David Davis MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2025 · Omar al-Bayoumi: Arrest and Extradition · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question): To ask the Minister of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the 2001 arrest of Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi and the failure to extradite Mr al-Bayoumi for his alleged involvement in the 11 September terror attacks.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Omar al-Bayoumi: Arrest and Extradition · Hansard source

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  Yesterday’s edition of The S unday Times revealed that in the aftermath of 9/11 the Metropolitan police were forced to release Omar al-Bayoumi, who was believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent accused of supporting the hijackers, because the FBI withheld evidence. Arrested in Birmingham 10 days after 9/11, al-Bayoumi was taken to London to be interrogated by Met counter-terror officers. The FBI declined to provide those officers with vital evidence of al-Bayoumi’s involvement in 9/11. The evidence included a hand-drawn aircraft diagram, trajectory calculations matching the Pentagon attack, and an address book with the attackers’ code name—a code name that bin Laden himself did not disclose until a year later. The FBI’s refusal to disclose this evidence prevented al-Bayoumi’s extradition to the United States. FBI records show that in 1999, al-Bayoumi met two officials from the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Those officials were assessed to be part of a network of individuals connected with the facilitation of two 9/11 attackers. A separate 2017 assessment by the FBI’s Arabic specialists concluded that Mr al-Bayoumi was a co-optee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, which is its secret service. A full investigation by the Intelligence and Security Committee is needed. It must investigate why the FBI clearly avoided extraditing Mr al-Bayoumi and exactly what was the involvement of the Saudi Government, in particular their Ministry of Islamic Affairs and secret service. As the Minister said, it is nearly 25 years since 9/11. In that time we have extradited many innocent people to America, but we failed to extradite someone who deserved to be sent over there. We need to get to the bottom of this, in part so that we do not see this terrible atrocity happen again.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. To take the Health Secretary back to his promise to provide regional healthcare, the integrated care board is opening a consultation on the future of the hospital in Goole, after a decade of almost positively running it down. Will he instruct all the health services in the country to make the most of the valuable assets they have, not shut them down or misuse them, and actually deliver a local service for local people?

• 21 Jul 2025 · SEND: Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

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  Given that answer, I will quote the Secretary of State. She was saying earlier that the system is so distorted that the financial allocations do not reflect the real needs of children. That means that local authorities have huge deficits through no fault of their own; they are trying to do their job. When she comes up with her new policy in the autumn, will she commit to writing off those deficits so that those authorities can do the job in the future?

