Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) is exactly right. The issue of whether the House allowed itself to accept assertions instead of evidence touches on a point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), which I think I agree with, that Members of the House must take their responsibilities seriously when it comes to votes on such matters that affect the lives of not only people in other countries, but the servicemen and women who are deployed on the basis of our votes.

There is a huge lesson to be learned from this, as I have heard from people who took part in the debates at the time on both sides of the House. Those debates took place before I was in Parliament. Those people now regret that they downloaded their sense and judgment from the Dispatch Box in the belief that no Prime Minister would tell them such things unless they were firm and true. They therefore believed that what they were being told must be right. Of course, those who demurred from that view were demonised in the House and outside it. If there is any lesson to learn from all this, it has to be that we should never again mistake certitude at the Dispatch Box for certainty about such grave matters.

We are told by some people that the report reveals no smoking gun in relation to the former Prime Minister. People have listed exaggerated versions of the charges against Tony Blair—that he lied, for example, and that he misled Parliament—and say that none of that is in the report. I have stated previously that I know Sir John Chilcot and have experience of working with him in Northern Ireland in various capacities. I also said that while he had many attributes and skills, I was unsure whether he would be found in the “Yellow Pages” under “I” for independent or “C” for challenging. I accept, however, that the report is compelling. It may be written with typical British understatement, but we should not neglect the key truths within and the lessons that need to be learned. Some will say, “There is no smoking gun about the dodgy dossier or anything else,” but I will give an example of Sir John Chilcot’s understatement. He says in paragraph 836 of the executive summary:

“The Inquiry shares the Butler Review’s conclusions that it was a mistake not to see the risk of combining in the September dossier the JIC’s assessment of intelligence and other evidence with the interpretation and presentation of the evidence in order to make the case for policy action.”

That is a telling criticism of what exactly was afoot with the September dossier.

The Prime Minister—well, last week’s Prime Minister—highlighted in his statement that Sir John had identified that an “ingrained belief” was genuinely held by people in both the US and UK Governments about Saddam and his weapons. I know that to be true. In November 2002, Tony Blair addressed myself and other socialist leaders in Downing Street and not only told us what he believed was the case with Saddam and what he thought would be found, but shared the view that the US was going to go to war anyway and it was important that he maintained a restraining influence. He described himself as something of a bridge, trying to ensure that America would not go too far on Iraq. I remember saying to him that I did not buy the image that he was selling of himself as a mooring rope, attempting to hold America closer to where Europe was on such matters, and that I felt that America saw him as a tow rope who would pull Europe and possibly rupture it. I do not doubt, however, that he sincerely believed that he was somehow in a positon to restrain and influence America by adopting the course that he was preparing to take.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael]

A very different approach was taken at the time by Canada. Jean Chrétien, the then Prime Minister, said that Canada would not stand with the United States. Now, 13 years down the line, does the hon. Gentleman think that the relationship between Canada and the United States is any the worse for Chrétien’s decision?

[Mark Durkan]

No, absolutely not.

To say that I might accept that there was an ingrained belief, genuinely held, is not to endorse or accept that belief, or to say that it was a wise belief. It was a foolish and rash belief that was, in some ways, deluded.

Alongside that ingrained belief, the report also states that the UK Government, and Tony Blair in particular, had an ingrained intent that was not genuinely expressed either to this House or in public—those are not the report’s words, but mine. The ingrained intent was that he was going to war anyway, because he thought that that was where America was going. The report contains example after example of evidence being bent, melted and confected to justify that the preparation for any intervention would be undertaken on the basis of weapons of mass destruction, whereas it was clear that the then Prime Minister knew that the intervention in which he would be joining America really had an agenda of regime change. People in this House and elsewhere knew that that was illegal, so that view was withheld. People might say, “Chilcot hasn’t said that Tony Blair lied to or misled this House”—it was not for Chilcot to make such a finding about a parliamentary matter—but nobody can say that there was no duplicity of presentation throughout.

The report’s other big indictment is about the paucity of preparation. I refer to the fact that there was a commitment to go to war without the proper equipment to protect and safeguard people who were being put in harm’s way, or to allow them to give care to people whom they would be meeting in distress. There was a paucity of preparation for the aftermath with regard to any sort of reconstruction. People had the assumption, “The Americans will somehow sort that out. We assume they have that done.” That is serious and must bear on all our minds.

When we have had votes such as those on Syria and on Libya during my time in this House, I and other hon. Members have had to consider what we were being told, and what assurances and assumptions the Government’s position was resting on. That is why I have not been convinced on any of those. I say that not from a point of view of self-righteousness, because I was in the small minority of those who voted against the action in Libya and hoped that I was going to be proved wrong. When it looked as though the early intervention had achieved the short-term goals that people had wanted it to achieve, I was more than happy to have been proved wrong.

There were times during the debates on Syria in this House when some of us who were asking about the Government’s proposals were advised that we should just listen to what the Prime Minister was saying. During the last such debate, there were people here who still had not learned the lessons from the Iraq war, because they were saying, “If our Prime Minister is telling us this, we should do it. We should proceed.” It is clear that in this House we need to do much more to learn the lessons from all this.

The motion is that “this House has considered” the Chilcot report. Obviously, I do not demur from that motion, but we should not pretend to ourselves that this two-day debate is anything like an adequate consideration of the report. I cannot pretend to have read all 2.6 million words, and other hon. Members have not pretended to have read them either. This debate has also taken place in the context of a swirl of other events, which is somewhat distracting. A strong undertone in this debate has been the question of the former Prime Minister, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) was right in pleading that we should not just personalise this around the former Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman also made hugely important points on behalf of people who serve in these sorts of military ventures.

