David Davis MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 7 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

• 3 Apr 2025 · Tourism Outside Cities · Hansard source

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  8. What steps she is taking to help increase tourism outside cities.

• 3 Apr 2025 · Tourism Outside Cities · Hansard source

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  Or the armour.

• 3 Apr 2025 · Tourism Outside Cities · Hansard source

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  Since we are swapping villages, I was in Pocklington last week, at the site of what Professor Alice Roberts described as the most important iron age archaeological site in Britain: the Pocklington chariot burial. It is a magnificent thing, and the centre of a huge area of iron age archaeology. I was there to meet dedicated local volunteers who are creating a new museum at Burnby Hall based on that archaeology, which will bring tourists into the countryside. What can the Government do to help people like that develop ideas such as this?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  One point the Secretary of State has not yet come to is that there is an excruciating element of double jeopardy here. Every single case we are talking about was investigated carefully by the police at the time—the soldiers and the commanders involved were interrogated as to the intelligence, the plans and the outcome at the time, with all the information available. What we are seeing here is that soldiers were effectively found innocent 33 years ago, only for us to come back and do it all over again to get another answer that we want. He must understand that the soldiers see this as terrible double jeopardy. May I bring the Secretary of State to the underlying principle of the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis)? What we are all after is a mechanism, however that is found through the law, that will allow us to release these soldiers from a lifetime sentence of being pursued by the courts under what is, in my view, frankly, a misuse of article 2. If it is true that, as my right hon. Friend says, people like Philippe Sands—hardly a hard-line right winger—think that we can do this, will the Secretary of State give the House an undertaking that he will make every effort to deliver on that aim?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Of course, he is the Member for Hereford, so many of the people who have retired and will face these threats will be his constituents. He and I are long-standing supporters of human rights in this country, and have both defended article 2, for example, but this case is a misuse of article 2. The people who wrote the European convention on human rights were recently out of the second world war—they did not write it to be interpreted in this way. He has made a double point. Returning to my right hon. Friend’s point about the IRA, since the events in question, the Good Friday agreement has allowed for the release of convicted terrorists in order to achieve an end to the bloodshed. I guess we all agree with that, yet we continue to persecute those who fought against the terrorists. These persecutions are conducted decades after the fact, without any new evidence being presented to give reason for the reopening of cases. After the action, everybody involved was questioned thoroughly to establish the facts—what the intelligence was, what the arrest plans were, and what happened. On the basis of that questioning, on 15 October 1992—with the evidence close to hand and the events fresh in the witnesses’ minds, and when investigation of everything was possible—the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland concluded that there should be no prosecution of the soldiers. There was no case to answer.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is exactly right, and he prefaces what I intend to say. He repeats the point that his party leader made in the urgent question, when he said that the judgment was ultra vires. I believe the right hon. Gentleman was right in that, although I leave that to the lawyers. To answer the rest of the question from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), we have to return to the actual facts of the Clonoe incident. The self-styled East Tyrone brigade was one of the most active Provisional IRA units. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, it undertook a surge of activity, pursuing a Maoist-style murder strategy. I think it was called Lynagh’s strategy at the time. In August 1988, eight soldiers were killed by a Provisional IRA bomb at Ballygawley. On 7 March 1989, two Protestants were shot dead at a garage in Coagh. A former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, Derek Ferguson, was murdered in 1991, also at Coagh. An attack against Glenanne barracks on 31 May 1991 left three soldiers dead. It is also thought that some of their members were involved in the Derryard attack in 1989, notably using a heavy machine gun, probably the DShK we will see later in this story, to kill two British soldiers. In February 1992, the RUC special branch found out that the IRA was planning a number of attacks on 15 and 16 February. It had information that an IRA team, armed with a 12.7 mm Soviet DShK heavy machine gun and three Kalashnikov rifles, would attack the Coalisland police station. The intelligence indicated that the attack would be mounted from the Clonoe chapel car park, so the SAS commander’s plan was to arrest the terrorists as they formed up at the car