Dr Al Pinkerton

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contribution to this important debate, and the 175,000 petitioners who have brought this issue into the public domain. I join others in paying tribute to our extraordinary armed forces personnel who have fought and defended our freedoms. I think today about my grandfather. Although he was too early to serve in Northern Ireland, he knew precisely what was meant by fighting against terrorism: he was placed in Mandatory Palestine shortly after the second world war, dodging the bombs and bullets of the Lehi and the Haganah and narrowly avoiding being blown up in the King David hotel. I open with a statement that should be entirely self-evident: families bereaved by the troubles deserve clear, credible answers and access to justice. This is not about ideology or party politics; it is about the foundational principles of decency, dignity and the right to truth, something that many victims’ families in Northern Ireland and beyond have waited decades for. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 sadly fell short of that aim and those principles. By shutting down investigations and offering conditional immunity, it extinguished the remaining legal pathways for families across Northern Ireland’s political spectrum. It told victims that time had run out on reconciliation, a key tenet of which is legal accountability. Tellingly, every major Northern Ireland political party, as well as victims’ groups and others, opposed the legislation—albeit, at times, for vastly different reasons.