Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Bew Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say some words in favour of this Bill. One might assume that we had a situation at present that was viable. I very much sympathise with the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and others who have looked at the word “reconciliation” and said that it is tossed around in the Bill in a way that is not entirely convincing, to put it politely. I absolutely understand that, but the truth is that we have an entirely rancid situation in Northern Ireland. The continuation of lawfare is just a contributory to what is perfectly obvious to anybody who pays the most casual attention to public opinion in Northern Ireland: there is an increasing mutual contempt between the two communities. There is a reason why the Government are trying to introduce this Bill. I fully accept the point from the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, that in part it is to do with a manifesto commitment and the issue of veterans, but it is also to do with the fact that the status quo is simply not tolerable, and in our discussions I think we should acknowledge that.

I was very impressed by the introduction to the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Caine, not just because of the careful and calibrated way in which he spoke and acknowledged the difficulty, even the anguished way he spoke, but also the precise way that he spoke. But he did not really have much effect on the broader tone of the debate. As the debate went on, we learnt that the Bill was obscene and again and again it was said that it was depriving people of hope.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, talked about Pinochet’s Chile. Perhaps it is because I was at Cambridge with people who suffered under Pinochet, I thought that was a slight stretch. I accept that the noble Lord was a remarkably effective Secretary of State. He has made it clear tonight that he is on a journey and that he has now modified some of the positions he previously held on this matter in the light of his hopes for what might come from the Boutcher inquiry. I must say, as someone who knows Jon Boutcher, that that is a big wager; it is a Pascal’s wager of a big sort that that inquiry will somehow challenge the terms of this debate, for all the brilliance of his police work. Everybody who knows about his career in London knows that he was—indeed, still is—a very fine policeman.

This language is striking and so different from the tone that the noble Lord, Lord Caine, adopted in an attempt to be precise and face up to difficulties. Again and again tonight, reference has been made to the fact that there were sexual crimes. In fact, the Government have tried to move on this; it is there, but you would not know it from anything that been said in the past two or three hours.

The crucial thing, above all, is that I find myself thinking again and again about the friend of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, at the time of the initial report, which he has talked about so eloquently tonight. Everybody knows that his friend, Denis Bradley, is no particular friend to British Governments. When this Bill was published and it was clear that the Government were going to act in this way, did Denis Bradley talk about “obscene”? Did he talk about depriving people of hope? No. He went into a television studio and, to the annoyance of people who expected him to use that sort of language, he said, “There is no realistic hope. Politicians are merely playing a game if they try to defend the idea that there is hope somehow. They are making a public display. They are actually misleading people.”

It is important to remember the tone with which he spoke at that time. He said, “We cannot deliver more justice now, but we may be able to deliver more truth”; again, that is part of the thinking behind the Bill. That is what Denis Bradley said in the immediate aftermath of this Bill’s publication—quite different from the tone of so much of what has been said tonight, but at least it respected what the Government are trying to do. I am absolutely certain that, if he were here tonight, he would say, “There are loads of things in this Bill that I really don’t like,” but that is a different point. The noble Lord, Lord Caine, has already acknowledged that there are problems in the Bill and creative work will have to be done to sort it out. However, given the tone of what we have heard, it is worth remembering Denis Bradley’s initial response.

Again, the reason why I am sympathetic to the sceptical talk about reconciliation is that I was a historical adviser to the Bloody Sunday tribunal. As historical advisers, we all thought, “This is it. The Government’s great failing is that they won’t fess up to the things they or the state did wrong. We will put a line under it.” When the report came in, David Cameron made a fine speech, partly drafted by the noble Lord, Lord Caine, fessing up to what the British state had got wrong. The hope was, “Well, that’s it. That’s a dividing line. People will accept that we’re not afraid to criticise ourselves or our state’s performance.” The hope was that things would move on and the mood in Northern Ireland would change, but the mood did not change at all. It is as simple as that. I accept that it was a fine industry for the lawyers who worked in it, but the mood of the people did not change at all and the impact that David Cameron was aiming for in his speech ultimately amounted to zero. I am prepared to accept that it would have been worse had he not given that speech. But that is why I accept the talk that it is going to be difficult to achieve reconciliation and why I respond so sympathetically to what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said.