park, preventing the attack on the police station altogether and seizing the heavy machine gun. The commander did not know how many terrorists, vehicles or weapons would be involved, but it was thought that as many as 20 IRA members could be involved. The troop sergeant assessed the rather straggly hedge line adjacent to the car park to be the only suitable position where partial concealment was possible, but it notably did not provide cover from gunfire. The SAS team carried the standard Heckler & Koch G3K rifle and one soldier had a general purpose machine gun. Perhaps more notably in this context, some had shotguns loaded with alternate rounds designed to smash windscreens and deliver tear gas to immobilise the drivers and stop the vehicles. The soldiers also carried caltrops to wreck the tyres of vehicles attempting to escape. The armour-piercing rounds that the judge referred to could penetrate body armour, but their primary purpose in this context was to penetrate the engine blocks of the vehicles and stop them. The equipment was all designed to stop escape and allow arrest—that is the key point. The plan was to close in on the IRA operatives and to arrest them as they assembled and mounted the heavy machine gun on to the vehicle in the chapel car park. At 7.40 pm on that dark February night, 12 members of the SAS were in position on the boundary of the Clonoe chapel car park, behind the hedgerow. The soldiers observed the movements of five cars in and out of the car park. They were assumed to be reconnaissance vehicles scouting out the car park for the lorry to which the DShK was to be attached. However, the intelligence briefing was wrong—an error that ended up creating chaos and extreme danger. Instead, at around 22:40 hours, the lorry-mounted DShK was used to attack the Coalisland police station. Sixty rounds were fired at close range from the DShK and from the Kalashnikovs. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, the attackers’ intent was clear: to kill police officers. They were all would-be murderers; of that, there can be no doubt. The gunfire could clearly be heard and the tracer bullets were observed by the SAS patrol in the car park at Clonoe. After a minute or two, the soldiers heard another burst of gunfire. The soldiers, of course, did not know that that was simply bravado. For all they and their commander knew, hiding behind their hedge, the murder gang were engaging other soldiers or other policemen. Within a minute, the lorry appeared out of the darkness, driven at breakneck speed, lurching around corners and with its engine screaming in too low a gear. As it drove into the car park, the IRA truck’s headlights illuminated the SAS position behind the hedgerow. At that point, the soldiers did not know whether they had been spotted. The soldiers then stood up, advanced on the occupants of the lorry and three other vehicles in the car park with the lorry, and opened fire. Four IRA members were shot dead, four were wounded, one of whom was arrested at the scene and, notably, given first aid by the soldiers, and others fled in cars. Now we come forward to February 2025, when Mr Justice Michael Humphreys ruled that the use of lethal force by the SAS in this incident was unlawful. The ruling is demonstrably wrong and ignores the plain facts of the case. The SAS soldiers operated under the control of the police force, and the operation was carried out with police officers in close proximity. They faced heavily armed terrorists who had just carried out an attack on a police station—lethally, for all they knew. They did not know how many terrorists there were, but they assumed that there could be up to 20. They did not know how many vehicles there were or how many weapons were in the other cars. That creates a number of problems for issuing a challenge, which is the first option under the yellow card system. While it may be reasonable to stand up and issue a challenge to either one terrorist or a small number of terrorists who could be seen and covered while they respond, the circumstance is completely different when there is an unknown number of antagonists in an unknown number of cars with an unknown number of weapons. The probability of one of 20, let us say, deciding to fire on the soldiers is much higher, particularly when that individual may be out of sight of the patrol. That is doubly so when one remembers that this band of killers had just attempted to murder many policemen and had returned in a high state of excitement, pumped up with adrenalin and firing their weapons in the air. Secondly, the fact that the SAS commander did not know where they all were meant that his issuing a challenge could expose his entire troop to a lethal crossfire. Remember: this was happening on a dark February night at about 10.45 pm. Issuing a challenge under those circumstances could have amounted to collective suicide. Circumstances such as that are precisely why the yellow card rules allow a soldier to fire without challenge when the danger is too great. I find it hard to imagine a more clearcut case that allows firing without challenge, but in his ruling the judge ignored several significant facts and appears to have been naive in his view of others. His selection of facts appears to be extremely partial. For example, the judge made much of the SAS’s use of armour-piercing bullets, but he made no mention of the fact that the anti-aircraft gun the IRA was using fired armour-piercing incendiary rounds five times the size of any rifle bullets, or the fact that they could be fired at a rate of 