Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for presenting this budget. I feel rather sympathetic towards him in that he cannot come here for happy debates. One day, I hope that he will be able to do so. Luckily, much of what I was going to say has been said but, in particular, I would like to say that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, looked at this from an objective point of view and gave one or two extremely appropriate conclusions. I think we get too bogged down in the details of what is going on when we must look at how it really might all collapse.

Of course, our biggest problem is that we have a lack of local democratic accountability, with the absence of an Executive currently as a result of the protocol. Therefore, at present, there is only one democratically accountable legislature: here. Of course, we have heard how the civil service is currently unable, because the Government dictates this, to take many of the actions we would like to see. We have this void, or crevasse, between the refusal of the DUP to take part in the Executive and the refusal of the Westminster Government to interfere with theoretically devolved issues—although there have been cases where they have done so, so it is not an impossibility. Abortion may well have been one of them. They can do it if they wish but they do not wish to do it; of course, they have their reasons for that.

However, it is the 1.9 million people in the Province who suffer the long-term hardship—hardly the politicians or the Government. They suffer the damage to civil society without this democratic accountability and they do not have a say in here. We keep hearing that the position of the Government and the EU is that the protocol, after the Windsor Framework, works okay. I am not totally against it but, to a certain extent, I am fed up with hearing that it is okay because big businesses say that it is. Big businesses can afford to have a back office with half a dozen people scribbling out to cover the regulations but Northern Ireland is not a country of big businesses; there are very few of them. There are thousands of micro-businesses and small SMEs. I know of a haulier whose company, A1 Transport in Fermanagh, employs 85 people. Since this started, he has had to produce 70,000 documents to move his lorries back and forth across the border and to this country. He literally has not got the room to store them. This goes on and there will be even more documents as this business gets tighter.

The DUP has continued, rightly or wrongly, to make a stand against the protocol and the Windsor Framework. I do not like to admit it but the big problem is that so many things that this Government have done have made the average person so very angry in Northern Ireland that they have gone to the extremes. I dare say that the support for the DUP comes largely because people are so unsatisfied with what the Government have done. Legacy was one thing the other day. It has really had a big effect on people; there is a lot of discontent.

However, they are the UK Government and, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, they are responsible for the United Kingdom, regardless of devolution or anything else. We, the people in the Province, are caught between two immovable rocks: the DUP and the Government. They are the only people who can ultimately solve this challenge. What we need is real leadership, but we are not getting it. It needs to come from outside those two groups—perhaps from the Prime Minister; we have not seen him involved very much. I am hesitant about the Taoiseach after the things he has said in the last few days; that does not help things either. If we have a compromise or fudge, this problem will return; without a shadow of a doubt, we would be in this position again in no time.

We have major decisions on infrastructure to be made, such as on roads, education and, as we have heard, health. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, talked about the disintegration of health, and I will highlight one particular example, without going through all the different parts. South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen was a state-of-the-art new build opened by the late Queen in 2012. Believe it or not, it has hundreds of single rooms—no wards—clean air technology in the theatres and everything else. It has served a population of 83,000 people. The Western Health and Social Care Trust has suspended the acute services at the hospital due to financial difficulties and other reasons, such as the absence of direction from a democratic authority telling it to get on with the job. I am aware that the decision is statistical and due to a problem with recruitment—that may be so.

I was once on a hospital board in Belfast. It is a medical requirement for most important hospital interventions, such as childbirth, accidents, disease and whatever else to have acute services somewhere in case things go wrong—the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, knows that better than anybody. Therefore, those somewhat straightforward interventions now have to go somewhere else, in case the patients need acute help. They have to go to Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. That means that 83,000 people—if they need treatment; obviously not all at once—have to travel for 60 minutes or more. Of those, 68,000 will have to travel for 90 minutes or more, and 25,000 will have to travel for two hours. That is travel time, let alone the acquisition of an ambulance, which is a totally different subject.

In this country we have a universal postal service, as well as the equivalent in education, although we do not call it that, and health—the right of our citizens to access a service, whatever it is. We know that it costs more to post a letter to, or to run a school in, the outer isles—that is what the universal service is about. The removal of services from such a large number of people in Fermanagh and South Tyrone should be considered unacceptable behaviour on the part of an unaccountable body. But it does not have to be unaccountable if the Government make provision for interfering where things are quite clearly wrong. The health status of 83,000 people is being compromised in a manner that is incomparable anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

It has long been NHS policy to take account of the geographical situation and to compensate where necessary. According to the NHS Technical Guide to Allocation Formulae and Pace of Change for 2019-20 to 2023-24:

“Travel time to the next nearest hospital is an indicator of whether or not consolidation of services onto fewer sites is feasible”—


it is not feasible. We used to have a measure called the golden hour; what has happened to that? Believe it or not, the Western Health and Social Care Trust has said that things have changed and the golden hour is no longer the mantra. But what has not changed is the need; it is identical. The road accidents, childbirth issues and diseases are the same, so what has changed? All that has changed is its decision to not go by the golden hour.

