David Davis
MP for Goole and Pocklington · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on putting a Bill in front of the House that has support from literally everybody in the Chamber?”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal highlighted the institutional instinct to find a convenient scapegoat. Innocent people paid the price, while the institution sought to protect itself. If the Thirlwall inquiry asks too narrow a set of questions, systemic NHS failures will go unexamined.”
“Last month’s sentencing of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband exposed the real reasons behind the Scottish Government’s persecution of Alex Salmond. From 2010 to 2022, Peter Murrell abused his position to embezzle almost £500,000 from the SNP to buy luxury items. He used SNP money to buy a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf.”
“The consultants also reported that in the two months since the change infants have been sick but recovered as expected.” The report highlighted deficiencies in staffing levels, leadership and communication, but, in the trial, it was not shown to the jury—they knew nothing of it.”
“One of the nurses let go later described it as “the decimation of the Nursing and Midwifery service”, adding that “eight registered nurses...were replaced with nursery nurses...unqualified staff are replacing qualified staff”.”
“There was little space, cots and incubators were stored in corridors, and mothers struggled to find somewhere to breastfeed their babies. Susan Gilby, the hospital’s chief executive between 2018 and 2022, later described the unit as “dark, dingy and cramped”, providing a “less than ideal” environment to work in.”
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“The right hon. Gentleman has a long and honourable service in this area. He is exactly right, and he understands, as everybody on this side of the House does—well, most people on this side of the House—that asymmetries are built into the system that handicap, and indeed sometimes terrify, the people on one side of the argument while favouring those on the other. I want to talk to that because, obviously, as we have heard, the remedial order will allow new civil cases to be brought and, we are told, bring justice to victims. Government policy, as we have heard time and again, does not differentiate between real victims and terrorists. It will allow IRA sympathisers to continue their campaign of vexatious lawfare, hauling our brave veterans into court.”
“The IRA tried to pretend that it was a killing operation, but the SAS, or the soldiers on the scene—whoever they were—actually gave him first aid to save his life because he had been shot and injured, yet he gets £75,000 from the state. In 2023, the family of Stan Carberry tried to sue the Ministry of Defence for his death in 1972. Carberry, an IRA volunteer, was killed after a soldier returned fire at the vehicle that he was shooting from.”
“If we want to see the rewriting of history, Kelly’s family have already attempted to rewrite history, claiming that at Loughgall he “went out to blow up, not to kill”, despite his long and bloody track record proving otherwise. He obviously designed a bomb that only hits bricks, not people. I do not aim to make light of this, because it is incredibly serious. As with the 120 cases already mentioned, Kelly’s family have already brought legal action against the Ministry of Defence. They are not the only ones, so let us look at other IRA terrorist “victims” who have brought civil cases. In 2011, Aidan McKeever, the getaway driver at the Clonoe incident in 1992, in which four IRA terrorists were killed, was awarded £75,000 for injuries sustained when fleeing the scene. He is not a victim; he is a terrorist, and he got £75,000.”
“That is part of what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) was describing earlier about trying to rewrite history. This goes right to the core of what the Secretary of State has already done. We know that he has promised Mairead Kelly that there will be a coroner’s inquest for Loughgall. Why? Because her brother, Patrick Kelly, was killed at Loughgall. He was a victim, except he had killed at least five other people previously, including two UDR officers. He and his gang of eight were attempting to blow up—well, they were not attempting; they did blow up the police station, with soldiers and policemen inside. It was a 400 lb bomb, and they had heavy weapons, G36s—my hon. and gallant Friend will recognise them—to shoot through the walls and kill policemen.”
“They also precluded recovered bodies from being examined for forensic purposes. The families of people who have been murdered, where the body has been recovered, are not even allowed to use the bullets in them to see who killed them. That is how this justice works. And, of course, there will be no witnesses to the IRA crimes. The IRA themselves will not give witness, and I am afraid that anybody else will be taking their life in their hands. I will finish by saying this: today’s remedial order will allow the IRA to further its campaign of rewriting the history of the troubles, portraying our brave soldiers as state-sponsored killers, and falsely representing themselves as victims and heroes, neither of which is true.”
“Forgive me but I will not, as I want to get to the end of this. As we know, Gerry Adams is already preparing legal action, challenging the decision to prevent him and others from being compensated for being interned during the troubles. The surviving IRA terrorists and their families will benefit from what we are doing today. There will be some civil claims brought against IRA killers—the Secretary of State mentioned some of them—but they will be rather special circumstances. Omagh is one of those; I could explain why, but we do not have the time. There will be a few of those, but very few compared with thousands of deaths, tortures and murders. That is largely because Tony Blair and Jonathan Powell accepted, as part of the Good Friday agreement, not to allow decommissioned weapons to be studied for forensic purposes.”
“Early access costs money. Last year, children with special needs in the East Riding of Yorkshire were funded to less than £1,000 per capita—the lowest level in England. Camden received £3,565 a head. The Government’s grant proposals increase East Yorkshire by £30 a head. They increase Camden by £267 a head, nearly 10 times as much. How on earth does the Secretary of State expect East Yorkshire to provide early access or anything else, when funding is as tight as that?”
“This despicable regime goes in for state terrorism at home and abroad, and its principal instrument for terrorism abroad is the IRGC. This is now the sixth time that I have called on Prime Ministers and Ministers to proscribe the IRGC. The excuse given historically is that we want to keep our embassy open, but the embassy is now shut, demonstrating how futile that argument is. When will we proscribe that terrorist organisation?”
“In light of what was essentially a very sensible statement, may I ask the Minister a point of clarification? She talks about data technology and innovation, but have the Government considered an experiment in mandatory black box technology for very young drivers? The AA and the British Insurance Brokers’ Association say that that could save money and reduce the number of accidents by 35%.”
“Justice delayed is justice denied, but summary justice is not justice at all.”
“The Secretary of State has stated many times that the previous Government’s legislation in this area had no support from political parties in Northern Ireland. Can he tell the House which political parties support his legislation?”
“My right hon. Friend is being characteristically overgenerous to the Government when he talks about the requirement for modelling. This is not a “Mastermind” question; it is simple arithmetic. Three per cent of trials are by jury. If we do away with half of them, which is more draconian than even the Government are talking about, and there is a difference of 20%, the maximum difference it could make to the throughput of the court system is 0.3%. It will make no difference whatsoever to one of our most fundamental issues, yet it will throw away the most fundamental tenet of our justice system.”
“May I start by commending my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)? I do not always agree with him—I am not quite Anna Soubry—but on this issue, he struck exactly the right tone. I speak as somebody who has criticised the Ministry of Justice, under all parties, rather vigorously for 30 years, and he struck exactly the right tone in saying that the system has to be put right, given the failures over 30 years and more. We have to address this matter but not take the fundamentals out of the system in the process of doing so. May I do something unusual and commend the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller)? She made a very well thought-through speech.”
“When the Minister is modelling the numbers—she talks about the speed of the magistrate system—she should look at the appeal rates for magistrates’ decisions and the number of appeals in which the magistrates’ decisions are overturned.”
“Implicit in Leveson’s comments, and certainly in what the Minister said, is an underlying idea that juries are not quite up to it in certain cases. It is suggested that they cannot quite cope, particularly in technical and financial cases. Well, I have handled about a dozen miscarriage of justice cases over the course of the last decade or two, and in not one of them was the jury the source of the error. More often than not, it was a misdirection by a judge or an error of the system, or the court case was allowed to get out of control in some way or another—I will come back to an example or two in a minute. It was pretty much always down to the judge, and sometimes to the lawyers in court, but not to the jury. The risks involved in restricting jury trials are significant.”
