JOHNNY MERCER has withdrawn his support for Theresa May’s government over what he called the “injustice” of Northern Ireland veterans being prosecuted for Troubles-era offences.

The Tory MP for Plymouth Moor View made the move despite police statistics contradicting his claim that there was a “witch-hunt” against former British soldiers. 

In his letter to the Prime Minister on Wednesday night, Mr Mercer said the “macabre spectacle of elderly veterans being dragged back to Northern Ireland … is too much.”

He accused prosecutors of seeking to “to refight that conflict through other means, without any protection from a government who sent them almost 50 years ago.”

However Police Service of Northern Ireland figures obtained by the BBC in 2017 showed that killings by the army only accounted for around 30 per cent of its legacy workload.

The majority of ongoing police probes into the Troubles focus on killings by republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

And Mr Mercer’s bold claim comes just months after the Public Prosecution Service decided to charge only one of the 21 soldiers who opened fire on Bloody Sunday in 1972.

In March prosecutors filed double murder charges against Soldier F who admitted to the Saville inquiry firing 13 rounds on that day.

Is there a witch-hunt?

Research by the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) in 2018 found that just four British soldiers have been convicted of murdering civilians during the Troubles.

All four were freed just five years into their life sentences and allowed to rejoin the British army.

The PFC has said that this small number of prosecutions “hardly amounts to a ‘witch-hunt’.” 

The human rights group also warned that in the early years of the Troubles there was a gentlemen’s agreement between the police, army and the Attorney General to try not to investigate killings by the military.

This agreement, which lasted until 1973, explains why it is some of the oldest incidents from the Troubles that are only now being properly investigated.

The government said in 2018 that any veterans convicted now of a Troubles-era offence would benefit from the early release scheme under the Good Friday Agreement and would only serve a maximum of two years.

This would includes offences as serious as murder, although Mr Mercer has demanded a total amnesty from prosecution for soldiers.