My Lords, in my years of service to this House I cannot think of an occasion when sadness, disillusionment and indeed anger pressed upon me to the extent they do today. Over the months we have worked to try to improve this Bill, I have listened to many highly technical speeches based on great parliamentary experience. But to that I have to add one other element today which it has been my sad duty to bring to the attention of this House over that period.
It is to tell noble Lords that the word “victimhood” has become so used that we have lost sight of what or who a victim is. A victim exists with a picture on the mantelpiece. A victim exists with frequent visits to a hospital for treatment. A victim exists in the grandmother trying to explain to grandchildren what happened to members of that family. A victim is one who believed at one stage that the mother of Parliaments would understand their dilemma.
I have paid tribute on several occasions to the Minister for his patience in dealing with this issue, but I have to say this afternoon that he has not gone far enough. The feeling of sadness which overwhelms me
is based on my many years of service to victims—to the men, women and children who were the real sufferers of our Troubles. I cannot get them out of my mind at this moment: the funerals, the addresses at funerals, the comfort in the hospital ward or beside a bedside. That is the whole background: the human side of “victim”. The human side is an ageing population who have been through the Troubles, and who now, by the passage of time, have looked with some hope to what we were going to pass in Parliament.
Way back, all those years ago, when Denis Bradley and I were asked to make the first attempt at dealing with the combined reconciliation and legacy issue, we set out on a journey which ends at this moment, in your Lordships’ House, so my feelings run very deep. Irrespective of the Opposition’s assurance that they will repeal this legislation one day if they are in power, and irrespective of the politics of it all, I speak of the broken hearts, the broken bodies and the irreconcilable issues that face ordinary decent people. I think of the members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Ulster Defence Regiment, the civilians, caught up in this. I think of the work in hospital wards by dedicated doctors and nurses, and I can still hear in my mind the drumbeat of the procession to the grave. I say to the Government: surely, they have brought us not to a crossroads but to the edge of a cliff, and Northern Ireland is tottering at the edge.
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