• 21 Jul 2025 · SEND: Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source

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  19. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of proposed reforms to education, health and care plans on children with SEND.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  Absolutely—the phrase I would use is “heroic restraint”. Under those circumstances, restraint means putting their own lives and the lives of their comrades on the line. That is what was going on there, that was the decision that was being taken, and that is what is being challenged today. My right hon. Friend is right about that, and that restraint was institutional. It was not simply heroic soldiers, although of course it was that as well. The yellow card system demanded restraint and issued warnings of proportionality. Every time a British soldier killed a paramilitary, it was subject to rigorous judicial scrutiny, and when that process failed we ensured the matter was properly investigated. Remember the Saville inquiry, which cost £200 million, took 12 years and consisted of 5,000 pages. What other country in the world would review its own behaviour in that way? I am not going to actually give all the answers, but Members should consider in their own mind whether some of our allies might not have gone quite so far to give everybody justice. Our soldiers were held to the highest standards of law, yet our Government are rewarding that by effectively threatening them in their retirement. Remember: we have been talking about human rights. That is not a proper reflection of their human rights. They are human beings too, and they have human rights. We should remind ourselves that human rights are founded in natural justice. They do not spring out of the air; they are founded in natural justice. In this process, there is no natural justice for our brave veterans nor, frankly, for the real innocent victims of the troubles. The process gives neither. The Government are understandably struggling to find a solution, and the Secretary of State knows that I have some sympathy for his position. Let me tell him the criterion for success, because it is very simple. The Government must completely remove the threat of prosecution from our brave veterans who have served their country well and who have already been through the judicial review of every action they took. If the Government repeal the legacy Act without a robust replacement—that is the key point—we hand the narrative back to those who seek to rewrite history. I accept that mistakes were sometimes made, and where they were, those responsible must be held to account. That has been done. But we must not allow politically motivated lawfare to dismantle the very capabilities that make our armed forces precise, lawful, effective and among the best in the world.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  No, I will not. What young person today would sign up to serve, knowing that their reward could be a courtroom in retirement? It was through our soldiers’ measured actions that the IRA’s barbaric campaign of terror was confronted and diminished. The number of people killed by the IRA fell by 94% between the periods 1970 to 1974 and 1994 to 1998. That outcome matters. Our soldiers’ intervention prevented countless more deaths. I have now called on the Government six times to end this campaign of a retrospective parody of justice, but I have so far received no meaningful answer. I hope we get one today. We talk a lot about human rights. In my related Adjournment debate, I read a poem that I first heard at a regimental Remembrance Day service, and I will read it again today because it is extraordinarily relevant: “It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the peace camp organiser, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag. It is the soldier, not the politician…who has given these freedoms.” Those who freely talk about human rights would do well to remember that our rights, our law, our democracy and our nation were protected by the very veterans who are at risk today. Let us all make one promise: that no British soldier will ever again be abandoned by the very nation they have so bravely protected.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  Today, we speak on behalf of our veterans and the 176,000 members of the public who have so far signed the petition to give veterans protection against the vexatious legal pursuit of our brave heroes. Last week, when I raised this in the House, the Prime Minister dismissed it as “political point scoring.” He is wrong; it is a matter of justice, a matter of ensuring that those who risked their lives to protect our citizens during the troubles know that the state stands behind them. The Veterans Commissioners for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—not naive people—issued a joint statement last week in which they said: “Inconsistent application of justice—particularly where it revisits incidents already thoroughly investigated—serves only to retraumatise veterans and undermine public confidence.” I agree with that statement entirely. It is exactly consistent with the views of every veteran I have spoken to, and I have spoken to a rather large number of them since February, when I first raised this matter. Getting this right is not just a matter of historical justice. The legal witch hunt will not end in Northern Ireland; it will cast a shadow over every future conflict that our armed forces engage in and undermine their abilities to defend us. I am a strong advocate of human rights. I think I am the only person in the House to have defeated Governments from both sides, both in the House and in court, on matters of human rights. I take those rights extremely seriously, but this issue is driven more by politics and its exigencies than by human rights. Take the inquiry process, which both my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) referred to. The Secretary of State will tell us later, but I imagine that by reinstating the inquiry process, the Government believe they are addressing the implied article 2 right