However, it is important to understand that the status quo is radically unacceptable, defective, and helping to create an increasingly rancid and divisive public mood in Northern Ireland. At this point, the Bill has unified both communities, but it is a false unity. They each simply want the terrorists of the other community to be brought to law. The unity disclaimed against the Bill is not a real unity.

What has surprised me most this evening is how the Supreme Court ruling in the McQuillan case in December 2021 has not been discussed in any serious way. It has a very significant impact. The headline in the Times law report on 10 January stated that the Supreme Court had said that Northern Ireland police are not required to reinvestigate incidents from the Troubles. That is not being said by the Minister or the British Government, and nor is it a clause in this Bill. It is a very firm statement of Supreme Court policy.

I am sure that there is debate about this, and that many do not like or accept it, but it is a Supreme Court—

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

Does the noble Lord accept that the Times headline writer might not have been quite accurate, and that the judgment in the McQuillan case might have been slightly more complicated than that?

[Lord Bew (CB)]

It is no more inaccurate than any other headline that I have seen. I accept that it is a complex ruling. However, the Northern Ireland police force issued a statement after the judgment:

“The Police Service welcome the clear legal ruling that there are no legal obligations arising from Article 2 ECHR to investigate these cases. We will now carefully consider the judgments and their impact on the legacy caseload.”


The Government have been attacked for depriving people of hope but, at the minimum, fairness requires us to say that the Supreme Court is depriving people of hope. Only this week we have had an attempt to assassinate two policemen, and serious business with loyalist paramilitaries. Anyone who thinks that the Northern Ireland police force does not look at that ruling and think it significant—and significant enough to be mentioned in this debate—is living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Yet apparently, no one thinks that because it is better to say that this Bill is obscene, is depriving people of hope, et cetera.

I am insistent because we have a problem. The public debate in Northern Ireland now—the way that lawfare operates and the way that these cases are now exhumed on a regular basis, which the Government are responding to—does not relate to what happened in the Troubles. To give a very simple example, the RUC, as was, suffered 309 deaths. It killed 53 people, including 10 of its own in error, carrying heavy weapons in police cars and so on. RUC officers were killed at five or six times the rate of their killing. This is very crude but factual. The killings committed by the republican movement were something like five times the rate of their own deaths, but no one would know that if they looked at the cases running through the courts in Northern Ireland, and at how lawfare was operating. No one would consider that to be the balance of killing and of suffering. Nobody would know that.

That is the problem that we are trying to address with this Bill and why I am willing to give it a degree of support. It is not in doubt that there are problems with the Bill. The Minister has made it clear that the problems are significant. The House can do a lot of work to improve it. Yet everyone must remember that the Bill does not exist on its own but alongside a Supreme Court ruling that unquestionably moves the dice—moves the balance. There is no question that it does that. It may not move it 100%. There may be requirements for other developments, but it certainly moves the discussion in a way that we have not acknowledged in several hours of debate tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, with that interesting comparison because everybody has said that the one thing the Bill does not do is promote reconciliation. We certainly need to have a debate about what would promote reconciliation.

I join others in showing appreciation to the Minister for his opening speech. I think we all genuinely appreciated his sincerity. When he said that the Bill is challenging for us and for him, it was pretty obvious that there was a very sincere situation. He has our sympathy, which is perhaps not what he wants, but I believe he will get engagement. What we will get at the end of it is obviously yet to be determined, but it is important to put that mark down.

