Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief, given the hour and the desire to move on to the dinner break business. From these Benches, we very much support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, to impose a function of investigation on the ICRIR, as well as one of review. She made very compelling arguments and I will not repeat them, but I hope that the Minister will take on board the strength of feeling in the debate on these amendments this evening.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 72 in this group, to which I have added my name. I was struck by the personal and powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, as well as the practical suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for some ways forward. Perhaps we could take this forward with the noble Lord, Lord Hain, before Report.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, made the case powerfully that the process being used by Jon Boutcher in Operation Kenova has cross-party support and has acquired the confidence of all those who have been directly engaged in it. Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrably works. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, we do not need to reinvent the wheel. I suspect that virtually everyone taking part in this debate has spoken to Jon Boutcher. If you meet him, it is hard not to be overwhelmingly impressed by his commitment, dedication and drive. He is really committed to this process, and we should seriously consider it between now and report.

I urge the Minister to look closely at Amendment 72. I look forward to his response at the end of this group, not least to some of the questions that have been asked on the Government’s response to the option of upscaling the processes used in Operation Kenova, which seems to me to be a preferable approach compared to the proposals in the Bill.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, if I were still Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and someone had suggested to me that the Bill should be introduced and then, immediately after suggesting it, said that all the international bodies concerned with human rights, Members of Congress in the United States, every single political party in Northern Ireland, every Church in Northern Ireland, and more or less everyone in Northern Ireland was against it, you might understand what my response would have been. The Bill certainly would not have ended up in this Chamber.

What I do not underestimate is the problem that the Minister and Government face. Of course, we have to try to resolve these issues—we have been 25 years trying to resolve these issues, and we did not do it when we did the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, because there were all sorts of other things to do. We have tried and tried, not least with the Eames-Bradley report, which I am sure the noble and right reverend Lord remembers. However, there is a dilemma: should the Government abandon the Bill—should they dump it? I think they probably should—or should it be improved? That is the work of the House of Lords, which is trying to improve it, to see whether there is any consensus at all among political parties here and in Northern Ireland as to what should replace it.