Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation

I beg to move,

That the draft Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 14 October 2025, be approved.

As every one of us knows, Northern Ireland continues to live with the legacy of the troubles. Over 3,500 people lost their lives during that period of brutal violence, including almost 2,000 civilians and over 1,000 people who were killed while bravely serving the state. We owe them, and always will, a huge debt of gratitude. Ninety per cent of all those who lost their lives were killed by paramilitaries. Each person was someone’s father, brother, sister, mother or child; each one a tragic loss of life.

In 1998, the people of Northern Ireland chose to leave this legacy of violence behind them when they voted for the Good Friday agreement, but for too many families of the victims, questions remain as to why their loved ones died and at whose hands. There have been many efforts to address the legacy of the troubles since, including the Stormont House agreement, reached between the last Government and the Irish Government in 2014, and, most recently, the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.

It is now beyond doubt that that last attempt—the legacy Act—whatever its intentions, fundamentally failed. It failed because it has been found in many respects to be incompatible with our human rights obligations; the legislation simply did not work on its own terms. But even more importantly, it failed because it did not command any support in Northern Ireland among victims and survivors or the political parties.

I commend the Secretary of State for the careful and thoughtful work that he has done to bring the House to this place today. Does he agree that, with this remedial order, he is doing the right thing for victims? That means ordinary people, including veterans and the wider armed forces community, all of whom were injured or lost loved ones. They are the people we have in our minds today. It was the Conservatives’ bad legislation that led us to have to pass a remedial order, for only the 11th time since the second world war. Does he agree that—

Order. This is a very long intervention. Many speakers wish to get in this afternoon, so I urge Members to keep interventions short.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the legacy Act needed dealing with. Any Government that came into office in summer 2024 would have to be doing what we are doing.

It is worth bringing to the House’s attention again the fact that the legacy Act, whatever its legality or otherwise, was predicated on our membership of the European convention on human rights. Does the Secretary of State agree, and will he reflect on the fact, that there was an appeal against the supposed illegality of the Act at the time of the general election by the previous Government, and this Government decided to ditch it?

That is indeed a wholly accurate description of the sequence of events, because this Government do not agree with immunity as a matter of principle—I will go on to advance the argument a little later—but the Act was also, as the right hon. Gentleman points out, found to be incompatible with our obligations as a nation because we continue to be signatories to the European convention on human rights.

I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way; he is an immensely courteous Member of this House and always has been. He will be aware, however, that there is a live legal case by the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement, and that the very Human Rights Act he cited says that this kind of order ought not to be moved—indeed, it would be ultra vires—while a case is proceeding. How does he feel about that, and will he explain to the House why we are debating this at all given all that I have said?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. If he will bear with me, I will come very directly to precisely that point a little later in my speech.

It is the Government’s view that there is both a legal necessity and an imperative for us to act, and this remedial order is the first step in that process. The remedial order will remove two key effects of the provisions of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 that were found by the courts in the Dillon case to be incompatible with our human rights obligations.

One of the main reasons for the failure of the legacy Act was its attempt to grant immunity, including to terrorists who murdered, in cold blood, soldiers and civilians in Northern Ireland and in towns and cities across England. In fairness, it probably seemed reassuring to veterans, and it was almost certainly reassuring to terrorists who had committed those acts, but it was a false promise that protected no one. It was never commenced, which is a very important fact. It was rejected by the courts as being incompatible with our legal obligations and, as a result, it was never implemented. No one ever got immunity, and while it may remain on the statute book, in practice it does not exist.

Nevertheless, while the Act has not been commenced, for many families any uncertainty about their loved ones’ killers being granted immunity has been a deterrent to coming forward to seek answers from the independent commission. There has also been opposition from some who served in Northern Ireland, because immunity undermines the rule of law that they were seeking to uphold.

David Crabbe, an Ulster Defence Regiment veteran who sits on the victims and survivors forum, said of immunity:

“The vast majority of veterans living in Northern Ireland did not want or feel as if they needed this protection. It was viewed as a perversion of the law, that went against the ethos of what those who served stood for, and what their role was in preserving law and order.”

May I remind the Secretary of State—I know that he knows it, as he has heard it from me and others many times before—that there is nothing about creating a false equivalence between the two? Everybody is equal before the law. If anything created a false equivalence, it was the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which said that no matter how many murders a paramilitary had committed, and no matter how many illegal acts, if any, a soldier had committed, neither of them would ever serve more than two years of a sentence. That equivalence is there. It is not moral equivalence; it is equivalence before the law, and the 2023 Act did not initiate it.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right when he describes the provisions of the 1998 legislation, but as he knows, that policy, along with the rest of the Good Friday agreement, was supported by just over 70% of the people of Northern Ireland in the referendum. It was a very bitter pill to swallow for many people in Northern Ireland, but it was a price to be paid for peace.

The point I am making in relation to this remedial order is that the last Government chose to legislate to give immunity to veterans and to terrorists on the same basis. The noble Lord Dodds said of the legacy Bill—which, by the way, he described as “rotten”—that it

“basically elevates terrorists and perpetrators of violence above their victims. That is fundamentally wrong.”

That is why we are bringing forward this remedial order to remove those provisions on immunity that have done so much damage to trust in Northern Ireland. Doing so will provide clarity and certainty ahead of the wider, significant reforms contained in the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill.

The remedial order will also remove the bar on troubles-related civil cases that stripped UK citizens of their right to seek redress. Section 43 of the 2023 Act left some 800 troubles-related civil cases involving the Ministry of Defence untouched.

My right hon. Friend may shortly be coming on to this, but civil cases have been raised as a concern given the potential for lawfare, notwithstanding that people like Gerry Adams are also subject to civil action in the coming months. Will he outline what he expects in terms of civil cases against those who served in our military or security services?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. Those 800 cases were untouched and the Act allowed them to carry on—that is a very important point, given some very inaccurate press reporting at the beginning of this week, of which I am sure many right hon. and hon. Members are aware—but it did stop about 230 new civil claims proceeding. Those claims were lodged after First Reading of the legacy Bill, and about 120 of them are against the MOD. It also prevented any more claims from being brought in future. The point I am making is that there are 800 cases already there, left untouched by the last Government’s legacy Act, and 120 cases against the MOD that have been added since that will be enabled to proceed if the remedial order passes. As we know, that bar on new civil cases was found by the courts to be incompatible with our legal obligations.

I intend to return to this matter in my contribution later on, but the issue of civil cases highlights most starkly the discord even between the courts. The High Court in Belfast focused only on the retrospective application of the provisions on civil cases, but the Court of Appeal then said that not only should it not be retrospective, but it should have no application in the future. There was a disagreement between the High Court and the Court of Appeal about the import of the measure, yet the Secretary of State, more determined to pursue his policy objective than the law, decided not to appeal that issue in the Supreme Court. That is why there are questions about the appropriate nature of this remedial order—does he accept that?

It is not unusual for higher courts to take a different view on a matter to that taken by lower courts—that is the way the law works. I would give the same answer to the right hon. Gentleman that I gave to an earlier intervention, which is that the Government’s view is that citizens of the United Kingdom should be able to bring civil cases as a matter of principle.