we need. We must start by reverting to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, and to the principles that Tony Blair oversaw back then. He chose peace over justice, and he was right to do so. That was the right principle. Now, in our time, we need to choose truth over individual justice for people who can never realistically hope to attain individual justice. That is the way to heal a community; evidence from transitional justice programmes around the world, particularly in South Africa, demonstrates that that is the way to achieve healing in a community. The hon. Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) put it very well when he talked about the need for positive peace—national peace and reconciliation. Mrs Jones, the lady we have adverted to throughout this debate, is not going to get justice through the law, but if we genuinely open the archives—including the archives in Dublin—and encourage truthfulness, she could get the truth.

Going forward, we need to stop all future prosecutions of the sort that have persecuted our veterans, and we need a Bill that draws a line under the Northern Irish troubles, as well as the Haddon-Cave inquiry. We need a new process for war crimes under English law, and a new legal basis for military conduct without European law. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) and the private Member’s Bill he has introduced; I think that Bill goes in the right direction, but we can go even further. It particularly emphasises—this is the core point—that the chain of command is ultimately responsible for the actions of soldiers on the ground, and Ministers are ultimately responsible for the use of force, not the poor bloke who had to take a decision in a split-second, at risk of life.

I suggest that something more is needed even than what the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington suggests. We need to go further—we need to pull out of the ECHR altogether. There are many reasons for leaving it, and my party makes those points repeatedly. It protects terrorists and stops the deportation of illegal immigrants, but the most important reason is that it enables the prosecution of our soldiers. On those grounds, we must leave it.

Drumcree

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

When I received the section 9 letter on Friday morning, I had no idea when the court was going to come to its conclusions, and obviously I had been asked—and am required by law—to consult with the Parades Commission and the Chief Constable, as I did. That is the process I followed. I do not want to stray further into that process, simply because all of this is subject to legal challenge.

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

The Secretary of State has outlined the issues relating to the Drumcree parade, and has said in his statement that those who have acted unlawfully must face the consequences of their actions. If that process is allowed to proceed—and I hope it will—the police must do their job, and the prosecution service must do its job. Beyond that, though, people in Northern Ireland need to know that if political leaders and others break the law, there are consequences beyond the court proceedings, consequences that will preclude their holding office. Is the Secretary of State prepared to discuss what sanctions can be taken to prevent somebody who breaks the criminal law from holding public office, and to issue and declare such sanctions?

[Chris Bryant]

I think the hon. Member is asking me to introduce primary legislation to change the Northern Ireland Act, which is not my intention at the moment. I am not sure what other process he is considering, but I am very happy to consider it with him.

I noted one thing the hon. Member said earlier, or maybe yesterday on the television: the last thing we want is Chris Bryant running Northern Ireland.

[Mr Campbell]

indicated assent.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Member is nodding, so I got that right. Maybe we can agree with each other, because I want the Northern Ireland Executive to continue in operation. I certainly do not want to be in a position where I am running all of Northern Ireland.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a really important point, and I am grateful to him for his question. We all have a responsibility—political leaders have a responsibility to call out what was witnessed for what it is and not mince our words, and as I have already indicated, social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that such material, if it is illegal, is not available on social media sites. I pay tribute to the police and the community organisations, who did an extraordinary job on the night of the 10th to find shelter for people who had been burned out of their homes. Parents also have a responsibility; if someone’s son comes back at 11 o’clock at night wearing dark clothing and smelling of smoke, a parent might ask, “Where have you been and what have you been doing?”

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

Community cohesion is important, both racially and politically. Everyone accepts that political leaders and others have to be cognisant of what they say and what they do, and whenever we are all remembering our dead, as we do, no one denies republicans the right to remember their dead. Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that if a political leader, such as the First Minister—Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill—not only remembers republican dead, but lauds, praises and defends their indefensible actions, that does great harm to community cohesion?

