My Lords, I must make an apology because the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is unable to be in his place and I did not leap up quickly enough to speak to Amendment 147. I shall infuse into my comments on Amendment 166 some of what I would have said on Amendment 147.
My approach here is going to be brief. I am no expert on Northern Ireland. There are many people who live there and are experts. I spent two years as HMIC for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and I was head of the Met, which leads on counterterrorism investigations for the United Kingdom. That is the extent of my experience.
My interest in this Bill stems from a couple of things. First, my instinct is always that murderers and others who commit serious crime should not get away with it. However, I would subsume that interest if the people involved believe that no further action should be taken. The more this Bill has been heard in its various stages, the more I have been persuaded that no one from Northern Ireland supports this Bill and nor do many other people, which makes it rather difficult to support it in principle. My comments are really about how to mitigate some of the damages, should the Bill became law rather than whether it should become law, because it seems that it does not have the support of the people of Northern Ireland or, most importantly, the families and people who were most affected by the Troubles.
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In Amendment 166, we are trying to improve the DPP code relating to prosecutors. Account must be taken of the views of the families and those most affected before a prosecution decision is made not to
prosecute. The amendment also looks at whether they consider the number of offences that might have been committed, the amount of time since they were committed and what involvement some of the people have. We think that would improve the way that these judgments are made.
I was not able to speak to Amendment 147, but what really concerns me is that under Operation Kenova, which has been talked about an awful lot in various discussions in this House, 127 incidents are already being investigated by that team, and there are presently over 30 files with the DPP, as there have been since February 2020. That means there is a series of families who are waiting for an answer. It also means that an awful lot of witnesses have come forward and put themselves at risk already. For them to have taken that risk but then to find that there is no further action—neither a charge nor a court hearing where that would be appropriate—seems to be a significant failure of duty on behalf of the Government to the people who have put themselves forward to take those risks on our behalf.
Any investigation has various stages. The first is engagement—talking with the families and building a level of trust. The team seems to have done that in some very difficult circumstances, particularly where the state is alleged to have been involved with some of the attacks. That has taken an awful lot of work, and to destroy it at this stage in these cases would be rather terrible because that trust, hard-won, is easily lost, and I argue that this is not the time to do that.
Of course, the investigation itself takes some time. A file has to be prepared. We have heard already that there are many files with the DPP, and surely what has to happen is that those files are considered and eventually all the investigations are completed. I realise that this is difficult for the Government because it would mean shifting the line by which they will allow the commission to start its work, but in the case of Kenova it is vital that these cases are considered and allowed to continue into the future.