Northern Ireland Troubles

Debate between Hilary Benn and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is such a strong advocate for the many veterans she represents. I encourage her to look at the legislation to see the nature of the legislative commitments to give effect to the veterans’ protections. There will be a couple that will not be in legislation because they are entirely in our own hands, agreeing a protocol with the commission to ensure that there is no cold calling.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome my new deputy, the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick) to the House. It is very remiss of me not to have done so. This is the first chance we have had to sit together on the Front Bench. I pay tribute to the Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), from the Ministry of Defence, who has played a really important and significant role in putting the protections in place. I note that Lieutenant General Sir Nick Pope, the chair of the Confederation of Service Charities, has said that the Confederation

“welcomes the development of the safeguards that have been put in place to offer protection to those within the armed forces community who are affected by legacy issues.”

I, too, welcome that recognition of what we have done.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Obviously the devil lies in the detail in these things, and never more so than in Northern Ireland. Before the Bill comes eventually before us, we really cannot say for certain whether it is good, bad or indifferent, as is often the case.

I will raise two points. First, I will mention the agreement—I find it a little wishy-washy—over Ireland’s role in all this, which, as has been said by my hon. Friends, has a huge amount of history attached to it, given that Ireland has previously refused to hand over people who really were guilty of the most vexatious, disgusting attacks on civilians and soldiers. It does seem to me rather peculiar. We will wait and see what that actually means. Ireland says it is committed—I would love to see what that commitment actually means.

Secondly, I will mention vexatious prosecutions. The note we have here talks about protection from repeated investigations

“unless there are compelling reasons to do so”.

My concern with things like that is that they are little hooks that allow development through legislation, instead of being powerful tools to do what the Secretary of State says. I therefore urge him right now to be very clear when this legislation comes forward that this cannot be broken through and to tie down the definition of “compelling”.

[Hilary Benn]

I note the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the past, and I am not going to dissent from what he said, but this is an attempt to move beyond the past and the history and to move forward to something that is better. In the end, people will judge the commitments that this Government and the Irish Government have made, but the deal has been signed in good faith, and we are committed to doing what we promised to do.

The commission was established by the previous Government, after all, and I took the decision not to abolish it, but to reform it. Many people criticised that—they wanted it scrapped completely and for us to start again, but I thought that would have been a mistake, because time waits for no one. We would have wasted all the money and stopped the investigations that are taking place, which are really important to the families. Every single investigation is important to every single family, because each is about the death of a loved one.

I am sure we will debate the specifics of the legislation at length in the House. The state has a duty, of course, to properly investigate cases where it has been involved in a death. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware of that. It is a duty that all of us should uphold.

Clonoe Inquest

Debate between Hilary Benn and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

The findings of the coroner in this case stand for themselves and are on the record, and all of us are able to read them. In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s direct question about what the Government are doing, as I indicated to the House in my answer to the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), the Ministry of Defence is, of course, giving very serious consideration to what the coroner had to say.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am astonished by the coroner’s findings. He was not asked to contemplate the question about why—getting inside the head of a soldier who is worried about whether they are going to be shot dead is very difficult. I served in Northern Ireland and some of the decisions that we had to take were instantaneous. There was no time to mull them over—it was either life or death. I lost a very good friend, Captain Robert Nairac. The Secretary of State says that the trouble with the last legacy Act was that it gave immunity to IRA members, but they already had immunity, not just through the letters of comfort but because they kept no records, so they cannot be prosecuted. The only group that will be prosecuted will be soldiers, like myself, who never asked to go to Northern Ireland, but went because we were told to protect civilians, and who served their country. They will be dragged in front of the courts because the Government seem not to care about them.

[Hilary Benn]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman, who himself gave distinguished service, that I absolutely understand and recognise the point he forcefully makes about the circumstances in which our soldiers found themselves as part of Operation Banner. They had seen their comrades killed and they did not know what they were going to face; as he rightly says, in those circumstances soldiers had to make very hard split-second decisions.

The coroner had a job to do. He expressed his findings, Members of the House are expressing what they feel about those findings, and the Ministry of Defence is considering them. It is right and proper that we stand by our armed forces, which is why the Government and the Ministry of Defence give support to veterans in those circumstances. However, I would point out that many, many members of the Provisional IRA and the loyalist terrorist organisations were prosecuted, tried and convicted.

Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Troubles

Debate between Hilary Benn and Iain Duncan Smith

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

On the one inquiry I announced to the House, in relation to the murder of Pat Finucane, I explained the unique circumstances that led me to reach that conclusion. If I may correct the hon. Gentleman, inquiries were never taken off the table as an option. They have remained on the table. It is for the Government of the day to decide whether a public inquiry is ordered or not. He is right that civil cases and inquests in due course will return. It is the case that some people do not have confidence in ICRIR. That is why I think it is important that we should take further steps to try to build that confidence, but I have no doubt about its capacity to do the job that is required on behalf of the families that seek its help. As I made clear in the House previously, in the end, ICRIR’s effectiveness will be judged by those families. Do they get the answers that they have sought for so long by approaching it? I know that Sir Declan Morgan is really committed to making sure that he can do that.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I, like a number of others, served in Northern Ireland. We did not ask to go, and I lost a very good friend there—and others, at the same time. That man’s parents died without ever knowing what had happened to him, but it turns out that he may well have been dismembered and disappeared completely. There is no closure for them, and there is no chance, unless Ireland opens up its books and looks into this, that we will ever get any justice for him. He had a family as well, and many friends who wonder what happened to that brave man, and there are many more like him. So I say on their behalf: yes, let there be justice for families, but let us not forget all those soldiers who will now, in some cases, be hounded for no reason at all—those who lost their friends and their children and who did not want to go there in the first place. Where is the justice for them?

[Hilary Benn]

Let me first thank the right hon. Gentleman for his service in Northern Ireland. Let me also say how sad I am to hear about the case that he has just described. Justice information should be—must be —available to all. I would just point out, however, that there are service personnel who lost their lives in the conflict in Northern Ireland who did not support the legacy Act, precisely because it proposed to give immunity to people who had killed their loved ones. That is another reason why I think it is right to remove immunity from the statute book, which the remedial order that I have laid before the House today will do.