Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill
Debate between Lady Hermon and Julian LewisTuesday 9th July 2019
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 9 July 2019 - (9 Jul 2019)
Lady Hermon
I am very grateful. Since the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment makes reference to “other security personnel”, will he confirm whether he and his colleagues have taken the view of the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association, and will he elaborate on their opposition to any such amnesty or statute of limitations? That would be enlightening for the Committee.
Dr Lewis
I am afraid that we have got into a situation where people in Northern Ireland have become, to some extent, a prisoner of their own rhetoric. As I understand it, there is opposition to what people imagine is being proposed on the basis that it draws some form of moral equivalence between the forces of law and order and those people who went out, illegally armed, to commit terrorist offences. It does nothing of the sort. The only equivalence that anyone can or should read into such measures is the basic equivalence before the law that applies to everyone.
I have made this point before, and I am afraid that I am going to keep making it until one day more people accept it: already, in the form of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, such equivalence is quite clear. What that Act provides for is that if somebody has been convicted of not just one grave offence but even multiple murders, they might well be given a life sentence, but under that legislation no one will ever serve more than two years of that life sentence in jail. That has sometimes been thought to be something that applied to paramilitaries and terrorists but not to the armed forces, but in repeated debates on this subject it has been established very clearly and unambiguously in ministerial statements from the Front Bench that it applies to everyone. That does not create moral equivalence between the people it applies to; it simply creates the same equivalence before the law that applies to every British citizen, whether virtuous or villainous.
Dr Lewis
I thank my hon. Friend, who is an expert in these matters, for that perceptive observation. Certainly, on the differentiation between people who were lawfully armed, trying to preserve the peace and the good order of society, and those who went out unlawfully to try to disrupt that, I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks will address that very point in some depth, because it goes to the heart of his amendment.
Lady Hermon
I am exceedingly grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is being very generous indeed. I think that it would be very helpful if he, and indeed his colleagues, clarified how many members of the British Army have been investigated, re-investigated and prosecuted in Northern Ireland. I think the numbers would be very instructive and interesting.
Dr Lewis
I am not an expert on the subject, but I think that the numbers at the moment are very low, but the threat—the sword of Damocles—is hanging over a very large number of people.
That leads me rather neatly to the final point that I want to make, about conformity with international law, which does not require a prosecution but does require an investigation. That is why the Select Committee on Defence—we have a further report coming out that relates not just to Northern Ireland, but to the wider context of other campaigns—has always sought to combine the notion of a qualified statute of limitations with that of a truth recovery process. What might loosely be termed the Nelson Mandela solution means that we would satisfy the requirement for an investigation but remove the sword of Damocles hanging over someone’s head, because they would know that they would be required to say what they remembered of the events concerned, with an absolute assurance that no prosecutions would result. That would give the bereaved families the best chance of finding out the truth.
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Lady Hermon and Julian LewisMonday 9th July 2018
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Notices of Amendments as at 2 February 2018 - (5 Feb 2018)
Dr Lewis
I see the Secretary of State acknowledging that fact. She will know that the Defence Committee was particularly disappointed about something that I mentioned earlier in an intervention. In the Government’s response—the one that was published in November 2017—they reprinted two of our recommendations and it gave the following answer to them. The recommendations were as follows:
“It is clear from the experience of these legacy investigations that, unless a decision is taken to draw a line under all Troubles-related cases, without exception, they will continue to grind on for many years to come—up to half-a-century after the incidents concerned… Accordingly, we recommend the adoption of Option One—the enactment of a statute of limitations, covering all Troubles-related incidents, up to the signing of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which involved former members of the Armed Forces. This should be coupled with the continuation and development of a truth recovery mechanism which would provide the best possible prospect of bereaved families finding out the facts, once no-one needed to fear being prosecuted.”
This is what might be termed the Nelson Mandela solution, which of course proved to be such a success in South Africa.
Lady Hermon
At the very beginning of the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution, he summarised what he felt was the attitude in the House, which was that there was a consensus on a statute of limitations in Northern Ireland. May I just say that I am not in that consensus? I do not support a statute of limitations in Northern Ireland for the armed forces alone. I would like the right hon. Gentleman to address the really critical question. There is a fundamental principle of the British legal system that no one is above the law. How would he reconcile the amendment to which he is speaking with that fundamental principle?