I ask hon. Members who tried to say that the report exonerates Tony Blair to stop making the mistake of polishing its non-findings and trying to rubbish some of its findings. Some people who are highlighting the non-findings are also questioning several of the findings about what the future course should be, and what future requirements should be with regard to upholding UN positions, and proper parliamentary oversight, information and awareness.

The final point I make, in agreeing with the hon. Member for Bridgend about her statement, “People don’t have the right to criticise unless they asked about the equipment,” is that people also do not have the right to justify the Iraq war and to pretend that the Chilcot report is not an indictment of the decision and how it was taken if they did not ask questions at the time. The report tells us that those questions should have been screaming out to us at the time, and if we look carefully at the report, we see that any reading of the intelligence available to MPs at the time would have told them that they were there.

Yemen: Cluster Munitions

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

Completely confident.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Once again, we have Ministers prepared to present the Saudi wolf in a sheepdog’s clothing. Today, we have been given a pub crawl of excusery. We have been told that the weapons were old or that there was no evidence of any cluster munitions having been used by the Saudi-led coalition. Then we were told that there was no evidence they were British manufactured. Then the Minister told us that he was concerned and that he would try to get evidence. Rather than just asking the Saudis what they have done, will the Government contact the Yemen Executive Mine Action Centre, which actually recovered the matériel we are talking about and has it in a de-mining depot, and look at the same evidence that Amnesty International has examined?

[Mr Dunne]

I would gently remind the hon. Gentleman that we are not members of this coalition. We do not have locus in Yemen to undertake direct investigations ourselves. What we are talking about are alleged violations of international humanitarian law. The correct procedure when an incident has been brought to the attention of members of the coalition is for them to undertake the investigation itself. We are able to encourage and stimulate them to undertake that investigation, because there is a long-standing relationship between our respective armed forces. That is what we are doing, and that is the right way to proceed.

Armed Drones

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this important debate; I supported him in doing so at the Backbench Business Committee. He set out a number of concerns, which I hope the Minister will address, not least of which is the question of why Parliament was told that the reliance was on self-defence of the UK, when the message to the UN relied on collective self-defence of Iraq. People might say that that is an arguable or pedantic point, but the fundamental principle matters; it should matter to us in Parliament, and those of us with any concern for international law and the standing of the UN.

Members have touched on a number of issues. Some suggested that we should not relate the issue too much to the experience in Northern Ireland, but when we consider some of the decisions made in the formative years of the involvement in Northern Ireland of the British Army and the intelligence services in the early ’70s, and what then became normative, questions do arise for us. We cannot just casually accept, whenever we ask questions about this matter, people saying either “Don’t ask” or “Don’t expect a full answer.” The real answer is, “We know, and it is okay.” Many hon. Members accepted that sort of line down the years when we raised questions about the nature of operations in Northern Ireland; and many of them then declared themselves shocked when they read in the de Silva report that something close to a kill list was operated in Northern Ireland, and that Parliament was being misled. It is still not clear whether Ministers were misled or were part of the misleading. That experience of sleepwalking through the formative stages of a new situation or operational vista, and of other standards becoming normalised, means that we need to ask questions at parliamentary level.

We should also remember that the Prime Minister told us about this extrajudicial killing in the context of a wider statement about Syria and refugees. It is not clear whether we would have had a statement just on the killing. That sad statement came at the end of a recess, and it is not clear what the standard would be in future. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that the standards to be followed and the decision-making processes are identical to those for manual aircraft, but I do not think that, in parliamentary terms, we do know that. He may have been briefed to that effect, but we have not been told that. Many of us have asked questions, including on the all-party group on drones, and have not received full information. Let us remember that manual aircraft would not have been sent in to kill Reyaad Khan, so we are not talking about like-for-like at all.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) raised the question, as did the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, of the protection of operators and of knowing exactly where they stand in the system. There is not clarity on any of those issues. If the hon. Member for Strangford is so confident of the answers, he should join us in calling for a much fuller clarification of the policy and practices, so that when we have a system, moving forward, it is not determined by default and drift, but by real deliberation, real design and proper delineation of standards, principles and procedures.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Front-Bench spokespeople, I hope to be able to give the proposer two or three minutes to respond to the debate.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The Prime Minister has already made it clear that if we planned British military strikes and operations in Syria that we would be directing or responsible for, yes, he would first come to the House.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Secretary of State has said that western troops operating in a combat role would serve only to promote ISIL’s ideological narrative and radicalise more people. Why does he think that such risks attach only to boots on the ground and not to bombs from the air?

[Michael Fallon]

That is the view of the Iraqi Government, not simply my view. Everything we do in Iraq is done either at the request of the legitimate Government of Iraq or with their permission. The Iraqi authorities have full authority over this campaign and can veto any action they think would be unhelpful. They do not think that combat troops on the ground would be helpful, but they certainly welcome the air support the coalition is providing.

Glenanne Gang Murders

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan, even if the subject matter is sombre.

A recently published book by Anne Cadwallader, “Lethal Allies: British Collusion in Ireland”, is the result of work by the Pat Finucane Centre and work previously conducted by members of the Historical Enquiries Team in investigating a number of historical murders in Northern Ireland. The reports by the Historical Enquiries Team, of course, were made available to families, but were not published. That is the basis on which it has worked. The reports on 10 murders were made available to the Pat Finucane Centre.

