Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, as always. We recognise that service personnel were victims too, including the 722 service personnel killed by terrorist actions during the troubles. I put on the record yet again that we cannot forget the service they provided. They must have justice. Many of them and their families remain without the justice they deserve.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Victims also include service personnel who have been repeatedly pulled up before the courts. We have not made that clear so far in the debate, but I want to do so now. There are many servicemen—and some servicewomen, perhaps—who are still suffering. They are victims too, because things have not been cleared up for them. I hope this Bill will sort that out.

[Peter Kyle]

These were issues that dominated the debate on Second Reading. I know there are people here with lived experience, including the right hon. Gentleman himself, an honourable and gallant Member of this place, and that there are speeches to follow from both sides of the Committee that will encompass that. Believe me, among Members on the Opposition Benches our respect for the service of those he mentions is enduring.

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[Peter Kyle]

I am always grateful for the hon. Member’s considered and sincere interventions. He will sense my frustration that it has come to this moment in time. In effect, he is asking me to play the role of Government party managers, Front Benchers and Ministers, who should have been considering the issues and discussing and debating them with Front Benchers, Back Benchers and the party way in advance of today. I have been designing solutions to the problem based on the work of the hon. Member’s Committee and involving victims, and it has not been done in secret. I might add that it has involved doing the hard work of going through previous legislation to see how the exact same issue has been overcome in other circumstances. We have several more hours of consideration on the Bill, so I think that we have plenty of time to come to an agreement, but it needs to be rooted in amendment 115.

[Bob Stewart]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Peter Kyle]

I will ventilate my argument and then of course give way so that the right hon. Member does not encourage me to say something that I am already about to say—I fear that might be the case.

On Second Reading, I raised the warnings from experts that the Bill would allow immunity to be granted to rapists and other sexual offenders. During the debate, Ministers insisted that that was not the case. Since then, we have had months of Select Committee evidence hearings where multiple witnesses confirmed that the Bill would allow immunity to be granted to perpetrators of sexual offences committed as part of the troubles.

Daniel Holder from the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the model Bill team clearly stated:

“Our interpretation of the Bill as it stands is that it does not exclude sexual offences. They are included in the potential amnesty/ immunities scheme, which, as you will know, is pretty much unheard of in international practice—torture as well. We are aware of the argument that has been made by another Member of Parliament that they are not Troubles-related offences and therefore they would not be included, but that, in itself, is problematic, to deny that sexual violence was part of the Troubles, as it very clearly was.”

I heard that—I was watching—and Ministers and officials would have been watching as well. That needed to be considered before the Bill got to this place.

Other witnesses from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Victims’ Commissioner echoed that exact view. I do not believe for a second that the Minister fails to take this issue incredibly seriously—I know that he does—and I am certain that he wants those who committed acts of sexual violence during the troubles brought to justice as much as I do.

I want to explain for colleagues’ benefit exactly what our amendment 115 would do. It is simple and straightforward. It reads:

“Clause 18, page 17, line 7, at end insert—

‘(12A) But certain offences of sexual violence listed in Schedule (Exempt offences) must not be treated as within the scope of immunity from prosecution.’”

The schedule of offences is based entirely on the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021. As many Members will know, that Act went through exactly the same kind of debate that we are having now, with the Government refusing to include the amendment and then suddenly, at the last moment, realising there was a problem and tabling the amendment that they wanted themselves.

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[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have an amendment to that effect: amendment 74, which is about bringing in one or two people with international experience, an international perspective, no particular skin in the game and a fresh pair of eyes—an honest broker, if you will. The credibility of their international experience could be drawn from the United Nations, from Rwanda or from other conflicts in places such as South Africa, where different sides have been brought together and a path to peace has been found—sometimes with baby steps, halting or retracting along the way, but slowly and surely making the progress that we wish to see.

[Bob Stewart]

I agree with my good friend the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that we should have several commissioners, and I agree with their being international. As I understand it, however, the human rights commissioners are all appointed by the Secretary of State and no one seems to object. I do not really see the need for the process to be expanded beyond the Secretary of State, as people seem to accept the appointments that he has already made.

[Simon Hoare]

My right hon. and gallant Friend makes a perfectly respectable point that is sustainable under scrutiny. I do not seek to challenge him on it.

