Patrick Finucane Report

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s question and the way he puts it. Let me be clear: the reason for not having a full public inquiry is not that it would not be possible to establish the terms of reference. My view is that it is not the right approach, because I do not think it would achieve what we need to achieve. I do not necessarily think that a long, open-ended, very expensive inquiry would actually get further than what we have in this report, which has been an exercise in opening up government, the security services and the police to the maximum extent possible. Nothing has been held back, so I do not think we will get further. Of course, a public inquiry would put a stay on any potential prosecution while it was under way. We are not having a public inquiry because I do not believe it is the right approach; I think this report is the right approach—and as I say, I cannot think of any other country in the world that would open itself up in the way that we have quite rightly done so.

The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes about Ministers being misled is absolutely right. That is why I said in my statement that the Cabinet Secretary is one of the people who will report back to me about lessons that need to be learned or problems that still need to be uncovered or dealt with. That is important. The only point I would make to the right hon. Gentleman about the role of the security services is that things have changed fundamentally since 1989. In 1987 and ’88, it was still a time when Ministers at this Dispatch Box did not even admit that we had a Security Service. It is now on a statutory basis—it is properly regulated and under the law—there are information commissioners who have to examine what is done and ministerial permission is properly sought in all the proper ways. The situation is totally transformed. That does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned, however, which is why the Defence Secretary, the Northern Ireland Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary will all be reading this report carefully and reporting back to me, and I will make those reports public.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I, like my good friend the hon. and gallant Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), was an intelligence officer in Northern Ireland. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the identities of those people from all sides who gave information to the security forces—I had well over 100 people giving information to me, albeit sometimes indirectly—will be kept secret, because it would be devastating if such information were ever to get out?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. In the process of writing these reports, the author has to consider carefully article 2—the right to life of all those people contained in the report. It was Sir Desmond de Silva’s decision about who to identify and who not to identify. It is important to bear it in mind that although there are occasions where someone is not identified in the report because of that article 2 consideration, there are also occasions where someone cannot be identified because the report cannot be sure about who was responsible for such and such an action. It needs to be read in that way.