Colum Eastwood

It is frustrating sometimes, going through these debates. I know from speaking to victims, as many of us in this House do—although not enough of us—how frustrated they have been by some of the language that has been used in our many debates on this issue. I feel that the first people we should always talk about are those who were murdered and those who were left behind, not those who did the shooting. That is what I feel. We let ourselves down in this Chamber by focusing far too much on veterans. People in this place are entitled to be proud of the British Army if they want, but why is the focus nearly wholly on those who have been charged, or should be charged, with shooting children, for example? Some 26% of the children killed during the troubles were killed by somebody in a uniform. People would not really understand that, listening to some of those in this room. I get that Members want to represent veterans, and I understand the politics around all of that. Yes, veterans might be worried about getting a knock on the door, but there are other people who got knocks on the door over 30 years. They might have got only one knock on the door from a police officer and never heard from anybody else about the matter ever again. Those are the people we should be concerned about. I listened this morning to the “Today” programme. Someone I know very well, Emmett McConomy, was on representing his brother, Stephen. How about this for a split-second decision? Stephen was 11 years old, playing with his friends in front of lots of witnesses on Fahan Street in Derry. A British soldier shot him in the back of the head with a plastic bullet. He died a couple of days later. The soldier was pulled in, interviewed for about half an hour and let go again. Not long after, the police and the Army raided Stephen’s mother’s house. The bishop of Derry at the time, Bishop Daly, said they were in the house longer than the soldier was in the interview suite. Was that a split-second decision? Should the soldier who did that not be hauled in front of a court? They would have been, if this had happened on the streets of Manchester, Liverpool or Edinburgh. People who most Members of this House would see as British citizens were shot and murdered by the British Army or a British police force. Should those people not be entitled to the same level of justice, if it can be achieved, as any other citizen in the United Kingdom? I do not understand the argument against it. Many people have made the argument, including victims, that justice is becoming more and more difficult to achieve—I get that—and that many victims want different things. However, they are entitled to seek justice, and they should not be barred from seeking it by any Government; their rights should be upheld, just as any of us would expect our rights to be upheld. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), gave a fantastic and important speech. He reminded us who this debate should be about. He talked about Majella O’Hare. I spoke to her brother Michael today, as I do most times when these issues are coming up. I want us to remember what that was about. She was a 12-year-old girl going to chapel, to go to confession. She was shot by a member of the Parachute Regiment and killed. That was not a split-second decision. Majella did not have a rifle in her hand, or a coffee jar, or anything else. The hon. Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) gave a powerful speech, and I understand his personal experience and I respect it, but he talked about the issue of memory loss, as have some others; I do not know about other Members in this room, but if I shot a child of 12 years old on her way to chapel, I would remember it until my dying day. That argument cannot be used as an excuse for not doing anything. Last week, WAVE trauma centre, a fantastic organisation, brought some victims to this Chamber. I know that many people met them. They had good experiences and bad experiences with some of the people they met. Patsy Gillespie’s daughter Jennifer was among them. A braver family you could not meet. Jennifer was 12 when the IRA came into her house, held her and her mother at gunpoint, took her father Patsy away, chained him to a van full of explosives and made him drive that van into the British Army base on the Buncrana Road in Derry, killing Patsy and five soldiers. Patsy tried to warn the soldiers, but the IRA remotely detonated the explosives. Jennifer is no supporter of the republican movement. She wants truth and the justice possible for every victim that can get it. We also met Mo Norton and her husband. Her brother, a soldier, was killed in the M62 bus bombing. She said a very powerful thing to me: “Why are we never talked about when they talk about veterans? What about all the soldiers and police who were murdered, or the families who were left behind? Are they not entitled to seek truth and justice?” That is where the argument that some people are making would lead us. I just do not understand why we do not talk about those soldiers when we talk about this issue. I was at an event last week with the family of Sean Brown, who was the chairman of Bellaghy Gaelic athletic club. He was closing the gates when he was taken away and shot repeatedly and left outside his car. There have been two court cases already. Five High Court judges, the Lord Chief Justice included, have mandated this Government to open a public inquiry into what happened. We think 25-odd people were involved in that murder, and the state has admitted that they included state agents. Next week, we will have to go to the Supreme Court, because this Government are appealing the judgment that mandates this Government to bring about a public inquiry. I appeal to the Government today to take the opportunity to listen to what Bridie Brown has had to go through. She is an elderly woman, and her husband was brutally murdered. She is demanding a public inquiry, and she should be entitled to it, because the court has said that she is entitled to it. I ask the Government to drop that appeal. One of the reasons why I am opposed to some of the disclosure elements in this Bill is that I looked at the files that were released to the Sean Brown family. It was black pages from start to finish. I have seen that a thousand times with victims. They have to fight and fight to get disclosure, and all they get are blanked-out pages. There are cases right now of dead children where the families still have not got access to their files and will not for many years. We have issues with some of the provisions. We have issues with the national security veto, which has been used many times before. It is a national embarrassment and should not be used again. However, this is the last chance we have. I have been working on this issue for 20 or 25 years, and others have been working on it for much longer. Victims have had to think about it every day. I get that some veterans are worried, but my first concern is for the victims and those who were left behind. We have amendments, and we will support other people’s amendments—even people with whom we do not normally agree. The bottom line is this: if we do not pass this legislation, we will not pass any legislation on this issue. It will not happen. We saw what the last Government tried to do: they tried to close down access to truth and justice. Let us take this opportunity, despite all our issues with this Bill, to give those who have been left behind by the process some chance of truth, and the hope—the vanishing hope—of a prosecution.