Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

That is my point: the fact that it got there and those two soldiers went through that process for nine years of their lives from 2005 to 2014. The wife of one the soldiers died during the process. That is why we need this process. A lot of this could have been done better over the years, but we are where we are.

I have a concern that people in Northern Ireland will not engage with the process and that victims and other groups will not come forward. That is a legitimate concern—I can see that campaigns will be run to try to get people not to engage. The only people who will lose out will be the families in Northern Ireland. For some time, they have been taken on journeys that, at times, were unfair on them. That is not a popular thing to repeat given the side of the argument that I come from, but some of the practices have been unfair on them.

Finally, I turn to glorification, and I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to listen to Opposition Front-Bench Members on that. I know that there are provisions in legislation—[Interruption.] Not about crime but specifically about the glorification of terrorism. We must be very careful that those cowards who got up in the morning to murder women and children for their political aims are given absolutely no opportunities to glorify what they did. We must double down and ensure that there is no gap in legislation where those people could take advantage of their crimes.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Member support the amendment on glorification this evening?

[Johnny Mercer]

As I understand it, conversations are ongoing about how that objective can be achieved—[Interruption.] No, it is not as simple as that. I have been a Minister and seen amendments that, on the face of it, looked like they would improve a Bill, but the reality is that certain things cannot be done because of how other legislation bumps up against them. Legislation must to be crafted in the correct way. As I understand it, Ministers are looking at that with the Opposition and they will ensure that there is no gap in the legislation that allows for terrorism to be glorified.

I have sat through all the speeches and every minute of the Bill’s passage, and I am afraid that I repeatedly hear things that are not true. We all have a responsibility to deal with this issue not as though we are speaking to our home crowd but as it actually is. If not, ultimately, the people who will lose out are families, victims and veterans. For me, they have always been at the heart of the debate, and I hope that we can continue to hold them there as we progress.

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[Stephen Farry]

I will be generous in accepting what the Minister says about his intentions, but we have to be honest and say that the nature of how we got here has, in many respects, been extremely bad and flawed, which hampers that aspiration. Who knows, people may well engage with the process in due course, but at the moment there is a lot of suspicion around it and people do not feel that it will address the needs of their families.

That brings me to the wider concern around the use of the term “reconciliation” and how it could well be used to almost legitimise the process around immunity—or, as many people see it, a de facto amnesty. There is an expectation that down the line many measures in this legislation could be challenged through the courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, which is not part of the European Union, as we keep saying. The key piece of case law in this respect is Marguš v. Croatia. The broader lesson I take from European law, and wider international law, on this is that there is a general tendency to move away from the concept of immunity or amnesty. It might well have been in vogue at certain times in the 1980s or ’90s, but it is certainly not in vogue in the contemporary approach to the issue of justice in conflict societies or divided societies.

If there is to be a chance of immunity getting some degree of acceptance or being seen as legitimate, it would need at the very least to meet one of two tests: the process would either have to be agreed as part of an overarching peace process or agreed subsequently by the key stakeholders and other parties in the society. Where we have a Government unilaterally imposing an outcome on Northern Ireland, it is hard to see how either of those tests could be met if we found ourselves in a legal challenge down the line.

My second broad point relates to civil cases, which have been mentioned by other hon. Members. I am not going to labour this point, but I want to stress that the notion of an arbitrary cut-off is incredibly unjust, particularly when it is linked to the timing of the Bill’s First Reading. Many people simply did not have the opportunity to lodge the papers they were working on at the time. Some people were able to lodge papers and some solicitors were able to act very quickly, but others were not, which creates a hierarchy in what happens in those civil cases.

In a similar light, we have touched on the inquests themselves. These proposals go back to my dear friend the Lord Chief Justice back in 2016. The process was not fully formulated until 2019, but we now have the prospect of some cases being taken through to conclusion and others being arbitrarily dropped because they are not at a so-called advanced stage when this legislation becomes active. I think this will create a real sense of grievance among families, particularly when they have been given hope of seeing their loved one’s case go through that process.

