My Lords, this has been a very impressive, rather stunning debate. I have tabled Clause 18 stand part, which would effectively omit immunity from the Bill. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, quite rightly mentioned that this debate, and this and subsequent clauses, are at the heart of the legislation. Without them, there would be no Bill and no argument. If anybody reads in Hansard, or watches on television, the last two hours of debate in your Lordships’ House—and I hope they do—they will see how strong the feeling is across these Benches. This is not just because people do not like it but because noble Lords have spoken from deep experience over decades in Northern Ireland, from living there, being Ministers there, or whatever
it might be, unanimous in the belief that this immunity, this amnesty—they are the same thing—should be dropped.
The other unanimous view in the debate was that the legislation completely ignores the victims: it is not about them, whereas it should be. Looking back over the last 25 years—particularly, I suppose, at the agreement—as I was saying to someone today, there were a number of things that we could have done and did not. We did many things when we introduced the agreement, but we could have improved on how we dealt with victims. In the years that followed, there were brave attempts: the Eames-Bradley review and others all tried to put right that which was not right a quarter of a century ago. What is certain is that this legislation does not. To the contrary, it makes things worse. Over 25 years, I have never experienced such unanimity on a difficult issue like this in Northern Ireland—I have experienced much disunity—so it cannot be right that we go ahead.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made the interesting point about whether we should go ahead with the Bill, as it is so bad. Then the noble Lord, Lord Hain, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and others put their amendments forward, all first class with excellent speeches. They give an opportunity to improve it. Revocation of immunity, conditional immunity and licensing around immunity would all certainly improve it. The whole issue of trying to improve it was discussed last week in our first day of debates on Kenova. That is a dilemma for us in this House. We could have done nothing, let the Bill go through on the nod, and said that it was so bad that we would have to wait for a change of Government to repeal it, which the leader of my party has said that he will do. But there is a duty on us to try to ensure that it is not as bad as it is at the moment when it leaves this Chamber and goes back to the other place.
This part of the Bill in particular goes fundamentally against the rule of law. If I thought for one second that we could salvage some of this, that would be all well and good. But my feeling is that the Government simply want to go ahead, come what may. The amendments that they have put forward are all right, but they do not go far enough. My plea, and, I am sure, that of everybody in this Chamber, is to drop it.