The Pat Finucane Centre, through Anne Cadwallader, has worked painstakingly to spell out the narrative that emerges from those 10 reports by the HET, but also to build on the work of document recovery and evidential pursuit, which has taken the Pat Finucane Centre to the National Archives in Kew. Although the issues in the book “Lethal Allies” pose fundamental questions about the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Ireland Office and armed groups, we should not ignore the fact that it also spells out sharp questions about the Ministry of Defence—not least, but not only, in respect of its oversight of the Ulster Defence Regiment in those years.

The book dwells on the deadly, devastating work of what was called the Glenanne gang. It was more of a syndrome than a fixed gang, because, as the book points out, what was initially thought of as a gang operating in what was called the “triangle of death” or “murder triangle”, ended up being a network, able to source members in the UDR or serving in the RUC—particularly in the part-time reserve—at the time of its involvement in the paramilitary activities. It was also able to source a lot of its weaponry in raids in UDR armouries, one of which was a joint UDR-Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve armoury. The documentary evidence shows that even the MOD suspected that the raids involved large degrees of collusion.

I shall take a selective skimming of the evidence, but I hope that it is relevant. A letter in July 1972 from Army headquarters Northern Ireland, from the civil adviser to the general officer commanding, acknowledges an earlier letter asking about UDR involvement in the UDA. The letter, to Lieutenant-Colonel J.L. Powell in the Adjutant General Secretariat at the Ministry of Defence main building in Whitehall, also says, among other things:

“The UDR has to draw a line somewhere between hard-line Protestants who can safely be contained in the UDR, and those who cannot. The UDA is not an illegal organisation, and membership of the UDA is not an offence under the military laws; it is also a large organisation not all of whose members can be regarded as dangerous extremists. One important (but unspoken) function of the UDR is to channel into a constructive and disciplined direction Protestant energies which might otherwise become disruptive. For these reasons it is felt that it would be counter-productive to discharge a UDR member solely on the grounds that he was a member of the UDA.”

The letter later says:

“Similarly, it is not formally laid down that where an applicant to join the UDR is found to be a member of the UDA, his application must automatically be rejected.”

It goes on:

“I am sure that this moderate line towards UDA supporters is the right one in view of the role of the UDA as a safety valve. In my opinion it would be politically unwise to dismiss a member of the UDA from the UDR unless he had committed a military offence; the dismissal of a member of the UDR on lesser grounds could well lead to wide-spread morale problems particularly in certain areas.”

Tellingly for MPs, it goes on to say:

“I recognise the reasons why Ministers might wish to be able to say unequivocally, in reply to Parliamentary Questions, that membership of the UDA is not compatible with membership of the UDR and that we have no evidence that any UDR member is actively associated with the UDA. But I fear it would be wrong to offer categorical assurances on either point, and indeed it might be very damaging politically if Ministers were to make a public statement which implied that the UDA was an outlawed organisation.”

That tells us that the mentality was more about sensitivity to the reputation of the UDA than to the integrity of the UDR as part of the security forces.

As we go through the various documents from the MOD in 1973, we see that it casually and frequently refers to collusion in its internal documents when describing overlapping membership between the UDA and UDR. There is also evidence from 1973 of the Irish Government, on the basis of representations and complaints from the SDLP and many other people with pastoral and other community interests, registering strong concerns with the British Government about what was going on in relation to some members of the UDR, their overlapping membership of the UDA and the seepage of weapons.

I shall not dwell on the issue here, because you, Mr Sheridan, might rule that that was about the Foreign Office side, but we have a letter from the British Government that basically dismisses the clear concerns of the Irish Government in early 1973 as mere electoral gimmicks.

A series of internal Army and Ministry of Defence reports in 1973 show the ongoing loss of weapons from UDR armouries—and, in some cases, the homes of UDR members. Those reports point to suspicions of and concerns about collusion. A significant MOD report in August 1973, called “Subversion in the UDR”, said:

“Since the beginning of the current campaign the best single source of weapons (and the only significant source of modern weapons) for Protestant extremist groups has been the UDR.”

It then sets out the details of significant arms losses for 1972-73. I do not wish to go through all the figures for the self-loading rifles, sub-machine-guns and pistols that were lost or the much smaller number that were recovered.

That internal British Government report on subversion in the UDR indicated that a significant proportion, perhaps 5% to 15%, of UDR soldiers would also have been members of the UDA, the Ulster Vanguard Service Corps, the Orange Volunteers or the UVP. Another part of that report confirms that:

“The discovery of members of para-military or extremist organisations in the UDR is not, and has not been, a major intelligence target.”

There we have wilful negligence—people recognise that there is a risk, they see that there has been a pattern of collusion, with arms being removed into the clutches of loyalist paramilitaries, and they know there is overlapping membership, but at no point does anybody make it their business to make it a serious matter and intelligence target.

That document on subversion in the UDR was circulated in government and there were a number of replies from a number of people. We will be able to present all the documents at a later date—hopefully, not too much later—to the Minister and the MOD, if it is too much to expect the Minister to reply to all the information today. We might say that it is depressing and regrettable, but those memos and letters in response to that document confirm the accuracy of the report. There was no real dispute about its assessment.

The document tried to indicate that the security vetting process had improved, so some reliance might be put on it. It is interesting to note that the Army director of security said, in response to that suggestion in a memo dated 20 August 1973:

“I would make the general point first that the process is in fact only a screening procedure and has no relationship to normal security vetting carried out on people who require to have access to classified information.”

