My Lords, I am grateful, as always, to those who have spoken. I do not intend to follow the current fashion for making yet another Second Reading speech at this stage of the legislation’s proceedings. I will just pick up one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, when he referred to the role of the Northern Ireland Assembly in all this. He will recall that it was the Northern Ireland Executive, back in 2013, that invited Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan in to try to deal with issues related to past flag parading. Of course, no consensus was forthcoming on that occasion. As I have reminded the House on so many occasions, the reason we ended up dealing with these issues as the UK Government and in Westminster is that after the Stormont House agreement, it was the then First Minister and Deputy First Minister who came to the Secretary of State and said that it was far too difficult for them to do in Stormont and asked us to do it in Westminster.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, asked me about the motivation for the legislation and what it is designed to achieve. I touched on this last week and in my comments in moving this Motion. It is primarily to get more information to victims and survivors of the Troubles about what happened to their loved ones, in a far shorter timeframe than we feel is possible under the current legacy mechanisms. It is about information recovery, where people want to access that information. That is the motivation behind the legislation. It is now incumbent on us to pass the Bill and give Sir Declan Morgan and his team the opportunity to make this a reality and to deliver for victims and survivors of the Troubles.