My Lords, I give my support to Amendment 154A, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Faulks and Lord Godson. We are now on the fourth day of Committee, but it has been six months since this Bill was first introduced to the Lords. I kept hoping that, as time went on and on, somebody in the Government would think that this was one of the Bills that they should be retreating on and getting rid of, as they seem to be doing with so many other Bills. But here we are, and so we want to ensure that we end up with the best Bill possible.
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I am delighted that such senior noble Lords as the noble Lords, Lord Howell, Lord Butler and Lord Macdonald, are all here today supporting Amendment 154A. It is a common-sense amendment. When I asked a question some time ago on this issue and the failure to comply with the Carltona principle, I was assured that something would be done to sort it. This is a real opportunity, which I am sure the Minister realises, to change the legalisation. This compensation could run to millions of pounds. Nobody should underestimate that, although the whole issue around Gerry Adams has not got a huge amount of publicity, everyone who thinks they have got a chance of getting compensation will apply, and it will be a huge amount of money. This amendment is crucial to ensuring that people in Northern Ireland feel confident that the injustice of people getting compensation for an administrative error is going to be dealt with.
I add my support for what the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said about the RUC, the UDR and our Armed Forces. I am afraid that we are seeing the rewriting of history. It is very important that we in this Committee remember the sacrifice of so many people who defended people in Northern Ireland—particularly those members of the Armed Forces working in border areas. It is very sad that so many terrorists absconded over the border, having bombed or killed, and the Irish Government did very little—in fact, they refused—to send back many of those people. We must always look at this in the context of where the real problem was, and that was with terrorists, not with the Armed Forces.
Sadly, we are seeing more and more lawfare, where lawyers are able to continue probing incidents where individual soldiers and individual members of the UDR and the RUC killed someone and perhaps a mistake was made. The balance has got to be that we treat people and victims fairly. Sadly, victims and the families of victims killed by terrorists in some of the
big atrocities are not getting that justice; they are not getting ombudsmen or inquiries into what happened. That is why people from all sides have different ideas of why this legacy Bill is not going to help stop that kind of lawfare.
I hope that the Minister will come back at the end and say that he does not think, as the noble Baroness, who is no longer in her place, said, that Amendment 154A needs much detailed scrutiny. It is very simple and it addresses something that should not have happened, and will make sure that compensation cannot happen.
I also ask the Minister this. Who decided the salary that the new head of the ICRIR will be getting? It was reported in the media that they will be getting £150,000. I would be interested to know who made the decision about the salary, or whether that is just media speculation.