600 to 1,200 rounds a minute. Those bullets can pierce concrete walls or shoot down aircraft at a mile range. The machine gun had just been deployed and could have eliminated the entire SAS patrol in a matter of seconds. It was a terrible weapon, and capturing it before it could be used to kill more people was an important part of the SAS tasking. The judge accepted assertions that the IRA weapons all had their safety catches engaged. Frankly, if that were true, there was no way at all for the SAS commander or the troops to know that at the beginning of the fight. In fact, how likely was that? Let us take the DShK, which the forensic examiner said had its working parts forward, with no round in the chamber. The gun was mounted on a lorry that had just been driven back at breakneck speed from Coalisland in a few minutes. During the few minutes of that journey back, getting the gun into the state described would have required nine actions, some of which require two hands, while hanging on to the side of a lurching truck. I am afraid it all sounds just a bit improbable. The forensics specialist did not actually arrive until two hours and 45 minutes after the action, at a scene contaminated by firemen, police, soldiers and other staff—indeed, she complained about that very contamination. Against the forensic specialist’s views, we must take the observations of soldiers on the ground and other evidence. Four soldiers reported seeing flashes from the back of the lorry, which they interpreted as muzzle flashes. We are not talking about inexperienced soldiers: they would know what they were looking at. Two soldiers heard rounds striking the ground to their right, near the hedgerow where the SAS was hiding. The forensic examiner documented bullet strike marks on the hedgerow. One soldier received a bullet wound to the face that knocked him to the ground. Without any forensic evidence, it was attributed to a ricochet, which implausibly would have required the round to go through a 180° change of direction. Soldier G heard the exchange of gunfire and saw a soldier go down, which “confirmed my belief that the terrorists were shooting at us”. There was also an interview taken by the Garda, in the Republic of Ireland, of one of the IRA drivers, who said he could not understand why his colleagues had opened fire. He had been in a position in which he was able to judge where the fire was coming from and obviously believed that it was from his own side. He refused to sign the interview notes, presumably when he considered the consequences for him back home of giving away such critical data. All of this was countered by the claim that no bullet casings were found on the ground in the car park, but a number were found in the lorry, and one of the cars present appeared to have had a general-purpose machine gun and an AKM on board. If those weapons were fired from inside a car, there would of course have been no casings on the ground in the car park. Instead, GPMG live ammunition and disintegrating links were found in that car, as well as an AKM casing from a rifle other than those recovered, implying that a fourth AKM had been fired from the car. The car had all its seats other than the driver’s laid flat, which was standard practice for the IRA when using a hatchback as a weapons platform. The car escaped and was then set on fire, and the fire services were kept away from it while it burned out—another standard IRA tactic to destroy forensic evidence. I am afraid that this ruling exposes the double standards that have plagued the legacy of the troubles.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  May I start by thanking the Secretary of State? The public will not necessarily know that it is very unusual for the Secretary of State to respond to an Adjournment debate, and his presence here demonstrates how important this is and how seriously he takes the task. It also brings back fond memories for me, but that is another matter. I hope that every Member of Parliament elected to this House believes that upholding justice should be our first priority as a Parliament. The right to life is the first among the rights we should uphold. That justice, and that right, should be even handed, and there should be no exception for agents of the state. I believe that, and accordingly I was a fierce critic of the state in, for example, the unlawful killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, the torture of Binyam Mohamed, and the failure to protect and provide justice for the six Catholics who were murdered at Loughinisland in 1994. There is no general exception when the state gets it wrong. Justice must, by definition, be fair and practical, and I am afraid the findings of the Northern Ireland coroner on the Clonoe incident were neither. To understand the significance of this inquest ruling, we must consider the context. Operation Banner was the British Army’s longest deployment, spanning from 1969 to 2007. More than 300,000 soldiers served sequentially in Northern Ireland, and despite immense challenges, the British Army performed admirably. They were not beyond reproach—Bloody Sunday is a striking example, I fear—but the massive majority of our soldiers acted with professionalism and restraint in the face of danger. The troubles led to 3,500 deaths and 50,000 injuries. More than 90% of them were caused or brought about by paramilitaries. The British Army’s rules of engagement were clear—governed by the yellow card, which soldiers carry at all times. Soldiers were required to issue a challenge before using force, unless