Alex Burghart: Troubles Bill will not give comfort to veterans, nor will it help victims find out the truth – it must be opposed

​The last Conservative government chose to draw a line under the litigation of the Troubles. That line is now being erased.

Our Legacy Act was a response to the emerging legal reality that the legal system was ceasing to provide meaningful answers for victims, whilst dragging veterans through the courts in clearly vexatious cases. The process itself had become a means of punishment. And time is reducing the chances of convictions.

We created a new means of providing victims and their families with information, one which offered the opportunity to claim conditional immunity in return for information recovery.

Thanks to the excellent work of Sir Declan Morgan, the ICRIR is currently considering about 250 cases and is taking more on each month. Confidence in it is growing. It is working.

But the new bill strips out the conditional immunity introduced by the Legacy Act and reopens the door to vexatious litigation against veterans whilst leaving it very unlikely that terrorists will be prosecuted.

There have been only five convictions of Troubles era terrorists since 2012 and, as time passes, the chance of successful prosecutions will reduce further and further.

In the past year alone we seen the manifest failings of the system as it is. The terrible decision in the Clonoe inquest. The 1991 incident, in court last month, of a special forces soldier acquitted by a judge who said the case against him was “ludicrous” and should never have come to court – but not before the man had been investigated for four years. And, of course, Soldier F – where no conviction was possible despite one of the longest public inquiries in British history.

The legislation before us today will perpetuate disappointment for victims and despair for veterans.

But the government is claiming that it has no choice but to legislate for three reasons.

First, its objection to conditional immunity. Second, its belief that the Legacy Act is incompatible with the ECHR. And third, the fact that the Legacy Act lacked cross-party support.

The Legacy Act provided immunity to individuals in return for an account to the commission that was “true to the best of their knowledge and belief”.

This is the immunity to which the government is now opposed.

But the Blair government accepted that the price of ending the conflict was a departure from the norms of criminal justice in Northern Ireland.

They gave us: early release of 483 prisoners – 143 of whom were serving life sentences, including the man who, in 1984, attempted to murder the whole of the British Cabinet. The Sentencing Act 1998 which limits prison terms to two years. Decommissioning weapons legislation which allowed for the destruction of forensic evidence. As well as an effective amnesty for those who provided information to the Independent Commission for Location of Victims Remains. Immunity in return for information.

More significantly, it was very much the intention of the Labour government to create a scheme for immunity. In November 2005, Peter – now Lord – Hain brought legislation to Parliament in the form of the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill. This was intended, explicitly, to create immunity from prosecution for terrorists. Hain was adamant that the Bill was necessary to complete the peace process. The government eventually dropped the legislation because of the opposition of Sinn Fein who opposed its scope being extended to cover the security forces and the police.

I say this to highlight the absurdity of Labour’s opposition to our legislation and as a reminder that the proposals now presented are the opposite of what Labour believed was necessary to complete the peace process 20 years ago.

The government now argues that our legislation is unacceptable because it is incompatible with the ECHR. But this itself is not entirely true. Whilst the High Court in Belfast found that conditional immunity was incompatible with ECHR, the High Court, for all its strengths, is not the summit of the UK legal system. The Labour government could have appealed the judgment as the last government was doing but instead in July 2024 they dropped the appeal. In legal circles that judgment is considered highly disputable. Indeed, the law strongly suggests that were the same logic applied to key legislation from the peace process it would all be considered incompatible. Moreover, given that the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement was granted permission to intervene in the case of Dillon before the Supreme Court – specifically on the issue of compatibility, the case is live.

The Conservative Party under Kemi Badenoch has been clear, the ECHR should no longer be considered an obstacle to doing the right thing. It is not a holy text. And its jurisprudence is now frequently forcing governments to do unholy things. And since legal advice of the highest order has now twice shown that the UK can leave the Convention without breaking the 1998 Agreement, this is what the next Conservative government will do.

The government has previously said that it has to legislate because the Legacy Act did not have cross community consent. But their legislation has equally failed to achieve that cross-community support.

If there had been a cross-community solution on legacy, Stormont would have found it. But I suspect that no such solution is to be found.

And this means it is the responsibility of Westminster to protect those now abused by the system.

The new Bill will fail to do that. It will not help victims find out the truth.

It will not give comfort to our veterans. It will reopen old wounds. And allow infection in.

It must be opposed.

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l Alex Burghart MP is the Conservative shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland