Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy

Sarah Pochin Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Davis]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. I had forgotten about that report, but I did see it when the Committee published it under his chairmanship.

Instead of seeing terrorists facing justice, we see veterans being hauled before inquests, decades after the fact. That is a problem in part because inquests in Northern Ireland differ in two critical respects from those in the rest of the United Kingdom. The first difference arises from a deliberate decision taken by the Blair Government. Article 3 of the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 changed the definition of “victim”. It ruled anyone affected by the troubles—through loss, trauma, or injury—would be classed as a victim. That means that a proven murderer killed in an attempt to carry out another murder is still classified as a victim. I know of nowhere else in the world where the law treats killers as victims.

That is still relevant. In September, the Democratic Unionist party—sadly none of its Members are present—used a motion in the Northern Ireland Assembly to try to restore some moral clarity by adding the word “innocent” before “victims”. What did Sinn Féin do? It opposed the motion and removed the word “innocent” from before “victims”. Why? Because the word “innocent” exposes the truth; it draws a line between terrorists and their victims. “Veterans” and “victims” are not mutually exclusive terms; “terrorists” and “victims” are.

Let us understand who these so-called victims are. At Loughgall—the greatest single defeat of the IRA by the SAS—eight heavily armed IRA murderers were stopped on their way to kill again. They and their weapons were implicated in at least 40 previous murders—and possibly more than 200, but it is very hard to pin that number down. Yet because of the Government’s proposals, and the Secretary of State’s promise to the sister of one of those IRA murderers, the soldiers who stopped them face being hauled before the courts, 30 years on, over an operation that prevented further bloodshed of innocent Northern Ireland citizens. The 2006 Order means that those dead terrorists are deemed to be victims.

And what do veterans face? A one-sided inquest, weaponised by Sinn Féin in its attempt to rewrite history. Veterans—many of whom are in their advancing years—are dragged to the witness box. They are made to sit opposite the families of IRA killers—men who died while attempting to maim and kill the innocent. The atmosphere is not one of an impartial inquiry.

I have spoken to a number of veterans, including one in particular who voluntarily attended the Coagh inquest to give evidence. He could not answer some factual questions—he did not know the answers—so the coroner put to him a hypothetical question to get him to answer a hypothetical version of the truth. The veteran declined, quite reasonably, to answer hypotheticals—that was not why he was there. In response, the coroner got “very cross”—the veteran’s words—raised his voice and threatened the veteran with contempt of court. The man was, at that point, a voluntary witness—not any more. He was so disgusted by the process that he will now only give evidence under subpoena; he will not volunteer again.

In mainland Britain, inquests exist to establish the facts, and at the first suspicion of unlawful killing, they are required to stop and pass the evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In Northern Ireland, inquests have all too often sought to assign blame—all funded by a legal aid machine putting huge unjustified costs on the taxpayer. Just last month, a judicial review against a soldier who shot one of the terrorists at Coagh was robustly dismissed by the judge, who noted the

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

I have never heard a judge be so critical of the award of legal aid, but plainly he thought this was ridiculous—ludicrous, in his words.

Under the Government’s new legacy proposals, our veterans will remain subjects of suspicion and victims of this vexatious lawfare machine.

[Sarah Pochin (Runcorn and Helsby) (Reform)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the coroner’s court exists to appease the republicans and that all applications should go through the legacy commission?

[David Davis]

I agree with the hon. Lady’s conclusion, and I happen to agree, as I will come back to in a moment, with the republicans’ view of the coroner’s inquiry process.

It comes back to the issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) raised as to what the punishment was. For a decent, ordinary, law-abiding soldier, the punishment is in the process—being dragged back, having this hanging over them for decades, the uncertainty they face, the sleepless nights and the stress it brings to them and their wives and children, who are worried in their own right and worried about their husband or father. That, I am afraid, is what the IRA and their sympathisers want. It is one of the reasons the IRA consider the very fact of Loughgall being referred to an inquest as a victory. They see that as a victory—that and the fact that it allows them another chance to rewrite history, to fit their own bogus claims.

That is why, in a letter on Remembrance Day that has been repeated in this Chamber a number of times, nine four-star generals wrote:

“By extending the same protections to those who enforced the law and those who defied it, the bill becomes morally incoherent. It treats those who upheld the peace and those who bombed and murdered…as equivalent actors in a shared tragedy.”

