Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Tony Lloyd

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tony Lloyd]

I agree, particularly for this reason: killing is killing. We do not have a statute of limitations for murder more generally. It is hard to understand in this most brutal of backgrounds—when a whole society has been traumatised and continues to be—that we are now moving on. I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. I refer to the issue of collusion not because the state is any more guilty than others, but because every murder deserves the same proper and complete investigation, and we will not see that under this Bill.

I will make a couple of other points. I am seriously concerned that the new independent commission for reconciliation and information recovery simply will not have the powers of an inquest or the capacity of civil cases. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is not intervening, but I think he is assuring me from a sedentary position, “Yes, it will.” Let me tell him this: if we go back nearly 20 years, the British Government—a Labour Government at the time, by the way—were taken before the European Court of Human Rights, and one of ways in which the Court concluded that our country’s actions were incompatible with article 2 of the European convention was on the inability of the process at the time to lead from investigation and inquest through to prosecution. That is a significant issue, because there is no capacity in which the new body can deliver that prosecutorial process. Therefore, in the same way we will be in default on our article 2 obligations here. That is a serious point about which we should be very worried.

[Colum Eastwood]

The hon. Member is making an important speech. I wonder whether he has heard that the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights has today said that the Bill

“raises serious questions about the extent to which the proposed mechanism…is compliant with ECHR standards on independent and effective investigations. The possibility to grant immunity…on a low evidentiary bar raises concerns that this could lead to impunity.”