My Lords, I acknowledge and applaud the integrity with which the Minister introduced the Bill, and the way he articulated the problems that exist. Given the range of amendments apparently to be introduced by the Government, though, it is difficult to understand why we are actually debating this difficult and challenging Bill.
In starting my words, I pay tribute to all those with whom I have worked over the years. For 25 years, in one way or another, I have been in this business of investigating and overlooking the Troubles. I pay tribute to the people who came to me, particularly when I was Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, because that took a lot of courage. I remember one mother who came to me and was terrified; she knew the name of the person who had murdered her young son but was too afraid to tell me his name. As she sat at my table, I ran through the names of IRA men whom I had identified as working in the area until she nodded. That seemed to open some sort of gate, which enabled her to talk to me.
I think of the victims, including the police victims: people such as Constable Colleen McMurray, Detective Sergeant Joseph Campbell and Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick, the last soldier to die in Northern Ireland. I think of all the victims of all the shootings and bombings. The first I dealt with in some detail was Omagh, where 29 people and two unborn children died, which was really traumatic and went to the heart of what the Bill is about. One of the problems we have is that although most people who were in the security services and the forces in Northern Ireland served with great distinction and integrity, not all did. We have a significant problem in relation to many agents of the state. I think of people such as Stakeknife on the one side and those in the UVF on the other, who were engaged in terrible crimes.
Noble Lords have referred to the extent to which the Bill has been rejected by people, organisations, statutory organisations, former police officers and soldiers, including veterans who served honourably and have stated that criminals who served alongside them should
be prosecuted. It has also been rejected by numerous independent and distinguished human rights lawyers and other experts, the UN committees, the European Commissioner for Human Rights and so on.
However, at the heart of this, as we have heard tonight, the legacy of the Troubles lives on in the hearts of all of us who have been affected by them. I include all those affected by the deaths which occurred here in Westminster; I think of Airey Neave and of all the bombs that there were here in England. They live in my heart for my lost baby, who died before he was born in a bomb explosion; they live in the dreadful and murderous sectarian attack on my son when I was police ombudsman, which left him with terrible injuries. There was an investigation but we always knew that it would go nowhere, because people were so afraid of the loyalist paramilitaries that nobody would come forward to give evidence.
That is the legacy and reality of life in Northern Ireland, and it lives on still. On Saturday night, I will go to a place called Oristown in County Meath, where they are trying to recover the bodies of the remaining disappeared. There were three of them: Columba McVeigh, who was 17, Joe Lynskey and Captain Robert Nairac. It lives on in all our hearts and all our souls.
I did a search to find out how these new provisions will promote reconciliation. The word “reconciliation” is used in the Bill on 168 occasions, some 167 of which are in the titles of the Bill and the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. There is one other reference to “reconciliation”: Clause 44(4) provides for a study of memorialisations and requires that there must be consideration of
“how … memorialisation activities currently, or will in the future, promote reconciliation in Northern Ireland”.
That is the sole provision aimed at reconciliation. Can the Minister explain whether the Government intend to amend the Bill to provide mechanisms by which they might promote reconciliation?
The Bill does four very important things, which are being articulated here. It terminates existing criminal investigations into Troubles deaths, including the Kenova investigations, with which I am involved. It provides for review in limited circumstances, which may lead to prosecution but is very unlikely to. It terminates civil actions from 17 May this year, and there will be no Troubles inquests after May 2023. I hope that the Government will not come back and tell us that they will allow it to be May 2024, which would be an insult to people in Northern Ireland. All inquests currently under way but that have not reached the stage of substantive hearing must be terminated by the coroner. The Bill also provides for conditional immunity for those involved in the Troubles, as we heard.
Earlier proposals included roles for the Northern Ireland Department of Justice and the Northern Ireland Policing Board, but the Bill makes no provision for any involvement of any of the devolved part of Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State is even responsible for making decisions about memorialisation projects. Does the Minister not agree that, like so much in the Bill, this should be a matter for the devolved Government rather than the Secretary of State?
The Bill makes the commission the only body that can examine legacy cases throughout the UK. As noble Lords have said, the structures will lack operational independence. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that there will be changes in how the Chief Commissioner will be appointed. However, the Bill provides for extensive involvement by the Secretary of State in operational matters, including giving guidance to a whole range of bodies, including the commission, about the exercise of its function; proposing cases of death or harmful conduct for review; determining resources—we all know that the way to render a new institution impotent is to limit its funding and powers, and there is scope for both here; determining applications for immunity; monitoring the work of the commission; and guarding access to information.
