Alex Burghart

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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2,601 lines on record for Alex Burghart, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, without an account. Most recent 500 lines shown. Search to find more. Page 2 of 10.

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1. “Soldier F was found not guilty after the longest and most detailed inquiry in British legal history. Judge Patrick Lynch told Belfast Crown court that even after such an investigation, the evidence fell well short of the standard required.”

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2. “Because I was in the middle of speaking. The judge said: “A 53 year old statement cannot be cross examined, nor can I assess the demeanour of a sheet of A4 paper.” It is becoming vanishingly difficult to get convictions.”

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3. “Then, in 2025, the case was taken to the High Court in Belfast, where it was thrown out by a judge who described it as “ludicrous” and said that it should never have come to court. Despite that, in April this year the case went to the Court of Appeal, where it was again thrown out. Last month an attempt was mounted to take it to the Supreme Court, and that attempt is ongoing. Soldier B has been dragged through the courts for five and a half years, when the legal system in this country admits that the case against him is ludicrous.”

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4. “On that occasion, four men—known terrorists—armed with semi-automatic weapons and a Dushka machine gun attacked an RUC police station and then moved on to commit further crimes. They called themselves an army. They carried weapons of war, they sought to kill and they operated entirely outside the bounds of the law, and yet we were asked to believe that the use of lethal force against them was not justified. The men will now be subject to unjust and unfair scrutiny of the decisions that they had to make in exceptionally difficult circumstances, decades ago. The case of soldier B, a former SAS officer, has been raised repeatedly in the House. In 2024 a coroner ruled that he had been justified in using lethal force in Coagh in 1991.”

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5. “The hon. Gentleman, if he had waited a moment, would have heard me talk about the victims. The victims, who suffered so much, are being given the promise of convictions that will never come. Even when we have the most detailed inquiry in British legal history, no conviction comes, yet this House is now expected to believe that the legislation before us will open the road to all these convictions. It will not happen. It is a promise that will not be fulfilled, but that does not mean that soldiers who did nothing but their duty will not be pulled through the courts time and time again. In February last year, this House debated the terrible ruling in the Clonoe case from 1992.”

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6. “I am giving the Secretary of State an example of the things that will not be stopped by his legislation. This will continue. The Bill does not solve the problem.”

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7. “The hon. Lady says that it is our problem. Our legislation drew a line in the sand which meant that things like that would never happen again. That case had already started, and if the hon. Lady were familiar with the legacy Act, she would know where the line in the sand was drawn.”

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8. “Those who work in ICRIR are desperately concerned that that will lead to a massive increase in their workload, with no increase in funding, and that it will inevitably mean long delays and distraction from the core information-recovery exercise, which was intended to be their central function. Those on the Government Benches may not want to take from me the case that I am making against this Bill, and I understand that, but they should take it from the retired generals and soldiers who have repeatedly spoken out.”

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9. “That was an information-recovery exercise which concluded that no perpetrators were ever likely to be identified, but it still provided answers to questions that have haunted Mr O’Kelly’s family for half a century. His daughter described, in extremely moving terms, how the report had moved the family into a “space of serenity and light, all anger taken away”. Yet just as ICRIR has started working as intended, the Government are to reprogramme it into what two generals have described today as essentially a criminal investigations body, charged with collecting evidence to a criminal standard, although we know that the chance of prosecutions is incredibly unlikely.”

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10. “They fail on their own test, because the Bill and the Government’s amendments “will permit repeat investigations.” Earlier, the Secretary of State raised the use of the word “essential”, and talked about new evidence. As Philip Barden pointed out, “Any lawyer worth their salt can find new evidence.” This might sound like a high bar, but it is an extremely low bar. All the while—throughout the year and more in which we have been dealing with this legislation—the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, set up by the legacy Act, has been doing its work. A few weeks ago, ICRIR published its first report, which laid out the details of Mr Rory O’Kelly’s murder by the IRA in 1977.”

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11. “My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was pointing out to the hon. Lady and the Minister for Veterans and People exactly the sort of problems that the legacy Act was designed to solve. There was obviously a cut-off point— [Interruption.] As I am sure the hon. Members know, the legacy Act had a cut-off point, and cases that had already started were not caught by that. I am giving an example of similar cases that will now come about because of their legislation. As Philip Barden KC wrote in The Spectator this week, the Government’s attempts to solve this issue, and the Government's proposed protections, are wholly inadequate to the task.”

