Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Sorcha Eastwood Excerpts

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

[Chris Bryant]

That is the subject of an amendment that has been tabled by the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). I am going to resist that amendment. Whatever date we choose would be, in one sense, an arbitrary one. I think the best date, which worked for the previous legislation and would also work in relation to this legislation, is the date of the Good Friday agreement, and that is what we are sticking to. I understand the point that is being made about Omagh. A public inquiry is ongoing, and it is important that the Irish Government can co-operate fully with that process. Indeed, I raised some of these matters directly with my counterpart, Jim O’Callaghan, the other day.

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. If we are going to discuss these things, I think it is important to be accurate. The Omagh tragedy occurred in Northern Ireland in August 1998.

[Chris Bryant]

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

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[Matthew Patrick (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I support this Bill for victims and veterans. I support this Bill for truth, justice and the rule of law. I support this Bill for Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and peace. I welcome the amendments from the Government. I know they have come about following deep and constructive engagement with many people in the House and outside it, and I think they strengthen what we have before us.

The Good Friday agreement is rightly one of the proudest achievements of the last Labour Government. It changed the course of history. While praise is understandably lavished on the politicians who negotiated its terms, they would be the first to tell us that its success is not theirs to own, but that it is owned by the people of Northern Ireland, who, day in and day out, make that progress possible. They do so without fanfare and they embrace it. It is not that they have forgotten the pain and suffering—how could they?—but they chose a different future, and in so doing they wrote a different story for Northern Ireland.

What a story the people are writing! The economy is exciting, and the creative industries, the defence sector and technology are booming. They have the lowest unemployment in the whole of the UK and the highest growth. Excellent schools are helping to equip the next generation—a generation not growing up knowing the sound of a bomb, and not growing up to fear a Protestant or a Catholic. Brilliant charities and community groups are helping a generation to see that they have more in common with one another. I believe that, if we are to protect that progress, we need a legacy process that commands confidence, and I think that is helped by these amendments.

None of that, of course, is to pretend that there are not problems in modern day Northern Ireland. Recent weeks have shown us that the peace we have is not a replacement for the pain, and it has not changed what happened in the past—that can never be changed, and we should never ignore it. Let us be clear: that pain will also be known by those who served in Northern Ireland, whether in the Army or the police, and by their families. The amendments that I support, including stopping repeat investigations, matter a great deal to them, and I will always be in admiration of those who stood in harm’s way to keep people safe. They lost far too much; the way they were tested in their service of our country, I would wish on no person.

Whenever the issue has been debated before in this House, there has been a contingent of veterans in the Public Gallery. Each time, I have learnt so much by going to speak to them. I have learnt about the horrors they encountered. I have learnt how rightly proud they are of their service, and how frustrated they are about the injustices that they, their friends and their comrades faced. Our conversations often turned to whether they would want immunity for that period; they do not. They told me that they fought to defend the rule of law, not to be above it. They simply want equality before it.

Surely, we in this House agree that it is all those people—those who have helped to make Northern Ireland what it is today and to make peace possible—who we should put first. If the Bill helps a father in his late 80s end the torture of not knowing what happened to his daughter in her final moments, can we say that he is not worth our support? Should we tell him how glad we are that he never allowed his grief and devastation to stop his commitment to a peaceful Northern Ireland, but we cannot pass those provisions for him? If the Bill helps a widow of a veteran murdered by a terrorist group get the justice that she has been denied for decades, can we say that that is not worth our support? Should we tell her that her pain and anguish—her children having to grow up without knowing their father—is really awful, and we are sorry, but we cannot do this for her?

It is clearly not right that those brave veterans who helped contain the worst of the violence should be forced into the dock to relive the worst day of their life, when they have already been cleared by an investigation that looked into all of the evidence. They were asked by our state to act; they do not deserve to be tried again and again until a different result is found. That is precisely why the protection from repeat investigations is so important. It is why I welcome the amendment set out by the Secretary of State that strengthens that very protection. That is how we honour the sacrifice of people who went out to defend the rule of law, without cruelly and needlessly making them relive the very worst moment of their lives.

I do not think this Bill will be as totemic as the Good Friday agreement. It will not go down in the history books in quite the same way. But it can deliver with fairness for all those who I mentioned at the start of my speech. This Bill might bring answers—maybe even justice—to people who have lived with very deep pain for many, many years and put their country first. They put peace first. Those are the people who make progress possible, each and every day. I am proud to support them, and I am proud to support the Bill.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I want to make some remarks on the amendments that I have tabled, and some more general remarks, given the debate so far. I will discuss amendments 39 to 42, which, in my opinion, the Government amendments have not addressed.

Amendments 39 to 42 provide for judicial panel members to be appointed by the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission, not the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Judicial appointments should remain within NIJAC’s remit to maintain independence and public confidence in the process, as well as to safeguard against future politicisation. It is disappointing, therefore, that the Government’s amendments make no provision to address this, despite concerns raised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and UN experts. Indeed, the Committee on the Administration of Justice also notes that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland appointing judges would reverse the process put in place after the Good Friday agreement reforms, which created NIJAC as an independent body to appoint the judiciary.