The Secretary of State can rule that information is
“protected international information … which … if disclosed generally might, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, damage international relations.”
The Constitution Committee observes that Clause 4(1) prohibits the commission doing anything that might “prejudice … national security”. There is no provision for the review of any national security claims made by the Secretary of State.
Clause 2 provides for the work of the commission. The language of Bills is normally very carefully chosen. As has been said, the need for proper investigations of Troubles-related deaths was previously acknowledged, and the language has changed in the Bill. The functions of the commission include the review of deaths and harmful conduct and the production of reports on the review of each death. Reviews are not investigations; they are conducted to help a senior investigating officer who is investigating a crime, or is proposing to investigate an unsolved crime, to detect that crime by identifying lines of inquiry. There is national best practice for how to do a review so that it is thorough, is conducted with integrity and objectivity, looks at all investigative opportunities and makes recommendations for further investigation. Reviews are there to assist investigation, not to substitute for it. They should result in further investigation, not just final reports. I do not believe that it is an accident that the word “review” has suddenly appeared in the Bill.
One of the requirements under Article 2 for investigating the crimes of the Troubles, especially those crimes in which a state agent or actor has been involved— although many served with honour, there were hundreds of these crimes—is that the investigation be independent. Taken together, the structures created by the Bill restrict and inhibit the operational independence of the commission. The right to independent investigation is guaranteed, not only through the convention on human rights but through the Good Friday agreement and, most recently, Article 2 of the protocol, which provides for no diminution of our human rights. Your Lordships have been debating with great interest the effect of Article 2 in the protocol debate.
International bodies and eminent experts do not accept that the structures created in this Bill will satisfy the UK’s international and legal obligations. The powers available to the commission do not even appear to include unfettered use of police powers—the powers of the Secretary of State seem to extend even to the
use of those powers. This Bill does not provide the existing right of access to information held by state bodies. There is an obligation on state bodies only to provide information and documents that are “reasonably required”. As Police Ombudsman, I had a right to all information held by the PSNI. In other cases, I had to seek information from state agencies such as the MoD, MI5 and GCHQ. Sometimes they were helpful; on other occasions they were not. More recently, as a member of the international steering group for Operation Kenova—I have been there for nearly seven years—investigating the activities of the republican state agent known as “Stakeknife”, I have seen the difficulties experienced by this investigation, which was commissioned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. It is not a new problem. The language of this Bill will make the work of information retrieval from the state much more difficult.
Under the Bill, in addition to his other powers, the Secretary of State gives guidance as to the identification of sensitive information. Sensitive information includes anything held by GCHQ, MI5, the MoD, the Army, the PSNI and any British police force. The Secretary of State can issue regulations on the holding and handling of that information. Those regulations may create criminal offences. The Constitution Committee has said that this provision is constitutionally unacceptable because criminal offences should be created in the Bill itself, not by negative resolution, where there is no provision for amendment. In addition, the holding and handling of such information can be regulated by the Secretary of State, and they can even provide for biometric information to be destroyed.
The decision as to reasonableness—the Bill refers to information that is “reasonably required”—will be made by the state agencies, not by the commission. In many cases, I am sure that the MoD, MI5 and GCHQ will decline to provide access to much of the information they have. They will say this is necessary because the material is secret, or its disclosure may put lives or methodologies at risk. I have seen material classified as secret which should not have been. I saw that most recently when I was investigating the Metropolitan Police. The European Court of Human Rights has found that determinations of national security threats must not be arbitrary and must contain sufficient safeguards to give the individual adequate protection against arbitrary interference. I have seen methodologies protected that are no longer relevant. It is most unlikely that the commissioner will get access to what they need for review, or even for investigation.
We must add to these difficulties and restrictions the fact that the commission must grant immunity to a person who has requested it, and who has given an account of their own conduct that formed part of the Troubles that was true to the best of their knowledge and belief. Immunity is not possible for Troubles-related sexual offences. Both the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee have said that the power given to the Secretary of State to define sexual offences should be removed from the Bill. But what sort of regime prohibits immunity for sexual offences but grants immunity to murderers?
