SAS killings latest: Hilary Benn accused of wanting to pay damages to IRA godfather while offering limp response to Clonoe ruling

The secretary of state for Northern Ireland was responding to a debate in Westminster about the inquest verdict by Mr Justice Humphreys last week, who also recently caused controversy in a legacy case when he ordered the government to hold an inquest into the loyalist murder of Sean Brown.

The TUV MP Jim Allister told the Commons that "there is tangible anger in Northern Ireland over this preposterous verdict, and I do have to say the secretary of state's limp response today will not assuage that anger".

He continued: "This is a secretary of state who wants to see IRA godfather Gerry Adams paid compensation because the wrong minister signed his detention order 50 years ago.

"This is a secretary of state who today has defended the retention of a coronary system which, time without number, puts the security forces in the dock but never the terrorists.

"Little wonder [that] confidence in him is haemorrhaging in Northern Ireland, and this response only underscores why."

Mr Benn said the previous government had tried to tackle the issue of compensation claims from internees like Gerry Adams, but its solution - the contents of the Legacy Act - had been found to be unlawful.

"We are looking at all lawful means to prevent compensation being paid in those circumstances," he said.

On inquests, he said "it is not possible to write legislation which says 'we will have the verdicts we like... but we won't have the findings that we do not like'".

The impassioned session in the Commons also saw one Tory MP wonder whether similar concern would have been voiced about the death of the four IRA attackers if they had been operating in Birmingham or London.

The men were trying to make their getaway after attacking Coalisland RUC station with an anti-aircraft gun when they were ambushed. The coroner ruled that the use of lethal force against them had not been justified – prompting outrage from unionists.

DUP MP Jim Shannon said that the coroner’s controversial findings in the case fuelled a feeling that the judiciary are helping to re-write history. When the matter came before the House this afternoon, Mr Shannon said that "the Bible is very clear: live by the sword, die by the sword".

"Live by a war machine gun used to shoot a police station, you die by a machine gun," he said. "That's the way I see it."

He said the coroner's ruling "flies, I believe, in the face of commons justice, and feeds the feeling that the judiciary is not complicit but active in the re-writing of history".

Tory shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Alex Burghart said: "These terrorists called themselves an army, they carried weapons of war, they sought to kill, and they operated entirely outside the bounds of the law.

"And yet we're being asked to believe the use of lethal force was not justified upon them.

"Mr Speaker, I'm not a lawyer. But if this is the state of the law, then the law is an ass, and it is up to Parliament to change it.

"What if this had not been on the streets of Tyrone? What if it had been on the streets of Birmingham? What if it had been in Parliament Square?

"Would we be asking why those men had not been arrested? Would we find it acceptable that the courts subsequently sought to punish those forces that had risked their lives for ours?"

Mr Benn said: "I completely understand the concerns he has expressed with such passion about our armed services personnel, including in relation to this case."

Mr Benn complained that the previous government's Legacy Act would have gifted the four IRA men, had they survived, "the ability to secure immunity from prosecution" and hence it needed to be repealed.

"You never prosecuted any of them," came the comment from one heckler.

"I feel the anger being expressed in the House," Mr Benn concluded. "But we do have an independent legal system in this country, and it's one of the foundations of our freedom."

DUP MP Carla Lockhart told the House that the IRA's assault on Coalisland police station had been "cowardly".

"But they met real soldiers, and they lost," she said.

"No doubt many innocent lives were saved by the security forces as a result of that evening."

She asked the secretary of state if he believed the ambush on the IRA men had been a "justified and necessary operation within the guidelines of military interception?"

She further asked if he would "condemn judicial rulings that seek to rewrite history, undermine our security forces, and embolden those bloodthirsty terrorists who waged war against innocent people?"

Mr Benn responded: "I accept the characterisation that the honourable member has ascribed to the individuals who went, clearly, in firing 60 rounds at the police station we know what their intent was.

"And that was what the PIRA and other terrorists on the loyalist side did during the course of the Troubles. And we have to speak of that as well.

"The coroner's findings are there on the record. Members, public society, are perfectly entitled of course to express a view. And I acknowledge the concerns that members have raised today. "It is a very serious issue, and that is why it falls to the MoD to consider the findings and what may follow."

But, as many MPs pointed out, no minister from the Ministry of Defence had been put up to speak in the debate.