Not the Secretary of State but the director of investigations, because the commission will be operationally independent from government.
In paying tribute to Jon Boutcher for the work he has done, a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hain, spoke about scaling up Kenova. I do not have the transcript in front of me, but the noble Lord referred to Mr Boutcher’s evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in the other place. He acknowledged that, while some aspects of his work could be built on and scaled up, not all of it could, so there are difficulties.
To give an example of the scale of this, the noble Lord’s amendment would require a criminal investigation in every case, and given that the Police Service of Northern Ireland currently has a caseload of around 1,000, the danger is that we would spend significant resource, but also, more importantly, significant time, dealing with this backlog, which would mean that we
would spend almost as long investigating the legacy of the Troubles as the Troubles themselves lasted, which I think is not something anybody wants.
7.45 pm
On Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and others, she is absolutely right to predict some of my response, which is that Section 6 of the Human Rights Act would already place the commission, as a public authority, under a duty to act in a way compatible with all convention rights. In cases where prosecution remains a possibility, we would expect the body to follow best practice applicable to criminal investigations and to ensure that any subsequent criminal proceedings are not prejudiced because of deficiencies at the investigation stage.
I am conscious of time. To conclude, the Government are of the view that Amendment 76 in my name addresses the concerns raised by parliamentarians and international bodies: others will almost certainly disagree. In our view, it provides clear instructions to the commission, without needing to amend the entire legislation. I ask therefore that noble Lords do not press their amendments in this group, as I will not press mine, and we will return to discussions and debates on these matters at a later stage.