[Hilary Benn]

Northern Ireland is a society, as the hon. Gentleman knows better than most, that has been undergoing profound change since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 28 years ago. As the famous lines go, we have a shared history, but not necessarily a shared memory. The progress we have seen is because Northern Ireland society has been working to move beyond that. One of the people I met who was there on the night of the violence said that we now have “another other” in Northern Ireland. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the traditional divisions, but there is now another other: the ethnic minority population of Northern Ireland, who are terrified about what is happening. We do not want to add to the troubles of the past by not being clear how unacceptable it is to see that on the streets of Belfast today.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Q10. The Government have said that higher taxes are needed to fund rising welfare spending. In Northern Ireland, my party’s Communities Minister is taking action to reduce welfare fraud and error. Discussions were held between the Treasury and the Department that would have allowed Northern Ireland Departments to retain a share of any savings to invest directly in public services, but those proposals were blocked by Sinn Féin. Will the Deputy Prime Minister ensure that the incoming Prime Minister will look at that approach again so that we can tackle benefit fraud and protect taxpayers’ money as well as delivering real benefits for communities across all of Northern Ireland?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is discussing the budget at this very time. Tackling fraud and error in the welfare system is a priority for the Government, which is why we passed the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act 2025, giving the Department for Work and Pensions more powers to stop fraud in its tracks, recover money lost and prevent overpayments.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Training College

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland training college.

Thank you for your chairmanship, Sir Roger. It would be remiss of me not to mention, at the start of the debate, the appalling incident that happened in north Belfast last night. I am sure that hon. Members agree that we roundly condemn that serious assault. Our prayers and thoughts go out to the individual assaulted. We hope he makes a speedy recovery and we call for calm in the protests that will occur right across Northern Ireland tonight. It is up to this Government to address the serious concerns of the public.

As the Member for North Down, I rise to speak about an issue that is at once local, regional and national: the future of police training in Northern Ireland and the urgent need for the United Kingdom Government to step up and fund a modern, single-site police college as a matter of national security. It is not a luxury project; it is a core part of the critical national infrastructure. Northern Ireland police officers past and present have stood on the frontline of threats that have not been confined to Belfast, Bangor or Newry, but have reached to the hearts of London, Birmingham and Manchester, and beyond. The skills those police officers develop, the intelligence they contribute and the partnerships they underpin with UK-wide agencies all flow from the training that they receive. If we value their contribution to the safety of every citizen in the United Kingdom, we must be honest about the state of the facilities that we expect them to train in and about the scale of the investment that realistically only the UK Government can provide.

At the heart of the proposal for a new training college is a 54.8-acre site in my constituency of North Down. It is a site of sufficient scale to bring together on one campus the full spectrum of modern policing training: recruit training, specialist firearms and public order training, cyber-crime and digital forensics training, and training in road policing and marine policing, as well as leadership development and continuous professional training. On the 54.8-acre site there is space to do that properly by designing purpose-built classrooms, scenario villages, driving tracks, ranges and simulation suites that reflect the real world environments that officers face. That is the future we could and should build, but today we do not train our officers in such a place. Instead, we rely heavily on Garnerville—an ageing and constrained estate—and on a patchwork of split-site arrangements across Northern Ireland.

It is time that we were candid about what that actually means. Garnerville has served with distinction for decades. Many of our finest officers have passed through those gates, but sentiment does not mend roofs, rebuild tired accommodation blocks or magically transform 20th-century buildings into 21st-century digital training hubs. The maintenance realities at Garnerville are stark. Every year more and more of the already stretched budget of the Police Service of Northern Ireland is poured into simply keeping the lights on and the structures safe by patching up old wiring and maintaining leaky roofs, into trying to retrofit modern information and communications technology into buildings never designed for it, and into constantly working around the constraints of a campus that has quite simply reached the end of its usefulness and economic life. Engineers have been clear at best: with ongoing remedial work and ever-greater maintenance bills, the existing core facilities have perhaps 10 years of realistic lifespan left—10 years at most. That is to keep an outdated model limping on, not to deliver the standard of training that a modern UK police service facing complex, fast-moving threats truly requires.

We face a choice. Do we continue to sink millions of pounds into life-extending repairs on a site that cannot by its very nature deliver what is needed, or do we invest once in a modern, consolidated college on a 54.8-acre site that is available, appropriate and future-proofed? The truth is that the current split-level model is no longer financially or operationally defensible. Training being scattered across multiple locations leads to the duplication of facilities and staff, increased travel time and transport costs, ineffective scheduling, wasted officer hours, a fragmented culture, inconsistent training experiences and logistical complexities that pull focus away from core training qualities.

