My Lords, if I were still Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and someone had suggested to me that the Bill should be introduced and then, immediately after suggesting it, said that all the international bodies concerned with human rights, Members of Congress in the United States, every single political party in Northern Ireland, every Church in Northern Ireland, and more or less everyone in Northern Ireland was against it, you might understand what my response would have been. The Bill certainly would not have ended up in this Chamber.
What I do not underestimate is the problem that the Minister and Government face. Of course, we have to try to resolve these issues—we have been 25 years trying to resolve these issues, and we did not do it when we did the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, because there were all sorts of other things to do. We have tried and tried, not least with the Eames-Bradley report, which I am sure the noble and right reverend Lord remembers. However, there is a dilemma: should the Government abandon the Bill—should they dump it? I think they probably should—or should it be improved? That is the work of the House of Lords, which is trying to improve it, to see whether there is any consensus at all among political parties here and in Northern Ireland as to what should replace it.
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The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, introduced a large number of very interesting amendments. They were not only interesting but in line with the principles of the Good Friday agreement, which is based on the European Convention on Human Rights in some respects. Each of those amendments, which she very ably spoke to, indicated how we could indeed have a situation in which reviews were replaced by investigations and stay within the European convention. At the moment, if you have a grievance, if you are a victim or the member of a family of a victim, you can have an inquest, go to civil action, go to criminal action and go to prosecution—and we are going to get a review. It is not good enough. The Minister and the Government have appreciated that, and presumably the Minister will touch on the amendment that would ensure that there could be investigations, if the Chief Commissioner so wished, which could replace the review. But they are not in compliance with the ECHR in the same way as in the amendments introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan.
Of course, I must refer to my noble friend Lord Hain, who very successfully and, I think, memorably introduced his amendments on Operation Kenova,
about Jon Boutcher’s system and the methods that he has used over the last number of years. I have talked to him too, and he is a very considerable person in every respect. Operation Kenova could be used, as it is tried and trusted right across the board, and it would be an excellent alternative to the system that nobody wants. If you want this legislation to succeed, this is an ideal way—although of course it would have to be refined—to do that. I do not know the ins and outs of whether it would take longer or be more expensive and so on—but I think “poppycock” probably applies to that in every sense.
I hope that the Government will have a very serious look at this proposal, because it might save the Bill—not save it in the sense of whether it would go through the two Houses of Parliament, but save it in that, whatever happens here, if it goes back to Northern Ireland and nobody wants it, it is doomed. It is as a simple as that—but it could be saved. It is significant that we have had two former Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police speak powerfully in favour of the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Hain. Perhaps above all else, the Operation Kenova system, if you can call it that, puts the victims at its very heart. Frankly, that is what is missing in the current proposals that the Government are putting forward—so I suggest to the Minister that it is not just worth considering but that he must consider it.