“When I raised this matter with the Justice Secretary—I think I did so in oral questions on one occasion—I asked him whether he had read the report by Mr Rivlin KC, which does a formidable job of forensically taking apart the Leveson recommendations. One of the points he makes is that Leveson is making judgments—quite properly, as a very distinguished judge of very long standing—but he is not making them on the basis of empirical data. There was very little empirical data behind what Lord Justice Leveson argued, and it is really important that we look at that. I recommend to the Minister that she read Mr Rivlin’s note. He was the head of Southwark Crown court, which has one of the highest throughputs in the country, and he put this point to all his judges. Not one of those working, active judges agreed with Leveson.”
“The system failures have been serially spectacular, and I recommend that she look back at some of the National Audit Office reports. I commissioned one when I was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee; it is the longest NAO report that I can remember and the most complex, because these matters are systemically complex and do not lend themselves to off-the-cuff answers. She talks about modernisation, which is often important, but it should not be at the price of taking out the most important building block in our justice system—one that the rest of the world, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark said, has been copying for centuries. Of course, the majority of the judiciary does not agree with restricting jury trials.”
“I am losing the House, piece by piece, but that is okay. The Minister should pay some attention to the detail of the speech by the hon. Member for Chichester, because she made some extremely important points. As for the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Chiswick (Andy Slaughter), he and I have fought together on some spectacular cases of miscarriage of justice—successfully, I think, in the biggest ones—but I do not agree with him that the Government’s policy does not address matters that are morally fundamental to the justice system, because the jury system is absolutely fundamental, for a few reasons that I will touch on in a minute. The Minister has a difficult job. Bluntly, her Department—not just the Ministers, but the Department itself—has not done a very good job of managing the system over decades.”
“Well, let us see what she thinks the size of the saving really is, because we are expected to take this on trust, and we should never change something that is so fundamental to our constitution and justice system on trust. I do not think the Government’s policy will move the dial at all. There is one other systemic issue that I want to raise. Again, my hon. Friends might not like it—”
“Was there a problem?” When they were asked if they could not understand the case, they answered unequivocally, “Oh yes, we could understand the case. It was the lawyers who couldn’t understand the case.” That is precisely what the outcome of that analysis was. The Minister resisted publishing the model, which is understandable. I can see why she is doing that. She wants it to be presented properly and transparently, I hope, but she has made the decision already, so at the very least, she should tell us the size of the saving and the size of the change. In my judgment, it is less than half of 1%—a point that I made in an intervention earlier. She may disagree.”
“Frankly, the hon. Lady highlights yet another problem with the magistrates court. The point is that if we are going to implement a big, systemic change, we should not change the fundamentals. That should be done as a separate testable exercise later, after we have tried everything else. Let me come back to the expertise of juries. It is illegal in Britain to talk to jurors about what happened in the jury room—it is not allowed—but there is a spectacular lacuna in that. One of the most complicated financial cases was the Jubilee line fraud trial, which collapsed. As a result, it was possible to interview the jurors. This case was in an area where it is said that jurors cannot cope: complex financial law. They were asked, “Couldn’t you cope?”
“It is not unusual, I know. My hon. Friends might not like my mentioning this primary case, because it undermined a part of the Thatcher Government’s activities. It was the case of Clive Ponting. He was the civil servant who gave out the information that the Belgrano was sunk while it was leaving the Falklands, not arriving. The judge in that case instructed the jury to find him guilty, but they found him not guilty. Why? Because they made a moral judgment about the powers and rights of the state over the citizen. We cannot replace that with any judicial mechanism. My comment to the Minister is that I sympathise with the size of the problem, and she is right to try to take it on. I am glad she is doing so, and I will support her in what she does, but she should not tackle the problem by wrecking the system.”
“I am not just standing to give my hon. Friend a minute. Does he agree with me that even if we accept what it says, being sent down for a couple of years can destroy a life?”
“It is widely reported that the Home Secretary is a strong supporter of robust reform of the European Court of Human Rights. A large number of countries on the European continent share our concerns over that. Has she discussed them with any of her opposite numbers? In particular, where does she see the common interest in reforming the Court?”
“I refuse to call this property relief on what is an absolutely new tax, but will the Minister tell us if the agricultural property tax threshold will rise in line with agricultural land prices?”
