My right hon. Friend knows the subject incredibly well; he did the job with distinction and was widely liked and admired in Northern Ireland. He will understand the difficulty of grappling with some of this. As I said earlier, I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for having the courage to pick this up and have a go—there is a reason why Governments have not done a lot.
My right hon. Friend talks about bending justice. Seriously courageous decisions were taken to bring that dreadful period in the history of Northern Ireland and our United Kingdom to an end. People who had been convicted of the most appalling offences were released early. We are operating in a very contested space, but we are absolutely determined to do the right thing by those who need to be at the heart of the matter—those who suffered and those who lost their lives.
The Bill very clearly defines what a troubles-related offence is. It specifies that such an offence
“is ‘serious’ if the offence…is murder, manslaughter or culpable homicide…another offence that was committed by causing the death of a person, or”,
as my right hon. Friend says, if it
“was committed by causing a person to suffer serious physical or mental harm”.
Those are the definitions with which the information recovery body will have to engage to make very finely balanced judgments.