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12. “I hope that Labour Members, and anybody in the House who is thinking of supporting the continuation of this legislation, will listen to the two retired generals who wrote today that the Government should stop pretending that their amendments offer veterans meaningful protections. The consequence of continuing down this route will be that some men who served decades ago, like soldier B—not soldier B himself, but men like him—will spend years in the jaws of vexatious litigation, that victims will not receive the justice that they are being promised by this legislation, and that many more veterans will continue to live with the nagging sense that those using lawfare may come for them. They are already being punished by the idea of this legislation.”

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13. “The hon. Lady speaks powerfully on this point, and she is absolutely right to say that many victims were people who served. I was talking about the way in which ICRIR works and is now being seen to work. Regardless of who was killed, it can be used by victims’ families in order to assist in the information-recovery process, and one of the advantages of ICRIR is that it is a non-adversarial system that has already started to enable families to find out things they did not know before. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: that process is very valuable, which is why it was put in the legacy Act by the previous Government.”

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14. “The hon. Lady will know that her Government, when they came in, did not appeal against that case. We have a human rights framework that is wholly inadequate for dealing with cases from decades ago, and it is clear that the current Government would rather protect that framework than protect people from that period. The failings of this Bill, should it be passed, will be quickly seen and long felt. The House has the power to stop it tonight. If we do not and the Government persist, the next Conservative Administration will repeal it and once again draw a line under the troubles.”

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15. “The consequence is that those who threaten the “serious injury, disorder and wider contagion”, of which the Chief Constable warned, have won. Unless remedy is made, the message being sent to Northern Ireland is that people can pick and choose which laws they obey, and that those who threaten violence and disorder will get their way. I know that that is not what the Secretary of State wants, but he needs to tell the House what he intends to do to prevent that terrible message being the legacy of these past few weeks. I know that it is not for him to determine how the police exercise their duties following this incident, but I hope he can tell the House how the Government now intend to prevent the law from being openly flouted again and again and again.”

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16. “The Chief Constable said that facilitating it would have “required a substantial public order intervention that was not assessed to be proportionate, and which would have carried an unacceptable risk of serious injury, disorder and a wider contagion effect across Northern Ireland.” I hope that the Secretary of State can be clear with the House about what is behind this statement and what the nature of that risk was. Was the Secretary of State at any stage made aware of a possibility of terrorism? Was he at any stage made aware that firearms or explosives were likely to be deployed? I very much hope he was not, but the House should know. I know that the Secretary of State was placed in a desperately invidious position, but the consequence of the march not going ahead is that those who have broken the law have won.”

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17. “As the Secretary of State has set out, the planned march was legal, subject to the detailed restrictions placed upon it by the Parades Commission. It follows that under section 14 of the Public Processions (Northern Ireland) Act 1998, those who prevented this lawful march would seem to have broken the law. The stand-off that they caused ultimately led to Chief Constable Boutcher asking the Secretary of State to review the Parades Commission’s determination and stop the march.”

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18. “I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for his call over the weekend. I do not envy him the position in which he has been placed in these past few weeks. The scenes that we have witnessed on the streets of Drumcree are all too reminiscent of previous times—times that we had all hoped were past, and times that we must still hope are past. The willingness of communities nearly 30 years ago to submit to independent adjudication processes was one of the pillars of the peace. It is consequently at best irresponsible and at worst dangerous for people to ignore those processes when they do not go their way. Further, it is inexcusable for anyone, but particularly politicians, to decide that they will only obey the law when it suits them. That is the road to a very dark place.”

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19. “I welcome the Minister to his post. I very much look forward to him updating the House on his negotiating mandate and his conversations with the European trade commissioner. Earlier this summer, the Prime Minister said that it would be wrong to rerun divisive arguments about rejoining the EU, but, soon after, the Minister refused to rule out rejoin being an option in the next Labour manifesto. Will he tell the House: will Labour rule out rejoin featuring in its next manifesto? [ Interruption. ]”

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20. “It is perfectly reasonable to rule things out. The Minister has had plenty of time to talk to No. 10 since his interview on Sky. I am sure the Labour party would rule out many things at this stage—I am sure it would rule out leaving the European convention on human rights, getting rid of net-zero targets and bringing back the death penalty—so why is it so hard for the Minister and the Government to rule out rejoining the EU?”

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21. “Over the summer, the Prime Minister announced that mayors will keep a proportion of income tax receipts. Why will mayors like Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen not be allowed to use that money to cut taxes or offer rebates to local residents and businesses?”