In an area in which we ask our officers to handle everything from neighbourhood disputes to international organised crime, we should not be asking them to shuttle between sites because one campus cannot meet their needs, nor should we accept a model where some specialist training must be compromised or curtailed because the facilities are not available in the right place at the right time.

A single, purpose-built college on the site in North Down would end the split-site inefficiency and bring recruits, specialists and leaders together. It would allow shared use of high-quality simulation environments—digital labs, scenario streets and lecture theatres. It would foster a genuine shared professional culture across ranks and disciplines, and crucially it would do so on a site that is large and flexible enough to evolve with the threats we know are coming over the next 30 to 40 years, and not just the next five years.

Some might say, “This is a devolved matter—let Stormont pay.” That argument simply does not stand up when we consider the nature of the work that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does and the national security dimension, which in Northern Ireland is inseparable from policing. Let us be clear: the PSNI works hand in glove with the security services, the National Crime Agency and police forces across Great Britain on counter-terrorism, serious and organised crime, cyber-threats and the protection of critical national infrastructure. Threats that are planned or incubated in Northern Ireland may be executed across other areas of the United Kingdom. Intelligence gathered on the streets of Belfast or Londonderry can keep people safe in London or Glasgow.

Northern Ireland is not a distinct, separate theatre of operations; it is an integral front in the security of the whole United Kingdom. The officers we train in Garnerville or Antrim are not just local officers; they are part of a UK-wide network of professionals protecting all of us from terrorism, paramilitary criminality, people smuggling, drug trafficking, cyber-attacks and hostile state activities exploiting our unique geographic and political context.

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

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Does he agree that in addition to having a state-of-the-art training facility—and I agree with him on that—we need to have more police officers on the street. The police in Northern Ireland are understaffed, and we need to see more politicians, some of whom are absent today, standing with and recruiting people from all communities, so that they can be trained and serve people in Northern Ireland.

[Alex Easton]

I agree with everything the hon. Member says. We are 1,000 police officers down from what we need to deal with crime in Northern Ireland. That is a failing of Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister, who has failed to find the funding to recruit those extra officers, but even if we got those extra officers, we do not have the facilities to train them properly. It is a vicious circle. That is why we need to step up and do something about this.

Investing in a modern, secure and fully equipped police college is not a regional spending decision, but a UK national security decision. When we fund new facilities for the Metropolitan police to train their counter-terrorism officers, nobody pretends that it is merely a London issue. When we invest in specialist training centres in England, Scotland or Wales, we recognise that the benefits radiate across the borders. The same logic applies in Northern Ireland. If a police training facility serving the frontline of UK counter-terrorism and serious crime in any other part of our country had only 10 years of realistic life left and operated across a fragmented, split-site model, this House would rightly expect the UK Government to act. We would not expect a single devolved budget, already under pressure from health, education and infrastructure, to shoulder that burden alone.

Moreover, the risks of inaction are not theoretical. Allow me to spell them out. First, a failure to invest over the next decade will steadily degrade training quality. As the buildings become harder and more expensive to maintain and as technological advances become more and more out of step with operational reality, the temptation grows to do just enough training rather than the best training, and our police service in Northern Ireland deserves the very best. Secondly, split-site inefficiencies will continue to erode value for money. Every pound spent duplicating facilities or transporting officers between ageing sites is a pound not spent on actually improving our protectivity and capabilities.

Thirdly, there is a risk to morale and recruitment. We ask bright, committed young men and women to join an exceptionally demanding police service in a uniquely challenging environment. Showing them that we are prepared to invest in a world-class training facility is part of respecting that ask. Leaving them in crumbling buildings, patched-up classrooms and outdated accommodation sends the opposite message. Finally, there is a strategic risk that the UK as a whole allows one of its key security partners, the PSNI, to fall behind in capacity and capability because we are unwilling to grasp the nettle of capital funding at the right time.

This is precisely the kind of investment that the UK Government should recognise and support as part of our national security framework. It is a single-focus project that has clear outcomes: ending an inefficient split-site model, replacing facilities with at best 10 years left of life, creating a modern 54-acre campus site capable of delivering cutting-edge training for decades, and strengthening co-operation with UK-wide security partners. The people of North Down and Northern Ireland understand the local and national significance of the project. Locally, it would bring skilled employment and investment and would send a clear signal that our area is a hub of professional excellence. Nationally, it would send a signal across the United Kingdom that we are serious, not just in words but in hard infrastructure, about maintaining the safety and security of every region of our country.

