My Lords, I support everything that the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said and his Amendments 172 and—in particular—173; it has been a long time coming, and we need to make that definition of victim the same across the United Kingdom.
I will speak to my Amendments 174ZA and 174A. Amendment 174ZA addresses a problem with the Government’s funding body, UK Research and Innovation—UKRI—councils. Many of us who are interested in legacy are concerned about what seems the one-sided nature of much of the academic research into our past and the way that UKRI funding has
been monopolised by what seems to be a single legal view. That view is radical and investigates faults only with the United Kingdom state and its security responses during the Troubles.
I cite here Queen’s University’s transitional justice department, which produced the model legacy bill referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and others. Almost alone, that department has received some £4 million in UKRI funding. It works in conjunction with the Committee on the Administration of Justice, a largely nationalist body in Belfast that encourages legacy litigation. I note with concern that the speakers’ list at the transitional justice institute’s seminars during the events at Queen’s University on the recent 25th anniversary of the Belfast agreement was drawn from one outlook only.
The wording of my Amendment 174ZA stems from an Answer that I received on 8 November last year from the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. He said that UKRI funding on legacy
“is allocated according to research excellence as assessed by independent peer review”.
I am aware—I am sure that many noble Lords will also be—that peer reviews can often become what you could call “chum reviews”, especially when few other academics work in the same field. One academic, Dr Cillian McGrattan, wrote that
“the UKRI record does not bode well for the government’s plan to create a multi-disciplinary history that encourages the acceptance of ‘different narratives’ that transcend and challenge ethnic taboos; that is plural rather than single-identity; that is based upon the actual historical record rather than after the event collective and communal memories; and that fosters reconciliation rather than continued division”.
This lack of balance of legacy and justice at Queen’s University makes it essential that the Bill has more safeguards about academic diversity and fair funding—hence this amendment, which dovetails with others in the group that the noble Lords, Lord Godson and Lord Bew, have endorsed.
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I turn to Amendment 174A, also to Clause 46, which speaks about the production of an analysis of patterns and themes in events during the Troubles, addressing in particular the experience of women and girls. This rightfully mentions what constitutes a majority of the population. My addition refers to researching the experience of the gay and lesbian community. This is a small minority—2.1% of our people, according to the recent census figure—but it figured centrally in disputes and debates throughout the decades of the Troubles, perhaps more so than any other group outside the two main communities.
The process from decriminalisation to now gay equality was effected in a long series of legislative steps, always at Westminster. My good friend Jeff Dudgeon, of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association, was a successful plaintiff in Strasbourg against the UK Government in a case which ran from 1975 to 1981. He initiated what was to become a tortuous reform process, after decriminalisation by the Government in 1982. Some eight further pieces of legislation were involved over the decades.
I played my small part back in 1994. The issue then was the gay age of consent which, for England and Scotland, was brought down from 21 to 18 by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. John Major’s Conservative Government had, once again, left Northern Ireland out of the proposed gay law reform. I said then:
“I am sure that the House would not want homosexual people in Northern Ireland to suffer inequality under the law”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/4/1994; col.171.]
Tony Blair, who was then Shadow Home Secretary, helped me whip sufficient support from MPs across the parties, enabling my amendment to win by 254 votes to 141.
The particular reason why the gay community’s experience needs addressing is that it suffered—as we all did—from death and injury through killings, bombings and shootings by illegal organisations. It then had, separately, to face those organisations when they brought further death and destruction just to the gay community. That even occurred after the 1995 ceasefires, in the case of a police officer, Darren Bradshaw, who was murdered by the INLA in the Parliament bar in 1997. The BBC is currently broadcasting a series about it entitled “Blood on the Dance Floor”. The Reverend David Templeton was murdered by the UVF in the same year. Their killings followed a series of bombings of gay venues over 30 years by the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries, and of murders of gay men—often off the street—especially in the darkest days of the 1970s.
Academic research can provide not just a record of those events but a valuable analysis of how life amidst death occurred in the gay community. I sincerely hope that the Minister will see the justice in this amendment and make it one of the NIO’s promised additions on Report.