doing so would put them or others in immediate danger. The intent was clear: to protect innocent lives, while allowing the use of lethal force when it was necessary and reasonable. Some 1,400 members of the security forces died in those troubles. They killed approximately 300 terrorists. Those figures, and that ratio reveal the discipline and restraint of our soldiers and our policemen acting under yellow card rules. They also reflect the personal risk to the soldiers and policemen of observing those rules. Unsurprisingly, the IRA members never carried a yellow card. They targeted civilians and committed murder without warning. Their methods ranged from torture, followed by a bullet in the back of the head, through to the mass murder of innocent civilians in atrocities such as the Omagh, Claudy and Ballykelly bombings and the utterly cold-blooded Kingsmill executions. Incidentally, the IRA was responsible for more Catholic deaths during the troubles than any other group. The IRA members were terrorists, but we should not forget that they were also criminals specialising in organised crime. They made £5 million or £6 million a year from protection rackets, smuggling, extortion, drugs, tax fraud, state benefit fraud, fraudulent front companies, illegal gambling, theft and other crimes throughout the island of Ireland. If colleagues want evidence of that criminality, in 1990 I carried out an investigation of those activities, which was written up on 6 November of that year in the Financial Times . The point is that the IRA was both a criminal gang and a terrorist organisation. Now it is trying to rewrite history.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  My right hon. and gallant Friend makes the central point of the argument perfectly. Here we are, 33 years later, with a Northern Ireland coroner judging events in retrospect, without any new evidence, and finding that soldiers acted unlawfully. That is entirely at odds with the result of the legal investigation immediately after the operation in 1992. I believe in a process of peace and reconciliation that allows closure for all the relatives of the dead, but he makes a good point: there are no records, and that goes for the vast majority of the people who died in the troubles. That makes this a process not of peace and reconciliation, but of vindictiveness and vengeance. It is an attempt to rewrite history, not find the truth. There have been countless attempts to take British soldiers to court for their actions during the troubles, but how many ex-IRA combatants have faced the same thing? Not one. Not a single IRA member has been pursued over the 2,000 deaths—all murders—for which the IRA were responsible. Our veterans are being punished in their retirement years for decisions they made when serving their country. The psychological impact on them, and on soldiers serving today, is enormous. The ruling also undermines the integrity of present and future operations. We cannot send soldiers into high-risk environments, ask them to undertake brutal training, and expect them to operate with confidence if they fear being condemned decades later. The ruling on the Clonoe incident risks further persecution of the British soldiers who served during the troubles. The Government must ensure that those who serve our country today are protected from such partisan distortions of justice. Our soldiers deserve better. What we are seeing with the Clonoe ruling is historical revisionism that seeks to punish those who served our country in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances. The law must be applied fairly, and we must not allow politics to undermine the legacy of those who fought to protect our freedoms. The Government—I say this directly to the Secretary of State—gave notice at the time of the election that they intended to remove the element of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 that protects soldiers and police who served during the troubles from prosecution. The judgment from the Northern Ireland coroner on the Clonoe incident exposes a number of soldiers to potential prosecution. The Ministry of Defence is quite properly seeking a judicial review of this inquiry, but even if it wins, we must put in place statutory protections for our soldiers, now and in the future, from this persecution. These are men who served their country with honour, heroism and skill, sometimes in the face of the most incredible danger. They are now no doubt hoping for a well-earned peaceful retirement, not a future of endless stress and psychological torture. If the Government leave them open to persecution it will be shameful, and will serve only to further the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland. Many Members may have received letters on this issue from retired Special Air Service soldiers. Most of them say in those letters that they support human rights, but they do more than that; they guarantee those rights for the rest of us. Let me end by quoting the words of Charles Province, the American soldier and poet: “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, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protestor to burn the flag. It is the soldier, not the politician…who has given these freedoms.” These soldiers are the guarantors of our security, our freedom and our justice. I say to the Secretary of State, surely we owe them no less than security, freedom and justice in return.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Official Development Assistance: Infectious Diseases · Hansard source