“The best way to look at that issue is to look at what has already happened, as described by the senior judge who oversaw the judicial review of the Coagh inquiry: “In this challenge, this Court is being asked to slow the passage of time down, to analyse events in freeze-frame and to address the issue of absolute necessity in slow-motion…It is ludicrous to suggest that this court should analyse the events of the day in question in that manner”, but that is what will happen with Loughgall and all the other issues that will come before the courts, and our brave and honourable soldiers will be humiliated through that process. That is why the process is the punishment.”
“The Minister has said that veterans will have Government support. I am sure that is what he intends, but the hard reality is that the Bill that he is defending will lead to coroner’s court inquiries into decisions taken in a fraction of a second, 40 years ago.”
“The Justice Secretary quite rightly says that justice delayed is justice denied, but summary justice is no justice at all. He based much of his argument on the views of the eminent Lord Leveson, but has he read the analysis of that review by Geoffrey Rivlin KC, who went through the report in expert detail and described much of it as unfounded and misguided because it was based on poor data. If the Justice Secretary has not read it, will he please do so before he comes back to the House?”
“In the words of Lord Denning: “It has been the bulwark of our liberties too long for any of us to seek to alter it.” Why will the Secretary of State not go and have his argument with the Treasury and solve this problem properly?”
“When the Secretary of State took office, he swore an oath of office, which reads: “I…do swear that…I will respect the rule of law, defend the independence of the judiciary and discharge my duty to ensure the provision of resources for the efficient and effective support of the courts”. That last bit matters. Governments of his party, my party and—before they get too sanctimonious—the Liberal Democrats all starved the courts, from Blair to now. The Secretary of State has to put that right, because if he does not get sufficient extra sitting days, this problem will not be solved. When I say “sufficient extra”, I do not mean 1,000 days, or even 5,000 days; we need an increase of an order of magnitude. Instead, he is undermining a bulwark of our constitution.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Since 2017, Members’ hands have been tied when it comes to amending the Finance Bill because successive Governments have failed to include a general amendment of the law as the first resolution, which for centuries allowed unrestricted amendment of the Budget. For example, a Back-Bench amendment to the 1977 Finance Bill forced the Government to index income tax personal allowances against inflation—something that is topical now. That sort of change is much more difficult under the current arrangements. The Hansard Society and I have both written to the Chief Whip about this matter, but can you provide advice on how the House can ensure that in future years we can recover those fundamental rights that have been arrogated by the Government?”
“Will he involve himself personally to ensure that 60, 70 and 80-year-old soldiers, who have carried out actions that most of us would view as heroic, are not persecuted in the coming years, because now it is a matter not of national security, but of national honour?”
“The Prime Minister knows that, last week, nine four-star generals made it plain that yesterday’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is doing harm to the British Army already. The most acute damage is being felt by the Special Air Service. It is already affecting its recruitment, retention, morale and operational effectiveness. As a result, lawyers acting for the SAS Regimental Association have sent a letter before action to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I know of no precedent for this in the entire history of the British Army, and this reflects—because it is so important—how important it is, so may I make a plea to the Prime Minister?”
“Labour, under Blair, effectively gave a de facto amnesty—maybe it is challengeable in law—to at least 650 terrorists, who had carried out more than 3,000 killings. Early release schemes, on-the-run letters and the royal prerogative of mercy collectively created a vast secret system of de facto immunity. It was secret because the Government knew that people would not accept it.”
“That story would have been at the back of the mind of every soldier who subsequently served in Northern Ireland. They made their decisions in the face of the risk of immediate death. It is a measure of their professionalism that hundreds of terrorists were arrested alive under the circumstances, given that the soldiers could have been killed. Today’s debate is actually about morality. It is about whether this House chooses justice over political convenience, truth over revisionism, and loyalty over the cynical rewriting of history. The Government claim that today’s problems arise from legislation passed by the previous Government, which allegedly created an amnesty for terrorists. Really? What are the facts?”