There was a consultation and one of the documents was signed by 30,000 people—30% of the population. It was treated by the trust as one entity. It did not like it at all and virtually disregarded it. I know about consultations; we did one for an inquiry here into bank closures. Every major bank that came to us said, “We’re consulting; don’t worry”. We never saw one bank that failed to close or was turned around as a result of any consultation, so I think that the definition in the dictionary ought to be slightly different.

Will the Government live up to what they should be responsible for: ensuring equal treatment and opportunities throughout our nation, regardless of whether the devolved system is in place and working? That says a great deal about levelling up in our nation, does it not?

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 71, 72, 73 and 74 in my name, which are amendments to Amendment 70, tabled by the Minister, who has continued diligently to engage with all shades of opinion in your Lordships’ House. Like other noble Lords, I thank him for that.

For the reasons given, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friends Lord Hain and Lord Murphy of Torfaen. At this stage, I feel no need to go over those reasons again. In proposing these amendments, I am conscious that, when juxtaposed with the larger issue of immunity itself, they are confessedly procedural and administrative in their scope. But they do seek to do something in the province of responsible legislation: they anticipate that which can be anticipated, minimise the effect of contingency and, in this particular case, ensure that, if the chief commissioner is unable to consider requests for immunity—whether for reasons of misadventure or owing to a potential or perceived conflict of interest, or for any number of reasons—there is a person empowered to do so. To some extent, this has been anticipated by Amendment 70 in the name of the Minister.

While the government amendment is welcome, the amendments I have tabled seek to do three specific things. Amendments 71, 72 and 73 mandate the appointment of a deputy for the chief commissioner. This deputy would be appointed by the Chief Commissioner immediately upon their own appointment and would be empowered to exercise some or all of the immunity functions if the chief commissioner were absent or otherwise unable to do so. I believe that the mandatory appointment of such a deputy would better ensure a consistency of approach, strengthen institutional memory in respect of such decisions and place a further brick in the wall dividing the Secretary of State—mindful as I am of new subsection (7B) in Amendment 70—from the fraught question of immunity.

Where Amendment 70 seeks to engage that eventuality by recourse first to a rapid nomination by the chief commissioner and, if that is not possible, through an ad hoc appointment by the Secretary of State, my amendments would see such a person already in place. This person would be fully briefed on these issues and placed in their position by the chief commissioner at the start of their term.

Given that new subsection (7C) in Amendment 70 quite rightly mandates that a stand-in for the chief commissioner must have held high judicial office, it is evident that one of the qualities such a person must possess is impartiality. Surely, being appointed by the Commissioner rather than by an active politician in the shape of the Secretary of State would strengthen claims to judicial objectivity rather than the reverse. Moreover, having a named deputy in place from the beginning of the chief commissioner’s term will provide confidence that, where decisions must be made in his absence, they will conform with the standards set by the chief commissioner and follow the tramlines of decision-making in a manner that is consistent across all cases. I beg to move.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I have listened to everything. I have not bothered to intervene because I basically agree that this is not a great Bill and that all we can hope to do is make it less damaging to what is happening in Northern Ireland.

The one thing that strikes me is that reconciliation is on the face of the Bill. I have been struggling with that and with the definition of “reconciliation”. I decided to look it up on my phone. It is on the face of the Bill: therefore, it is the number one objective of the Bill. If we had reconciliation, we would not be worried about the other things. “Reconciliation” is defined as

“the restoration of friendly relations”

and

“the action of making one view or belief compatible with another”.

The definition goes on to say

“an act of reconciling, as when former enemies agree to an amicable truce”.

The problem is that we know that there is not an amicable truce. We know from the glorification of terrorism and lots of other parts of what we have been discussing that that is not there. Yet it is on the face of the Bill as being the number one objective.

What troubles so many of us in Northern Ireland, whether our families have directly suffered a death, or for all the people we k now who have suffered and their families—one family has been mentioned; three of my soldiers were killed, one after the other, and a sister was mown down on a checkpoint for serving in the security forces—is that the people in Northern Ireland see the Bill coming and would love to have reconciliation but the Government are not giving one little inch to assuaging their lives and their fears. I know that there have been amendments, and everybody is very grateful for that, but, if people are to accept this and if it is to work, there has to be something significant, so they actually feel that it was made for them.

All I plead is this: we really hope that the Government accept some of these amendments, which will enable people to say “Yes, but they have done this and they have worked towards us, and we want to make it work”. We know that at the moment virtually nobody in Northern Ireland is saying that.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, Amendment 61A stands in the name of my noble friends Lord Dodds, Lord Weir and Lord Morrow. The explanatory statement says:

“This amendment would require an individual to be disengaged from activity which would be reasonably regarded as precluding reconciliation in order to be eligible for immunity from prosecution”.


There is another amendment in the name of my noble friends that is in a similar vein.

