Jesse Norman

It is very good to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. As a member of the shadow Cabinet, I am speaking with the permission of Mr Speaker and the Clerk, because this is a matter of the utmost importance to my constituents. On the petition map, Herefordshire is a dark brown colour, showing that the two Herefordshire constituencies have the highest proportion of constituents who have signed the petition—and mine has the highest of all. That is because so many of my constituents—1,159—are veterans of special forces and other regiments, and I speak on their behalf. These are men—many of them now in their 70s—who have had their lives blighted. It is a nonsense to suggest somehow that there is political scaremongering here; these men have sat in front of me, and with all the astonishing bravery, vigour and fortitude they have shown, they have flinched in the face of the legal challenge, and the vexation and worry it has caused them, their families and their communities. We must recognise that. I also speak on behalf of Anthony Daly, a great friend of mine who died at the age of 23 in the Hyde Park bombing, on the soil of England, because of the IRA. Let it never be forgotten that the IRA is not just any other terrorist organisation. It was the most professional terrorist organisation in the world at the time. It trained and supplied other organisations of a similar kind around the world. It was therefore astonishing for this country to send young men and some women into that cauldron to defend all the rights that we take for granted today. They were men who acted under orders and in a chain of command—on the Queen’s business—and who cannot now respond, in many of my constituents’ cases, to the terrible injustice that is being wrought at the moment, which is itself already proving, even among this group, dangerous and deleterious to morale. There is something fundamentally dishonest about the Government’s position, which is that they have not bothered to explain the basis of the legal reasoning that is used. I invite the Secretary of State to clarify that basis in this Chamber today, and if he cannot, I want him to write to me so that we can share, in public, the basis of the legal reasoning. Sections 46 and 47 were not controversial when they were passed. They were passed with the support of the then Opposition, who are now the Government. It is therefore absurd to hear colleagues from across the Chamber suggest that they somehow always disagreed with them, or that they have now suddenly discovered some Whips’ interest. Will the Secretary of State give us all the answer to the following questions? Why did the Government abandon the appeal? How exactly is the legislation in sections 46 and 47 incompatible with the convention rights? Did the Government give thought to allowing that supposed incompatibility to continue, given that they are under no legal obligation to cure it? Why did they not simply allow the pattern of the normal course of law to proceed and let the Supreme Court make that decision? Above all, why did they not decide on their own solution before they decided to create all this uncertainty by abandoning the appeal?