Hilary Benn

I will do my best to respond to as many of the points that have been raised in the debate as possible. I listened very carefully to the speech from the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), but I am sorry to say that he did not address the central problem, which is that the previous Government’s legislation failed and needs to be replaced. He also appeared to suggest that he knows that victims and survivors will find out nothing from the very process that that legislation put in place, which I am keeping in the form of the legacy commission—[Interruption.] Well, that is what he said. Was the hon. Gentleman arguing that judicial review should be removed from legacy cases? Is that his argument? If that is his argument, it would not have been available to challenge the Clonoe inquest—a challenge that the Government are supporting. The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) shares the Government’s opposition to immunity. I must confess that I was disappointed by his party’s stance on the Bill, because if there is no Bill, we cannot get it right. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba)—himself a distinguished veteran—made a powerful appeal for reason in order to try to get this right. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) was listened to in absolute silence, rightly, as he described a number of the children who were killed during the troubles. That silence was in marked contrast to some of what we heard earlier. Notwithstanding what the right hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said in most of his speech, I welcome the fact that at the end he made it clear that he is opposed to giving terrorists immunity, and that his party, which he leads, has always been clear that it did not support the immunity provisions in the previous Government’s legacy Act, which is indeed this Government’s policy.