I draw attention to something that my noble friend Lord Dodds has already mentioned. There is a question in my mind concerning the legislation as it stands. My noble friend mentioned the late Joe Clarke, one of the hooded men who received an apology on his deathbed from the chief constable of the PSNI over his treatment while he was interned in 1971. He was one of 14 men who claimed that they were subjected to state-sanctioned torture. They all claim innocence. However, at his funeral the other day, Mr Clarke was buried with what appeared to be full so-called IRA military honours: his coffin was draped in the tricolour and he was escorted by men and women in some sort of uniform—white gloves, black ties and white shirts. I believe that this is reserved for members of the IRA, particularly those who have carried out what is known as IRA active service—and we know what that really means.

To deepen the plot, one of those carrying Clarke’s coffin in that military-style uniform was none other than a man who had been arrested and imprisoned over the murder of two soldiers at the Massereene barracks in Antrim during the time when I was the local Member of Parliament for that constituency. That person and his doctors told the court that he had only three to four years to live at most. Strangely, 14 years later, he is the picture of health, miraculously cured and carrying an IRA man’s coffin. Actually, that person is a neighbour of mine. I ask the Minister this: would the likes of Mr Shivers receive immunity or an amnesty under the present legislation as it stands, without the amendments suggested by my noble friends Lord Dodds, Lord Weir and Lord Morrow?

--- Later in debate ---

Touching briefly on the referral of conduct to prosecutors, I understand the rationale behind Amendment 59A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, but it is not necessary. If an individual is not granted immunity because the account they have provided is not deemed to be true to the best of their knowledge and belief, and if there is sufficient evidence that an offence has been committed, we expect the commission to refer that case to prosecutors. However, given the age of some of these cases, and to ensure that we can manage the operational burden on prosecutors, it would not be proportionate to require a referral in every case.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

I have just a quick point. When we talk about the individual giving all the relevant and truthful knowledge, to what extent will he be asked about the other people involved in the incident, whenever it was? If he fails to give information on them, does that mean that he has fallen short of what is required by the commission, because there is virtually no incident that did not involve a number—or in fact quite a lot—of people? If he gives information but the other people he has named do not come forward when asked to, will they then be open to prosecution using some of what that original person either said or failed to say as evidence?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, for his intervention. Much of what he says will of course be dependent upon the way in which the criminal investigation, if there is one as part of a review, is carried out. But there is a duty to take reasonable steps to establish the truthfulness of an individual’s account by looking at all the relevant information that is available. If an individual’s account is deemed to be not truthful to the best of their ability, they will not qualify for immunity.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I support this group of amendments. I ask the Committee to consider them not in the detail of the proposed wording but in the entirety of their spirit and background, with which the Minister is very well acquainted. It is vital, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has just said, that we take a wide view of what should be removed from immunity.

I have devoted a great deal—in fact, most—of my adult life to working for reconciliation. In the process, I have met many young people sucked into the paramilitary machine, not always realising what was happening to them—that was the human tragedy of it—but living to regret that they had allowed this to happen in their lives. I see these amendments in terms of those young people. I have seen what some of them have managed to do with their lives You might perhaps call it reconciliation; I prefer to call it a reawakening of conscience and of isolation from paramilitary activity. The success stories that I have seen have been from those who recognised that there was not an easy path to follow but that it was worth following. Those are the young people who these amendments are mostly targeted at.

I have seen those who have paid the price for what they have done. They have served their time and have managed to build some sort of decency to their lives. But I have also seen some who are extremely subtle in the way in which they have embarked on a continuing career that encourages others to be involved in criminal activity. I put it on the record, and ask the Minister to consider in his response, that we have to take the broadest possible attitude to the way in which society deals with what we call reconciliation, particularly in Northern Ireland terms. It is easy to write about it, to make money out of it and to establish it in programmes, the media and published work—you name it, it is there. This group of amendments reminds the Committee that we have to be realistic and to recognise that these things do happen and that there is no way in which any society moving forward can grant immunity to those who constantly find ways of escaping the net that the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has spoken of.

Lastly, in supporting these amendments, I urge the Minister to recognise that there is a reality about them that perhaps was not captured by the title of this legislation. The reality is that reconciliation can be judged only by your actions, your way of life and the purpose to which you put it, rather than just saying it with your lips.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and I support what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, just said about children. Children are the future for Northern Ireland, and integrated education and more understanding between the communities are all-important. This form of glorification is directly appealing to them. The integrated schools are fine. We are also moving into joint campuses—or I hope we are. In my local village of Brookeborough, they currently do one day of joint education between the Catholic maintained school and the state primary school. Half the school goes each way; I happened to go and visit it the other day. It was really good and the children were really enjoying it; it was fantastic. Another school further up the country was meant to be on the list but has been taken off the list because it was not doing joint education before and the parents all objected. The key is that integrating schools is by choice. The future is that these schools will be integrated because that is the only place they will have to go to school, but all this glorification—these songs and everything else—is in direct conflict with that.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

This daisy chain of conditionality is extremely shaky ground on which to overhaul a country’s entire system of justice relating to a several-decades long conflict. The Bill, if passed, will be challenged in the courts. To base such a radical and controversial shift on a hypothetical statement, deemed irrelevant to its own case, is an adventurous act in a process that is supposedly about reconciliation.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to mention one factor which may be naïve and maybe I just cannot see it, but we appear to be talking about amnesty for individuals who have committed a heinous crime of some type. I wonder whether noble Lords understand what actually occurred in practical terms? This is from my own experience of living there and serving there.