“In Operation Banner, our soldiers assiduously obeyed the yellow card rules, but in Northern Ireland the courts have sometimes interpreted those rules as requiring our soldiers to take almost suicidal risks. We are dragging men in their 70s and 80s through coroners courts in Belfast, and judging them by a standard that makes no sense in a military context. To illustrate this, let me share with the House a single case that highlights what can happen to soldiers under these circumstances. On 16 March 1978, in the middle of the night, two SAS soldiers were manning a covert observation post. They saw two men in combat clothing moving toward them. One of our soldiers, David Jones, stood up and challenged the men. The IRA gunman immediately shot him down in a burst of gunfire.”
“This is a terrible Bill. Its central failing is that it will lead to the persecution of patriotic, innocent British soldiers whose only sin is defending our democracy with heroism and skill. What it will do is recreate a circumstance in which soldiers are treated unfairly by the law. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) referred to the case of Soldier B and the judge’s dismissal of it as a “ludicrous” challenge funded by legal aid. I have known Soldier B for 30 years; I count him as a friend. He is tough and clever yet, even for him, being dragged through the courts for four years and more, on what is effectively preparation for a murder charge, would have been unbelievably stressful. The point my hon. Friend made is that the process is the punishment: four years of stress and wear and tear.”
“Enough moral inversion, and enough rewarding of terror, while hounding those who defended the public.” We are told that the Bill is necessary because Northern Ireland will not support alternatives, but when real leaders must choose between consensus and justice, they choose justice. This Bill must not rest on appeasement. The world watches while Britain chooses today. Its allies watch with concern, and its enemies with enthusiasm, as they plan future decades of lawfare against our best soldiers. If we do not speak up to protect both our current service personnel and our veterans, the innocent will suffer in future, and we will find ourselves unable to defend our nation.”
“Yet today those who upheld the law face relentless legal pursuit, while those who broke the law received leniency, letters and legal shelter. Let us not forget that the IRA are also protected by the fact that witnesses, or would-be witnesses, against them know that they risk murder if they turn up. I was in Omagh a few weeks ago, and I met a policeman who was shot—six times, I think—only a couple of years ago by the Real IRA, or the New IRA or whatever label they have today. Instead of attacking those who served, we should honour them, their service and their patriotism. We should not treat them worse than the killers they defeated. This House must say, “Enough.”
“No. I am sorry, but I do not have time. People knew that the system would not be accepted, which is why Gerry Adams asked for an “invisible system” for dealing with on-the-runs. Why are they on the run? They are on the run because they are criminals, and this was a secret system to deal with it. In contrast, 300,000 of our soldiers defended democracy in Northern Ireland. They defended law and order, democracy and the innocent citizens of Northern Ireland, whom we often forget in this. They acted as the direct opposite of the IRA, the gangster organisation that terrorised all communities in Northern Ireland. By the way, I mean “all communities”; remember that the IRA killed a very large number of Catholics to terrorise that community.”
“Again, we are talking about vicious murderers. Ninety-five of those in receipt of letters of comfort were involved in 295 murder investigations—295 murders. The letters were clear. I quote from the first letter of comfort issued: “You would not…face prosecution for any such offence should you return to the United Kingdom.” Those were letters given to murderers. The Government will, of course, retreat to the refuge of legal technicality. They will tell us that these letters were not, strictly speaking, an amnesty, as they left open the possibility of charges for crimes not yet discovered—as does any amnesty. The Government are hiding behind legalistic language. These letters absolutely did stop prosecutions for terrorist atrocities.”
“It was kept secret precisely because it was so spectacularly controversial, and was done in response to Gerry Adams saying, “it would be better if there was an invisible process for dealing with OTRs.” The name speaks for itself: those people were on the run from the law. It was an administrative scheme precisely because attempts to legislate for it were dropped when Sinn Féin opposed them on the grounds that it would have protected soldiers too. Those were their explicit grounds. Of course, there was no risk for them in opposing it; they already had their letters, they already had their de facto immunity. The Government are coy about the exact numbers, but at least 156 people received an individual letter of comfort and many others were listed in Government communications as “not wanted” by the authorities.”
