Contribution
It has been a privilege to be part of this debate over the past two days, and to hear some fantastic contributions from Members on both sides of the House, and on all sides of the argument. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for the moving story that he just told about one of his friends. We could rerun the overriding arguments that we have been debating for two years, but I do not want to do that. I think the House knows how the Conservative party feels about the Bill, but I want to try to take things forward. To do that, I want to take us back to what the last Government tried to do in 2022 with the legacy Act, which set up the ICRIR, with the intention of enabling people to come forward and give information that would bring some solace to victims and their families. Some of those victims were soldiers; most of them were obviously members of the public—people from all communities. At the same time, we tried to draw a line under the troubles inquests and civil cases and so on.
When this Government won the election and came to power in 2024, it was in their manifesto that they wanted to address the concerns with the legislation relating to the European convention on human rights, and wanted to get public confidence in the ICRIR. I am not asking the Labour party to move its position on the ECHR—I know what its positions are, and I know that it will put the amendments in question through. What I would say is that here in 2026, it is clear that the ICRIR as constituted by the Conservative party is working.
I was very pleased that the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn), yesterday quoted from the first report that the ICRIR published about the murder of Rory O’Kelly. His daughter, on receiving and reading that report, said in incredibly moving and, indeed, poetic terms that it had moved the family
“into a space of serenity and light, all anger taken away.”
That is what I am proud to say the institution established by the last Government has managed to do. I am pleased to say that now, in 2026, there are 277 cases before the ICRIR and 123 investigations under way. We believe that it is working.
There are two issues that I hope the Government will consider as this Bill moves into the Lords, and the Secretary of State has touched on them. The first is about the bar to entry. We have a difference of opinion on “essential” and “new and compelling”. It is very clear from the legal evidence that we have seen that “essential” is not the bar that he intends it to be. As has been said to us by leading legal advisers and King’s counsel, any lawyer worth their salt can find new evidence, so there is no “essential” bar, and the “essential” in the legislation is not defined there, so that will be expanded on and contested. The term “new and compelling”, however, does exactly what it promises. It is a filter test that is already applied in the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. It is a legal term that has certainty. It is not subjective. The evidence must be new as a matter of fact, and it must be compelling, in a way that will impact the outcome. I encourage the Government, as we move into the Lords, to consider this matter again, because I think we are trying to achieve the same thing, but obviously we believe that “new and compelling” will be much more effective.
The second issue is what the Secretary of State has termed rinse and repeat. He says that he wants to see an end to rinse and repeat investigations, and we would dearly like him to succeed in that. The veterans groups who have been analysing and scrutinising this Bill do not feel that the legislation will achieve that, and we agree with them. At the moment there are no veterans groups that support the Bill as it stands.
As the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) said, Loughgall, which was discussed so eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), is the embodiment of rinse and repeat. It was investigated in 1987, 1988, 1995 and 2001, and because of this Government’s decision, it will go before an inquest again. That is rinse and repeat.
There is a way of doing this differently, which was discussed by the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who I am pleased to see in his position, and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington, and that is to put the inquests into the legacy commission, so that everything is going down the same route. The Secretary of State rightly said that he does not want an imbalance, but the inconsistency is an imbalance. That imbalance was drawn out powerfully by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister), who said that when we compare what is happening with Omagh to what will happen with Loughgall, we see a discrepancy that we have to call out.
I raise both those overriding issues because there is still time to improve the legislation. It will get thorough and detailed scrutiny in the House of Lords. Although we would rather the Government were not undertaking this Bill, we believe that if they make the changes that were set out not just by the Conservative party but by colleagues throughout the Unionist communities in Northern Ireland, by the Liberal Democrats and, indeed, from within the Labour party, this Bill can be made stronger on its own terms.