Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

66: Clause 18, leave out Clause 18
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove Clause 18 from the Bill, preventing a person from requesting immunity from prosecution as part of the ICRIR’s investigations of Troubles-related conduct.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, this amendment deletes Clause 18, which introduces conditional immunity in the Bill. This is the most contentious and controversial part of the Bill. It is almost universally condemned in Northern Ireland, and I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate. I begin my brief remarks by paying tribute to Lord Brown; he was a great influence on me when I first entered this House and I always enjoyed listening to what he had to say. He was a fine lawyer.

I have looked at the legal arguments put forward by Policy Exchange on this amendment. I cannot say that I understood every word of them, but they looked impressive to me. However, from my experience, the practicalities of the situation indicate that something must be done.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, quite rightly reminded us what the situation was like back in the 1970s. I assure him and your Lordships that, 25 years later when I was doing the same job, it had not changed all that much in terms of signing warrants. When I was the Minister of State in Northern Ireland, I knew that Mo Mowlam, who was Secretary of State at the time, was aware that I was signing these warrants on her behalf. Similarly, three years later when the roles were reversed and I became Secretary of State, I realised that the Minister of State signing those warrants on my behalf was doing so absolutely properly and within the law.

I have no doubt that everybody signing these warrants in Northern Ireland over all these years believed that they were doing the right thing—and I am sure that they were—but there is clearly a problem because of the Supreme Court ruling. I look forward to the Minister telling us how he will change this situation and make things better.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful, as always, to noble Lords who have spoken in this short but very important debate led by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, to whom I am very grateful for the constructive engagement and discussions we have had over the past few days. This has been an excellent debate. I join in the tributes to Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, whose contribution to this House over many years has been immense.

The Government are extremely sympathetic to the aims of this amendment. It aligns with our desired policy aim to reduce pressure on the civil courts in Northern Ireland, which currently have a considerable case load. In our view, it would not be appropriate for the Government to give an opinion on the judgment of the Supreme Court in R v Adams, but we are of the view that this judgment, which was unexpected, has led to a degree of confusion in our law that merits clarification in some way. If I may go slightly further than my brief, when the judgment appeared some of us were—to put it mildly—somewhat baffled by its content.

On the numbers of cases in scope, we are aware of around 300 to 400 civil claims being brought on a similar basis to the Adams case, including those at pre-action stage, with 40 writs filed before First Reading of this Bill. It is therefore likely that a number of Adams-type cases will be allowed to continue in spite of the prohibition on civil claims in Clause 39 of the Bill. We are aware that this amendment has a wider application than just civil damages claims, which are otherwise within the scope of Clause 39, but the numbers of other types of cases in scope are limited.

The Government also understand that the amendment covers applications for compensation for miscarriages of justice under the statutory scheme established by Section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, following the reversal, as a result of the Adams judgment, of convictions for escaping or attempting to escape from internment facilities. The Government anticipate that it is unlikely that many more cases could in theory be brought along these lines; based on the numbers of escapees, this is unlikely to be more than around 30 and could be substantially less.

Claims brought as a result of the Supreme Court judgment in Adams are claims for compensation that are not based on any allegation against the state of mistreatment or misfeasance in public office, as other claims in this area are, but on a technical point regarding the signing of interim custody orders, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, made absolutely clear. At the time of their detention and conviction for escape-related offences, and for decades afterwards, these individuals could not have expected the Supreme Court to find as it did.

The Government have always acted on the understanding that those interim custody orders made by Ministers of the Crown, under powers conferred on the Secretary of State, were perfectly valid on the basis of the well-established and understood Carltona principle. This is a clarification that needs to be made, in our view, to restore legal certainty around this crucially important element of the way in which government works in this country.

I listened with great interest to my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, who is the surviving member of the Northern Ireland Office from 1972 as Minister of State. He gave a very vivid and accurate description of just how difficult life was at the time, and how dangerous and fast-moving the situation was.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, in his description of how the warrant system works in Northern Ireland. As many Members know, I have worked for a number of Secretaries of State, and the signing of warrants is something all of them have taken a huge amount of care over to ensure that they are done properly and within the law.

In response to the noble Baroness, we are not far away from Third Reading, as she will be aware, but I will endeavour to consult with interested parties between now and then.

On this basis, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, indicated, I will commit to bringing forward an amendment at Third Reading next week, following consideration by officials and lawyers, that addresses these matters. In return, I ask that the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Godson withdraw their amendment, subject to the caveat that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, made in his remarks.

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[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, I did not intend to contribute to this debate, but sitting here listening to some of the speeches, not least the wonderful remarks we have just heard, reminded me of what I think was the most difficult period of my life, when I was responsible for the committee that, after the Good Friday agreement, reorganised the police service in Northern Ireland. With my colleagues—people such as the late Maurice Hayes, Peter Smith and others—we thought we needed to have public meetings around Northern Ireland. When we suggested this, people said, “But nobody’ll come, nobody goes to public meetings now”. But come they did; to 40 meetings, probably 40,000 people came, and each of those meetings was a reminder not just of exactly what has just been said, the horror of the violence, but of the intimacy of the violence.