Let me set out to the Committee the thinking that underpins my amendment 92. We are aware that all the political parties in Northern Ireland are opposed, in whole or in part, to the proposals before the Committee. We also know that a vast swathe of civil society in Northern Ireland is concerned about the Bill. I know that of itself, amendment 92 will not address all those concerns, but the argument that my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and I have heard in the Select Committee—and, indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) and other Committee members on both sides of the Chamber have heard—the Secretary of State, by dint of office, is part of Her Majesty’s Government, and state actors representing Her Majesty’s Government, in the armed forces, the security services or the Royal Ulster Constabulary, were part of that “Government machine”. A concern that amendment 92 seeks to address relates to the imprimatur, the democratic imprimatur, of a pre-appointment hearing—I was responding to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham, but he seems to be about to leave the Chamber.

[Bob Stewart]

Sorry!

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[James Sunderland]

I spoke in support of the Bill on Second Reading, although I highlighted several frictions and concerns that may merit further work, which is where we are today.

The people of Northern Ireland, our veterans and those directly affected must be at the heart of this Bill, and I hope to offer a wider perspective that may be of use. On Second Reading, the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), said:

“Is the Bill perfect? No, of course it is not, and no legislation is, but let us not lose the good, or at least the intent to achieve the good, in pursuit of perfection.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 195.]

That is where I think we are today.

We know what the Bill does, as it has been covered a lot over the past few weeks and months: it establishes an independent commission for reconciliation and information recovery; it grants immunity from prosecution to those who engage with the commission—this is a key point—on a case-by-case basis; it ends, in theory, troubles-related criminal investigations and protracted legal proceedings; it commissions a historical record of every troubles-related death; it covers memorialisation; and, importantly for me and for many others, it does not provide moral equivalence, which is an important improvement on the draft Bill.

The lingering concern of many I have spoken to, both here in England, Wales and Scotland and over the water in Northern Ireland, is that perpetrators may now never be brought to justice and the truth may never be known, notwithstanding what the Bill says it does on the tin.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my good friend for allowing me to intervene. One thing the Bill might do, and I hope it does, is ensure the names of those who go before this reconciliation body are made public so that people know who they are and understand who carried out the deed, whatever the result for the person concerned. Victims and families may understand who did it, and I hope that will be considered in the Bill.

[James Sunderland]

I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right, and I hope the Minister heeds his point.

Having looked at what the Bill does, and having discussed it on Second Reading, I ask: where can we go from here? Where do we need to go as a Committee? First, I would urge the Government to reconsider the exclusion of rape and sexual offences, which merits further work, although I fully understand the arguments that exist in law. It may be a political point as opposed to a legal point, or it might be both, but it requires extra work.

Secondly, clause 18 currently says that the ICRIR must grant a person immunity from prosecution if conditions A to C are met. Condition B states that a person needs to have engaged and stated the truth to the best of their “knowledge and belief”. That is a very low and subjective expectation of one individual’s account, for which the immunity panel is not required to seek corroboration. What if that individual is not telling the truth?

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[Gavin Robinson]

People were in jail after due legal process. Not only did we have that corruption of justice then, but we have had subsequent corruptions of justice on the provision of on-the-run letters, on letters of comfort, and on attempts to make sure that people get an amnesty or immunity from prosecution. Here we have a further iteration.

[Bob Stewart]

rose—

[Gavin Robinson]

I will not give way at this stage if the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I am deviating from the amendments and I recognise that we do not have much time.

We should be encouraging people in this process to give information, and we do that not by removing the consequence of avoiding the process, but by ensuring that there is a consequence should they not engage.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) made reference to Mrs Iris Moffitt-Scott, who gave an interview this morning on “Good Morning Ulster”. She asked that the Government not trample on victims. She said that today, on the 39th anniversary of her husband’s murder. Her husband had no affiliation; he was a farmer cutting hedges, and had just delivered his four-year-old child to the bus for the first day of school when he was murdered in cold blood. There was no reason for his murder other than pure, base sectarianism, and she is just asking today that the Government not trample on her and other victims like her.

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[Johnny Mercer]

I am grateful to be called in this incredibly important debate. I had a speech prepared about the usual things that I have bored everyone about for many years, but instead I will address some critical points that have been advanced by hon. Members—particularly on the Opposition side of the Committee, but some on the Government side too—about their concerns with this legislation.