My appeal to the Minister today is simply to look beyond the narrow lines of departmental spreadsheets and see this for what it is: a critical national security investment in one of the most tested, professional police services in the United Kingdom. If we can find the resources for the site in North Down, we will build not simply some new classrooms and a few training tracks; we will build confidence among officers that we are behind them and confidence among the public across all four nations of the United Kingdom that we are serious about their safety. The alternative is to limp on at Garnerville, pouring good money after bad into a site with a maximum of 10 years left and locking into an inefficient split-site model. It is just not prudent. It is a false economy and a risk to the security of all.

The choice is clear. I urge the Government to choose the future, to commit to the necessary UK funding to deliver a modern single-site police college on the North Down campus, and to do so openly in an investment in the national security of our entire United Kingdom.

North Belfast: Violent Attack

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it was an act of pure evil. I am surprised he suggests that there is any possibility that those who came to the aid of the victim should be at risk of prosecution, because they were trying—[Interruption.] Judging by the footage, they were trying to save the victim when the attacker was trying to inflict great harm upon him. My judgment, having looked at that, is that what they did was proportionate and fair, but that is for others to judge. It is important that they are recognised. I have already indicated to the House that as soon as I have information that is confirmed and that I can be sure of, I will inform the House.

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

Tens of thousands of people are horrified at the circulation online of the video that the Secretary of State has alluded to. He quite rightly congratulates the members of the public who intervened—whether it was a hurl bat or a cricketing bat, they took action—but as tension rises, we now need to see Government action to restrict and inhibit people arriving in this country illegally, some of whom carry out actions like we saw on the streets of Belfast last night.

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Gentleman will be well aware of the action that the Government are taking to deal with illegal migration. I have also made clear to the House the steps that we take if anyone, however they came to the country, or whether they are from this country, commits a criminal offence: they will face due process. Any foreign national, regardless of how they came, who abuses our hospitality and commits crimes can expect to be deported at the end of their sentence.

Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Carry-over)

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Carry-over motion
Monday 27th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

I have read the Saville inquiry, and the hon. Member will have just heard me say that even after one of the longest, most expensive and detailed public inquiries in British legal history, it was impossible to get a conviction. Yet we are asking victims in Northern Ireland to believe that there will be some magical moment where suddenly it would be possible to get convictions in other cases. That, the House must understand, is for the birds; it will not happen. Victims will have their hopes raised and dashed in front of this legislation.

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

Does the hon. Member agree that if ever there was a demonstration of the two-tier process in terms of legacy, we have it as a result of the Saville report? The same Saville report that was used to pursue Soldier F contained an assertion that Martin McGuinness probably had a submachine gun on the same day. He was never questioned, never mind pursued or taken to court—not once.

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman raises a significant issue about the terrible events of Bloody Sunday, but I will not attempt to relitigate the whole of the Saville inquiry this evening—I understand the remarks that both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) have made.

Similarly, over the past few months, very senior veterans, senior generals and former members of the special forces have come out decisively against the Bill. On Armistice Day, in an unprecedented intervention, nine four-star generals wrote to warn that highly trained members of the special forces are already leaving the service. In January, seven SAS commanders wrote of the acute dangers of how

“a peacetime human rights framework”

now wields

“an effective veto over efforts to close the past.”

Last month, Generals Wall and Parker wrote that

“those who…did their duty in circumstances not of their making…are left exposed, without the shield of context or accountability that should rightfully belong to the state”.

This month, we read public reports that members of the special forces are quitting because they sense that the lawyers of the future will come after them.

I implore the House, on moral, practical and political grounds, not to support the Bill. I know that Labour Members will not wish to take it from me—and they do not have to—but they should take it from generals and special forces veterans who have dedicated so much of their lives to protecting their country and do not want to see their comrades-in-arms persecuted or their country weakened and put at risk. As politicians, I draw the attention of Labour Members to the fact that the Bill is not beloved by their constituents. They are being sent through the Lobbies tonight by people who may well change their position tomorrow.

