Kemi Badenoch held a significant meeting today with veterans from Northern Ireland, urging the Prime Minister to reconsider the decision to remove immunity provisions from current Troubles legislation. The meeting comes amid growing concerns over Labour’s intent to repeal Northern Ireland’s legacy laws.

The Conservative leader, along with some prominent MPs, engaged in discussions with a group of former soldiers at Parliament. Their gathering took place as these veterans staged a protest against Labour’s proposed legislative changes that could impact those involved in past conflicts.

This meeting occurred just before an important Commons vote scheduled for Wednesday, where ministers are expected to push through a ‘remedial order.’ This order aims to amend the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act of 2023.

The proposed changes would eliminate the existing provisions that grant immunity from prosecution for individuals involved in Troubles-related crimes, provided they cooperate with a truth recovery body. Additionally, the Government’s remedial order intends to lift restrictions on filing new civil claims related to Troubles cases.

There is considerable concern that such actions might expose veterans to what some describe as ‘vindictive lawfare.’ In response, Kemi Badenoch has pledged to challenge Labour’s stance vigorously in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

There are fears the action will leave veterans exposed to ‘vindictive lawfare’, with Mrs Badenoch vowing to fight Labour in both the Commons and the Lords.

‘I support our veterans because it’s the right thing to do,’ she said. ‘Labour’s plans won’t just impact those veterans facing prosecution today, but also those thinking about joining our Armed Forces in the future.

‘Because why would anyone choose to serve and fight for their country if they don’t think the Government will have their backs afterwards?’ 

Ministers are taking the action after the High Court in Belfast ruled that parts of the 2023 Act were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The previous Tory administration was in the process of appealing that decision, but the new Labour Government dropped the appeal after the 2024 general election.

Labour has now introduced its own Troubles Bill to replace the Act and end the immunity scheme in that legislation.

Mrs Badenoch met with veterans after earlier urging Sir Keir Starmer to ‘do the right thing’ and abandon the Government’s plans.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions at Wednesday lunchtime, the Tory leader said: ‘We support our Armed Forces in every possible way.

‘Later today, my party will vote to protect our veterans from unfair prosecution. He is ordering his MPs to vote against them.

‘In our national interest, and for the sake of all the brave people in the Armed Forces, past, present and future, will the PM do the right thing and vote in support of our veterans, not against them?’

Sir Keir replied: ‘Under the last government, they passed legislation which was struck down, leaving our veterans utterly exposed.

‘We’re putting in place proper measures to protect them.’

Speaking later in the Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said the 2023 Act ‘fundamentally failed’ because it was incompatible with the UK’s human rights obligations.

He said: ‘One of the main reasons for the failure of the legacy Act was its attempt to grant immunity, including to terrorists who murdered in cold blood soldiers and civilians in Northern Ireland and in towns and cities across England.

‘Now, it probably, in fairness, seemed reassuring to veterans, it was almost certainly reassuring to terrorists who had committed those acts.

‘But it was a false promise, and it protected no one.’

He added: ‘The Government is clear that these repeals need to happen as quickly as possible.

‘Why? Because we need to provide clarity on immunity to build trust amongst victims, survivors and indeed veterans in the independent commission.

‘Because while immunity remains on the statute book, it will be harder for them to obtain the confidence of some victims and survivors.’

Alex Burghart, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, argued the remedial order was a ‘continuation of the Troubles by other means’ and it was time to draw a line under it.

Mr Burghart said he agreed with fellow Conservative MP Lincoln Jopp, who described it as a ‘proxy war’ to ‘relitigate the question ‘who won?”.

Senior Tory MP Sir David Davis warned Labour’s Bill will ‘reopen the door to criminal prosecutions against our veterans’.

‘This week is the beginning of a process which will expose British soldiers, particularly the SAS, to vindictive lawfare in Northern Ireland,’ he wrote in an article for the Daily Mail, which can be read in full below.

‘Veterans face decades of investigation, repeated questioning, and public suspicion, even when there is no realistic prospect of a charge.

‘In at least one case, a veteran has already died from a heart attack under the strain. His family say the stress of a 20-year legal ordeal killed him.

‘Any such trial will be unable to understand the realities our veterans faced.

‘These were men operating under the rule of law, under sustained threat and live fire, forced to make split-second, life-or-death decisions.

‘No retrospective investigation, conducted decades later in a wholly different context, can ever hope to comprehend the circumstances under which those decisions were made.

‘The consequences are now being felt by the two million veterans across the country who rightfully feel betrayed.’

The Government has said it will introduce new protections for veterans, including protection from repeated investigations, a right to give evidence remotely, protections for health in old age, a right to seek anonymity and a protection from cold calling.

