In a letter to The Telegraph, published on Saturday night, Gen Sir Peter Wall, Gen Sir Nick Parker, Gen Sir Richard Barrons and Gen Sir Chris Deverell accuse the Prime Minister of treating veterans of the campaign as “expendable pawns in political manoeuvres”. That, they write, is “a betrayal of the trust they held in their Government when under fire”. The state must not “break the vital bond of trust between the soldier and the State”, the letter warns.
Between them, the four held some of the most senior commands in the British Army. Sir Peter was Chief of the General Staff from 2010 to 2014. Sir Nick was Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces from 2010 to 2012 and, as a lieutenant general, the last General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland, overseeing the withdrawal of troops from the province’s streets when Operation Banner ended in July 2007. Sir Richard headed Joint Forces Command from 2013 to 2016. Sir Chris held the same post from 2016 to 2019.
The Telegraph published the letter under the headline: “Duplicity of Burnham’s ministers threatens the bond between soldiers and the State.”
The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill would repeal and replace key parts of the 2023 Legacy Act, passed under the Conservatives. That act established the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), introduced a conditional immunity scheme for Troubles-related offences and ended civil claims and inquests arising from the Troubles. Parts of it were later found by the High Court in Northern Ireland and the Court of Appeal to be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. The Government says more than 1,100 families, among them over 200 Armed Forces families, had investigations into their loved ones’ deaths shut down when the act’s provisions came into force in May 2024.
According to the House of Commons Library, the bill would reform and rename the ICRIR as the Legacy Commission, with expanded powers to conduct criminal investigations and inquisitorial proceedings modelled on public inquiries. The 38 inquests halted by the Legacy Act would be revived, some returning to the coronial system and others dealt with by the Legacy Commission. In response to the court rulings, the Government has also brought forward a remedial order to remove the act’s conditional immunity scheme and allow halted civil claims to resume. Ministers say the legislation is intended to fix “flawed and failed” arrangements “in a way that honours our duty towards veterans”, and the framework includes six protections for veterans, among them a right not to be forced to travel to give evidence and protection from repeated investigations.
The bill implements the framework agreement with the Irish government announced at Hillsborough Castle in September 2025 by Hilary Benn, then Northern Ireland Secretary, and the Tánaiste, Simon Harris. Both governments presented it as a way of replacing arrangements they judged to have failed, securing answers for families and obtaining the “fullest possible co-operation” of the Irish authorities, including a new legacy unit in An Garda Síochána and a new cross-jurisdictional information recovery body. The announcement itself makes no mention of relations with the European Union. It was struck, however, while Sir Keir Starmer’s government was pursuing a wider reset with Brussels, and The Telegraph reported that the framework formed part of that effort. That connection is what the generals allege, and what ministers deny.
The four say they have spent the past year pressing for changes. According to their letter, they attended formal discussions with the Northern Ireland and Defence Secretaries, accompanied by their own lawyers, and were given what they describe as “a decent hearing” for their amendments. Ministers assured them the two sides were “not far apart” and that there could be “scope for a workable compromise”, the letter says.
Ministers are understood to have advised the generals in recent days that key parts of the bill were non-negotiable because of the agreement with Dublin, which the Government has said is aimed at enabling “truth for families of the Troubles”. The four respond in the letter that if the legacy framework needed adjusting to secure proper protections, “so be it”, adding: “It may be hard but it is also necessary.”
MPs backed the bill at second reading on 18 November 2025 by 320 votes to 105. It was carried over into the current session in April, and the Joint Committee on Human Rightsreported last month that the bill was still awaiting committee stage. The Secretary of State announced in April that the Government intends to bring forward a “substantial package of amendments”, including veterans protections, when the committee stage begins. The Government has told MPs it wants the remaining Commons stages dealt with this month, and has indicated that the amendment package will be published in mid October.
Veterans’ groups argue that the bill could leave former soldiers exposed to repeated or vexatious proceedings in circumstances they say are not replicated for former paramilitaries. That is the case the four generals have now put in writing.