In a subsequent paragraph in the same letter, he says:

“In order to counter doubts expressed by some MPs about the impartiality of RUC records, the check was extended to include the interview of at least one character referee ‘to establish that an applicant is of good character, is not an active supporter of any organization at one or other extreme of the political spectrum and is likely to act in the best interests of the people of Northern Ireland as a whole.’”

In the next paragraph, he says:

“Although the injection of the interview has probably been successful as part of the PR exercise involved on the checks, it can have had little effect on improving the value of the screening. The applicant nominates the referee, who is almost certain to be influenced in his favour and can add little to the security knowledge of the applicant.”

We have a clear picture: the Ministry of Defence knew the concerns but was not itself concerned, and did nothing to stem members’ involvement in the UDA or the weapons leakage that went with it.

Weapons leakage happened at numerous levels. The most significant raid occurred at the Lurgan UDR and Territorial Army Voluntary Reserve base in October 1972; they raided so much that they could not carry it all away. There was another raid exactly a year later, on 23 October 1973, on the Fort Seagoe UDR base, and another major arms raid at the Magherafelt UDR base in 1975. All of them were conducted similarly, and the lack of proactive security in place showed that no lessons were learned.

What then happened to those weapons? It was not just an embarrassing lapse of security; they were then used by an absolutely ruthless killer gang network. One Sterling sub-machine-gun was stolen from the Glenanne UDR base before the other raids to which I referred. It was stolen some time between 20 and 21 May 1971, as the Historical Enquiries Team found.

The HET was unable to find any documentation explaining the circumstances of the theft, nor could it find any evidence that any investigation had taken place. The whereabouts and use of the weapon during the four-year period between May 1971 and 1 September 1975 are unknown. It did not feature in any ballistics report before the murder of Denis Mullen. After that, it was used to kill 10 other people over a period of 11 months.

On 1 September 1975, a Sterling sub-machine-gun—UF57, and then a long serial number—was used to kill Denis Mullen, a Social Democratic and Labour party branch secretary who had just won promotion to become the first Catholic ambulance controller at the new South Tyrone hospital in Dungannon. Gunmen threw a clod of mud through a window of his home at Collegeland. He went to the front door to investigate, and they opened fire, shooting him 27 times at close range. His wife Olive ran for her life through the house with bullets slamming into the walls behind her and crawled across the kitchen floor before climbing out through a window to run for help.

Their daughter, Denise, aged four, heard the shots and got out of bed to find her father bleeding and dead at the front door. She stood over his body for an hour, her nightdress soaked in blood, before the police considered it safe enough to remove her and her 11-month-old brother, who was still in his cot. A former Member of this House, Seamus Mallon, also arrived at the scene. He had heard interference on the police radio in his car, was immediately alarmed that it might be his friend and party agent Denny Mullen and went to the house. Denise Mullen, now Denise Fox, spoke about those events at her party conference this weekend, along with Seamus Mallon, to put them on record.

It should be remembered that some convictions were obtained for all 11 subsequent murders committed with that sub-machine-gun, unlike many of the other murders committed by the Glenanne gang. Those convicted included a private in the Territorial Army, a former UDR man and a serving RUC officer. That UDR weapon’s 10 other victims included Peter and Jenny McKearney, an elderly couple shot dead at their farmhouse near Moy on 23 October that year; Michael Donnelly, 14, Patsy Donnelly, 23, and Trevor Brecknell, 32, killed on 19 December; Brian, John, Martin and Anthony Reavey, shot dead on 4 January 1976; Fred McLoughlin, shot dead on 15 May 1976; and Patsy McNeice, shot dead on 25 July 1976. Altogether, that weapon rendered 19 children fatherless and orphaned five.

I am citing only one weapon as an example. The book catalogues 120 killings, all of which relate to the murderous machinations of the Glenanne gang. That is not something being said only now, with hindsight; these allegations and concerns were apparent at the time, as we know from the suggestions in the papers about how to offset the complaints and allegations being made by MPs and others, and the dismissal of active concerns from the Irish Government and at the community and pastoral level.

I am particularly struck by a quotation by Father Denis Faul two days after a bombing in Killyliss in which two men, their sister and her unborn child were blown to pieces by a gang in which the HET believes a UDR man was involved. Only a few days after those murders, on 26 April 1975, Father Denis Faul said:

“The Government are teaching a deadly lesson to the people: that power comes out of the barrel of a gun; that the ballot box is powerless against force; that police and army can betray their trust and not be the impartial servants of government and people; that the judiciary can fail to oppose tyranny and to protect life.”

Many of us tried to scream those concerns at the British Government, the British establishment and the MOD. We know that there were layers and lines of dismissal and denial and that the people offering those concerns were denounced as subversive or irresponsible.

[Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that substantive amounts of key information and British Army records are stored in the National Archives at Kew that could help bring justice to some of the victims and survivors?

[Mark Durkan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which relates not only to Kew, but to other locations as well. Sadly, our hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) cannot be with us, as her predecessor, Eddie McGrady, died yesterday. Down the years, Eddie McGrady supported Seamus Mallon in making these very allegations and voicing these concerns.

In touching on those murders, I have in no way decided that they are the worst or the most egregious. I have tried to edit my concerns in this debate to focus on angles of responsibility and irresponsibility on the MOD’s part. I doubt whether the Minister has been briefed on what exactly is in all the documents that the Pat Finucane Centre has unearthed and on which the HET has drawn, but I assure her that the Pat Finucane Centre is more than willing to assemble a thorough compendium of papers for the MOD’s fuller consideration and for the sake of a fuller response from the British Government.

An important process is under way in Northern Ireland that we hope will produce ways to address some of the wider concerns about the past. The Haass process should not be used by the British Government, particularly the MOD, to dodge their responsibility to tell a truth that they denied for so long.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) on securing the debate. He raised a serious issue that has been the subject of much comment over a considerable period of time. In recent weeks, the allegations that members of the security forces were part of a murderous gang that killed more than 100 people in the 1970s have been given further currency in the recently published book to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman has raised some points that I will not be able to address in my speech. I apologise for that, but I assure him that I will write to him with responses to as many as possible of those questions. The hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) mentioned the records at Kew, and I am told that those records have been made available to researchers and feature heavily in the book “Lethal Allies”.

The hon. Member for Foyle will be aware that such serious allegations should properly be dealt with by the police, so I can say little about them. It is right and proper for me to condemn all sectarian attacks, by whomsoever they may have been carried out, but I cannot comment on the accuracy or otherwise of the allegations, and it is not for the Ministry of Defence to usurp the function of the police by seeking to carry out investigations about those who may have been involved. As I understand it, the Historical Enquiries Team has investigated several cases associated with the Glenanne gang, but I am not aware that those investigations have led to any fresh allegations of specific criminal activity by soldiers that are to be investigated further. Of course, if such evidence were found and given to the police, it would be for them to decide whether any further inquiries should be made. If they decided to pursue the matter, my Department would provide every assistance to any subsequent investigation.

It is clear to me, as it will be to most Members here today, that during the long period that we refer to as the troubles, terrible crimes and atrocities were perpetrated by extremists on both sides of the community. The account by the hon. Gentleman of a number of terrible murders and killings brought back to me large chunks of my childhood. It is easy to forget that 40 years ago, such events were almost a feature of life. Here we are, 40 years on, enjoying a period of peace that we could not foresee within our own lifetimes. There were incidents of great tragedy when members of the community were innocently and accidentally caught up in events that led to serious injury or death.

Many allegations have been made about the armed forces’ role in various cases involving violent deaths during the troubles, which remain unsolved. As I have said, such allegations must be investigated. At the same time, however, it is only right for me to make the point that some of these allegations may well be untrue. The truth can be uncovered only by painstaking and professional investigation. Although I am aware of the criticisms that have been made of the Historical Enquiries Team of the Police Service of Northern Ireland—that is not a matter for me, of course—I pay tribute to the work they have done in carrying out this necessary task over a period of several years.

[Mark Durkan]

The Minister has made the point that some of the allegations against individuals may be untrue, but does she accept that the documentation shows that the Ministry of Defence knew one thing in private but told an entirely different story in public? Does she accept that the evidence points to the fact that the MOD dismissed the concerns that were being legitimately expressed by Members of this House, by other representatives in Northern Ireland and by other Governments?

[Anna Soubry]

I am in danger of repeating myself, but those are matters for the police to investigate. It would not be appropriate for me to comment. Those matters should be investigated thoroughly, honestly and vigorously by the police. It is not my Department’s intention to shy away from acknowledging or apologising when genuine mistakes or errors have been made, or where, as a Department, we have failed in our obligation properly to manage our activities in Northern Ireland. We know from the conclusions reached by Sir Desmond de Silva in his review of the circumstances leading to the murder of Pat Finucane that the Ministry of Defence made important failures in managing important aspects of our intelligence operations during the mid to late 1980s. Some reports have suggested that that situation may have prevailed for several years. We know, for example, that some members of the security forces bore responsibility for the leaking of some sensitive intelligence information to loyalist organisations. Indeed, there have been convictions as a result, and rightly so. We also know that Army weapons, as the hon. Gentleman has described, have been stolen from military establishments and used in terrorist attacks by loyalist gangs.

Those failings were totally unacceptable and should never have occurred. Equally, however, attempts to claim that such practices were endemic throughout the security forces serving in Northern Ireland are, in our view, quite unsubstantiated. Sir Desmond goes into great detail on the matter in his report, which was based on unhindered access to the archives of the police, the Army and the Security Service. He shows, to my mind incontrovertibly, that the actions of the security forces frustrated loyalist terrorists and significantly reduced their operational capacity in Northern Ireland.

[Mark Durkan]

I want to assure the Minister and anyone else who may be concerned that in pointing to the seriousness of the allegations and the fact that they are supported by MOD documentation, I do not want in any way to traduce or hurt the memory of many other members of the security forces, including those of the Ulster Defence Regiment, who served with honourable motives and who believed that they were serving their community. They were let down every bit as much as the civilian community was by the corruption at the heart of the process.

[Anna Soubry]

I absolutely agree that we must pay tribute to the majority of those individuals who served in the way that the hon. Gentleman has described. As the Minister with responsibility for veterans, I feel strongly that we owe the security forces who served in Northern Ireland a great deal of gratitude. The vast majority served with courage, fortitude, integrity and dignity, risking their lives to bring about the conditions that eventually enabled a process to take place that allowed the people of Northern Ireland to lead peaceful lives without fear for themselves or their families. Northern Ireland has been transformed since the Good Friday agreement was signed.

Devolution has brought about many improvements for the people of Northern Ireland, and the recent positive achievements such as the city of culture award, the investment conference and improved tourism, against a backdrop of relative peace, have been welcomed by all sections of the community. Although a number of people continue to pursue their aims through violence and maintain destructive links to the past, they are, thankfully, few and there is very little public support for their actions.