“They included hardened terrorists, guilty of extreme violence, such as Gerry Kelly, convicted for the Old Bailey bombings, which killed one person and injured over 200; the three IRA terrorists who murdered SAS Captain Herbert Westmacott; and Fergal Toal, who held down his victim’s arms while two of the victim’s fingers were hacked off with a hammer and chisel. They all received the royal prerogative of mercy. It was also the Blair Government who authorised the so-called on-the-run administrative scheme—that is its formal title—and the letters of comfort that accompanied it. It was a secret scheme that only came to light properly in 2014, years after terrorists had received their letters.”
“7WH.] That is, the Conservative Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. That is plain wrong. The truth is that there has long been a de facto amnesty for crimes committed during the troubles. Blair’s Government created the Good Friday agreement. It is an agreement that, for the purpose of achieving peace—a good aim—drew a line under the atrocities that had been committed without resolving the complex issues of accountability. The Good Friday agreement contained a provision for early release of convicted prisoners. Four hundred and eighty-three terrorists were released from prison early—effectively pardoned—of which 143 had been sentenced to serve life sentences, and they inevitably included many killers. At least 16 terrorists were granted the royal prerogative of mercy—also effectively a pardon.”
“This is not simply a question of policy detail, but a question of principles: the principle that we do not abandon those who acted under our lawful instruction; the principle that we do not risk weakening the effectiveness of our armed forces; and the principle that we do not bend to the demands of terrorists or, indeed, their modern sympathisers. I am afraid that the Government’s proposed legislation does little to show any willingness to defend those principles, to which I will return shortly. In the Westminster Hall debate in July, we heard Labour MPs—Government-supporting MPs—argue: “The only thing that grants immunity to former members of the IRA is the Northern Ireland legacy Act as it stands.” —[ Official Report, 14 July 2025; Vol. 771, c.”
“I start by welcoming the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to his place. We all know that Secretaries of State do not have to answer Adjournment debates. He and I will, of course, have robust differences of view on this, but no one can gainsay either his courtesy or his commitment to the task and so I thank him for being here. In the coming weeks, we will be asked to consider legislation addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland. We must approach that with the real facts of what happened in Northern Ireland, not the misinformation peddled by the IRA and their sympathisers. We should also remember that the state has a moral obligation to protect brave soldiers who defended our freedoms in the most testing circumstances.”
“The Secretary of State will respond with great charm and say, “Ah, but Mr Downey is now facing prosecution.” That is what he will say.”
“My right hon. Friend on the Front Bench mentions the name John Downey. In 2014, John Downey faced prosecution for the Hyde Park bombing. He produced his letter of comfort and his trial collapsed. What the judge said at the trial is important. He stated there is a “public interest in holding officials of the state to promises they have made in full understanding of what is involved in the bargain.” He could not be clearer. He concludes that “it offends the court’s sense of justice and propriety to be asked to try the defendant.” It should not have even been brought to trial. In other words, the judge was recognising a de facto amnesty. It was only at the collapse of Downey’s trial that the existence of the administrative scheme became public knowledge.”
“For those few successful convictions since 1998 that the Secretary of State referred to, what is their punishment? It is limited to two years because of the Blair-era Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998—two years for mass murder? Instead of seeing terrorists face justice, we see veterans being hauled before inquests decades after the fact.”
“He did not name the cases, and I would like to see the details of those cases published so we can actually understand what has happened here. Are these dissident republicans? Are they loyalists? What are they? That is just so we know what has actually happened here. In any case, there have been five convictions for 3,000 killings, and the Government are trying to maintain that there is no amnesty—really? To ensure that no prosecutions could effectively be brought against the IRA, the Blair Government also agreed during the Good Friday agreement that none of the decommissioned IRA weapons could ever be used as forensic evidence in any future trial. Of course, there are not many witnesses in a trial about Northern Ireland terrorism—that is a fast way to the grave—so forensic evidence is critical, and it was all ruled out of order.”