Early on in the Troubles there were cowboy shoots. There were people who went out just to murder a person. But after a certain time, I would like to think that the security forces not only became better, but they also became much more numerous. There were patrols all over the place. How was it that these people—supposedly individuals, as we seem to be talking about—were not caught? I will tell you why: after several years of the Troubles, no one except a madman carried out an incident on his own. It was not one person; it was a group of people.

When they went into Derryard checkpoint and reversed a lorry in and used flamethrowers, there were about—I am not sure—six people involved. Forty people were involved in that incident in total, and they were accomplices to murder. On every occasion, there were other people involved. Sometimes there was a change of gunman at the last minute. Does that make the other person any less guilty?

What I am really coming to is this: what is the evidence the commission will ask for in order to give immunity to a person? What can he say without giving evidence on some of the other people involved? Is he expected to do that, and how would it work? What evidence does the commission require to say that it knows he is telling the truth? If the commission asks how many were involved and he says, “Nobody. I carried a Mark 5 mortar on my back, crawled down the road and blew up the police station”, which is patently rubbish because you cannot do that, what is the proof it will require? What is the threshold of admission? Does that admission include any other names? If so, what is going to happen to these other people? Can the commission take it any further? This is really getting down into the practical side of how on earth this will work.

We talk about reconciliation—the noble Lord, Lord Browne, mentioned it a minute ago—saying that the truth would lead to reconciliation. Rubbish. What on earth are we talking about? There are people there who have lost loved ones and their families, and friends, who are equally hurt. In our case, in Fermanagh—I am talking about victims of all types, but these are my examples—every single one of my soldiers who was killed was killed off duty. They were killed feeding calves in the backyard; delivering vegetables; visiting a wife who happened to be Catholic, on a housing estate which was more Catholic; driving a lorry; leaving home in the morning.

How did they kill them? It was not the next-door neighbours; it was somebody close. If he is going to tell the truth, he is also going to say that his accomplice was his next-door neighbour. Do you call that reconciliation? Let us be realistic about this. There is a big hole here. How can you give immunity to individuals when there were multiple people in every incident who are equally guilty? Sometimes more so, because the gunman could be somebody who is instructed just to do it and is told: “I will drive you there and we will make sure that there are no patrols”. They did it to such an extent that they might have laid it on five mornings previously, one after the other; but lo and behold, there was a patrol and somebody said: “Don’t do it. They are closer to you than they can be”. The gunman, although he may have pulled the trigger, may never have done it without 20 people behind him, without the planning, without everything else.

Maybe I am being naïve but I just do not know where we are going with this at all, and I agree with everybody else that it is going to create rubbish and as far as reconciliation goes, which I would like to see in my own area, it is further from completion than anything I have ever heard.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the very powerful speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, who brings us back to the reality of the sordid terrorism, the violence and the campaign of the IRA—and other paramilitaries —during the period of the Troubles. It struck me very powerfully because just yesterday evening, Pam Morrison, who the noble Viscount will know well, as will others in this House, came to meet us as part of the delegation from SEFF, the victims group. In the space of six years from 1981, in the county of Fermanagh, she lost her three brothers to IRA terrorism—Jimmy, Cecil and Ronnie Graham. They were all slaughtered in the manner to which the noble Viscount referred: not on duty but going about their daily business. Pam also lost her sister, who was a Greenfinch in the UDR, as a result of the violence in Northern Ireland. This is the reality of what we are talking about. She was here at Westminster, along with others who have suffered terribly, basically to plead with lawmakers here to think of them, to bear in mind their loss and not to deprive them of hope, however difficult, as one of them said. They realise more than anyone the difficulty of getting justice, but to take away the hope of justice is a terrible thing.

I will deal with the amendments briefly because we have had a long debate, but this group of amendments on immunity is an important one; it goes to the heart of the Bill and it is right that we take time to examine it in detail. I just want to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said at the start of our debate on this group. He was absolutely right when he said about the concentration now by so many on this legislation that it is as if it is the first time there has been an attack on the equality of justice. We hear people in the United States complaining about this Bill. We hear people who have defended the IRA and raised money for it complaining about this Bill. We hear people in the Irish Republic who provided a safe haven over many years for terrorists and would not extradite them complaining about this Bill.

A number of examples have been listed, such as the letters of comfort to on-the-run terrorists, the royal pardons—we have never had a proper explanation of what crimes, and who, were covered by those—and, let us be frank, the 1998 agreement itself. To be fair, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, referenced the point about victims and that agreement, which released some of the most hardened criminals who had carried out some of the most obscene atrocities in Northern Ireland after only two years’ imprisonment. That was a grievous body blow to the victims, and many of us spoke out about it at the time. There has been a litany of issues affecting victims. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bew, for making this point because it puts all this into context.