It is important to remember that those who oppose the Bill have genuinely good intentions, as has consistently been the case since the Bill was announced. I understand what has been said, particularly on the issue of rape, which is an incredibly difficult subject to legislate on. It is also difficult to talk about whether it should be on the face of the Bill. When I oversaw the passage of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, we encountered that exact problem. Clearly, everyone finds the use of rape in war, Northern Ireland or wherever it may be completely abhorrent, but the issue is what it looks like politically if the Department does not put it on the face of the Bill. That is where it needs to do a bit of work. I understand why it has not done that, but in my experience it is worth having those conversations to see what can be done to ensure that hon. Members and those who will use the Bill are under absolutely no illusion as to its reach and extent.

The problem that the Department faces is that if rape and then sexual assault are on the face of the Bill, what makes up sexual assault and what was sexual assault in the period of the troubles? It becomes increasingly difficult to define those offences. It is important to have such debates, and I hope that the Government will work to change their position on the legalities of what is in the Bill so that people feel comfortable, but hon. Members should not demonise those who think, as I do, that the Bill should go through to the Lords as it is. We should talk about the amendments when it gets down to that process and send it through unamended today, even though there is a particular issue around this crime that we all agree is abhorrent.

I totally understand why the Northern Ireland parties oppose the Bill, and why the DUP opposed the Good Friday agreement. Nobody on the Government side of the Committee wants anybody who has committed an offence, whether they were in uniform or a paramilitary, to get away with that—nobody wants that at all. If people ask me what I want from the Bill, I say that I want justice, fairness, and anything that brings a degree of peace and an ability to live on past the troubles to come forward.

The problem is that we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. My hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) said that we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good, and that was raised as a bad thing, but that is what we are here to do. I totally understand where the Northern Ireland parties are coming from, and this has been an educational journey for me as well. We have had some pretty feisty debates in this place, and I totally understand where those on all sides in the debate are coming from in Northern Ireland. The only problem I have is that, as politicians, we have to be pragmatic and we have to work in the space of what is physically possible.

I would, I suppose, have more time or more understanding for the argument that we have to try these different things if we were not 24 years on from the Good Friday agreement, and individuals such as Dennis Hutchings, who did nothing wrong and was never convicted of any offence, are repeatedly dragged over to Northern Ireland—he eventually died in a hotel room on his own in Belfast—because we have not been pragmatists. We have all been idealists, because we all want the perfection of a clear result in relation to what was an incredibly difficult period in Northern Ireland, but it is just not possible to achieve that.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my good friend very much for allowing me to intervene, and I totally endorse what he has said. Those of us sitting here utterly understand how awful it is, and we totally understand why the parties in Northern Ireland cannot accept allowing people to get away with it. I feel the same, and when I vote tonight I will be using quite a long spoon because I totally understand where they are coming from. It hurts me, too, that anyone might get away with cold-blooded murder.

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention, and I pay tribute to his extraordinary service in Northern Ireland in some of the most appalling atrocities of that conflict.

That is a really important point. We think about the mother of Stephen Restorick, a lance bombardier from one of my regiments, who was the last soldier killed in the troubles in Northern Ireland. He was asking for the driving licence of a lady passing through his checkpoint, and she said, “All I can remember about him was that he was a beautiful boy, and his smiling face as he leant down to the window to take the driving licence”, when he was shot in the back by a sniper. No planet exists where people such as me, from exactly the same organisations, would want an individual who had committed that to be released.

The individual who did it was convicted and sentenced to 490 years, yet was released under the 1998 Good Friday agreement. There is no comparison here. My friends from Northern Ireland live over there in their communities, but the truth is that pragmatism has to win—it has to—because to continue doing the same thing and expect it to be different is a definition of insanity.

I have not seen anybody else in the Committee sit through such trials in Northern Ireland, but I have seen the absolutely ludicrous nature of them. We talk about victims. I know this will make me unpopular in some circles, but I actually feel sorry for a lot of the victims for being dragged down this pathway now. Everybody there knows that we will never reach the threshold for a criminal conviction, but nobody has the courage to say to them, “Do you know what? I’m so sorry, but this is unlikely to be successful so we have to take the next best option. The best option is that we find somebody and we put them in prison. I’m so sorry—and it’s the state’s fault, it’s lots of people’s fault; we didn’t investigate properly—but that is not an option. So you now have to deal in this space, which is the pragmatic space. What are you going to do? Do you want to know what happened to your loved one, and that they mattered, in their final hours—or do you want to continue to progress down this path where you will never get an answer?” That is my experience of dealing with victims, and I totally respect that other people have different experiences.

