My Lords, I have listened to everything. I have not bothered to intervene because I basically agree that this is not a great Bill and that all we can hope to do is make it less damaging to what is happening in Northern Ireland.
The one thing that strikes me is that reconciliation is on the face of the Bill. I have been struggling with that and with the definition of “reconciliation”. I decided to look it up on my phone. It is on the face of the Bill: therefore, it is the number one objective of the Bill. If we had reconciliation, we would not be worried about the other things. “Reconciliation” is defined as
“the restoration of friendly relations”
and
“the action of making one view or belief compatible with another”.
The definition goes on to say
“an act of reconciling, as when former enemies agree to an amicable truce”.
The problem is that we know that there is not an amicable truce. We know from the glorification of terrorism and lots of other parts of what we have been discussing that that is not there. Yet it is on the face of the Bill as being the number one objective.
What troubles so many of us in Northern Ireland, whether our families have directly suffered a death, or for all the people we k now who have suffered and their families—one family has been mentioned; three of my soldiers were killed, one after the other, and a sister was mown down on a checkpoint for serving in the security forces—is that the people in Northern Ireland see the Bill coming and would love to have reconciliation but the Government are not giving one little inch to assuaging their lives and their fears. I know that there have been amendments, and everybody is very grateful for that, but, if people are to accept this and if it is to work, there has to be something significant, so they actually feel that it was made for them.
All I plead is this: we really hope that the Government accept some of these amendments, which will enable people to say “Yes, but they have done this and they have worked towards us, and we want to make it work”. We know that at the moment virtually nobody in Northern Ireland is saying that.