to investigate purportedly unlawful killings. I imagine that is what they are trying to do. Indeed, The Guardian this morning, as we have heard, referred again to the Secretary of State claiming that the Government are protecting the right to investigate 202 murders of British Army soldiers. Really? I wonder whether that claim comes with an undertaking to take witness statements from the 200 terrorists who committed those murders—who, incidentally, I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, were given pardons by Tony Blair as part of a peace process that began some 40 years ago. I think 423 were released from prison with pardons, and approximately 200 so-called “on-the-runs” received comfort letters. That is not this Act—that is then, yet it continues to exist now. The Veterans Commissioners continued: “There can be no moral equivalence between those who served in uniform to uphold peace and the rule of law, and those who sought to destroy it through acts of terrorism.” Again, I could not agree more. The largest group of people killed during the troubles, by a vast margin, were murdered by paramilitaries, to use the current euphemism for terrorists. They were killed by terrorists. Every single one of those 2,000 people killed was an unlawful killing, to use the phrasing of the coroners courts these days. We do not need a court to establish that. How many of those IRA murders will be subject to inquiry? On the current listing—we have 33 listed—just two such cases, out of 2,000. That is because the major driver for these inquiries is the IRA-Sinn Féin effort to hide their own barbaric acts behind a freedom-fighting façade, trying to rewrite history with themselves as the heroes and the British state as the villains. That is why battles such as Coagh, Clonoe and, very likely soon, Loughgall feature so large in the demands for inquiries and the prosecution of long-retired, innocent British soldiers. All three of those actions were humiliating defeats for the IRA. Let me be clear: all of the IRA members who died in those exchanges—so-called “victims” in this context—were actively in the process of committing atrocities. They were trying to murder innocent people. At Coagh, they planned to murder an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment officer. At Clonoe, they attacked the Coalisland police station using an armour-piercing machine gun in an attempt to murder the officers inside. At Loughgall, they drove a bomb-laden digger to blow up a police station and were armed and ready to murder any survivors. All were armed, dangerous and intent on murder. Many of them had killed before, making them a fatal risk to our soldiers—a risk our soldiers had to cope with in split-second decisions. Those are the people we will put on trial if we allow them to lose their protection that we ought to be giving our veterans today. Look at the individuals involved, starting with Coagh where the inquest heard about Michael Ryan. Ryan was probably responsible for many murders; I can cite two. He shot two UDR officers—one in front of little children at a crossing, the other in front of the officer’s 13-year-old son. That is the sort of people we are dealing with. As for the IRA’s greatest defeat, Loughgall, the weapons recovered at the scene had been used in over 40 previous murders—there is no doubt about that. Of the IRA members there, McKearney and Arthurs were both involved in the Ballygawley police station attack, which killed a further two policemen. James Lynagh—nicknamed “The Executioner” by the Royal Ulster Constabulary—was believed to have been involved in more than 30 killings, including the cold-blooded assassination of the 80-year-old Sir Norman Stronge, who was largely blind and deaf, as well as his son in front of him. As for Patrick Kelly, who was the leader of that attack, he led the self-styled East Tyrone brigade, which is believed to have killed around 250 people before Loughgall. By the way, he also took part in the second attempt to assassinate brave UDR officer Glen Espie, who is sitting behind me in the Gallery. He fought off the assassins on two occasions—he was shot twice and fought off IRA assassins twice. If they had not been stopped, there is no doubt that all of these killers would have continued their psychopathic campaign of murder. The IRA’s campaign of violence was indiscriminate and extended far beyond the island of Ireland. I say to the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire that the number was not 722 if you include the police officers and UDR officers. If you include them, 1,073 servants of the British state were killed in the course of defending innocent civilians from those murderers. The IRA is trying to equate the British Government’s actions with that psychopathic behaviour, but of course nothing could be further from the truth. There is ample evidence of the Army taking enormous risks to arrest rather than take the often safer option of killing the terrorists. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the South Armagh sniper. He killed seven people, but he was arrested and not killed. Consider the arrest—not the killing—of the killers of Captain Westmacott. They were arrested—not killed—by the rest of his patrol. Even today’s Daily Mail mentioned the rescue of Bernadette McAliskey. There was an attempt to kill her by the Ulster Defence Association. British soldiers rescued her even though she was effectively a political arm of the Irish National Liberation Army. The clearest demonstration of our real strategy is that, while 1,073 British forces, soldiers and policemen were killed by republican terrorists up until 1994, 145 paramilitaries were killed and 428 were taken prisoner. That means that around three or four were taken prisoner for every one killed. Seven British soldiers or policemen died for every IRA person who was killed. That tells us the strategy and it tells us what the IRA is trying to reverse.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  Our veterans do not need to read the Bill; they just need to look at the outcome of the Clonoe inquiry—four potential manslaughter prosecutions.