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  7. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of planned reductions to the official development assistance budget on efforts to tackle infectious diseases.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Official Development Assistance: Infectious Diseases · Hansard source

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  I agree with the Minister on what he just said, but Gavi says that the changing policy will mean that 37.9 million fewer children will be immunised, which means that over five years, 600,000 will die. How on earth does he live with himself with that policy?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  We new boys are still finding our way, Mr Speaker. My part of the world, Yorkshire, has the lowest EV charging points per head of the whole country. The National Audit Office has pointed out that only 15% of charging points are in rural areas, compared with 44% in London and the south-east. The net zero aims will collapse if we do not fix the equitable provision of EV charging points. What will the Government do to correct those problems?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  21. What assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the roll-out of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  It actually follows rather well, because—

• 24 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Defence Secretary should know that the whole House supports the Government’s actions to preserve peace in Ukraine, but that was not the point that the shadow Secretary of State was making. He was asking whether the Ministry of Defence recognises that it has a duty of care towards soldiers who fight for their country and then face decades of lawfare and the misuse of the European convention on human rights. Will the Ministry do something to protect those soldiers?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Post Office Horizon: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that answer. He and I will agree that the Post Office Horizon scandal is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern times, but the problems with the Post Office and its injustice extend far beyond that. Some 21 cases relating to the precursor system, Capture, which bear the same hallmarks as those in the Horizon scandal, have been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I am afraid that the CCRC is famous for taking years to come to obvious decisions, so can the Minister tell me that it will deal with this in months? If not, will his Department intervene directly?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Post Office Horizon: Compensation · Hansard source

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  11. What steps he is taking to ensure that compensation is paid to people impacted by the Post Office Horizon scandal in a timely manner.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q11. Four weeks ago, the Northern Ireland coroner accused British soldiers of unlawful killing after they engaged with IRA would-be murderers. After careful reading, as far as I can see, that judgment was based on no evidence whatsoever. More than 100 special forces soldiers have been summoned before those inquiries; not one IRA leader has been summoned in the same way. Soldiers who serve our country with honour, heroism and skill are being punished in their declining years for doing nothing but carrying out their patriotic duty in the face of enormous risks. Given how the Prime Minister opened his comments, with which I associate myself, does he not think that he and his Government have a duty to protect those soldiers from such partisan parodies of justice in their declining years?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Iranian State Threats · Hansard source

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  I know I bore the Minister incessantly with my repetitive calls for the proscription of the IRGC, so I welcome what he has to say today, particularly about the independent adviser’s review, which I hope will be rapidly available for him to take action. May I pick up the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) about the need for a whole of Government response? That does not mean just the Foreign Office as well as the Home Office; it is wider than that. I could give the Minister a single example or a number of examples. Successive British Governments have stood aside while British universities have done military research in conjunction with Iranian researchers on battlefield armour, range-finding lasers, drones and fighter jets. Will he ensure that the whole of Whitehall brings the focus to this that is required?

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for taking this statement personally. I know that he did not have to, so I thank him for that. The Government gave notice at the election that they intended to remove the element of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 that protects soldiers and police who served during the troubles from prosecution. Last week’s frankly speculative judgment from the Northern Ireland coroner into the Clonoe shootings now exposes a number of soldiers to potential prosecution. These are men who served their country with honour, heroism and skill, sometimes in the face of the most incredible danger. They are now mostly in their 60s and 70s and no doubt hoping for a well-earned peaceful retirement. In his statement in December, the Secretary of State of spoke of “recognising the dedicated service of the vast majority of police officers, members of the armed forces and the security services who did so much to keep the people of Northern Ireland safe during the troubles.” [ Official Report , 4 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 419.] So precisely what are the Government going to do to stop the vengeful pursuit of decent patriotic people? If the Government leave them open to persecution, it will frankly be shameful and serve only to further the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to make a statement on the coroner’s ruling in the Clonoe inquest.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Sir Edward. Could you give us guidance? I thought—perhaps wrongly, because of my inexperience—that somebody representing petitioners in the Chamber had to make the argument for them and believe in what they are asking for. We have had absolutely the opposite today; the petitioners have had no service in this debate up until now.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  If we take it that the Government are trying to address the large tax avoiders—the Dysons and the billionaires who invest to avoid tax—and that they want to protect real farmers, it is perfectly possible for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to do so. Farmers are not on pay-as-you-earn; they all make submissions, every year, on the amount of time, work and effort they put in, and the money they make from farming. Would it not be possible to give an unlimited exemption to people who are real farmers, based on their HMRC submissions?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Armed Forces Recruitment · Hansard source

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  Soldiers will be leaving the Army, rather than being recruited, if we continue to allow the persecution of soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. Last week’s coroner’s report into the Clonoe and Coalisland shootings was 51 pages of facts and eight pages of naïve speculation, which led right into the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland. Without the Northern Ireland legacy legislation, how will the Secretary of State prevent that, because if he fails, what should be a process of peace and reconciliation will turn into a vindictive, vengeful pursuit of men whose only sin was to serve their country with honour, heroism and skill, and in the most terrifying conditions? If we cannot prevent that, all the recruiting efforts will fail.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Can the Secretary of State explain to the House in what circumstances the police and the Crown Prosecution Service are allowed to deny access to evidence, after a trial has concluded, to a defence lawyer who is seeking to appeal, as has happened in the Lucy Letby case and, I believe, in others?