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22. “I thank the right hon. Lady for her answer, but she did not answer my question. My question was about the income tax receipts that Ben Houchen will be allowed to retain. Over the summer, she said that he would not be allowed to use that to give rebates to local individuals and businesses. At the moment, councils already have the power to levy council tax discounts and business rate discounts. Why can mayors not do the same with income tax receipts?”

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23. “They will only have the freedom to increase the size of the state, not reduce it. It appears that this Government are rewiring the state—but just to grow it. The last point is simply about cost. How much is this reorganisation costing? How much is being spent on No. 10 North? How much will need to be spent in order to power the localisation agenda that this Administration have put forward? Where is that money coming from? Is it coming from other Departments, in which case, from where, or is it coming from tax, and if so, which taxes? If it is coming from borrowing—well, I think the bond markets will have something to say about that. Until the Government can show that they are able to cut taxes and spending, so that we can get real growth across the country, I am afraid that all of this will just be another northern pipe-dream.”

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24. “Also over the summer, after the Prime Minister had made his interesting announcement about assigned income tax and retained business rates, the Mayor of the Tees Valley, Lord Houchen, said that he would create “a new rebate scheme to put money back into people’s pockets and let families keep more of the money they earn.” It is an excellent idea—an excellent Conservative idea—so excellent that it was immediately shot down by the deputy Prime Minister. Will she tell us whether combined authority mayors will be able to cut taxes or give rebates, so that working people can keep more of their money—or will this just lead to higher taxes? Otherwise, it appears that local mayors will not have the freedom to cut taxes; they will only have the freedom to increase them.”

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25. “Will that be reduced, and by when? The second guarantee is on the nature of devolution—whether it is driven by the interests of local people, or just by those of one party. Over the summer, Labour councillors were allowed to redraw the boundaries of the authorities that they hope to represent, and to do so before any independent review by the Local Government Boundary Commission. Labour set about the biggest reorganisation of local government in 50 years with no mandate to do so, and announced it on the day before recess, with no scrutiny. One wonders how it can be localism if it is imposed—and imposed with constraints.”

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26. “Over the Blair years, laws such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and environmental legislation created endless sources of judicial review, which made it increasingly difficult for Government to do things—to build infrastructure and so on. That is a colossal drag on the capabilities of the state. If the right hon. Lady wishes to work on that, the Conservatives would be happy to work with her. In the statement, we heard a further exposition on devolution and the merits of No. 10 North. For that to be credible, the Government need to be able to give three basic guarantees. The first is that this will lead to an overall reduction in the size of the civil service. Despite promises made after the election, the opposite has happened under Labour; since the general election, the headcount of the civil service has risen by over 11,000.”

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27. “I had rather hoped that she was going to lead the charge to smash the barricades and destroy this terrible imperial power, but instead it appears that the empire has struck back. The briefing we were given initially was that No. 10 North was going to take control of growth. That seems to have been watered down. It is now rumoured that the Chancellor will give the speech on growth next week, and that the real power remains within No. 11 south. Will the right hon. Lady tell the House what powers, levers and budget she will have, as head of No. 10 North, to increase growth across the UK? Legal constraint is obviously a massive problem.”

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28. “It is a step in the wrong direction, because Ministers will retain responsibility for those services, but they will lose power over them. One of the reasons we have seen a proliferation of arm’s length bodies is that they have become a way of dodging excessive bureaucracy put on by the centre. In this instance, by the centre I really mean the Treasury. In its modern form, the Treasury is the behemoth created by Gordon Brown and designed to control Whitehall and to reduce departmental Ministers’ authority over their spend and their decisions. I was therefore genuinely interested to hear the right hon. Lady say over the summer that the Treasury was an “imperial finance department”.”

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29. “There were many reasons to criticise the Blair Government, but I wish to talk about just three: the first is quangos, the second is the nature of the Treasury and the third is the issue of legal constraint. Some of the worst of these problems are those of entrenched institutional inertia. We have seen over time how quangos have led to Ministers having less agency over important decisions that affect our constituents’ lives, so it is unfortunate that the deputy Prime Minister has today announced the creation of a massive new quango in the OneGov Delivery Agency. It will be in charge of Government recruitment, the civil service, pensions, shared services, security vetting, and so on. It will oversee the spending of considerable public money.”

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30. “I thank the deputy Prime Minister for advance sight of her statement. I congratulate her on her appointment—it is a major achievement—and I look forward to working with her. I also congratulate the right hon. Lady on the wording of her statement. The phrase “rewiring the state” was first coined by the Leader of the Opposition in her leadership contest in the summer of 2024, and for a very good reason. The state does need rewiring; we agree on that. It is in urgent need of rewiring. It needs rewiring so that politicians can make decisions, it needs rewiring so that elected Governments can fulfil their mandates speedily, and it needs rewiring so that the state does not continue to grow ad infinitum. I know that the new Administration delight in nothing more than criticising the Blair Government.”

