Alex Ballinger

I am happy to speak in support of the motion as set out on the Order Paper. The wider context is straightforward: the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 passed by the Conservatives attempted to replace long-standing legal routes with a new commission, ICRIR, and a conditional immunity scheme. However, that approach did not command support in Northern Ireland and it did not withstand legal scrutiny. Both the High Court and the Belfast Court of Appeal found key provisions in the Act were incompatible with UK human rights law, in particular where they undermined the state’s duties to investigate serious harm and where the Act shut victims, including the victims of terrorist attacks, out of court. This was entirely foreseeable. The Joint Committee on Human Rights warned in 2022, when there was a majority of Conservative politicians on that Committee, that the Government’s approach risked “widespread breaches of human rights law” and would fail “to meet the minimum standards required to ensure effective investigations.” Victims of the troubles and their families, including British servicemen killed by terrorists, would have had their routes to justice shut down by the Conservative’s unlawful legacy Act. Nevertheless, they pressed ahead regardless, passing an Act that they knew would never be compatible with UK law, and therefore would never commence. False promises were made to our veterans and negligence was dressed up as decisiveness. So it is right that the Labour Government have committed to repeal and replace the previous Government’s failed Act through primary legislation, but today is about a necessary interim step: the remedial order before the House. The remedial order will fix human rights breaches quickly, when the courts have found that Parliament’s work has cut across basic protections. What does it do? First, it removes the Act’s conditional immunity provisions—the quite outrageous provisions that allowed terrorists to secure immunity from prosecution by offering an account “to the best of their knowledge and belief”. Those provisions were never enacted as they were struck down by the courts, but their presence on the statute book has done real damage. It has fuelled mistrust, created uncertainty and offered a false promise of protection to veterans that could never be delivered. Secondly, the remedial order removes the statutory bar on troubles-related civil claims. The 2023 Act sought to block citizens of the United Kingdom from pursuing justice for crimes that they faced during the troubles. I believe that was wrong in principle, and indeed it was found to be incompatible with article 6 of the convention. Thirdly, it removes the exclusion of protected material gathered by ICRIR from being used in civil proceedings and certain other processes. In plain English, that stops victims who would have had their hands tied by the law from using evidence they would need to seek justice. Much of the Opposition’s rhetoric has been directed at veterans, so as a veteran myself, let me address that head on. There never has been and never will be any moral equivalence between our armed forces, who served to uphold law and order, and terrorist organisations that targeted civilians.