• 14 Jul 2025 · Northern Ireland Veterans: Prosecution · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman says the chance is vanishingly small, yet the Clonoe inquest found there were four unlawful killings, which implies that four cases will go to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

• 9 Jul 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q9. With permission, Mr Speaker, before I ask my question, may I tell the House that there are a number of veterans of Northern Ireland in the Public Gallery? Given what the Prime Minister said about 7/7, I would like to publicly thank them for their courage in defending our country and our democracy against the first scourge of terrorism. The Prime Minister knows that every time a paramilitary was killed in Northern Ireland by a British soldier, it triggered a thorough investigation. No bullet went unscrutinised. Our soldiers were held to the highest standards of law. The IRA were not; they tortured, shot men in the back, forced families to watch their menfolk being murdered, and killed women and children with bombs, yet we are willing to prosecute our own men, who were forced to make life-and-death decisions in split seconds. If the Government get the legacy legislation wrong, at least 50 innocent retired veterans will be exposed to legal persecution for crimes they did not commit. I have raised this matter six times since February. I ask again: on Monday, when we debate this matter in Westminster Hall, will the Government protect our veterans, or will they sacrifice them to politically motivated lawyers who are trying to rewrite history with a pack of lies?

• 8 Jul 2025 · Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1 · Hansard source

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  The Minister plainly agrees that this injustice has gone on too long. Earlier today, I spoke to Janet Skinner, one of the postmasters whose life was wrecked in 2007 when she served nine months in prison after wrongful conviction. She has spent 18 years since then struggling to get compensation and is still battling for it now, forced to wade through endless paperwork and a cruel bureaucratic maze. In her own words, the compensation process has been “harder than anything I’ve ever had to do before—and I’ve been to prison.” That is what she said to me today. Sir Wyn’s report is welcome. I hope it ignites a fire under the Minister, although I know that he is committed to solving problems like Janet’s in months, not years. Can he give me the undertaking that he will solve these problems in months, not years?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Actions of Iranian Regime: UK Response · Hansard source

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  Omid Khalili, a British citizen and renowned Iranian broadcaster, hosts a phone-in reaching over 30 million Iranians. He has been targeted by the Iranian regime. The detail has been laid out in UnHerd by the journalist David Rose, but in summary his wife, parents and sister have been detained in Iran, interrogated, threatened and their passports have been confiscated. The aim of that is to blackmail Mr Khalili into coming back to Iran, where he will certainly be arrested and very probably executed. Those acts of intimidation are carried out by the Iranian secret police and the IRGC, and facilitated by so-called diplomats in the Iranian embassy here. We cannot ignore this state-sponsored blackmail, so what the Government ought to do is expel Iranian officials complicit in that behaviour and finally proscribe the IRGC.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I associate myself with the Home Secretary’s comments about 7/7. I remember that day too well, and we supported the Government then, too. In more recent times, there have been a number of major cyber-attacks, ransomware attacks and associated blackmail of major companies. It has come to my attention that one such company paid a very large sum to its blackmailer recently. I will share the name with the Home Secretary afterwards; it would not be appropriate to share it in the Chamber. Will she update the House on the progress of the Government’s actions to ensure that blackmailers of this sort do not succeed in future?

• 30 Jun 2025 · Operation Banner: Legal Protection for Veterans · Hansard source

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  6. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the adequacy of legal protections for veterans who served in Operation Banner.

• 30 Jun 2025 · Operation Banner: Legal Protection for Veterans · Hansard source

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  During Operation Banner, every single time a paramilitary was killed by a British soldier, it was subject to judicial investigation. The Director of Public Prosecutions went through the evidence at the time, interviewed people, looked at the planning documents and was able to talk to people contemporaneously while they could still remember it. It was not a rubber stamp; it was rigorous, as was proven by the fact that, where necessary, it led to prosecution. What is happening now is double jeopardy. Worse still, it is double jeopardy under new rules but with no new evidence. Indeed, there is a risk of lost evidence and lost memory, given the passage of time. I have heard what the Secretary of State has said, but will he commit to ensuring that soldiers who were subject to reviews at the time will not be subject to further risk of prosecution under the Government’s replacement for the legacy Act?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Armed Forces Day · Hansard source

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  I welcome what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Would he accept that the actions of the Royal Military Police attached to fighting units are a direct reflection of the Army and of our national character in upholding the rule of law even in warfare?

