“Soldier F” Trial Verdict

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Member raises an important point. It is, however, very important to distinguish, as I know she will, between potential criminal prosecutions, which are the result of decisions of independent prosecutors, and civil cases. One of the other things that the courts found was that the ban on civil cases was incompatible with our human rights obligations. I point out that there has already been a civil case in relation to a paramilitary, which found against that individual, and it is a fundamental feature of our system that people are able to bring civil cases. Decisions about how those cases are disposed of is rightly a matter for the courts.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Ind)]

My thoughts today are with the families of the Bloody Sunday victims and with the people of Derry, who have carried the burden of grief, truth and justice for more than five decades. What happened on Bloody Sunday is not up for debate; the Saville inquiry established in painstaking detail what the Parachute Regiment did to peaceful civil rights demonstrators on the Bogside. Can the Secretary of State explain how it was determined and who determined that Soldier F qualified for Ministry of Defence funding, and what precedent this decision was based on, particularly given reports that he received double the financial support typically afforded to a single defendant? If he was eligible for legal aid, that avenue was open for him. Instead, £4.3 million of public money was spent defending a man who, in his own evidence to the Saville inquiry, admitted his lethal role in the state-sanctioned murders on Bloody Sunday. Does the Secretary of State believe that this represents an equal and impartial application of justice, or a two-tiered system designed to shield the British state from accountability?

[Hilary Benn]

I say to the hon. Member that the Saville inquiry report made for very sobering and distressing reading for all of us. Like many Members present, I was in the House to hear the former Prime Minister, Lord Cameron, make that apology to the families—something for which they had campaigned for years and years when justice was denied to them. I will always remember the photographs of the fists that came out of the window in the Guildhall in Derry/Londonderry as people heard what the Prime Minister at the time had said from the Dispatch Box.

On the hon. Member’s first point, it is right and proper that the Ministry of Defence provides support to any veteran who is facing a criminal justice process. I think we would expect nothing less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Well, yes—do I have to learn the song? I will do my best. I thank my hon. Friend for raising the work of her constituents and her constituents’ school. It is absolutely vital that we not only recycle where sensible but cut down on the use of plastics.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Q5. This week, it was revealed that fossil-fuel companies, interest groups and climate denialists had donated £1.3 million to the Conservative party and its MPs since 2019. So, a simple question, no waffling or dodging the issue: on the eve of COP26, will the Prime Minister demonstrate that he is serious about tackling the climate emergency by paying back that money and pledging that his party will never again take money and donations from the fossil-fuel companies that are burning our planet? Yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

All our donations are registered in the normal way. I would just remind the hon. Lady that the Labour party’s paymasters, the GMB, think that Labour’s policies mean that no families would be able to take more than one flight every five years and that they would have their cars confiscated.