The Secretary of State can issue guidance on making a request for immunity or determining whether an immunity applicant’s conduct falls within the legislation
and is criminal conduct, et cetera. The Delegated Powers Committee says that the statutory guidance should be subject to parliamentary procedure. The Constitution Committee suggests that your Lordships may wish to consider whether the guidance should be incorporated in the Bill. There is no requirement to inform victims or family members of a request for immunity or the outcome of that request. Victims, family members or interested persons cannot provide information to inform the commission’s immunity decisions. In many cases, the families of murder victims have gathered vast amounts of information about the murder of their loved one which they could provide to the commission, as they have in the past provided it to me, and which might demonstrate that the applicant has not told the whole truth about his or her own criminality.
The Government, in response to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, said that they would expect the commission to inform families and that
“information about the granting of immunity should also be included in the published family reports”.
The whole immunity process will be vested in secrecy. There will be no transparency and no accessible accountability for the decisions made.
We also know that accounts given to members of families by those who were involved in the murders of their loved ones are very often inaccurate and sometimes wrong. The harm caused to families by inaccurate information cannot be overstated. There is no penalty for an offender not telling what they really know, although this may change. Where there cannot be a prosecution of an individual because they have immunity, that will impact on the ability to prosecute others for that offence, just as there have been difficulties in prosecuting pursuant to the operation of the current arrangements for assisting offenders under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
Even if the commissioner were to get access to information, to attempt to deal with the complications involving a request for immunity and to proceed to a review using police powers with a view to making a submission, there are very restrictive provisions as to the disclosure which may be made by the commission. In particular, paragraph 3 of Schedule 5 permits disclosure to a range of persons—the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Lord Advocate, a member of the police force, coroners, judges—but the Secretary of State must be notified. What is the purpose of notifying the Secretary of State? What is the Secretary of State going to do with the information? Why should case-sensitive information be disclosed in this way, rather than, for example, being dealt with under the normal rules for disclosure in prosecutions?
Paragraph 4 of Schedule 5 requires that proposed disclosure be notified to the Secretary of State, and he can then give consent for disclosure or withhold it if it would prejudice national security. Again, there is no clarity as to how this might impact on disclosure to the defence or, indeed, the prosecution in any criminal trial. What will be the impact of this provision? Can the Minister reassure the House that this will not have the potential to result in prohibition of the disclosure of material relevant to a prosecution? More importantly, what will the perception be of the victims?
These are not normal provisions. They build in delay. The Secretary of State has up to 60 days to make his first decision and 60 days to make his second decision, and that is for one piece of information. I can tell noble Lords that there are multiple pieces of sensitive information involved in any case. The power of the commissioner to submit a case for prosecution will be severely compromised by these provisions.
I have a few final points. The commission is charged to produce a historical record of the remaining deaths—those which it did not investigate. How will this record be created when there is no investigation? We already have that wonderful book, Lost Lives, which so many of us have used, which tells the story of every death of the Troubles. Will this process add anything to that work? Given that the commission’s work can be concluded or shut down
“if the Secretary of State is satisfied that the need … has ceased”,
the question must be, can the Minister confirm that the commission will be funded until its work is completed and that the work of the commission itself will not be terminated after five years? Cases will run on after the five years.
Our history is very complex. Somehow, a situation evolved in which the police, the Army and MI5, having successfully infiltrated terrorist organisations, lost their way. There grew a time when many of the agents of the state currently under investigation were allowed to carry on their involvement in terrorism to preserve them as agents. People died because of this, and it should not have happened. Even when they admitted their crimes to their handlers, they were just sent back on the street. As this emerged, as people began to realise that their loved ones had been murdered by people such as informants—agents of the state who had not been dealt with—there grew an ongoing sense of betrayal in both communities.
There were of course also cases in which members of the police and Army were involved in crime. I emphasise that I know that most officers served honourably. I dealt with so many of them in my time; I lectured them. I remember giving evidence to a Diplock court against an IRA man who had been gathering information against judges and police officers, with a view to a spectacular shooting. That was a difficult thing to do, but it had to be done.
All I want to do in my work on this Bill is to try and help noble Lords to ensure that it will provide justice and enable hope for the people who, like so many of our noble colleagues, have suffered so much through the Troubles.
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