Editorial: The veterans minister Al ​Carns either can’t see or admit that soldiers who served in Northern Ireland have been failed by the UK government to appease Irish nationalists

This week we asked the UK veterans minister about supposed new protections for veterans in coming legacy laws.

​We did so because Al Carns MP is a former Royal Marine, who is rightly proud of his past military service, and has cited that record to reassure veterans that he has their interests at heart.

It was reported in the summer that he was on ‘resignation watch’ if the repeal of the Tories’ Legacy Act did not result in proper protection for veterans, who have been the target of lopsided investigations into the endless allegations against them.

The former Conservative government had responded to the deluge of republican grievance claims against the UK state by trying (in effect) to shut legacy down, rather than take some of the legacy battle to IRA hypocrites. Even when Ireland, with breathtaking hypocrisy, sued the UK over the act, the Tories failed to take retaliatory action, such as an immediate, unilateral investigation into Ireland’s sectarian Troubles extradition refusals, which greatly helped IRA terror. But feeble though the Tories were, at least they moved decisively to minimise the avalanche of cases against UK forces. Labour gushes about an Ireland that is suing it and reopens the floodgates.

We welcome the fact that Mr Carns has given us a statement, rather than brushed off queries from the only newspaper that has taken a sustained interest in the way in which the army and, even worse, RUC have been treated. But he merely states that the government is “putting in place six real, workable protections for veterans that the failed Legacy Act never did”.

This is nonsense. The protections are either open to all – even if the government thinks terrorists will not avail of them – or are so minor as to be meaningless. The government in which Mr Carns serves – perhaps at the behest of the Northern Ireland Office – has capitulated to the Irish witchunt, even if he can’t either see or admit it.