William McGreanery

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is an honour to meet under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

William Francis McGreanery, or Billy McGreanery as he was known, was a 41-year-old man who was shot dead by a Grenadier Guard, a member of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, in Derry city in the early hours of the morning of Wednesday 15 September 1971. He worked in a well-known sports shop in the town and quite possibly sold me the first pair of football boots that were actually bought for me, as opposed to being hand-me-downs from brothers. He was a quiet, settled, well-engaged man; I know that from many people who were friends and acquaintances of his.

The location of his shooting is variously described as the junction of Eastway, Lonemoor road and Westland street in Derry. Visitors to the city might say that that junction is where Creggan meets the Bogside. The soldier who shot him was in a sangar at what was known, in the Army’s terms, as Bligh’s lane army base. In effect, these sangars and other makeshift army occupations were in the curtilage of the Essex factory, as it was then known, in the lower Creggan.

There were disturbances over prolonged periods of 14 September in the vicinity of that army base. The Army records, which have emerged as part of the Historical Enquiries Team inquiry into Billy McGreanery’s death, show that not only was stone throwing and what, in some cases, were described as riots reported, but there were also some shooting attacks on that army base. One soldier, Sergeant Martin Carroll, a member of 45 Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, was killed by a sniper. He died later from the injuries he received that day. Another soldier, Sergeant James Black, also of the Royal Artillery, was injured that day as well. I set out that record because I know that if I only focus on what happened in the early hours of 15 September, people might say that I am giving a partial account of the events and the overall circumstances of that time.

When Billy McGreanery was shot dead in the early hours of Wednesday 15 September, there were no disturbances pertaining at that time. Indeed, he and a number of friends were walking in the area and had to detour to negotiate a new barricade that had been established and move on. When Billy McGreanery and friends stood at this junction, he then fell to a gunshot from the army sangar at Bligh’s lane. He was taken to Altnagelvin hospital. Army records show that an ambulance was called at 0043 hours, but the Altnagelvin records show that he was admitted, having been transported in a van, at 0045 hours. Billy McGreanery died from his wounds on the operating table in Altnagelvin hospital.

The soldier who shot him, who was later named as soldier A in the context of the inquest and various other investigations, maintains that he shot a man who was pointing a rifle at his sangar. The other civilians present at the time, of course, completely disputed that and gave their accounts in the subsequent investigation conducted by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force in Northern Ireland at that time. However, the RUC did not question either soldier A or the other soldier who was with him, soldier B, because in those days the arrangement was that soldiers were only interviewed by the Royal Military Police, not by the RUC. So the RMP special investigation branch interviewed the two soldiers and took the account that a gunman was shot. Of course, that became the account that was briefed to the media and Government spokespersons at the time. Of course, Billy McGreanery, a man who lost his life, was branded as a gunman. That has aggrieved his family for many years: not just that he was robbed of his life, but that he was also robbed of his innocent name by the subsequent smearing by the Army version of accounts, which became the received verdict as far as Government and others were concerned.

Mr McGreanery was a single man who had no descendants, but his nephew, Billy, and his niece, Marjorie Roddy, have fought a long campaign, with excellent support from the Pat Finucane Centre, to try to have the facts and circumstances of his death properly established and his innocence rightly declared. We have seen this, similarly, with other families, whether the Bloody Sunday families in my constituency or the Hillsborough families in Liverpool, all trying to ensure that the good names of their loved ones are properly restored.

In that context, the family were glad to receive, in June 2010, the report of the Historical Enquiries Team into the death. This was actually the second time that the HET had looked at the death. The first report was a superficial, poor job that immediately was rebuked and essentially withdrawn. The second report by the HET clearly showed that Billy

“was not involved with any paramilitary organisation, he was not carrying a firearm of any description, and he posed no threat to the soldiers at the observation post.”

That is a quote from the HET report, which showed that it had reflected on the discrepancies in the investigation at the time, with the Royal Military Police questioning the soldiers and the RUC questioning the civilians.

It should be said, and clearly understood, that at the time the local RUC chief superintendent, Frank Lagan, recommended on 8 November 1971 that the soldier be prosecuted for murder. That opinion was endorsed at RUC headquarters. However, that prosecution never took place. It should be put on the record at this stage that, at that time, conversations were going on between representatives of the Ministry of Defence and the then Attorney-General for Northern Ireland, Basil Kelly. In papers discovered in Government archives at Kew by the Pat Finucane Centre is a minute signed by J. M. Parkin, head of C2 at MOD, who refers to his conversation with the Attorney-General:

“The Attorney-General told me that he had before him recommendations from the police that a soldier should be tried for manslaughter arising out of the death of Mrs Sarah Worthington in Belfast and that another should be tried for the murder of a man named McGreanery in Londonderry. His provisional view was that no action was called for in the Belfast case and that manslaughter at most would be appropriate in the Londonderry incident. Indeed, he felt that the latter probably called for no charge at all. He promised to advise us if he felt that action in either case was called for. I have no doubt that the Attorney General is doing all within his power to protect the security forces against criminal proceedings in respect of actions on duty. He must, however, preserve an impartial approach and is worried about the possibility of private criminal proceedings should he fail to act in cases where inactivity could hardly be justified. Given his delicate position this is understandable. I am however satisfied that there is no need to remind him of the danger to morale inherent in prosecutions of soldiers or policemen.”

