Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Viscount Brookeborough and Lord Eames

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

Debate between Viscount Brookeborough and Lord Eames

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.