Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I also ask you to be mindful about issues of sub judice; we have been given some flexibility by the Speaker, but I urge you to err on the side of caution when referring to ongoing cases.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Second Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, The Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland, HC 586, and the Government response, HC 1716.

It is a privilege, as always, to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, and I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for allocating time for the debate. We launched our inquiry in December 2024, and it stretched across 2025, culminating in the publication of our report shortly before Christmas. Alongside receiving almost 80 pieces of written evidence, we held eight evidence sessions with representatives of victims and survivors, veterans, retired police officers and human rights groups. We also heard twice from the Secretary of State. Importantly, we visited Northern Ireland several times to hear at first hand from people directly and indirectly affected by the troubles.

As a cross-party group, we recognise the significance of raising our concerns with a unified voice. As I said during my statement on the Floor of the House when we published this report, I am deeply appreciative of my colleagues’ collaborative spirit in shaping a report built on consensus. It is a serious and comprehensive piece of work, engaging meaningfully with all communities and demonstrating a strong cross-party consensus on outstanding issues of concern and specific provisions in the Bill that require amendment. Our hope is that the level of detail contained in our report will help to shape and inform the parameters of debate in this House and beyond across a wide range of issues. Although the Government provided a detailed response at the end of January, for which we are grateful, a number of important matters remain outstanding, and this debate offers an opportunity to explore some of those further.

I will start with resourcing. Beginning with the very foundation of the legacy process, my Committee repeatedly heard serious concerns about resourcing, which we set out in detail in the report. Put simply, no amount of reform, good will or political momentum will deliver truth or justice if the necessary funding is not in place for investigative bodies or those responsible for information disclosure. Even the current legacy investigation body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, pointed to concerns about sustainable financing going forward, given the increase in demand for its services—an increase that we hope will only continue under the new legacy commission. If the commission is to receive relevant information in a timely manner, the resourcing of organisations such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland also needs to be considered, given the new demands on them to retrieve and categorise their records.

However, the Government’s response does not fully address the concerns we raised. Despite the commission being given new responsibilities through the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, the Government have not updated the initial funding allocation of £250 million following the passage of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. We put that to the Secretary of State when he appeared before my Committee earlier this month, and he acknowledged that further discussions will need to take place with the Treasury about the funding of the commission. Those conversations need to happen now.

I thank the hon. Member for all her efforts on behalf of victims of the troubles and others. This is a chance to put in place accountability mechanisms that we should have put in place decades ago, particularly for those who do not have a judicial pathway. Families in Derry know what happened in their city on Bloody Sunday, regardless of a verdict. IRA victims know what directing terrorism looks like—the explaining away, the casualness with life—regardless of a judicial process.

Does the hon. Member agree that legislation alone will not get us to truth and a reconciled future, and that this must be an opportunity for those who created victims to step forward, bravely, to give that long overdue accountability: for the UK Government to accept that they compromised key human rights protections and at times colluded with paramilitaries; for loyalist paramilitaries to accept that their war was with innocent Catholics; and for the IRA to step up and acknowledge their decades of coercion of communities, and their casualness with human lives—in seeking to achieve an outcome that could never have been achieved in any way other than democratically?

I thank the hon. Member for the work she does and the perspective she brings to the Committee, and I agree that this is a matter of building trust and confidence and building a better future across these islands. That requires everybody to step up.

We noted a range of concerns in our report regarding the role of the Irish Government, including in relation to the timeline for equivalent legislation and information on the proposed legacy unit in the Garda. The Government response offers some welcome clarification. It confirms that the legacy unit is now operational and that the Irish Government intend to publish the necessary legislation to facilitate co-operation in either April or May this year. However, actions will matter far more than assurances, and we now await the practical outworkings of those commitments.

Finally, we know and respect the fact that, for some, reconciliation may be impossible. For others, it could be the basis of a better future. My Committee will soon begin an inquiry that explores that in detail. The Government’s response did not fully address the concerns we set out in that section of our report, particularly those relating to part 4 of the 2023 Act. We will use our forthcoming inquiry into reconciliation to continue pressing these questions.

We await the next stage of the troubles Bill, when we will all have the opportunity to put those who carry the legacy of the past at the heart of a new approach for the future. We owe it to them to get it right.

I would like to start by referring to the intervention of the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna), who is sadly no longer in her place. She talked about people stepping forward and speaking the truth. I believe that the Government’s new approach makes that less, rather than more, likely to happen. In their response to the Select Committee report, the Government speak in disparaging terms about the immunity provisions that the previous Conservative Government laid down; those immunity provisions are described as an affront to democracy. I do not believe that is true at all. It is not true any more than claiming that what happened in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela sought to heal that society, was an affront to their new democracy.

Will the right hon. Member give way?

I would like to make a little progress first, then I certainly will. I chaired the Defence Committee when we produced a report that recommended the combination of a statute of limitation with a truth recovery process as the best way to proceed. That report took evidence, as I have mentioned many times, from four eminent professors of law. They pointed out that that recommendation was a perfectly legal way to proceed, provided that, if immunities were introduced, they would be brought in for everybody, and provided that the matters concerned would be properly investigated. That investigation could consist of a truth recovery process; it did not have to involve prosecuting people after the investigations had taken place. Some of us have been very concerned about the malicious and vexatious prosecution of service personnel.