On 23 December the Chief Constable received a note from the Crown solicitor confirming that there would be no charges in relation to the case.

Of course, the ruling—the policy—of the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland that soldiers should not be prosecuted for murder, or for anything carried out in the course of their duty, came in December 1971, only weeks before January 1972, which, of course, is when Bloody Sunday took place. Many of us believe that, had that material been available for the Saville inquiry to test and cross-examine, the Saville report might not have been as light as it was in its wider observations on MOD responsibility and wider command and policy interests on the day.

The family are well satisfied that the HET report given to them confirms their uncle’s innocence and completely trashes the version on which the Army relied. They then wanted a proper, due apology, as all other families in a similar situation would want. What they received from the MOD was a letter in July 2011 from General Sir Peter Wall, the Chief of the General Staff:

“Dear Mrs Roddy and Mr McGreanery,

Thank you for agreeing that the Historical Enquiries Team could share with us their report of last year into the death of your uncle, William, in 1971, so as to allow me to consider properly your request for an official apology. In the light of what it says it is clear to me that such an apology is right and proper.

The report sets out the circumstances surrounding the death of your Uncle and the subsequent investigation. It is evident that the soldier who shot him was mistaken in his belief that he had a weapon and this error, tragically, resulted in the death of an innocent man. I have no doubt that, despite the passage of time, you and your family are still grieving over this loss. I would like to express my sorrow and regret for his death which, in the years since it occurred, has deprived you of an Uncle’s support and affection.

I do not believe that anything I can say will ease the sorrow you feel for what has happened, but I hope that this apology, and the findings of the Historical Enquiries Team, will be of some comfort to you.”

That was of some comfort to the family. However, they thought that the natural course was that the apology would be explicitly endorsed and vocalised on the Government’s behalf, so the family subsequently wrote to both the Secretary of State for Defence and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

On the family’s behalf, the Pat Finucane Centre received a rather bizarre letter from the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who is currently the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

“Thank you for your letter of 20 July 2012 regarding the case of Mr William McGreanery. You originally wrote to me and the Defence Secretary in February last year and following receipt of the report by the Historical Enquiries Team, General Sir Peter Wall, Chief of the General Staff at the Ministry of Defence provided an official apology to Mrs Roddy and Mr McGreanery on 14 July 2011.

Please let me explain briefly the process involved when a letter, such as yours of February 2011, is received by more than one Government department. The Department with the lead responsibility will respond on behalf of the Government and if, as in this case, the response includes an official apology then this is on behalf of the Government. One of the key aspects of this type of communication is that it is private. If any individual wishes to make it public, as I understand Mrs Roddy and Mr McGreanery did, that is their right; however the Government will not do so. It is for this reason that such private Ministerial correspondence is not placed in any official parliamentary records.

I am pleased that the report from the Historical Enquiries Team and the subsequent apology has provided some closure to the family of Mr McGreanery and I hope that my confirmation that the apology was officially on behalf of the Government is also of some comfort to them. I know that the grief and sorrow of losing someone close, particularly in such circumstances, does not diminish.”

The main reason why we have had to call an Adjournment debate today is to ensure that we give the Government, in the form of the Minister, an opportunity to vocalise that apology on the parliamentary record, just as other families have received apologies on the parliamentary record.

I hope that the Minister, in addressing those points, will consider whether the MOD is reviewing the policy of simply issuing apologies to families by letter from someone of rank in the MOD—and they seem to be of lower and lower rank now—and the Government treating them as private communications. That does not seem to be a satisfactory process. There will be more such cases.

Indeed, since I secured this debate I have been contacted by a family who lost a loved one to shots fired by the Parachute Regiment on the Shankill road in September 1972. The family of Richie McKinney, too, have always contested the Army version of events—that the soldiers fired at two gunmen—and they are quite clear that their loved one was an innocent man, not a gunman. They want to know that, when they receive their HET report, they will not have to go around begging, busking and petitioning MPs and other people so that they can get a proper apology on the record in parliamentary terms. I suggest that the Minister ask the MOD to consider that, when families receive HET reports in future and when apologies are issued on the basis of those HET reports, they should be marked by a written ministerial statement recording that fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan]

I did not use those particular words, although I can see why they would spring to the Minister’s mind and the minds of many people. He referred to the Shawcross exercise, in which Ministers speak to the Attorney-General. This was an officer of the MOD. The minute of the meeting is supplemented by a diary entry, which goes into more detail about the exchange between the Attorney-General and the MOD representative and appears to establish a working presumption at the time that any killing by a soldier acting in the course of duty would not result in a murder charge. That happened in the crucial weeks before Bloody Sunday.

[Mr Robathan]

I am not in a position either to negate or agree with the hon. Gentleman. If I may say so, there is a difference between those who act in good faith in the course of duty and those who might have acted in bad faith. I think that we can agree about that. The question is malice. As far as I am aware, there is certainly no policy that nobody should be prosecuted. As the hon. Gentleman will know, I spent many years in the Army, and I know of many cases in which people were prosecuted, including cases in Northern Ireland in which people who had behaved maliciously were rightly prosecuted for murder. I agree with that, and I think that the MOD of the time would have agreed with it as well.

Some may believe that we should hold a fresh investigation into the circumstances surrounding Mr McGreanery’s death. Whether that happens is a matter for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which would need to consider whether there was any new evidence in the case. If that were to happen, my Department would co-operate with such investigations. Just as importantly, we would stand by our obligation to support fully the soldier who, in this case, found himself having to account for actions that took place in the course of his duties some 40 years ago.