Having said all that, I want, if I can, to focus briefly and concisely on the amendments in this group in my name and those of my noble friends. The first is Amendment 149, which is

“intended to allow the offences for which immunity has been granted to be taken into account in sentencing for post-Troubles offences.”

That means offences committed after 10 April 1998. In my view, it is only right that, if a perpetrator or defendant committed a crime after that date and was convicted of that crime, a court of law should be able to take into account all previous convictions, including crimes for which they may have received immunity. Otherwise, we will have a perverse situation where post-Troubles crimes and sentencing are also affected by this legislation, which would be entirely wrong.

Amendment 114, also in my name and those of my noble friends, would

“require the Commissioner for Investigations to refer a file to the PPS when an individual is found to have provided false statements to the ICRIR in the course of its functions.”

I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, in relation to that. The Government have conceded that making a false statement should be an offence and that, if someone is found guilty of it, their immunity should be revoked. I very much welcome that limited progress, which my colleague, Gavin Robinson MP, spoke about and pushed an amendment on in the other place. I am glad that the Government have now come forward with something, albeit in a different form than we originally proposed, by creating an offence and then having a court revoke the immunity. However, in our view, Amendment 114 would tackle a deficiency in the Government’s drafting: the offence is established but it is not apparent who is to bring proceedings and where the burden falls. Although the Government are making provision to ensure that compelled material can be inadmissible in criminal proceedings, there is no provision to require the ICRIR to provide that material and evidence of false statements to the PPS. I just want to probe the Minister on that issue and see whether that gap can be rectified.

I very much welcome Amendment 130 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and others; indeed, we sought to table the same amendment. Again, there was a bit of a competition to get some of these amendments in, but it shows the level of cross-party support on many of these issues, in an effort to improve the Bill. If it can be improved, we should try to do that as part of the function of our House. Clause 21(4), which this amendment would remove, does need to be removed. It is wrong for the ICRIR not to be required to seek information from others in relation to someone who comes forward and gives their point of view on crimes they may have committed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, in dealing with this group of amendments, as we have to, it is undoubtedly the case, as has been said on all sides of this Committee, that we cannot get away from the elephant in the room: no matter how good an amendment is put forward—I include the amendments I have added my name to—it cannot turn what is an unacceptable Bill into an acceptable Bill. I urge the Minister and his government colleagues to listen to the clarion voices from all sides of the Committee, from all sections of society within Northern Ireland and from all groups connected with victims that this is not the right way forward. At the heart of it is the completely unacceptable anathema of the immunity that the Bill proposes. I agree with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and her call for Clause 18 not to stand part of the Bill.

However ultimately unamendable the Bill is in terms of its scope, we have no choice at this stage but to look at these amendments. It is a duty on all of us to make whatever improvements we can, however small, and at least try to take any step forward that we can, so I will touch on them briefly.

I welcome Amendments 120 and 121 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Ritchie. Along with others, I met representatives of SEFF and have spoken to other victims’ groups as well. There is undoubtedly a deep sense of hurt and betrayal among victims. It is obviously not their biggest concern, but one of the concerns that adds to their hurt is a level of confusion and anxiety over the definitions of general and specific immunity. There is a lack of clarity around that. While this will not get to the heart of the issue, at the very least, can the Minister give us some clarity around that today? I would welcome these probing amendments if they can draw out that information.

I also welcome Amendments 112 and 124, brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and others. To move from a position in which immunity is effectively compulsory to one which gives a much greater level of discretion to the commission is a sensible step forward. I think the scope of Amendment 124 has been accepted and government Amendments 139 and 140, dealing specifically with the issues around withholding information, move in a way that was not the case a while ago: at least there has been an acceptance that, if immunity is to be granted, it cannot simply be a one-off gift and that, where there are breaches, it can be revoked. That is an important principle as well.

We believe our Amendment 114 to be complementary with the provisions on the withholding of information or the giving of wrong information, because it gives a clear pathway for those prosecutions which the offence created in Amendment 139 can progress. The giving of false information or the withholding of information are of importance for two reasons. First, if we are to be stuck with this inequity of immunity, it should not be some form of tick-box exercise that anybody can qualify for no matter what information they give. Also, if there is anything to be gained from this at all in terms of truth—I very much share the views of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, that this whole process will be entirely counterproductive rather than helpful—one of the things that will aggravate victims is if the information provided is false, if they are given false hope and wrong information about the deaths of their loved ones.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

Perhaps the noble Lord would like to ask the question of what information given to the commission by somebody seeking immunity will be made available to the victims. That is the point at which reconciliation breaks down—when the names of the other people involved will horrify most families, people who have never appeared on the radar.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, raised the question of someone who clearly lies because they do not want to name accomplices. That person would not get immunity because the commission would determine that they had not been truthful in their account. If they did name accomplices, those people could be investigated by the commission and, if they did not engage, they could be prosecuted.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

Does he mean that the commission will ask them who their accomplices were and that they must not refuse to name them?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

It is fairly straightforward. The commission will ask whatever questions it believes to be appropriate. On the basis of the answers it is given, it will have to make its decisions regarding immunity. If a person is untruthful or unwilling to give information, that will of course be taken into account.