If the idea is, on the one hand, to rule out the vexatious pursuit of service personnel and, on the other hand, to heal society by allowing people who suffered in the troubles to find out the truth, then the package of a statute of limitation coupled with a truth recovery process seemed ideal. I cannot quite understand why the Government, and those who support their approach of reopening all those investigations, seem to think that their approach will lead to effective truth recovery. How much more likely is it that people will come forward and tell the truth when they know that they could be incriminating themselves because the Government have reopened that lethal can of worms? That compares with a situation inherent in the original package: by giving everybody immunity, people could then come forward and tell the truth without any fear of adverse consequences to themselves.

The other objection that is made, which I see spelled out explicitly in the Government’s response to the report, is that it is insulting to put everybody on the same level—that it is putting terrorists, service personnel and security forces on the same level. I have pointed out on countless occasions—and never heard a convincing refutation of this—that that ship has already sailed. The Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 laid down that if anyone is convicted, even of the most appalling atrocities—murders, tortures, rape, you name it—in relation to the troubles, they will not actually serve more than two years in jail. Why does it say that for everyone? Because the law has to be impartial. Just because the law applies impartially to service personnel and terrorists alike does not mean that it draws a moral equivalence between them, and neither did the package here. Its purpose was to give immunity to stop vexatious prosecutions and to enable the truth recovery process to allow the victims to find out what had happened.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain; I wish you a happy St Patrick’s day. I thank the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for securing this debate and choosing this topic, and I commend her and the Committee for their solid work. Their useful report brings together many different aspects of the Government’s work on this issue, and gave a platform to so many victims, organisations and voices that are often not heard in this place to talk about the impact it has on them, what they think about the current work and what they hope for in future.

This Friday is the anniversary of the 1993 Warrington bombing, when Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball—two children—were killed and 54 people were injured. Not a week goes by, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere, when we do not remember the victims. They are the people we should have in our minds when we talk about the troubles, and about legacy and reconciliation. Secretary of States do not often come to Westminster Hall, so I welcome the presence of the Secretary of State, who I know has taken a personal interest in righting the wrongs of the previous Government’s legislation, and in what that can do for society in Northern Ireland, both now and for future generations.

It is important to remember what this is fundamentally about; I could see that it was on the minds of all Committee members throughout the inquiry. More than 3,500 people, across Northern Ireland and in towns, cities and military barracks across England, died in the troubles. They included nearly 2,000 civilians and more than 1,100 members of our security forces. Nearly a third of those deaths remain unsolved, and a great many victims and families, some of whom I had the privilege of meeting when I was a Minister, are still seeking answers. Their questions remain with me. I will never forget sitting in the WAVE Trauma Centre in Belfast and talking to victims, who, so many years later, have so many questions and just want to know what happened to their loved ones.

My hon. Friend is delivering an excellent speech. Does she recognise the fact that there are also 200 service families among those victims who are seeking answers, and that the Bill will help to address that issue at the same time?

I absolutely agree, and my hon. Friend makes a very good point: this also includes service families. No matter what family someone comes from, it is a huge loss. These are people missing from family tables, about whom there are still questions, and it is a trauma not to know what happened—that is what this legacy legislation aims to resolve. We are so many years on, and there is so much investigating yet to do. I understand that many people simply want to know how their loved ones died.

The ICRIR is taking forward 100 investigations, some of which Peter Sheridan listed in his evidence to the Committee. Those include the deaths of Alexander Millar in 1975; Seamus Bradley, a 19-year-old; Rory O’Kelly in 1977; Kathleen O’Hagan in August 1994, who was seven months’ pregnant, and her baby also died in that attack; James and Ellen Sefton in 1990; and Judge Rory Conaghan in 1974. Those are just some of the people who died—their families have questions, and they are being investigated by the ICRIR.

The commission’s caseload also includes the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, the 1974 M62 coach bombing, the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, and the 1979 Warrenpoint massacre, which was the deadliest attack on British forces during the troubles. We must ensure that those investigations can progress and deliver answers for families, and that all communities can have confidence in the commission, as trust was also a key element of the evidence given in the report.

The last Government’s legacy Act had no support in Northern Ireland, and it is clear why that was the case. It shut down the right of individuals to pursue a civil case, whether against the state or perpetrators of terrorism. It cruelly stopped a number of inquests midway through, and it ended over 1,000 police investigations in Northern Ireland and England, including those into the deaths of more than 200 UK service personnel, as my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) highlighted.

I, too, met victims at the WAVE centre when I was on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. When I read the letter that my hon. Friend just mentioned, this comment really resonated with me:

“Whatever the then Government’s intention, the result would have been that terrorists who carried out the most egregious crimes imaginable would be able to walk free if they told their story”.

They felt like that was too much, so does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are right to address this issue for victims who have come forward?

I absolutely agree; it was just too much even to ask or encourage more people to come forward—if they did come forward, there would be no justice. The families of victims often see those people in their local supermarket; they are living in their communities, but the families know that there is no hope of them ever having justice. That is too painful to contemplate.