The Secretary of State’s broad powers mean that a future Secretary of State for Northern Ireland opposed to an independent rule of law legacy investigation could make further appointments to frustrate the legacy commission’s purpose. One example would be appointing judicial commissioners to write the findings of legacy commission reports after investigations. Indeed, there is precedent for the risk: the irregular appointment of the second police ombudsman was followed by a lowering of the office’s independence in legacy investigations, leading to an independent inspection and suspension of the historic function of that office.

I will now turn to some of my greatest concerns in the amendments we are discussing today—there are also concerns about what we will discuss tomorrow. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) has already started to tease out some of the issues with the national security veto, as has the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne). This issue really bothers me, and I feel that it should bother other Members. The veto can hide state involvement in killings. Indeed, it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge and start to deal with that aspect of our past. The Bill lets the Secretary of State redact legacy commission reports to families on national security grounds. That is not limited to protecting lawful covert methods; it can conceal the role of state agents and informants in killings currently attributed solely to non-state actors.

If you will briefly indulge me, Madam Chair, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) and his amendment 4, which I will support—as I have done already. We discussed that amendment within the realms of paramilitary offenders—the hon. Member eloquently articulated that point—but there were also state agents who were paedophiles and operated with impunity. We were told after the fact that they were involved in saving numerous lives. That is obviously a question of hindsight, and very conveniently difficult to disaggregate. However, on record there are paedophiles who were used by the state. Indeed, it is often a mirror image, but they were there to serve a purpose. We knew about the paedophilia and child abuse, but we let that go because we felt there was a security value. I will just let that sit with Members for a moment.

The relevant Secretary of State could be marking their own homework. The joint framework suggests that the Home Secretary and Defence Secretary could also redact reports, even though MI5 and Military Intelligence are potential subjects of the investigations in question. That has already been found unlawful, but the Government have pressed ahead anyway. The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland found the equivalent provisions in the legacy Act 2023 incompatible with the ECHR—in the Dillon judgment. The Government’s appeal is before the Supreme Court but undetermined, yet they have still included the provisions and certified the Bill as ECHR-compatible on the strength of an “expectation” of winning.

There is a conflict with international and ECHR standards. UN special rapporteurs warned that the veto could curtail victims’ right to know the truth and be incompatible with international law. The Government’s “neither confirm nor deny” stance—earlier this year much maligned, to the stage of being mocked, with the Stakeknife case—showed that the involvement of agents at all should not be disclosed. This cannot be squared with the ECHR duty to hold effective investigations capable of establishing state agents’ involvement in a death. No comparable jurisdiction gives Ministers that power over transitional justice reports.

I want to draw attention to a theme that has been present throughout this debate and many others. We live with this every day in Northern Ireland. That is not to say that those veterans who live in England or further afield do not either—but this dictates our policy in Northern Ireland of how we do things today. It is still there. As other Members have alluded to, those members who served for Northern Ireland did not get to leave. They did not go away; they served their tour of duty on their home patch.

The reverse is true as well: many victims of paramilitary violence will still see the perpetrators today. Many of them will know things through hearsay, rumour or gossip, but they are not quite sure. If the Bill provides a way to try and give those people the knowledge and understanding of who pulled the trigger, and where and when, then I will support it.

I thank the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn); I am glad that he is in his place. I want to get something off my conscience that has bothered me since the day and hour that I set foot in this House and took part in these debates: we have not done justice to all the victims through these debates—we just haven’t—and it hurts, and I think it is shameful. I stand here as somebody who has veterans in her house. I am proud of them; I do not try to diminish or do away with that. But I also stand here as part of a family who have suffered from paramilitary violence, through nothing other than sectarianism. I am not going to pretend that that was an unusual happening.

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[Lincoln Jopp]

I do not think it is a poor point, because we all have to make judgments in this place and to vote with our conscience.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I understand where you are coming from in part—

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

Where he is coming from.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I apologise. I have mentioned veterans tonight who I know are prepared to support the Bill, and there are veterans’ groups who have a different view of it. I completely appreciate that there are veterans’ groups that are absolutely against it—some of them are my constituents, too. It would be wrong to say, though, that there is a homogeneous view among all veterans, and I think that is worth restating. I would just express my gratitude for the hon. Member’s service—it sounds like he was very close to my home whenever he was in Lisburn. He will remember that last week was the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Thiepval Barracks, in which one soldier died. I completely understand where he is coming from.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. She is right, of course, that there is not one homogeneous group, but the closest we can approximate to that is the veterans’ organisations that have come together and spoken with one voice, saying that they do not think there are sufficient protections in the Bill for them not to suffer the rinse and repeat. For that reason, I will be supporting new clause 21.