Northern Ireland legacy bill: Former Veterans Minister Jonny Mercer battles DUP MPs in defence of Tory Troubles plans

The former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans has repeatedly accompanised English army veterans to prosecutions in NI.

He said the aim of the legacy bill was to ensure that no more English soldiers like Dennis Hutchings would die alone in a Belfast Hotel bed while awaiting trial in a Troubles related prosecution.

Mr Hutchings, 80, died in a Belfast hotel from Covid-19 in October 2021. The Cornwall man was standing trial for attemped murder and grievous bodily harm to John Pat Cunningham in Co Tyrone in 1974, when he was a serving soldier.

Responding to the DUP in the Commons, Mr Mercer said: “Whilst I totally understand why they go onto this narrative - we must have justice for this particular murder and this particular murder - everyone agrees that - but they also have to accept that the price of that is the experience of people like Dennis Hutchings...”.

He said the DUP had spoken out against the prosecution of Mr Hutchings and that the two issues - justice in terror murder cases and the protection of army veterans from prosecution “cannot compete in this space - you have to at some point decide where does the balance lie?”

He said the DUP cannot press continually for justice when there is only what he claimed was 0.1% of getting it, “and yet all these veterans are going through this experience. They are going to court in Northern Ireland - I have said before it was an absolute joke and reflected very poorly on everyone in Northern Ireland, I am sorry to say.”

He added that such veterans, as well going through the last 10-11 years of their life under the pressure of investigation are “dying alone in a hotel room in Belfast”.

He said keeping the possibility of justice in terror murder cases “comes at a price and my honourable friends have got to be honest about that price and whether it is actually one worth paying”.

The alternative that the bill offers, he argued, was for the majority of people “getting at the truth and trying to understand what happened at that time to bring some sort of peace to the families”.