Terrorism Act 2000 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) (Northern Ireland) Order 2020

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, for his detailed explanation of this statutory instrument, which I fully support. For the avoidance of doubt, I have always believed that terrorism, whether in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, when I was growing up in Northern Ireland, is never right and is never justified. Every death, every bombing, every maiming and every mutilation was totally wrong and unjustified.

I would like to underpin what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, about the victims’ pension scheme; like I did, he also referred to this two days ago, during another debate on a statutory instrument for Northern Ireland. This issue needs to be resolved by the Northern Ireland Executive. If they are incapable of coming to an agreement on the issue, the British Government will have to take it into their own hands, to ensure that those people who suffered immeasurable pain, injury and grief have the pension that they deserve.

The other issue I want to raise is this. I hope that relations will settle down in the Northern Ireland Executive so that we can start to see the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement, to develop a shared island of Ireland and to build relationships between Ireland and Britain. That is vitally important.

I have two questions relating to the statutory instrument. Can the Minister confirm whether the provisions of this statutory order have been enacted, given that due to the election in December last year there has been a time lapse?

The second issue is one that has been raised by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which submitted a response to the then Secretary of State, Julian Smith, on the issue of the interpreter. Not only was the interpreter tasked to deal with people who may have had speech impediments, there was also a need for one for people with limited ability in English, so that they could be perfectly understood.

Lest we be in any doubt, this type of digital recording is an important step towards the prevention of coercion and ill-treatment by the police. I am therefore content to support the provisions. However, I make a final plea to the Northern Ireland Executive to sort out the pensions issue and get back to working properly, thus showing that they are a joint office.