Another thing that has been said is that the term “Troubles” is euphemistic. It is a terrible understatement for what was a bloody conflict. It convulsed Ireland and Northern Ireland for 30 years and has left, as we now appreciate, a tragic and very complicated legacy. It is also worth saying that while none of us who live on the mainland can possibly appreciate what it did to the communities in Northern Ireland—we have heard so much about that and all appreciate the contributions made—it has left deep scars across the whole of the United Kingdom. This is not just because of the atrocities committed in Great Britain. In so many meetings over many years just as a local MP, I heard the sense of inadequacy, guilt and despair at the conflict and the inability to bring it to an end. I think that affected people right across the UK; we were just so used to news bulletins about another bombing or shooting, and we wanted it to stop.

The Good Friday/Belfast agreement laid down hope for the whole of the UK, as well as the island of Ireland. The question now is: will we be able to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that agreement with a process of reconciliation and a functioning Executive and Assembly? That would attract well-wishers from across the world. Right now it does not look likely and if not that, what?

Reference has been made to the Stormont House agreement. I recognise that the Ulster Unionist Party said that it did not support the agreement but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said, I hope it did not reject the basic principles: any legacy solution should promote reconciliation and uphold the rule of law; it should acknowledge and address the suffering of victims; it should facilitate the pursuit of justice and be human rights-compliant. That is surely not a point of contention.

The other thing we are all concerned about is the switch in the Government’s position. At the 2017 general election, the Government said:

“We … continue to believe that any approach to the past must be fully consistent with the rule of law … Conservatives in government have consistently said that we will not introduce amnesties or immunities from prosecution.”


That was said by Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State at that time, but we have had an election since and the world has changed. The Minister has been here throughout that and will of course have his own appreciation of that change and development.

I think all of us accept the views of some that the uncertainty over possible prosecutions of service and security personnel causes stress and anxiety—of course it does. But surely that does not justify setting aside human rights issues and the rule of law; it cannot do so. We have to recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, did, that the security forces did an incredible job, took huge casualties, were brave, saved lives and kept the peace, but some of them clearly did not conform. In fact, it is in the interests of the overwhelming majority who performed absolutely professionally that those who did not should not be given absolution.

It is important to say that this is not simply a domestic issue: it affects our reputation as a nation and an upholder of human rights, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said. We uphold human rights and the rule of law, but this has been seriously damaged by the conduct of this increasingly discredited Government who, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, now think that law should just be taken into account, rather than respected and followed.

I was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe—its political wing, if you like —and I am concerned when I hear debates within certain sections of the Conservative Party calling for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, alongside Belarus and Russia, the only non-members of that organisation. I am glad that Dominic Raab said that he does not think that useful, but that was not a robust defence of our membership, nevertheless. The idea that we should do that is unconscionable, and a dying Government with no mandate have no right even to consider it.

The problem, which has been mentioned, is that all of this should be happening in a debate among the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, who need to make an honest assessment of the role. We are here because they are not there, and that simply has to stop.

The Minister said that he has had many meetings recently, and I believe him; he probably listened and engaged sincerely and genuinely. But the fact is that the stakeholders are all saying that they have not been properly consulted and certainly have not been listened to, perhaps apart from in their engagement with the Minister. So we have to recognise that the Bill is supported by no one in Northern Ireland. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bew, that it is not good enough to say that, because they all have different motives, the fact that they are united against it is not valid. For a Government to pursue a Bill that no one in Northern Ireland supports shows total contempt for devolution, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said. It is unacceptable.

[Lord Bew (CB)]

I absolutely take the point the noble Lord is making, but some polling suggests that significant groups on both sides of the community do want to draw a line under this dispute, to use that horrible phrase. I am not suggesting that it is a majority, but you cannot deduce from the political parties their hostility. Do not forget what I said about Denis Bradley. The parties are playing a game whereby they apparently offer justice to people, but realistically there is no chance of justice. So you cannot deduce anything from the parties’ positions. Some of the polling is more mediated, and there is the position of the veterans’ groups, which has been referred to.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

I do not for a minute dispute that people have different motives for their objections, and they may have motives that I do not like or respect. But it is indisputable that no political party in Northern Ireland supports the Bill, yet the Government say they are determined to legislate against the wishes of all of the elected representatives of Northern Ireland. I repeat: those elected representatives should be sitting in Northern Ireland—