The failings of the Bill, should it be passed, will be quickly seen but long felt. The House has the power to stop it tonight. If we do not, and the Government persist, the next Conservative Administration will repeal it and once again draw a line under the troubles.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Patrick]

I absolutely do. I have always said that this is not a case of cutting a cheque and walking away. There is work we can do with the Northern Ireland Executive, and we continue to share best practice. In fact, just this week I wrote to the Minister responsible for early years, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire (Olivia Bailey), to explore further opportunities for collaboration.

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

At last year’s spending review, the Northern Ireland Office announced a £2 million allocation to support the integrated education sector. Given that a range of schools in Northern Ireland have been offering an integrated educational ethos for many years, will the Government review that policy to support integrated education per se across a number of schools in Northern Ireland?

Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2026 Commons Chamber

[David Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman has a long and honourable service in this area. He is exactly right, and he understands, as everybody on this side of the House does—well, most people on this side of the House—that asymmetries are built into the system that handicap, and indeed sometimes terrify, the people on one side of the argument while favouring those on the other.

I want to talk to that because, obviously, as we have heard, the remedial order will allow new civil cases to be brought and, we are told, bring justice to victims. Government policy, as we have heard time and again, does not differentiate between real victims and terrorists. It will allow IRA sympathisers to continue their campaign of vexatious lawfare, hauling our brave veterans into court.

I remind the House that in 2006 the Blair Government passed a law that said that anyone hurt in the troubles is classed as a victim. That means a proven murderer—a proven serial murderer—killed in the process of carrying out another murder, is classed as a victim. Imagine that happening in the rest of the UK. Imagine a bank robber, already a murderer, who is shot while trying to rob another bank. Do we think he is a victim? That is outwith the politics of Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, however, he is classed as a victim.

When the Secretary of State talks about victims’ families, he is, in many cases, referring to the families of IRA terrorists. Frankly, if the Government’s legislation matched their rhetoric, the word “victim” would always be preceded by the word “innocent”. If we were talking about innocent victims, many of our differences would evaporate.

But that is not the truth. Indeed, the other side of this argument—Sinn Féin and IRA sympathisers—know this. The DUP proved it last September when it moved a motion in Stormont to put “innocent” in front of the word “victim”. The motion was voted down by Sinn Féin and its allies because they know that they depend on this massive confusion, in the rest of the world, over what a victim really is.

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

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that a classic example of what he is saying was the Shankill bomb? The perpetrator of that bomb was an IRA terrorist. He was killed along with the innocent people whom he murdered, yet Sinn Féin and republicans insist on trying to portray him as a victim, as opposed to those who he genuinely caused to be victims.

[David Davis]

That is part of what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) was describing earlier about trying to rewrite history. This goes right to the core of what the Secretary of State has already done. We know that he has promised Mairead Kelly that there will be a coroner’s inquest for Loughgall. Why? Because her brother, Patrick Kelly, was killed at Loughgall. He was a victim, except he had killed at least five other people previously, including two UDR officers. He and his gang of eight were attempting to blow up—well, they were not attempting; they did blow up the police station, with soldiers and policemen inside. It was a 400 lb bomb, and they had heavy weapons, G36s—my hon. and gallant Friend will recognise them—to shoot through the walls and kill policemen. If we want to see the rewriting of history, Kelly’s family have already attempted to rewrite history, claiming that at Loughgall he

“went out to blow up, not to kill”,

despite his long and bloody track record proving otherwise. He obviously designed a bomb that only hits bricks, not people.

I do not aim to make light of this, because it is incredibly serious. As with the 120 cases already mentioned, Kelly’s family have already brought legal action against the Ministry of Defence. They are not the only ones, so let us look at other IRA terrorist “victims” who have brought civil cases. In 2011, Aidan McKeever, the getaway driver at the Clonoe incident in 1992, in which four IRA terrorists were killed, was awarded £75,000 for injuries sustained when fleeing the scene. He is not a victim; he is a terrorist, and he got £75,000. The IRA tried to pretend that it was a killing operation, but the SAS, or the soldiers on the scene—whoever they were—actually gave him first aid to save his life because he had been shot and injured, yet he gets £75,000 from the state. In 2023, the family of Stan Carberry tried to sue the Ministry of Defence for his death in 1972. Carberry, an IRA volunteer, was killed after a soldier returned fire at the vehicle that he was shooting from.