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31. “If the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill was any of those things, why did the former Armed Forces Minister, when he resigned last month, say that it remains “remains unfit for purpose. It risks failing the very veterans it claims to protect”? Why does the Secretary of State think that the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) said that?”

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32. “It is clear from the Secretary of State’s answer that the former Armed Forces Minister quit because he could see that the Bill remains unfit for purpose and fails to protect the very veterans that it claims to protect. The Secretary of State must realise that there is no cross-party support in Northern Ireland for his legislation, and nor is there support in the Labour party for his legislation. Will he now accept that the Bill should not progress and that we should return to the legislation that the Conservatives brought forward?”

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33. “I am glad that that builds on the steps the previous Government tried to take to improve access to adoption records, offer post-adoption counselling and improve the complaints procedure for agencies. We hope that all these steps will make a difference to some whose experiences lie in the past, and to many in the future. I would like to ask the Prime Minister two questions. The Education Committee called for an assessment of international redress schemes. Can the Prime Minister confirm whether the Government are considering that? I welcome his announcement of support groups for mothers and adopted adults. Who will be responsible for establishing this service and what budget will be set aside for it? I thank the Prime Minister very much for his statement and repeat what he has said to those affected: the shame was never yours.”

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34. “And she howled—I assume I did…and the following week they sent me back to school.” Thousands upon thousands of such experiences happened every day in every corner of our country over many years. Thankfully, in the years since, a huge amount has been done to ensure that such things cannot happen again in our country; change in adoption law and modern courts and legislation make a repeat of these injustices much less likely. We welcome the steps that the Prime Minister has outlined today and the fact that the Education Secretary is writing to local authorities and agencies setting the expectation that requests for records should be swiftly responded to.”

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35. “Bonds between mothers and children are the foundation of security and identity; indeed, perhaps the foundation of all we have. While I know from much experience that the act of adopting a child is among the greatest kindness one person can show another, and that many of those children will have gone on to be raised by loving families, there can be no doubt that they will also have carried a great grief across many years. One cannot help but be moved by the powerful testimonies that some have given. I will mention just one mother’s experience: the journey back from the hospital “was the longest I held my daughter—it was two hours—and it was like everything suddenly made sense. I just felt like this was absolutely right, and I wouldn’t let go of her…a woman appeared and said, ‘It’s time’…and she was taken from my arms and handed over.”

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36. “I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for coming to the House to deliver the statement himself. On behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, we welcome what he has said and agree that whenever the state makes grave errors, it has a deep responsibility to apologise for what it did to those it has wronged. One hundred and eighty-five thousand children grew up in Britain without their mothers because of bad decisions and fundamentally flawed beliefs that treated unmarried mothers with a shame and stigma that is mercifully alien to us today. Those decisions and beliefs left a permanent mark on each and every one of those lives: on children separated from their mothers, and on the mothers whose children were taken away. As the Prime Minister said, this is a stain on our history.”

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37. “In the negotiations that any Government have with the Executive in Northern Ireland, I believe there is a duty to make the case that the Northern Ireland Executive should be prepared to raise revenue on top of the budget settlements that the Treasury gives. After the last Budget, I was prepared to say that I thought the Northern Ireland Office had acquired a reasonably good settlement from the Treasury for Northern Ireland. The key now is that that money should be well spent. If the Northern Ireland Executive want to spend more, they should be prepared to raise revenue, but they should also be prepared to deliver their public services more efficiently and effectively. I hope that His Majesty’s Government will work with the institutions in Northern Ireland to help that to happen.”

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38. “That is a clear and present danger that the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill presents to financing in Northern Ireland, and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could explain the Government’s position. I would also be interested to hear whether the Secretary of State has had any discussions with the heir presumptive to the Labour party leadership on the future of the troubles Bill, because the legislative timetable has obviously been pushed to the right again and it seems unlikely that we will have the legislation before the summer break. That being so, it will be a consideration for the next Prime Minister. Can the Secretary of State tell us what conversations he has had with the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) about this legislation, and whether the next Prime Minister, if that is what he is, is in favour of it?”