• 26 Jun 2025 · Armed Forces Day · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to speak today ahead of Armed Forces Day—a day not just of pageantry, as the hon. Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) said, but of principle. I congratulate the Government on reinstating the pageantry as well—it is a good thing. It is a day to recognise the men and women who serve, or who have served, in His Majesty’s armed forces: the quiet professionals who carry the weight of our security, often in silence and too often without thanks. As we have heard, we owe them and their families a debt of gratitude that we can never really pay, but gratitude alone is not enough. As the Minister said, only a quarter of veterans feel that their service is properly recognised, and there is a reason for that. I will speak plainly about it, and I hope the Minister will not take it as partisan. I hope he will take what I have to say, in what will be a difficult five minutes of listening for him, as a call for action and assistance—or, if he likes, a call for help. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) said, there is a shadow that hangs over our armed forces: the political and legal vendetta targeting the veterans of Operation Banner in Northern Ireland. Those men answered their country’s call in one of our country’s darkest hours. Without hesitation, they stood between the innocent and the terrorists, often literally—they were often in the way of the bullets. Now, decades later, they are treated not as heroes but as suspects. The frankly inadequately informed inquest into the SAS-IRA conflict at Clonoe is just one incident in which elderly veterans are being persecuted; there will be many more. We should never forget that terrorists killed 722 British soldiers during the troubles. The people who carried out those murders have effectively been exonerated by the British state. I do not blame the state for that—it was necessary at the time—but today, we witness a legal crusade against the men who risked everything in the service of peace. This is not justice; it is an attempt to rewrite history. It is prosecution driven by politics, not facts. While the killers walk free, authorities hound the soldiers who stopped them from killing and treat those soldiers like criminals. The legacy Act—forgive my shorthand —was designed to put an end to this travesty. For their own reasons, the Government have decided to repeal that Act, but if they do not properly replace it with effective legislation, they will hand the initiative back to those who spent decades glorifying violence. I hope the Minister will pay attention to every detail of the paragraph I have just spoken, because it is important. The Government must decide whose side they are on in this exercise. Our veterans, who are now in their 70s or even older, deserve peace in retirement, not a knock on the door and questions about battles they fought to defend the public half a lifetime ago. Those battles were fought under orders, under supervision and under yellow card rules, and immediately afterwards, everybody faced close judicial examination of their behaviour to ensure they had obeyed the law in every respect. To refer back to the speech made by the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), the military police were often involved in those investigations—it did not always make them popular, but it was a necessary part of the process. Not one of the conditions I have described applied to the psychopathic murderers those soldiers were up against. I have repeatedly asked the Government to end this shameful campaign of retrospective injustice, and I will continue to ask until I get a meaningful answer and a resolution to this running sore of injustice. That is why I support the petition that my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford referred to, with its 145,000 signatures—an astonishing number in such a short time. However, this is just the start. This issue is not just massively important to our veterans; if this rewriting of history succeeds, this weapon of lawfare can be used against soldiers in any future conflict, destroying the effectiveness of our troops in future operations. This morning’s edition of the Daily Mail carried a powerful headline announcing the start of a campaign to highlight that very problem. When we look at that headline, though, we should remember that this is not just about our special forces; it is about the whole of the armed forces. There are at least 20 inquests into actions by Government agencies and forces that could potentially be restarted by the Government after the end of the legacy legislation. Only a minority of those inquests are about special forces; most are about conventional forces, or about the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Ulster Defence Regiment. If we continue down this path, not only will we betray our past; we will jeopardise our future. This campaign of persecution sends a chilling message to the next generation: “Serve your country, risk your life, and face prosecution in your old age.” Why would any young man or woman sign up for that? The truth is that many will not. I know that the Minister referred to better recruitment and retention figures, but that will not last if this battle is lost by the British state. This challenge has been most high-profile when it has struck at our elite units, such as the Special Air Service, the Special Boat Service and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment—the Det, as it was once known—but it applies to every rifleman, soldier and member of the military who carries and wields a weapon in defence of his country. Those soldiers, who operate in conditions of extreme danger and uncertainty, are required to make impossible decisions at great speed while under fire, or in terror of being under fire. They expect neither recognition nor reward, but just one thing: the support of their Government. We expect our soldiers to put their lives on the line for our country, but why would they do that if their country will abandon them after their service? Instead, they face doubt—doubt that creeps into the field, into the command and into mission planning. If soldiers must weigh every trigger pull against a future court case, we cripple their ability to act. What is the point of the armed forces if we render them useless through legal ambiguity? I am the last person to tolerate unnecessary killing or misbehaviour by our troops. Those who were in the House at the time will know of my past campaigns on torture and rendition. I will not stand for that, but we must balance properly the rule of law as it applies to each environment. We already have thought-through rules of lawfare established in the Geneva convention, and that is where we must look first when conducting a war. From 2005 to 2007, during the operations against al-Qaeda in Iraq, our military achieved, along with the Americans, spectacular results in saving lives. I reiterate that that was about saving lives. In Baghdad, the number of vehicle-borne suicide bombings fell from 100 a month to just one after we engaged. Sectarian assassinations—once rife—all but ceased, care of our military. That was not the work of indiscriminate bombing or division-level assaults; it was achieved through precise, controlled and surgical raids into some of the most hostile environments, generally by elite forces, and backed by careful planning. The impact was staggering. Even a hostile “Panorama” programme showed that 95% of terrorist neutralisations were captures, not kills. That was under unbelievable circumstances, and thousands of innocent lives were saved. That was a matter not just of operational skill, but of moral discipline. In the midst of close-quarters combat against some of the most dangerous men on earth, our forces showed a restraint few could match. I have no doubt that mistakes are made from time to time, and those should be answered for, but if we allow our opponents to use lawfare to destroy these capabilities, we are left with blunt instruments—the bomb, the missile and the drone—with which, instead of capturing or killing just the guilty, we kill every innocent civilian on a bus or every guest at a wedding party. Our military has been brilliant at doing the opposite—at being targeted, lawful and effective. Dismantling that capacity would be not only militarily reckless, but a betrayal of the principles that the Minister said we stand for, which distinguish us from those whom we fight. Let us today do rather more than clap politely at a parade. Let us act. Let us end the relentless hounding of our veterans. Let us give our serving forces the legal protection and political support they deserve. Let us recognise that if we find it difficult to recruit, it is a consequence of a state that too often turns its back on its defenders. This Armed Forces Day, let us make one promise: that no British soldier will ever again be abandoned by the very nation they have so bravely protected.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as a pilot. In this context, I spoke to one of the would-be producers—I think it is called Zero—and its primary concern with respect to the strike price mechanism that the right hon. Lady talks about is how that will be set and what input producers will have. Will she address that when she talks through the mechanism?