Like the report, I welcome the fact that the Government have taken a very different approach. I know that the Secretary of State engaged widely on the drafting of the Bill with victims’ groups, families, veterans and other affected parties, and I was pleased to play a part in those discussions. The troubles Bill will restore civil cases and enable the resumption of halted inquests. It will mean that legacy cases are dealt with sensitively and efficiently through a reformed legacy commission, with the fullest possible disclosure of information to families. Rather than making false promises to our veterans, as the legacy Act did, the Bill will put in place six genuine protections for any veteran who is asked to give information, and nobody who carried out acts of terrorism will be given immunity.

We should be clear that it was terrorists—the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Irish National Liberation Army and the Ulster Defence Association—who were responsible for the vast majority of deaths during the troubles. It is right that where there is evidence of criminality by anyone, those responsible should be held to account. Frankly, it is shocking that many Opposition Members disagree and would prefer to grant immunity to those who carried out the most heinous acts of terrorism on UK soil.

The Government agreed information-sharing commitments with the Irish authorities under the joint framework announced in September. I welcome the fact that the Select Committee visited Ireland before and during the compilation of the report. The agreement is unprecedented and could be hugely significant in enabling answers to be found for families once the new legacy commission is established.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and she was an excellent Minister in her own right. Will she join me in paying tribute to Councillor Tommy Judge, who has been the Labour councillor for Sharston ward in my constituency for many years, and who was a victim of the 1974 bus bomb? He is standing down after many years of public service, but he will carry that with him, in his retirement, to the end.

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning Tommy Judge, the work he has done and all that he has lived with throughout his life. My hon. Friend and I have met many other people across England who are working to support victims and survivors in Great Britain, as well as in Northern Ireland.

The report ends on a cliffhanger. It ends by talking about wider reconciliation, which is very important, because the legacy legislation is just part of a piece of wider work that needs to be done that is important for reconciliation. When I have been to Northern Ireland, I have asked many times: “What is reconciliation? What does it mean? What will be the outcome? What will it look like?” It means different things to different people. Some people do not want reconciliation; for some people, reconciliation means answers; for some people, it means the ability to live together in a community peacefully; and for some people, it means good jobs, education and opportunities, and hope for the future.

With the world watching the peace process in Northern Ireland, this work could not be more important. It is a beacon of hope for people in other conflicts around the world, who look to Northern Ireland and say, “It has been possible in Northern Ireland,” and who look to the ways in which we continue to build that peace, bit by bit. It is hard, and we are seeing how hard it is, but the ultimate aim must be for communities to be able to live and thrive peacefully together, and to reduce the generational trauma—to reduce the amount that is passed down to future generations.

I hope that future Select Committee reports will look at other aspects of reconciliation, including integrated education, which is an absolutely necessary part of bringing together communities, especially young for people. Just living and working together in a school all the time is so important, as has been reiterated to me so many times by parents and peacemakers in Northern Ireland. I am sure the Committee will consider that aspect too.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on bringing forward the report, and the Chair, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), on the way she has stewarded the debate and taken evidence from so many groups. Bringing forward a unanimous report on such a delicate issue in Northern Ireland is testament to all those who were involved and to those who gave evidence. It is a very difficult issue, because it is still very raw in Northern Ireland.

On this day in 1988, two British Army corporals, Derek Wood and David Howes, were attacked, beaten, abused and then shot because they happened to drive into the middle of a Provisional IRA funeral in Belfast. I was a teenager at the time, and I remember watching the reports on television and the brutality of the attack—the seemingly unwarranted deaths of two serving officers in Northern Ireland. That is where the troubles Bill does a disservice to some of our veterans with regard to how they served in Northern Ireland and how they are now being treated.

The concerns of veterans have been touched on many times and are referenced in the report, especially in the six promised protections for Northern Ireland veterans. The Secretary of State knows well that we have had many debates in which those specific protections have been highlighted and exposed as being there for all, not specifically for veterans, as detailed in the wording of the Bill. Words are fine, but unless they are on the face of the legislation, they can be lost, misinterpreted, repealed or even weakened in the interpretation as the Bill goes forward, and even through the judiciary.

I thank the House for allowing this debate on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee’s reflections on the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, because we have not yet had the opportunity to do so in the main Chamber. When the remedial order came before the House earlier this year, we were given the impression that the troubles Bill was only days or weeks away. Yet the Leader of the House today gave indications of next week’s business, and we still have no sight of when the Bill will reach Committee stage, so that the Committee of the whole House can delve into what it will mean for victims, veterans and Northern Ireland society alike. That is why this debate is important. In that regard, I am disappointed by the absence of some Northern Ireland MPs, because we asked for this opportunity to debate the detail of the Bill and they have not taken the opportunity to be here today. I understand that others have other commitments.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so sensitive in his speech. He mentions the remedial order that does away with the immunity scheme set up by the last Government; does he accept that that scheme was never actually in place, because it was struck down by the courts in Northern Ireland? The remedial order is really just a tidying-up exercise, rather than changing anything while the new Bill goes through Parliament.