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39. “It is clear that if the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is passed, it will increase the caseload of the ICRIR—the Legacy Commission, as it will become—but not increase the resources it has at its disposal, and it will increase the caseload that the PSNI is dealing with, but not increase the resources of the PSNI. The danger is that we will see a bottleneck in the Legacy Commission and very slow processing of cases, and an additional drain on the resources of the PSNI that will take more people away from frontline policing. We know that frontline policing in Northern Ireland has about 1,000 fewer officers than were expected when New Decade, New Approach was signed.”

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40. “I have a number of points to ask the Secretary of State about while I have the opportunity—most significantly, they are about legacy. He may have detected from some of our previous debates that Opposition Members are not in favour of what the Government are doing. That said, we think strongly that if the Government are to press ahead with their plans, given that it is acknowledged that those plans will create an additional burden on public services in Northern Ireland, on the police and on the legacy institutions, the Government should be prepared to meet that financial cost. It is not enough to say that £250 million is being made available. That £250 million was made available by a Conservative Government some time ago, and since it was granted inflation has probably degraded it to £200 million at most.”

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41. “This is a debate about devolved issues, but I know that the Secretary of State and his officials from the Northern Ireland Office have been in talks with the Executive and their representatives. I very much hope that we will get an update on those talks. We must, however, ask what will happen if no agreement is forthcoming. As was said, we are now a quarter of the way through the financial year and there is no solution in sight. We cannot move to a position where overspend continues to be normalised, and it appears that the Executive are effectively saying, “We can’t solve this problem—we need more money.” That is not sustainable, and it cannot give anyone confidence in devolution as it is now. What is the Government’s plan if the current talks break down and we move into the summer without an agreed budget in Northern Ireland?”

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42. “Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray)—I fear that my pronunciation may be slightly out—this is not an abstract matter; it is having a genuine impact on public services today and on the planning of public services for tomorrow. Uncertainty is building and—I am sorry to say this—there is no suggestion that it will be alleviated any time soon. In fact, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) mentioned, it appears that we are further from agreement now than we were at the start of the year, because there is disagreement within Sinn Féin on the proposals put forward. That begs an important question for the Government: what will happen next?”

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43. “I will also begin by congratulating the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), on making sure that we got this debate. It is clear that without her and the support of her Committee, we would not be discussing this incredibly important issue on the Floor of the House. I repeat the remarks made by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson): the Select Committee in this Parliament has been exemplary and given us high quality analysis, which has benefited debate on both sides of the House. We are here debating the estimate simply because the situation is becoming dire. As was said by the hon.”

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44. “I am pleased that the Government are looking at some sort of additional support for PSNI. I sense that the Secretary of State is about to move off legacy. I did ask him whether he had discussed the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill with the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) because, obviously, his view of the Bill will be critical for its future.”

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45. “I am sure that danger and excitement await the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in whatever comes next. The Government have always maintained that they have withheld material from the Mandelson case only at the request of the Metropolitan police, but a fortnight ago, a Daily Mail journalist spoke to the Metropolitan police, who insist that they did not ask for a crucial series of messages to be withheld. Can the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister explain why the Metropolitan police and the Government are saying different things?”

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46. “Obviously the House does not want to do anything prejudicial to a case, but it appears that the Metropolitan police are saying that some documents could be released without that being prejudicial to the case. I know that things will soon move on, but the Humble Address will remain in force, even if there is a new Prime Minister. If there is a criminal trial—and even if there is not—it is likely that more information will be released. As this has been a particularly novel way of using and responding to a Humble Address, it is likely that there will be a Select Committee inquiry into how the process ran. Will the right hon. Gentleman give a commitment now, at the Dispatch Box, that there is no material that the Government have withheld that the Metropolitan police have not explicitly asked to be withheld?”

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47. “This may be the last time I come up against the right hon. Gentleman during parliamentary questions. When we first faced each other nine months ago, I said that he was one of the most able performers in Government, and I still believe that to be the case. I think there will come a time when his party regrets the fact that he did not stand in this leadership contest. I think he would have lost—”

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48. “I was just trying to be nice, Mr Speaker. We will do it privately. Given that we may have a new Prime Minister on 16 July, does the right hon. Gentleman think that that new Prime Minister should take questions in the House before he goes off for the summer break?”

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49. “I am very glad to be the one to break the news that the right hon. Gentleman wants to keep his current job and not move to another role. This is a serious question. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it would be appropriate for the new Prime Minister to answer questions before the summer break? If so, will he make representations to the next Prime Minister?”

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50. “It is not in the Minister’s power to make a deal on his own, because it is a Treasury matter, but I am sure that, as a rising star within the Labour party, he has great friends in the Treasury and will use those friendships and connections to mark out what that arrangement might look like.”

    House of Commons9 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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