[Mark Durkan]

To take the Minister back to the point about how such cases are handled in future—there will be more—he referred to the fact that the Historical Enquiries Team does not share the reports with the MOD; it is up to the family to do so. If the family share a report and receive an apology, and if they ask for that apology to be in the parliamentary record, will the MOD make it future policy to do so by way of a written ministerial statement?

[Mr Robathan]

I do not say that there will necessarily be a written ministerial statement. If the family wishes it to be published, we will happily facilitate that, as it is the right thing to do.

This was a tragedy. It was highly regrettable. Even 41 and a half years later, I can see that. A young soldier —I suspect very frightened—behaved in error, but we do not think with malice, and it was certainly not thought so at the time. It was highly regrettable, and I repeat the apology on behalf of the Government.

Deployment to Mali

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My ears are always open to any suggestion that anybody else might contribute to activity that otherwise falls on the defence budget, but as I said earlier the funding for this operation will come from the conflict pool and from pooled funds that are available for precisely this type of intervention. This is an arrangement that is working extremely well across Government and is one of the successes of the past couple of years.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Notwithstanding what the Secretary of State has said, he will understand that many will remain concerned about the quick-sand syndrome overtaking these deployments, particularly in the absence of the political and economic engagement developing a more visible and viable profile. He is right to characterise so darkly the terrorist threat, but he must also acknowledge that Malian Government forces face allegations of serious human rights abuses, including recently. How is he proofing those whom he is deploying in a support role against any future suggestion that they will be implicated in supporting such abuses in the future?

[Mr Hammond]

British forces have clear rules of engagement. The forces we have deployed so far will be limited to engagement on the basis of self-defence only if they are attacked. I have already acknowledged our concerns about the allegations that have been made about Malian forces, and I know that our French colleagues have similar concerns and are addressing them with the Malian Government and the Malian forces on the ground. This situation is in a state of flux on the ground. The Malian forces are regrouping. Some of their command and control systems are currently inadequate, but the French are seeking to make a difference on the ground.

Afghanistan

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Of course the Foreign Secretary leads on our relationships with Pakistan, but I am absolutely ready and willing to engage with my military counterparts in Pakistan if he wishes me to do so.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Secretary of State has emphasised military transition, political inclusion and stabilisation. Is he sensitive to the concerns in Afghan civil society that the imperatives for the international community, and the interests of Afghan political powers in the context of those imperatives, may not extend to sustaining the advances that there have been in the status of women? As well as insisting that Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for terrorists, will he outline the Government’s determination that it will never again be a theme park for atavistic prejudice against women?

[Mr Hammond]

I think that some of the gains already made, such as the education of girls, will be irreversible changes in Afghan society. We have made it very clear that we want to ensure that those gains are consolidated. However, it is not for us to dictate to the Afghan people their agenda for the future. It is for us to ensure that there is a climate of security and stability in which they can exercise their constitutional right to determine the future of their country in a way that does not threaten the security of ours.

Baha Mousa Inquiry

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am, and it is an essential part of counter-insurgency—and successful counter-insurgency—that we are seen to protect the population concerned. The improvements made to training, to facilities, to detainee handling and, indeed, to the current training of the Afghan forces on how to do the same will ensure that, although we can never remove the risk of such incidents happening, we can certainly minimise that risk.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I acknowledge the tenor of the Defence Secretary’s statement on this grave matter. Will he tell us more about what Sir William has said about the extent of the failings of the Ministry of Defence itself in relation to these matters? When he speaks about allowing the harsh approach to continue, as used by defined people in defined circumstances, who will define the people and the circumstances in future? Will the techniques involved in the short, sharp verbal treatment include any threat to detainees, their families or their communities?

[Dr Fox]

The mechanisms and approaches are set out in the appropriate training manuals and are emphasised during the training process. It is a matter of great regret that there was, as the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) has said, a loss of institutional memory in the Ministry of Defence. I personally find it difficult to understand how a statement given by a Prime Minister on the Floor of this House outlawing five interrogation techniques could be “forgotten” by the body corporate. There was a lack of codification, which has, I think, been put right in recent years. I share the disbelief that such a corporate memory failure could be allowed to occur.

Libya

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

I am not withholding information from the House. There is no information to withhold. No decision to deploy attack helicopters has been taken, and if any decision is taken we will take steps to inform the House. The idea that we should have a votable resolution each time we make a tactical decision to use a different air asset is ludicrous.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In his first answer the Minister spoke of the need to increase the military pressure on the Gaddafi regime, but subsequently refuted any concerns about escalation or regime change. As well as reporting to the House, under resolution 1973 any country or group of countries taking an action under that resolution must report it to the Secretary-General of the UN, who will then refer it to the Security Council. Have the latest actions been reported by France or on NATO’s behalf, and does the Minister anticipate no concerns from any member of the Security Council that the resolution has been exceeded?

[Nick Harvey]

In my initial answer I was quoting the Foreign Secretary, who said, quite rightly, that we had to step up the pressure on the Gaddafi regime through military, economic and political-diplomatic channels. That is true. I do not, however, accept that there is any significant escalation or a broadening of our military objectives. It remains the case that our overriding objective is to prevent the threat to civilian life, and if there are different assets that different members of the international force working in Libya can bring to bear at different points in time, I do not think that such micro-operational decisions need bother the Secretary-General of the UN. However, if we were to shift focus significantly on what we were doing, that would be of a different order altogether, and the UN very well might be involved.