My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments. First, I was struck during the debate by this distinction between investigations and reviews. Everyone agrees that investigations should follow but the question is whether there should be prosecutions. There are arguments around whether a review is really an investigation—do the families really get the facts? If we could agree that an investigation was not always followed by a prosecution, this may be something that we could start to agree on.
Secondly, it seems that there is a broad consensus that, as an approach, Kenova is good. The standards of connection to the families and of investigation have been supported by the people who most need this—namely, those who have lost family members.
Finally, there is a bit of a definitional issue around the difference between a review and an investigation, and we will have to address that at some point. One of the things about an investigation is that, obviously, there is always an interview with the suspect. It has to be conducted by the rules of evidence and there is the potential for a charge at the end. One of the dilemmas with any review, including Kenova, is that a review can consider material that is not evidence. I will make two broad points in that area.
First, as we have heard, Kenova is looking at intelligence material from other countries as well as from within the UK. It may be able to look at such material but it will not be able to quote it or quote it in a court. Secondly, it is impossible to use intercept material—intercepted communications, usually by telephone—as evidence in the UK unless it has been obtained in a jurisdiction in which it is legally possible to use it as
evidence. It is ironic, but that is our system. Reviews are able to consider telephone communications that may be indicative of, but not evidence of, certain actions or charges. That dilemma has to be resolved at some point because although the reviewer may be led by such communications to conclude that one particular person was responsible or a crime was committed in a certain way, they cannot quote it in a court of law—it regularly now has to be held back in serious and organised crime and terrorism cases. The only information that can be quoted in a court is the fact that the telephone call occurred, the time it occurred, who was at either end of the communication, and, more recently, where they were when they made the call, because there is information on mobiles. I raise this not because it is an easy answer for the Minister to give but because it is fair to put that dilemma in this domain.