Hilary Benn

I have great respect for the right hon. Member and his service, both as a Minister and in our armed forces. I gently say to him that protections are not being stripped away because they never existed in the first place. It is important for the House to appreciate this: the provisions that were passed in the legacy Act were never commenced. They were then struck down by the courts. They do not exist; they never have existed. [Interruption.] That is just a fact. Nobody has been granted immunity because the provisions of that Act have never ever been applied. One cannot strip away something that never existed in the first place. I am afraid what the last Government did was to offer a false promise to veterans. One of the consequences of the widespread failure of the legacy Act is court case after court case where people have said, “Well, we need to find another means of getting an answer to the question about what happened to our loved ones.” That involves expensive court cases. I am under an order to establish a public inquiry into one case. It is—I think the phrase has been used—a legal wild west that the legislation opened up, and we are trying to put things back together again.