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[Conor Burns]

I absolutely join my right hon. Friend in paying tribute to Members of parties from across Northern Ireland, who speak so eloquently and passionately for those they were elected to serve. The one thing that unites us across the Chamber is a determination—even if we disagree about the means—to try to do the right

thing for the people of Northern Ireland, who it is our pleasure and obligation to serve.

If I may, I want to come specifically to some of the amendments discussed at various points this afternoon. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and the shadow Secretary of State raised questions about the independence of the commissioner. We are absolutely clear that central to the effective delivery of this legislation is the need for the body to be independent and to carry out robust investigations and reviews. We see the merits of requiring the ICRIR to provide a copy of its annual report to Parliament and to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and we will take that away and consider it further.

On my hon. Friend’s suggestion that one of the commissioners should be someone of international experience, we certainly see advantages in that. We do not necessarily see an advantage in writing that into the Bill, but it is certainly something the Secretary of State will bear in mind when we get to the point of appointment.

On amendments 111 and 112, tabled by the shadow Secretary of State, the commissioner for investigations will be a senior individual with significant experience in conducting criminal investigations and the authority to conduct the commission’s investigative processes as they see fit. There was some conversation about the difference in scope between an inquiry, a review and an investigation. The term “review” represents the scope of the investigative process that can take place. If the body is required to fulfil an article 2 obligation, it can conduct an appropriate investigative process to do so. In other circumstances, a different approach will be required and the commission will have to be flexible in order to do that.

I do not see the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) in her place, but she talked about the very tragic circumstances in Birmingham and public inquiries. Just to be absolutely clear, the role and power of the commission is comparable to a public inquiry. It will be led by a judicial figure, as chief commissioner, and the investigative process will be supported by full state disclosure. We have continually made the point that we will be passing across state documentation for the body to consider.

[Bob Stewart]

When the ICRIR meets and gets evidence, and perhaps gets evidence of the identity of some person who has committed a heinous crime, can the Minister guarantee that the name of that person, who may well then get immunity from prosecution in some way, is made public so that those poor people who have lost someone will actually know who has killed their next of kin?

[Conor Burns]

I am afraid that the answer to my right hon. Friend is conditional. That will be a matter for the panel itself to determine, and it will have all the evidence at its disposal to make the appropriate judgment. In reference to what I said a moment ago about passing over state records, we will obviously have to take precautionary measures to make sure that we do not jeopardise named individuals who may have been involved in different things where their naming could put them at risk of significant harm.

Just to clarify the question from the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) about the keeping of evidence, biometrics will be destroyed a reasonable period after the end of an inquiry, but all the records given to the body by other bodies will of course be retained, because they will be with the bodies—the police and others—that supplied the information to the body in the first place.

In response to amendment 83, we think the definition of close family member provided in schedule 3 to the Bill casts a significantly wide net as to who may request an investigation and a review into the death of a loved one. The legislation’s primary focus is on effective information recovery. The ICRIR will conduct investigations for the purposes of providing answers for those who want them. To be absolutely clear, individuals who have moved to a jurisdiction outside the United Kingdom and are subject to ongoing prosecution proceedings initiated prior to the entry into force of this legislation by a UK prosecutor for a troubles-related offence will be unable to avail themselves of immunity in the scope of the Bill before the Committee today.

There was some mention of concern about the glorification of terrorism and granting immunity for those who could go on to glorify terrorism in their communities. The Terrorism Act 2006 already makes it illegal for the encouragement or glorification of terrorism, whether in the past, in the future or generally. Nothing in the Bill would prevent the prosecution of individuals who are deemed to have committed an offence under the Terrorism Act 2006. The Bill is an ambitious attempt to try to move society in Northern Ireland forward. The role of the Committee today, and the role of the other place in days to come, will hopefully improve the Bill further, as we seek to steer it through to the statute book. I commend it to the Committee.