Although the Minister referred to the ICRIR potentially providing a process that encompasses legacy inquests, the reality has to be clearly understood. The level of interrogation that will take place as the ICRIR looks towards the immunity process is nothing close to the coronial system’s interrogation of evidence. They are fundamentally different concepts, so the fear is that the interrogation will be lost.

The Minister referred to the six months, nine months or a year before the knife falls and said that people can get on with it, which belies the reality in two respects. First, there is not the resourcing to accelerate the process any faster. Obviously, we would like to see more resources, which is something the Government could deliver.

Secondly, we have to acknowledge that the Government have not always been as co-operative as perhaps they could have been—I put it as diplomatically as I can—in how these inquests were taken forward. People express frustration that the Ballymurphy inquest only reached its conclusion 50 years after the event, but there were many battles beneath the surface, particularly with the Ministry of Defence, on co-operation. Things could have happened a lot quicker. In that respect, there are still ongoing battles and disputes on full Government co-operation with these inquests. If they are genuine about accelerating the process, they should reflect on that.

Finally on inquests, beyond what has been set out by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, if this Bill is passed, any inquest anywhere in these islands in relation to what happened in the past will be cut off, but there may well be circumstances in which those inquiries should take place.

The oral history, memorialisation and academic research is an important aspect of the legacy process that perhaps does not get the same attention as others, but it has always been regarded as a core element. In some respects, it could stand on its own two feet but, in practice, it is tied to what happens with the other institutions as part of the wider legacy framework.

Although I certainly trust the academics who would or could be involved in this process to do a great job, we have to recognise that a number of hurdles will be set in their path. One of those hurdles is the power of the Secretary of State to make appointments. I believe the appointments should be delegated to another body so there is no perception of political interference.

There also has to be a concern that the evidence to the ICRIR will be piecemeal. There are fears about both ends of the process. First, there is a fear that the perpetrators themselves will not be incentivised to engage with the process until the knock on their door is about to happen and they feel a self-interest to do so. A very select group of people will come forward in that respect. Secondly, which families will engage with the process? Again, it may be a very select group, so the evidence base may be piecemeal. There are also issues with the documentary evidence that comes forward and whether it will be properly opened up. There is scepticism or cynicism about how effective that will be. Again, this evidence may well be partial and piecemeal.

It is worth sticking with this process, even if it is outside the Bill. We have to learn important lessons and listen to the practitioners from Northern Ireland, such as Dr Anna Bryson from Queen’s University Belfast and others, who have expressed concern about how this has been set up.

It is my intention to support both the amendments on which the Labour party seeks to divide the Committee, and both the DUP amendments, too.

[Carla Lockhart]

The Government and the Committee are very aware of my party’s reasons for opposing this Bill, as so eloquently outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson).

This Bill, at its core, is about injustice, evading justice and denying justice, which makes it very, very wrong. Through amendment 107, we seek to ensure that those who engage with the panel and receive immunity will, at least, have their crime considered if they are in the dock for a post-1998 offence. Surely this is a fair ask. Surely this Committee and the Government acknowledge that, by not agreeing to this amendment, they would be erasing the past from our legal process.

If a terrorist is granted immunity for carrying out a murder and commits murder again, he or she ought to be considered for sentencing by the court in the knowledge that he or she has clearly shown neither rehabilitation nor regrets for the act of taking a life. He or she should therefore be sentenced as such.

New clause 4 and amendment 120 touch on the issue of glorification, and they would be a vital addition to this Bill. We tabled these amendments with victims at the forefront of our mind and because we desire a society in which glorification of terrorism is not seen as normal, and in which those who planted bombs and killed men, women and children are not venerated as some kind of heroes.

I sometimes wonder how many Members are aware of the perverse activity of some of our elected representatives in Northern Ireland and how they regularly glorify terrorism. If the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition attended the unveiling of a memorial to three terrorists, it would be headline news and would be raised in this House—there would be a media and press outcry, and their position would be untenable—yet in Northern Ireland the leader of Sinn Féin brazenly attends events celebrating IRA activity. It is a reflection on our society and our media that such activity, in the main, goes unmentioned and, more disturbingly, goes unchallenged.