I am delighted to say that I am sympathetic to the proposed Amendment 130 from the Baroness, Lady O’Loan, to Clause 21(4), which is designed to ensure that the commission has to take steps to seek information beyond that which it holds already for the purposes of testing an account. I am very much open to exploring further with her how this issue might be appropriately addressed, when we move to the next stage of the legislation,

I wish to focus very quickly on some other amendments that I have tabled. Under Clause 23, the commissioner for investigations currently has the power to refer for possible prosecution conduct causing death or serious injury which is the subject of the review under consideration. My Amendment 137 clarifies that the commissioner is also able to refer conduct that constitutes “connected offences” within the meaning of the Bill. These are offences which do not themselves meet the Bill’s definition of “serious offence” but are nevertheless factually connected to such offences, for example because they form part of the same incident. This would allow, for example, the commission to refer to prosecutors evidence of sexual offences connected to a death or serious injury, if it came to light during the investigation.

Noble Lords will have noticed my intention to oppose the proposition that Clause 19 should stand part of the Bill. To reassure, this is simply because I propose to move provisions made by Clause 19 to the new schedule introduced by Amendment 85, titled “No immunity in certain circumstances”. This will bring together these provisions and those relating to the revocation of immunity mentioned before. Moving Clause 19—

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, in producing this amendment, the noble Baroness is representing the widespread frustration that exists in Northern Ireland in the light of this proposed legislation. Speaking from my experience and years of service to Northern Ireland, I have never come across such widespread opposition to a proposal such as this as is the case today. A lot of that frustration, I have to say to His Majesty’s Government, is caused by their failure to produce the amendments to this legislation that they had promised. They made a solemn promise to this House and the other House that they would take very seriously the expressions of frustration that many of us had brought to the Floor of this House and to the other place. We are disappointed in the result and the failure to fulfil that promise.

The failure of this legislation to have at its heart the needs of survivors and victims and their families and loved ones is a total disaster. Because of the way this new commission is proposed to operate, many people in Northern Ireland are going to be denied justice and denied the opportunity to be heard. I speak from many years’ experience of pastoral service to the people of Northern Ireland when I say that this is nothing less than a tragedy.

It is for those reasons that so many of us have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Baroness has said. No one knows better than she does, from her public service, what the feelings of opposition amount to in Northern Ireland at the present time. I appeal to those noble Lords who have serious concerns, who do not live in Northern Ireland, who have not experienced what we have come through; I appeal to them to see the opposition to this legislation as a matter of right and wrong, for it is, I believe, verging on a moral issue.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say briefly why I support this amendment. I must declare an interest in that I am a military veteran who served for a long time in Northern Ireland and members of my family were in the police.

Veterans are, inevitably, really against the Bill, but I think one ought to accept that veterans are not just people like me and not just their families: they are our societies. If you take rural areas like where I come from, a village or a locality, those societies have become veterans of the Troubles. If you do not live there, you do not know how completely the lives of everybody who wanted peace were changed. It is not restricted to the brothers, sisters and parents who waited for their family members, whether they be police, prison officers or simply, like one of my soldiers, driving a lorry that was providing cement to build security posts. This is not a funny thing where people were in the Army or the police, now they are out of it and it is all finished: this is a whole society, and it really affects people. They are 100% against this, as are other victims who may not be totally related at that stage.

Imagine a small village. In one case, one of my soldiers drove a school bus. The noble Baroness, Lady Foster, is not here today, but she was a child on that bus. One of my soldiers drove it and he kept the bus at home: it was the most secure place. He searched under the bus every morning. His son helped him do so. They watched them do it. The place that was most difficult to search was behind the engine block on the other side. They put the bomb there. He got into his bus, he drove for a distance, he picked up children and the bomb went off. Luckily, the noble Baroness was towards the back. One of my other soldiers, plus one of the children and others who were on the bus, were injured. That child nearly lost its arm. But the next year, my soldier and his son committed suicide, because he had not searched the bus. So this is not just about veterans, but this Bill is seen as leaning the other way, and that is that.

It is an opportunity for Sinn Féin and the terrorists following, or whatever, to investigate the records that were kept by the police of every incident, through records of everything. But on the return side, there is not so much as a written note on a cigarette packet; that is how they planned their business, because at road checks, they could be searched, so they wrote it on little pieces of paper. Those are all gone. I ask Members of this House to remember that this is not something far away; this is part of the United Kingdom. It is whole societies that have been wrecked, and now this is putting the cap on the whole thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

I accept the noble Viscount’s point. I say simply that, if investigations are going to continue, and the rule of law is going to continue to be applied, I would seek for protocols to be put in place to protect the manner in which investigations were carried out and the way in which people who were required to take part in questioning were handled. I would want to ensure that their dignity, their respect, their age and their previous service were taken into due consideration. That is a minimum ask. That is a reasonable ask, and I speak on behalf of veterans who served their country in Northern Ireland over a very extended period.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

I suggest that the noble Lord may have meant GB-based veterans and not UK-based veterans, since Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Dannatt (CB)]

I accept that point entirely. I meant people such as me who live in England—I am three-quarters English and one-quarter Welsh. It is people such as me whom I had in mind, fully accepting that veterans from Northern Ireland have a very different outlook on the whole matter—quite understandably—because they were living and working within their own homeland. I am talking about soldiers who were brought up elsewhere than in Northern Ireland. I apologise for poor use of our language.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, whose stand on terrorism and violence, and what she has done for many years, I admire very much. I do not necessarily come to the same conclusions as her on everything, but she is fully aware of that.