I think people who have not lived or been very much to Northern Ireland simply never comprehend how awful the intimacy of that violence is. I remember one evening having a public meeting in a rather raw little town in Northern Ireland—I had better not mention which one—and it was pretty difficult. A terrorist from the borders, Slab Murphy, had come down with some of his colleagues and we were quite worried that there would be violence. I undertook all those public meetings without police protection because you could not examine the record of the police and have yourself guarded by policemen. We got out of the meeting in one piece—I think it was Maurice Hayes and myself—largely because of the extremely sensitive and sensible chairmanship of a solicitor who had made her reputation invariably defending republicans who were accused of violence.

From Portadown we then went to a meeting in Craigavon and the first three questions I had were from the widows of police officers. The man accused in the case of the husband of the last of these had been got off on a technicality in his trial, with the solicitor working for him being the same woman who had kept the peace in the meeting I had just come from.

I think going through all those horror stories, trying to be objective and balance one bit of horror against another, is a less than useful idea. I think I am right in saying that it was the episcopal father of Louis MacNeice who said in a famous sermon words to the effect that we should remember the past the better to forget it. Northern Ireland remembers the past too much and does not spend enough time building a better present and a better future, even today; even today that is the situation.

The very last public meeting that we had in Northern Ireland was in a little fishing village. It was a difficult meeting; three of us were sat up on a stage like that in “Cinema Paradiso”, and, as the meeting went on and on, the thought of getting back to Hillsborough for a glass of whiskey became more and more enticing. Eventually, we brought the meeting to a close and got up ready to leave, and I made a little speech about reconciliation, healing and hope. A little lady at the back of the room stood up and said, “Mr Patten, before you go off, before you go back to London, before you make any more speeches about reconciliation, healing and hope, and all of us getting on with one another, I would like you to know that this man here”—and she put a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of her—“killed my son”. It was true. He had been one of those let out as part of the Good Friday agreement. We forget sometimes, standing in a queue in Morrisons, how it would be seeing in the next queue somebody who killed your uncle or tried to kill you. I have never believed that you actually deal with that problem by going over again and again who was right and who was wrong about that particular barbarity—the sort of barbarity that was mentioned earlier.

The best book I have read on Northern Ireland was Seamus Mallon’s memoir. I think Seamus Mallon is one of the great, largely unsung heroes of the attempt to produce decency in Northern Ireland. I recall from that extraordinary book how he went again and again to the funeral or wake of anybody in his constituency who had been killed. It was difficult. Sometimes he had a problem getting out without being beaten up by people who did not want to see him there because he was from the wrong side. On one occasion, he is at a wake and they do not want him there. He is helped to leave safely through the intervention of a man who is a part-time—a reservist—police officer. Two days later, on his way to the pharmacy in the local village, Seamus sees the same man gunned down by republicans. Seamus has to spend the man’s last moments with him, under a lorry leaking animal urine, as they lie there saying the Lord’s Prayer.

As I say, I do not see how you deal with those sorts of memories by going through the catalogue of who did what to whom and whether one horror was greater than another. I think it is the case that good sermons are likely to make more of an impact than endless historical reconstruction.

When it comes to that, I will say what I have never said before: I am not sure that the Church of which I am a member has been wise in the view that it has taken over the years about segregated education. If we want kids to learn the sort of history that we would like them to, you do not slant it and insist that, in order to listen to your version, they must go to one of your schools otherwise they cannot get confirmed, which was the situation when I was a Minister in Northern Ireland for years.

I had not meant to say any of this. When it comes to history, however brilliant the historians and however balanced they try to be, we have difficulty even in producing official histories of our relationship with the EU, so producing a balanced history of what has happened in Northern Ireland would be very difficult. We should try to understand what has happened, of course, but—I sound like a bishop now—we should build on the decencies that have ensured that, despite all the trouble and the extremism, Northern Ireland still exists as, in many respects, a thoroughly decent community.

The people who I remember when I look back are the heroes. Some of the civil servants and public servants that I had, people such as Norman Dugdale and Maurice Hayes, were great human beings who gave their lives to the attempt to produce decency, prosperity and peace in Northern Ireland. But, please—no official history.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

This has been a powerful debate in many ways. I suppose it should be, bearing in mind what has happened in Northern Ireland over 40 years. This part of the Bill was meant to be the easy bit but it is not; as noble Lords have heard over the past hour or so, it is possibly even more difficult than the rest of this legislation.

I remember vividly going to Northern Ireland to help chair the talks on the Good Friday agreement, back in 1997. About 10 months in, I was chairing strand 1 of the talks and I had had enough of history by then. I told the people at the talks that I had spent 17 years of my life before I became an MP teaching history but had had enough of it, 10 months into the talks. I suddenly realised that it was a bit daft to say that because the people in those talks were revealing their past in a very special way. Looking back, I can see that there were not just one or two but even more versions of the same history, in exactly the same place, and we have heard a bit about that in today’s debate. That is not easy.