They go on to highlight the immediate effect, because we must bear in mind that this is having an effect right now on our serving armed forces. They said:

“highly trained members of special forces are already leaving the service. These are the men and women who quietly neutralise threats and protect lives every week. Their loss is significant; it is a direct consequence of legal uncertainty and the erosion of trust.”

I can attest to the fact that that is true. These are the reasons that our veterans hate this new legislation and view it as grotesquely unfair.

It also raises the question of who the Government are trying to appease. When the Government announced the policy, it was done not in this House—I think it was on a Friday—but in a joint statement alongside the Irish Tánaiste. The Irish Government are being treated as an independent party to these troubles and brought into the reformed legacy commission established by the new Bill as a party that is assumed to be acting in good faith. Well, I am afraid that is not true. There is overwhelming evidence showing the Republic providing sanctuary to IRA terrorists during the troubles. As the Kingsmill—a terrible tragedy—inquest confirmed, terrorists exploited the porous border ruthlessly. The IRA committed acts of terror in the north and used the Republic as their shield—a base for planning, training, storing weapons and, of course, sanctuary; violence in the north, sanctuary in the south.

Consider the brutal murder of Corporal James Elliott in 1972. IRA members abducted him at the border, dragged him into the Republic, tortured him for two days—two days—and shot him dead. They sent his body back across the border, booby-trapped with 500 lb of explosives and six claymores. What did the authorities in the Republic do? They charged two individuals not with murder, but with possessing explosives.

When SAS Captain Herbert Westmacott was murdered, the killers escaped jail before they could be sentenced. Where did they flee? Straight across the border, aided by their comrades. If hon. Members need a third example, they should look at the Omagh bombing, which was carried out after the Good Friday agreement had been signed. That bombing, which injured more than 200 people and tragically killed 29 innocent civilians, one of whom was pregnant with twins, was both planned and launched from the Republic. Despite this, and notwithstanding the call from a Belfast High Court judge for an investigation on both sides of the border, the Irish Government refused to authorise a separate, parallel inquiry. The pattern is unmistakable, and in some cases, agencies of the Irish Government crossed the line from passive antagonism into active complicity.

Former IRA intelligence officer, Kieran Conway, has admitted how leading members of the IRA were tipped off before Garda raids by Garda special branch. That was more than turning a blind eye; it was agencies of the Irish state actively participating in the subversion of justice. There are countless incidents laid bare before us, each one making this point plain. The most horrible one in my mind is from 1989, when two senior Northern Ireland policemen, Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan, were shot dead in an ambush as they crossed back into Northern Ireland. After almost eight years of detailed investigations, the Smithwick Tribunal determined that the Irish police colluded with the IRA in organising that attack.

Between 1973 and 1999, the Republic of Ireland turned down 102 extradition requests, choosing to view murders in the north as political acts. The Irish state is not a neutral bystander. It was not some impartial observer. It was, in practice, a partisan actor—an actor that for more than 30 years has deliberately turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the IRA. For years, our armed forces have properly faced scrutiny for their actions during the troubles. We have answered that scrutiny with honesty— never to erase the truth, but to confront it. Yet we hear nothing of the de facto amnesties given to terrorists and murderers, nothing of the collusion that allowed that terror to take root, and nothing from the Government about preventing the vexatious pursuit of our soldiers, who are guilty of nothing but bravely serving their country during the dark days of the troubles. Instead, all we see are relentless attacks on those soldiers, with doubt introduced about the legitimacy of their actions, and the weaponisation of the entire legal process.

We had a warning of that in a letter on Remembrance Day, when those generals wrote in The Times of the damaging effects of lawfare, and specifically the risk posed by the Government’s legacy proposals. They said that,

“the Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, and the legal activism surrounding it, risk weakening the moral foundations and operational effectiveness of the forces on which this nation depends. Presented as a route to justice and closure, the bill achieves neither…This lawfare is a direct threat to national security.”

The Government would do well to heed those warnings. Failure to do so brings injustice for those who served our country with honour, and threatens the future effectiveness of our armed forces. Every would-be enemy of the United Kingdom is watching how we handle this matter, and looking at plans for retaliation in our law courts as a way to avenge their defeat on the battlefields. As the generals warn in their letter:

“make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.”