I appreciate, from Northern Ireland’s point of view, the amount of effort that is going into trying to do something about the legacy, especially from the Government Front Bench, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the Liberal Democrat Benches. We must all be grateful for the amount of effort they are putting into this. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, went into the depths of the trauma, and I would like to follow up a little bit on that.

I declare an interest: my wife and I were both in the home-based security forces in Northern Ireland, and my wife looked after the families of those who were suffering from terrorism. We also host a veterans’ mental welfare charity at our home.

Whatever you think about the Bill, it is giving a form of indemnity to people, and we should look at why we are here. Is this setting a precedent in Ireland? It is actually not, because in August 1923, the Republic had an indemnity Act for its own forces and then an amnesty for all prisoners in 1924. In 1961—this is a relatively little-known fact—there was an amnesty in Northern Ireland, passed by the Northern Ireland Government when my grandfather was Prime Minister, for those people who were involved in what was called the “50s trouble”. This is not a precedent way out on its own.

We have to note how and why we got here. We are here because the state and society have failed to convict terrorist criminals over the period of the Troubles. If that had been possible, we would not be here at all. First, we had internment, which failed—as we are all fully aware of—for a lot of reasons. That was a disaster. Secondly, we had the Diplock courts, where we could not run trials with juries because of intimidation, so the trials were decided by one judge, or three judges on appeal. Although Sinn Féin and the terrorists, and the so-called loyalist terrorists, objected to Diplock courts, by their very nature they were slightly less unfriendly to them, because a jury convicts beyond all reasonable doubt, but the judges had to write down why that person was guilty. For those people who say—it has been said here before—that the Diplock court convictions were roughly level with other types of courts and so on, that may be so. However, I am fully aware of some of the particular cases which arose from Fermanagh, and the police and the investigators could not bring them forward because they knew that they would fail in a Diplock court. That was a slight appeasement to the terrorists.

We have heard about letters of comfort. I believe that when the Government, who were talking to Sinn Féin/IRA, got the list of people, they then checked with Northern Ireland investigators whether they had evidence to bring to court. They quite clearly did not, otherwise they would have done so by then. However, their reply went something along the lines of, “Currently we do not”. In the Chinese whispers, “currently” got lost, yet we are all fully aware that forensic science moves on, and convictions and cases—even more civilian-type cases, if you like—suddenly get new evidence, which comes from new forensics and various other things. So, this was an omission that was simply not acceptable, but it happened.

On the decommissioning of weapons, the terrorists decommissioned the weapons they wanted—presumably the ones with the most forensic traces on them—and got rid of them. That was an elimination of evidence.

We then have—it was not brought out for them—in this country, as compared with most modern countries, inadmissible evidence, which comes from telephonic and intercepted sources. We have discussed this in other Bills. As a result, we have quite a good idea of information, which is not evidence, that adds up to the fact that people had actually committed these crimes. However, that evidence is inadmissible.

Then, of course, we also had the release of prisoners.

People may think that the terrorists were discriminate —no, they were not. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, has already mentioned the number of people who were killed from both communities. When I was in the regular Army in Belfast, we had come-ons the whole time, where somebody left a device—whether it was a proper device or a hoax—and then a cordon was put in while the real bomb was some distance away. Most of them were IRA, I have to say, and because of the nature of Belfast, the chances of Roman Catholics from west Belfast going past them were incredibly high—and they did go past, and the terrorists never turned a hair. Then, of course, they had to disappear. We should not give much credibility to these terrorists, I am sorry to say.

Under the Bill, the commission must grant immunity on three conditions, which your Lordships are all aware of—I am not going to waste time going through them—but apparently this is unpopular and unacceptable to all parties. Somebody with a certain amount of intelligence said to me the other day, “Don’t you think that that’s not very true? This is a smokescreen by Sinn Féin.” Public relations-wise, Sinn Féin has to continue to hope that some members of the security forces will be brought to court for things that they should not have done. That is what its PR position is. However, Sinn Féin is very practical about this, and the numbers of terrorists we are talking about—I admit that there were loyalist ones as well—far outnumbers those people; we are talking about a multiple of 100, 200 or 300. However, the Bill is here and it will probably go through—QED, Sinn Féin gets what it ultimately wants: a clean sheet for all those people.