• 4 Jun 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q15. In 1999, the Prime Minister produced a book on “Miscarriages of Justice”, recommending ways of preventing them and of quickly putting them right. In 2014, people who had been wrongly imprisoned and then exonerated were allowed compensation only if they could prove their innocence beyond reasonable doubt. This ignored the decision of the court exonerating them, and meant that 93% of people who had been wrongfully imprisoned, and often had their lives destroyed, got no compensation whatsoever. This is an institutional miscarriage of justice. Will he instruct the Ministry of Justice to review this matter, and pay personal attention to getting this travesty of justice resolved?

• 21 May 2025 · Veterans: Legal Protections · Hansard source

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  4. What steps he is taking to ensure adequate legal protections for veterans who served in Northern Ireland during the troubles.

• 21 May 2025 · Veterans: Legal Protections · Hansard source

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  Seven hundred and twenty-two of our soldiers were killed by paramilitary murderers during the troubles. Not one of those deaths will be revisited. Because of the current circumstances, however, hundreds of brave men—who, as the Secretary of State says, served their country with honour, patriotism and integrity—face a sword of Damocles of politically motivated trials hanging over them. I can think of no better example of two-tier justice. Whatever the Government do, they have to take that away, and do so in a way that cannot be circumvented by clever, politically motivated lawyers. Will he give the House an undertaking that he will do that?

• 19 May 2025 · Support for Veterans · Hansard source

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  I take it that the meeting will not be on Everest. The Secretary of State knows as well as I do that one of the most distressing experiences for our veterans today is the fear of being dragged into court in the face of politically motivated prosecutions after the Clonoe and Coagh inquiries, which opened a month ago. Some action will obviously have to be taken to protect them. Is the MOD currently researching the legal, judicial and legislative requirements that are necessary to protect our veterans from this appalling treatment?

• 19 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I do apologise to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am glad that the Secretary of State is here. As we have heard today, a very successful parliamentary petition was put up by a member of the public just over a week ago, and was supported by a large number of regimental associations. In the middle of last week, an email was sent from the Directorate of Infantry to regimental headquarters. It said: “With immediate effect”— that bit is highlighted in red— “please ensure that all of your communication channels (including Twitter/X etc) remove any feeds related to the Northern Ireland Troubles Act announcement and any associated petitions.” Regimental associations are there to defend and look after the interests of, and to support, veterans. It is not for the MOD hierarchy to dictate what they can or cannot promote, particularly through legitimate parliamentary engagement. Veterans’ voices must not be silenced by bureaucratic interference. Is it appropriate, Mr Speaker, to pressurise regimental associations to remove content that supports democratic participation?