Bloody Sunday Inquiry

Debate between Baroness Royall of Blaisdon and Lord Glentoran

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Glentoran]

My Lords, in 1971, 496 people died in Northern Ireland, which was the highest casualty rate in any year of the Troubles. I am not as confident as everybody would appear to be about the Saville report. Throughout the 12 years that it has been going on, I sat on the Benches opposite and hassled to try to get something out of it in a reasonable length of time. I failed abjectly. However, we have been in power for only a few months, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State got the report published and the Prime Minister made his major Statement in a very short space of time. Why that did not happen under the previous Secretary of State is anybody’s guess.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

I respectfully point out to the noble Lord and the rest of the House that the report was ready to go when the election was called. It was ready as a consequence of the actions of my Government working in tandem with the Government of the noble Lord. I fully respect the noble Lord, but I do not respect what he just said about the timing of the publication. The Prime Minister did a magnificent job with his Statement, but I take issue with the noble Lord on the timing issue.

[Lord Glentoran]

I accept what the noble Baroness says, but will attempt to correct it after a nod in this House. The reason why I am little unhappy about the report has not been mentioned. It is that a certain lawyer who was representing the Army claimed that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville, cherry-picked the evidence to help to paint the picture that he wanted,

“after 12 years and 191 million pounds to give a report which gave very clear findings even where in truth the evidence didn't support them”.

Another negative about the report is from the civil rights organisation British Irish Rights Watch. It states that what saddens it is that after all this time and all this effort very little more is known about Bloody Sunday than was known before the inquiry took place and that the report begs more questions than it answers.

That is a serious warning about the future. I accept the plight of the victims and that victims are our major concern and should be. In Northern Ireland, when we are talking about the affairs that we are talking about today, there is nothing more important than the care of victims, particularly in the past.

The world has changed. Londonderry is now a city of culture. Who could have imagined that in 1972? As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others said, the Prime Minister made a fantastic, emotional Statement in another place that went a long way to appeasing a large number of people in Derry. I have spoken to one or two people to whom noble Lords might not have expected me to speak, one of whom was at our party conference. He assured me that the families of Bloody Sunday victims are largely relaxed—they are unhappy and sad—and do not wish to push for prosecutions.

Where are we now? Where do we go? A lot of people have talked about where we are and where we go, but we have not had any answers yet. A lot of the press statements and other comments—I also have it from Sinn Fein—indicate that prosecutions are not being sought. There also is legal evidence of the requisites that will have to be met if prosecutions are to take place. There has to be a better than 50/50 chance of getting a conviction, which has to be in the public interest. Certainly, defence lawyers would use the 38 years, or perhaps 40 years, rule before bringing people to trial. So that rules out prosecution of the soldiers. A further fact is that if soldiers were brought to court and convicted, they would not spend a single day in jail because of past legislation and all the other things that go with it.

As far as we are concerned, prosecutions for the future are off the table as regards Bloody Sunday, even though—someone might want to stir things up—some soldiers have admitted perjury. However, they still cannot be prosecuted because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville, said, they cannot convict themselves. Hence, that is out too. We have no possibility of any convictions, trials or prosecutions for the happenings of Bloody Sunday.

Let us return to where we go now, on which a lot of people have spoken. I agree that we have to go forward. We have to find a way of giving people some satisfaction that they know what happened. We have to do our best to ensure that the families of victims and so on are kept as well informed as possible about what happened on particular days. I do not believe that going forward with major inquiries costing millions of pounds, with the sole objective of finding some evidence to give comfort to family and friends, is a way to go.

Of the inquiries that are going on now, as is well known, the Wright inquiry found nothing. It did not even find how guns were got into the jail. Mr Wright, the father, is still as bitter, twisted and unhappy as he was before. He got no satisfaction out of that inquiry, which cost £30 million. We can go on. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has some good examples, while I am reading out the not-very-good ones. That is where I think that we are.

In summary, I do not believe that the Saville report was a great success or that it achieved very much more than the Widgery report. The whole thing was almost a white elephant. I accept what noble Lords have said about being wise with hindsight, but that is where we are. It is very important that, following the speeches made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, and others, we find a Christian, solid way of going forward, and of handling these things when they happen.