Billy Wright Inquiry

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I wholeheartedly endorse the comments of the hon. Lady and her hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). People suffered at the hands of the INLA, the LVF and the Ulster Volunteer Force and I wholeheartedly condemn those who caused that suffering. We should not forget that it was terrorists who caused those deaths.

When I meet the Justice Minister on Monday, I will go through the recommendations in the report. However, they are not for me to impose. That is what devolution is all about. Devolution is in the hands of local Ministers. We will have a thorough and open discussion, because, as the hon. Lady says, the facts involved are shocking, but we should also bear in mind that those facts date from a long time ago, and concern an institution that has long since closed. What I have seen leads me to believe that there is no comparison between the Northern Ireland Prison Service today and the service that struggled to handle the extremely difficult circumstances of holding 500 determined murderers in the Maze.

The hon. Lady asked briefly about the Finucane and Ballymurphy cases. I am due to have meetings with those concerned, and I think it would be wrong for me to jump the gun before I have met them.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

The Maze prison, where the murder occurred, is in my constituency. I well recall the events, and the subsequent inquiries and investigation by the police. I am concerned about the fact that the report does not identify how the weapons were brought into the prison. That remains a key issue. All the other failings were important, but it is doubtful whether the murder could have occurred had those weapons not been available to terrorists in what was reputedly the most high-security prison in Europe. I do not think that we can allow the report to pass without further inquiry into how the weapons came to be in the possession of the INLA terrorists.

There will also be doubts in many people’s minds today about the series of events leading up to the murder of Billy Wright. I condemn murder, whether by the LVF or by any other paramilitary or terrorist organisation. My thoughts are, of course, with the victims, but Billy Wright’s family are entitled to know the truth of what happened. In particular, his father, David Wright, is entitled to know what happened to his son. I do not believe that the report gives us that.

There are too many coincidences, too many happenstances, too many things that went wrong all at the same time, all of which contributed to the murder. Many of us are left with more questions than answers in our minds today.

[Mr Paterson]

I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman is not happy with the result of this report, after an investigation by a senior judge and his tribunal with its highly respected panel, and with more than 30,000 pages of evidence having been looked at. Obviously, it is also very regrettable that some of the details have not emerged. How the guns got into H block 6 is still not clear. That highlights one of the sad facts about trying to arrive at a system to look at the past: in some cases we just will not get to those final details. This may be one of those cases. After spending £30 million and following six years of investigation by some of the most experienced lawyers in the western world, we have not got to one of the key details: how the guns were smuggled into the H block. As we look ahead, I am afraid that we are going to have to accept that, in respect of some of these past cases, we simply will never know.