“The framework is something that was pulled together to enable us to start to foster better relationships with the EU,” Sir Peter said. “Various measures have been put into the agreement to satisfy the Irish government, which takes a republican stance. What we are told by Chris Bryant is that to revisit it would mean starting negotiations all over again. He has said it would take too much time. So essentially what you’ve got is the government relationship with Dublin taking primacy over its sense of duty to our veterans and its future soldiers.”
The “motivation to forge better relations with the EU”, he said, was “overriding any sense of duty” to Northern Ireland veterans, many of whom served in the SAS. They were “operating absolutely legitimately against the IRA’s intentions”, he said, and “did it very successfully and eventually brought the IRA to its knees”. In his view, Sinn Féin’s motive is to rewrite the campaign as “an essential freedom-fighting response to British oppression”.
Sir Nick told The Telegraph: “It is becoming very clear to us that we are not being treated as seriously as we believe we should be. It makes me feel that the government doesn’t understand its responsibility for the security and defence of its people. It doesn’t understand its contract with those who serve it.”
In the letter, the generals set out why they believe the process falls disproportionately on former state personnel. The IRA kept no records, they write, unlike the Government and the security forces, so investigations lean on the state’s paperwork. Parts of republicanism, they argue, have spent decades using inquests, inquiries and litigation to recast the Troubles as “oppression by the British State”. The result, they say, is “rinse and repeat”: one taxpayer-funded case after another, with no finality for anyone caught up in it. Their proposed remedy is a threshold, that cases may restart only on “new and compelling evidence”. “We are not asking for immunity,” they write, “but we are asking for proper protection from unfair process.” Under the bill as drafted, the possibility of gaining immunity from prosecution would be removed altogether.
The four joined the veterans’ campaign on the bill 18 months ago, according to the letter, and first wrote to Sir Keir’s government in Remembrance week last year. They say they received public assurances that they would be kept abreast of the bill’s progress. Sir Keir left Downing Street in July, and the warning in the letter is addressed to “Mr Burnham’s Government”, that of Andy Burnham, who became Prime Minister on 20 July.
Sir Chris Bryant rejects the charge. Veterans who served on Operation Banner, the longest continuous deployment of Armed Forces personnel in British military history, are owed “a huge debt of gratitude”, the Northern Ireland Secretary said, adding: “There is no equivalence whatsoever between the acts of soldiers doing their lawful duty, and those of terrorists.”
He said the commitments secured for information to be shared by the Irish authorities were “unprecedented” and did not prevent the Government from doing “what is necessary to safeguard our former service personnel”. “We remain in close, constructive dialogue with former senior officers,” he said. “Nobody should underestimate the importance of getting answers for veterans’ families, who remain the largest contingent of people applying to the Commission.”
A source close to the Secretary of State went further, describing the framework as “markedly similar to the Stormont House agreement” negotiated in 2014 and “nothing to do with resetting relations with the EU”. It is, the source said, “about enabling answers for the more than 1,000 UK families who lost loved ones and still don’t know how they died, and ensuring the Irish authorities play their part in this, including through sharing information held by the Gardai”.
Richard Thomson, a former Royal Marine and National Director of the Great British PAC, said:
“This is a betrayal. Pure and simple.
“Britain sent these men into Northern Ireland. Britain gave them their orders. They did their duty, and many have already been investigated and cleared.
“Now, decades later, Labour is prepared to drag them back through the system again.
“No one is above the law. But without compelling new evidence, a cleared veteran should not face endless investigations.
“Chris Bryant lacks the backbone to defend that principle. He would rather protect Labour’s deal with Dublin than protect the men and women who protected this country.
“And every serving soldier is watching and thinking: if the state abandons its veterans today, will it abandon me tomorrow?
“Our Armed Forces kept their promise to Britain. It is time Britain kept its promise to them.”
The generals have left little doubt about what they make of the answer they received. In their account, ministers offered a fair hearing before treating central elements of the Dublin framework as non-negotiable. It is on that basis that they accuse the Government of “duplicity”.
The letter closes with the warning the dispute turns on: “There is no plausible route for Mr Burnham’s Government that successfully privileges political expediency over breaking the vital bond of trust between the soldier and the State. On its current path the Government will fail its veterans and will undermine our future security.”
Their proposed route to compromise is on the record too. If protecting veterans means adjusting the framework agreement with Dublin, they write, “so be it: it may be hard but it is also necessary.“
