Operation Banner: Legal Protection for Veterans
1/26. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the adequacy of legal protections for veterans who served in Operation Banner.
The veterans who served under Op Banner served to protect civilian lives and secure the peace in Northern Ireland. I share the right hon. Gentleman’s deep concern that many may now be caught up in investigations or litigation, and I am determined that we protect them further. I am working closely with the Northern Ireland Secretary, as are our officials, to ensure that we discharge our duty to the veterans as part of the necessary plans to repeal and replace the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.
During Operation Banner, every single time a paramilitary was killed by a British soldier, it was subject to judicial investigation. The Director of Public Prosecutions went through the evidence at the time, interviewed people, looked at the planning documents and was able to talk to people contemporaneously while they could still remember it. It was not a rubber stamp; it was rigorous, as was proven by the fact that, where necessary, it led to prosecution. What is happening now is double jeopardy. Worse still, it is double jeopardy under new rules but with no new evidence. Indeed, there is a risk of lost evidence and lost memory, given the passage of time. I have heard what the Secretary of State has said, but will he commit to ensuring that soldiers who were subject to reviews at the time will not be subject to further risk of prosecution under the Government’s replacement for the legacy Act?
Any incoming Government would have to repeal the legacy Act. It is unlawful legislation—it has been rejected by domestic courts, and rejected by communities across Northern Ireland, and it is simply wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise. We owe it to those affected by the troubles, whom the right hon. Gentleman speaks about, including our armed forces communities and veterans, to be honest about the unworkability of that legacy Act and to get this legislation right. That is exactly what the Northern Ireland Secretary and I are working together to ensure we can do, taking full account of all the interested parties, in particular those veterans and armed forces communities that the right hon. Gentleman speaks about.
I call the shadow Minister.
According to the 2021 census, there are more than 2 million veterans living in Great Britain. Clearly, some of them have been busy lately: their parliamentary petition entitled “Protect Northern Ireland Veterans from Prosecutions”, with support from the Daily Mail, the Express and others, now has more than 160,000 signatures and will be debated in Parliament on 14 July. Which Minister will respond to that debate, so that we can ask them why the Government’s current remedial order is drafted to help the likes of Gerry Adams sue the British taxpayer while throwing our veterans to the wolves?
We welcome the petition, and we certainly welcome the parliamentary debate—it is quite proper that Parliament debates these issues. The right hon. Gentleman’s legacy Act offered false and undeliverable promises to the veterans of Northern Ireland. The last Government were warned that it would be unlawful and incompatible with the Windsor framework. Even the chief commissioner of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery said that the Act has obvious problems, and that elements of it were dead in the water from the beginning. We are now fixing that flawed and failed legislation, and we will do so in a way that honours our duty towards those veterans.
The Government could have appealed to the Supreme Court on this but deliberately did not. I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s personal sincerity. However, at Prime Minister’s questions on 15 January, the Prime Minister promised veterans: “We are working on a draft remedial order and replacement legislation, and we will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases from claiming damages—it is important that I say that on the record.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2025; Vol. 760, c. 324.] Why then, despite the PM’s solemn promise, is the order still unchanged? Surely he is not expecting to order his own MPs, many of whom represent red wall seats from which those veterans were originally recruited, through the Aye Lobby just to do Gerry Adams a favour? He is not going to do that, is he?
The Prime Minister was right then and he is right now. I am working with the Northern Ireland Secretary to repeal and replace the legacy Act. We will honour the Prime Minister’s undertaking to this House and do right by the duty that this nation holds to those veterans who served for more than 38 years during the troubles in Northern Ireland.