Alex Ballinger

I will be supporting the carry-over motion today. I would also like to pay tribute to the victims from the WAVE Trauma Centre, who, alongside many of us, have shared their powerful stories with parliamentarians in the last two days. Nearly 30 years on from the Good Friday agreement, these men and women are still seeking truth and justice for the awful crimes inflicted upon them. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will share a couple of the stories that they shared with me. The first is the story of Jennifer Gillespie. Jennifer was just 12 years old when masked Provisional IRA men broke into her house, took her and her mother hostage, and forced her father, Patsy, to drive into an Army checkpoint as a human bomb. Patsy, who was a civilian cook in the local barracks, was chained to the driving seat of a van packed with 1,000 lb of explosives, followed by kidnappers in a separate car, while his family was held at gunpoint. He was forced to drive into the checkpoint. As he approached, Patsy shouted a desperate warning to the troops guarding the checkpoint, but the IRA detonated the van, killing Patsy and five soldiers from the King’s Regiment. That was just one of three co-ordinated proxy bomb attacks that evening. Jennifer and her mother, Kathleen, are still seeking justice so many years after that horrible attack. I also met Mo Norton, whose brother, Bombardier Terence Griffin, was one of 12 killed in the M62 bombings. A Provisional IRA bomb was stowed in their coach luggage locker, and exploded as the young soldiers and their families were returning to Catterick after their weekend leave. Nine soldiers and three civilians were killed, including two children, aged just five and two. Mo is still devastated after all these years, and she and her family in Wigan are still seeking answers. I never served in Northern Ireland myself, but I have served alongside many soldiers and Marines who have. They spoke of the constant threat of snipers and bombs, of not knowing who among the local population might be trying to kill them or when they would strike. They took on strict rules of engagement, serving in the United Kingdom among British citizens to protect them. They fought paramilitaries that were unencumbered by those same rules, as the cowardly attacks I described earlier show. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to these veterans, but victims and veterans are not two separate groups. Two hundred and sixty-four members of our armed forces were murdered by terrorists. They had their unresolved cases terminated by the 2023 legacy Act. We owe these families a chance at justice. The last Conservative Government attempted in good faith to draw a line under the troubles, but their offer of conditional immunity was unacceptable to bereaved families, and the courts found it unlawful. The legacy Act must be replaced, and today’s motion allows for that work to continue. The families have waited for decades. I urge the House to pass the carry-over motion and allow the Bill to proceed.