Claire Hanna

Claire Hanna

Social Democratic & Labour Party — Belfast South and Mid Down

Speaking in the House of Commons on 19 March 2026

Debate

Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past

Contribution

I thank the hon. Member for all her efforts on behalf of victims of the troubles and others. This is a chance to put in place accountability mechanisms that we should have put in place decades ago, particularly for those who do not have a judicial pathway. Families in Derry know what happened in their city on Bloody Sunday, regardless of a verdict. IRA victims know what directing terrorism looks like—the explaining away, the casualness with life—regardless of a judicial process. Does the hon. Member agree that legislation alone will not get us to truth and a reconciled future, and that this must be an opportunity for those who created victims to step forward, bravely, to give that long overdue accountability: for the UK Government to accept that they compromised key human rights protections and at times colluded with paramilitaries; for loyalist paramilitaries to accept that their war was with innocent Catholics; and for the IRA to step up and acknowledge their decades of coercion of communities, and their casualness with human lives—in seeking to achieve an outcome that could never have been achieved in any way other than democratically?

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