Mr Mark Francois

Thank you, ma’am. This has been a lively and, at times, impassioned debate, and rightly so, when we remember what is at stake. Some 300,000 British soldiers served in Northern Ireland on Operation Banner between 1969 and 2007. They were sent there by this House to uphold the rule of law during a decades-long sectarian conflict, often playing piggy in the middle between two warring sets of armed paramilitaries. Thank you for your brave service. One week on from Armistice Day, we should also remember that over 700 of those soldiers were murdered by both republican and so-called loyalist terrorists, and thousands more suffered life-changing injuries at the hands of the same terrorists who were responsible for some 90% of all fatalities during the troubles, most of them against innocent civilians, whether Catholic or Protestant. Many of those who deployed on Op Banner were recruited at a young age from tough northern towns in what we would today call red wall constituencies, from Bury to Bolton and Blackburn to Burnley, which are currently mostly represented by Labour MPs. Ministers reassure them that their commitment to our veterans is “unshakeable”, and yet, as the veterans have highlighted, in this 107-page Bill, with its 98 clauses and six schedules, the word “veteran” does not appear once. Moreover, the so-called six protections for veterans—which General Sir Peter Wall, a former head of the British Army, called a “meaningless insult” to them—also apply in the most part to paramilitaries, a fact that Ministers are now simply too embarrassed to admit. For context, for years Sinn Féin and its old comrades’ association, the IRA, have sought to use lawfare via a conveyor belt of coronial inquests and civil prosecutions to pursue our veterans through the courts. This is not just an attempt to punish those soldiers who bravely opposed them—much of it, ironically, taxpayer-funded. More broadly, it is part of a politically inspired campaign to rewrite history in the terrorists’ favour. It was this process that our 2023 legacy Act effectively ended, hence why republicans are so desperate to repeal it. The veterans can clearly see this, and they are genuinely mystified—and, indeed, extremely frustrated—that Ministers cannot. Moreover, the veterans are rightfully furious that Ministers are seeking to persuade their Back Benchers to support this benighted legislation by telling them they are doing it at the behest of service widows to “go after the IRA”. I do not know a single Op Banner veteran who actually believes that assertion. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement has condemned it—in its words, not mine—as “completely untrue”.