David Amess murder: MP’s comments on past murders contain echoes of today’s debate about his own death

Whilst he was renowned as a die-hard community MP, focussing on his own local constituency at the expense of grander issues, his Commons record contains 74 terror-related contributions he had made down the years, mainly about overseas attacks.

The first record the News Letter can find of him talking about terrorism was in 1990.

At that time he spoke in Parliament to castigate the Labour Party for having “regularly voted against the renewal of the prevention of terrorism legislation, which has been essential in curbing the threat posed by the IRA”.

In the late 1990s he voted with the DUP on motions opposing the release of terrorist prisoners, and in 2002 he renewed his attack on Labour for “making concessions to Sinn Fein-IRA — concessions that were not required and have not been reciprocated”.

He also asked questions in more recent decades about decommissioning and about the state of politics in the Province.

However, this contribution from April 1987 stands out from his record, given the close resemblance it bears to the current debate about whether anything could have been done to prevent his own murder last Friday.

His alleged killer is believed to have been known to those running the government’s Prevent programme – a scheme designed to de-radicalise people with violent political views.

In reference to the stabbing of Carol Martin in 1986, carried out by a sex offender who was known to police, Mr Amess had said: “A year ago my cousin’s wife was murdered in Worcester.

“She was stabbed to death 52 times in a multistorey car park.

“The murder and trial were reported in the papers but, as far as the media were concerned, that was an end of the matter.

“We all know that in the Palace of Westminster one of our honourable members was murdered some years ago [a reference to either UUP man Robert Bradford or Tory Airey Neave, both killed by republicans].

“And we also remember the loss of one of our colleagues at Brighton.

“Following the vote last night [on a motion supporting capital punishment], I think that honourable members will have to ask themselves, the next time someone is murdered, whether we did everything that we could to stop that murder.

“I believe that we have failed to do so.”

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