If an MP from any other party named their constituency office after a terrorist, it would be dealt with by this House, but nothing was done when the Sinn Féin Member for South Down named his constituency office after IRA terrorists.

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[Carla Lockhart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and agree entirely with what he is saying. It is abhorrent that this House funds an office that is a cold house to all members of the constituency that that individual represents. Every day, it retraumatises the victims of the terrorists after whom that office is named. I raised this point in this House in an Adjournment debate and have consistently raised it with Mr Speaker and a number of Ministers, asking them to take action. I will continue to do so until we have that dealt with appropriately. If we are to educate our future generations about the futility and evils of terrorism, we need to ensure it is never sanitised and never celebrated. That is why we ask Members to accept our amendment.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Amendment 107 is, of course, about addressing whether serious offences should be excluded, for example murders that occurred after 1998. Would it not be appalling if the people who murdered two soldiers at Massereene barracks in the South Antrim constituency and seriously wounded two civilians in the same gun attack walked away free if the case ever came again before a court? Surely that is not what this Bill should be doing.

[Carla Lockhart]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. It is well made and has been noted.

New clause 4 seeks to ensure that terrorists receiving immunity cannot proceed to laud their evil activities; it is about ensuring that the book deals do not follow, and the fundraising tours and storytelling events cannot happen. Vitally, it is about protecting victims, for whom such events cause huge hurt and distress. The terrorists gave no thought to the victims and survivors before they made them such, and the activities of terrorists and their political proxies to this day show that they still have no regard for victims and the trauma they continue to inflict upon them. This Bill would be plunged to even deeper depths of moral despondency if it were to facilitate the further glorification of terrorism by those granted immunity in this process. I hope the Government will consider whether this is an outcome they would allow in England and, when they answer that question, act accordingly to amend this Bill to eradicate this extolling of evil in Northern Ireland.

Let me touch briefly on new clause 5, which stands in my name and those of my colleagues. The Bill is lacking in many areas, but it certainly lacks in the whole sphere of the revocation of immunity. It is vital that this Bill does provide for situations where new evidence emerges showing that condition B in clause 18 was not met because the terrorist has lied. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that such instances will occur, given the types of people we are dealing with. Let us not forget that for many years senior members of the IRA have denied ever being members of the IRA; the truth is very much secondary to the cause. The granting of immunity is in itself abhorrent, but just how abhorrent would it be if someone had been granted immunity on the back of a tall tale and then the appropriate mechanism was not in place to revoke that ill-gotten immunity on the back of new evidence? This must be addressed, and we ask that the Government consider it carefully.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East covered our other amendments in his contribution, passionately setting out why we believe they can at least make the Bill more robust. I reiterate his remarks, especially on the need to cut off at the pass any idea that immunity will give terrorists a platform to revel in their deeds and inflict more pain on victims who are already hurting so much because of this Bill.

[Tony Lloyd]

Let me begin by saying that this is an astonishingly important Bill and this is an incredibly incompetent way for this House of Commons to deal with it: to have had two days, in which we have been unable to get into the detail of the Bill, is frankly no way to deal with legislation of this import. The Minister is making valiant attempts to move a little with the mood of the Committee, but he must realise that we have not had the opportunity to get into the level of detail that we ought to on a Bill of this import.

I establish that because, interestingly, people from every party represented from Northern Ireland have spoken, at one stage or another, strongly against what this Bill seeks to do and indeed against individual parts of the Bill. That reflects the mood not only of victims and victims’ groups—I have talked to many of those over the years—but the opinion across the piece of the north of Ireland. It is important that we establish that because one problem with that the position is that it plays into different parties’ existing concerns. We have heard DUP Members say that they see this as a get out of jail free card for those who committed acts of terrorism, and I understand why. Those from the nationalist community will see this, again, as simply another attempt to gloss over the action of the state and the collusion that took place. In that context, the real danger is that rather than being something that moves us towards reconciliation, the Bill will establishes in people the rectitude of their own views of the injustice of the situation. That is very, very dangerous.