So, we must be aware of the effects of the Bill in giving immunity. Is the bar on this evidence going to be high enough? If somebody admits to driving a car and being part of an incident—there were sometimes 20 or 30 people, especially on border incidents—are they going to be obligated to give the other names? Where do we go from there? This is going to rattle down the thing. I cannot see how somebody making an admission of what they did could avoid giving the names of their fellow conspirators. What is going to happen here?

What we really have to look at are the ordinary people and the families, and what it was like. I will focus on the families of security forces, prison officers—people who contracted for the Government. We lived with constant tension and threat every minute. We had bomb detectors on our cars and alarm rockets on our houses. We were armed at all times, whether it was going out to dinner, going to church, or whatever. Some of our houses were seriously targeted, where SAS or covert people were even put into them. It may sound funny, because it is more like “Yes Minister”, but there were gas mask drills for the families. It went to that extent.

These were serious times. Down with us, a policeman was being covered by the very best of soldiers, but they were withdrawn when the threat had supposedly gone down, and he was shot the next night. We did pattern of life studies for all our soldiers and everybody we connected with so that they could be covered. The bin lorry, with two soldiers on it, was covered 24 hours a day by a plain clothes patrol. They were called “pixies” by some. Bus drivers were also covered—it was everybody who had a routine. From my point of view, when I was lambing ewes at three in the morning, there would always be a police car somewhere locally for the same reason. That is what people were living under, and it did not produce anything other than an awful lot of stress.

Soldiers, victims and the community suffer from intergenerational trauma. We have heard about that, but we should look at it. Perhaps overidentification with victims causes trauma—the term used is vicarious traumatisation—among people who are so close to the victim. It is not just families; it is also friends. If one of your friends came to the attention of terrorists, it would affect you too. So, this goes much wider than just the victims. According to Children in Need, PTSD in parents translates into very much higher rates of ADHD in children. We have instances in our charity where the trauma has gone down to grandchildren—this is serious. People also say that when parents are stressed, babies and children lack bonding in their formative years because their parents are not smiling. This is serious stuff. It is not just the victim but an ever-increasing cascade of traumatised people. It is vast.

There was a study published in the National Library of Medicine in Maryland on its intergenerational effects. It says:

“Intergenerational transmission of memory is a process by which biographical knowledge contributes to the construction of collective memory—


which we have been talking about—

“(representation of a shared past).”

Participants were children from Croatia and were asked to recall the 10 most important events that occurred in one of their parents’ lives. Approximately two-thirds of people from eastern Croatia, where there was more conflict, and one-half of people from western Croatia, where there was slightly less violence, reported war-related events from their parents’ lives. War-related memories impacted the second generation’s identity to a greater extent than non-war-related ones, so it is totally out of proportion with all this violence.

From our area, I knew three brothers who were soldiers. Jimmy was ambushed when he was going to work on a school bus in the morning. Luckily, he was only wounded. He was then shot months later in Derrylin on a school bus, in among all the children. Ronnie was shot delivering vegetables for a shop, about eight months or a year later. Cecil had married across the community and was killed on the doorstep when visiting his wife’s family in Donagh. Their sister Hilary who joined up—and the ladies were not the fighting part—was killed in a hit and run accident while serving her country on a VCP. Look at the trauma and look at where it all goes.

Then, of course, you have Enniskillen and the Omagh bombing and enough said about them—but there is never enough said about them. Therefore, the effect of the Bill is to give terrorists a get out of jail free card while yet again doing little or nothing for terrorists’ victims, their wider families and their friends. The mental trauma continues. Why are people, especially Sinn Féin, allowed to glorify terrorism? We have heard about it almost daily. This is psychologically induced, perpetuated trauma, which is an issue and an effect. It is also far too commonly believed that knowing more will help give closure to the victims. I am not suggesting that it may not help but, when I talk to the bereaved and injured, they say this will not give closure. What they want is some form of accountability for what has happened.

There is virtually no glorification of the successes of security forces by themselves or by the peaceful majority. That does not happen and would be totally unacceptable among our peaceful communities on both sides of the religious divide. I would just ask that when we talk about the hurt and lasting feeling of injustice, people understand that it is not a skin-deep protest. This is real and the grief is normally dealt with privately—and most people like to deal with it privately—but it becomes public when tormented by glorification of terrorism and the constant appeasement of those groups.

I hope we will see that this Bill might work with amendments that will come through and I thank the Government for being prepared to accept them.

Post Offices: Cash Withdrawal Services

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I can assure the noble Lord that this is, indeed, in progress.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that we inquired into this subject in our report on financial exclusion a couple of years ago? When faced with the question of closing banks, the banks virtually unanimously said, “We consult widely”. We did not find one single branch that had been left open as a result of consultation. They are merely ticking boxes. They then faced us with the fact that the post offices would take on their business, and now they are withdrawing it. As much as we condemn it here, we have to do more than that. The banks are letting communities down and it is no good simply condemning them. Will the Government not take some action that forces them to be part of our communities?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Viscount is right: a consultation matters only if its results are taken forward. I will reflect carefully on what he has said. I believe there is an obligation that should fall on banks to respect their customers and treat them with the decency they deserve.