Mr Benn said: ‘Today, I am asking the House to endorse a remedial order to remove indefensible and legally defective provisions contained in the previous government’s Legacy Act.

‘This remedial order is essential to rebuild the trust of communities across Northern Ireland who are opposed to the idea that the terrorists who murdered their loved ones could be granted immunity from prosecution if they came forward to the commission.

‘It also restores the historic right of citizens of this country to seek redress through the courts.’

‘Labour’s Bill will revive vindictive lawfare against veterans’

By Sir David Davis, MP for Goole and Pocklington

This week is the beginning of a process which will expose British soldiers, particularly the SAS, to vindictive lawfare in Northern Ireland.

On Wednesday, the Government will use a technical instrument known as a remedial order to overturn, in part, legislation passed in 2023 by the Conservatives that stopped the lawfare carried out by IRA sympathisers against our veterans.

This is the first stage of Labour’s Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which will reopen the door to criminal prosecutions against our veterans.

Let me give you an example.

In 1987, at Loughgall – the greatest single defeat of the IRA by the SAS – eight heavily armed IRA murderers were stopped on their way to kill again. They attempted to blow up Loughgall police station with a 400-pound bomb carried in a digger, which they detonated, also subjecting the building to withering fire with a hail of bullets from automatic weapons. The SAS shot the eight terrorists dead.

One of the IRA members killed was Patrick Kelly, the Officer in Command of the East Tyrone Brigade, a unit responsible for around 250 murders. Intelligence linked Kelly personally to at least five killings, including the murders of two UDR soldiers.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, has now promised a sister of this same terrorist a new inquest into the events at Loughgall.

One of Patrick Kelly’s sisters said, ‘I have never denied that my brother went out to blow up a barracks [police station], but they were unmanned barracks. He went out to blow up, not to kill.’

This is absurd. Immediately after the bomb detonated, they fired battlefield-calibre weapons at the building, no doubt in the expectation of killing any policeman who emerged. What is more, the eight terrorists and their weapons were implicated in at least 40 previous murders.

We should not be placating the family members of terrorists at the expense of our veterans.

Uniquely in Northern Ireland these dead terrorists are described as ‘victims’. In 2006 the Blair government passed a law which said, in effect, that a serial murderer who was killed in the process of trying to carry out another murder would be described as a victim. Nowhere else in Britain, indeed nowhere else in the civilised world, is this ridiculous definition applied.

Even the courts are beginning to realise the absurdity of these inquests and trials. In a recent Judicial Review against a soldier who served during the troubles, a judge warned, ‘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.’

What the judge said of this case will be true of all of them.

Some have said there will be no convictions even if it true, that is not the point.

The issue is this – the punishment is the process.

Veterans face decades of investigation, repeated questioning, and public suspicion, even when there is no realistic prospect of a charge.

In at least one case, a veteran has already died from a heart attack under the strain. His family say the stress of a 20-year legal ordeal killed him.

Any such trial will be unable to understand the realities our veterans faced. These were men operating under the rule of law, under sustained threat and live fire, forced to make split-second, life-or-death decisions.

No retrospective investigation, conducted decades later in a wholly different context, can ever hope to comprehend the circumstances under which those decisions were made.

The consequences are now being felt by the two million veterans across the country who rightfully feel betrayed.

In November, nine former four-star generals intervened publicly, calling the Bill morally incoherent and warning that it posed a ‘direct threat to national security’.

They delivered a clear warning: highly trained special forces soldiers are resigning.

It is regrettable that this warning has not been heeded – or acted upon – given the very real and increasing threats we face internationally.

These men are irreplaceable.

To compound the concern, over Christmas, seven former senior SAS officers wrote a letter warning that ‘in this Troubles Bill, the Government is complicit in this war on our Armed Forces’.

And now, most recently, the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, appointed by this very Labour Government, spoke out. He said that the Bill treats veterans as ‘worse than terrorists’ and is ‘eating at the very fabric of the Armed Forces’.

Soldiers now ask a chilling question: Should I take my lawyer with me when I speak to my commanding officer?

That is no trivial concern – it fundamentally weakens the operational effectiveness of our Armed Forces by forcing them to second-guess themselves.

On the battlefield, doubt costs lives.

But this issue extends far beyond our domestic debate. It is now beginning to damage our military relationship with the United States. Even the Vice President, JD Vance, has raised serious concerns.

At its core, the problem lies in the unchecked power of coroners’ inquests in Northern Ireland, public inquiries, and criminal prosecutions. These are mechanisms increasingly used not to uncover the truth, but to rewrite it for political aims.

The Government now intends to push through a remedial order as the first step to revive this lawfare. This is not justice. The Government must stop.