QUENTIN LETTS: The veterans, some superbly whiskered, stiffened their spines as Kipling was quoted

To the sharply-curtailed committee stage of the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, where Conservative spokesman Mark Francois spoke up for Forces veterans pursued by Irish republican ‘lawfare’.

Mr Francois, a man of emphatic patriotism, cited Rudyard Kipling’s Tommy poem – the one in which Kipling notes the propensity of our elite to exploit stoical infantrymen: ‘For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”

‘But it’s “saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;

‘An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;

‘An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool, you bet that Tommy sees!’

From the Strangers’ Gallery he was watched by a line of ex-soldiers, uniformed and heavily medalled. Their berets marked them out from the usual visitors who tend to be tourists or school children. These veterans, some of them superbly whiskered, sat motionless; but from the far end of the Commons chamber one could sense a certain stiffening of their spines at that Kipling.

The verse met with less approval from Pamela Nash (Lab, Motherwell, Wishaw & Carluke). She was sitting just behind her boss, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Bryant. You could not really miss her. Labour colleagues call her ‘wee Pammy’ yet she is not everyone’s ideal of a tandem partner.

Mr Bryant, the Cabinet’s most felicitous parliamentarian, had opened the debate with a diplomatic speech. Ulster unionists expressed dissatisfaction at the Bill but they seemed better disposed towards Mr Bryant, fairly or not, than they usually were to his predecessor Hilary Benn.

Mr Benn was on the backbenches. Some of those who left office at the end of the Starmer era have not been seen since in the Commons but Mr Benn has not sulked.

The same could not be said of ‘wee Pammy’. Ms Nash, in response to Mr Francois’s poetry, adopted an odd pose. She raised her arms behind her head and her outer lip protruded some distance. It started to curl.

Her body language conveyed disgust. Mr Francois completed his remarks by claiming that the Dublin government had ‘turned a blind eye for decades to republican violence’ and that elderly British veterans, without whose bravery there would never have been a Good Friday Agreement, had been treated abominably by the legal system. ‘Shameful!’ bellowed Ms Nash at Mr Francois. ‘Disgraceful!’ She shook her head to accentuate her displeasure.

Was she agreeing with him about the way our soldiers had been chased through the courts? No. The generous among you may wonder if she was perhaps passing critical literary judgment on the stanza quoted by Mr Francois. Perhaps ‘wee Pammy’ is simply not a Kipling woman and leans more to the free-form work of a writer such as e.e. cummings. Again, that seems unlikely.

The Hon Lady has not previously, so far as I can recall, expressed much interest in the humanities. She is an alumna of that fine institution, the University of Glasgow, but she read politics, specialising in, cough, human rights.

Colum Eastwood (SDLP, Foyle) – who happens to be the lover of Andy Burnham’s right-hand woman, Louise Haigh – took exception to what he saw as Mr Francois’s undue attention to republican violence. Mr Francois accepted that there were murderous barbarians on both sides of the community.

Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionists, was dismayed that the worst atrocity in the Troubles, the 1998 Omagh bomb, would not be covered by the Bill owing to an arbitrary cut-off date. How convenient for the IRA bombers.

Mr Robinson illustrated how difficult things had been for our troops. One, whose comrades had been killed, went on patrol and heard a clink. He thought it came from a gun and he was about to shoot when he realised it came from an elderly woman holding milk bottles. ‘He nearly shot an unarmed civilian,’ said Mr Robinson.

By this time, thank goodness, oafish Pamela Nash had left. Can Mr Bryant not find a better parliamentary private secretary?

Labour ministers are accused of betrayal over the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill