Queen’s Speech

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I want to pick up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely. Talks are resuming in Northern Ireland following the Haass process to try to resolve contentious issues on flags, parades and the past. I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House will have hoped that by now we would not need to keep going back to deal with these issues. Sadly, we are not in that happy position.

The Haass process ended at the beginning of January, without agreement. There have been party leader meetings on and off ever since, but after the elections a brief window of opportunity has arisen and the leaders will be having a couple of two or three-day sessions between now and the end of June. While the Haass process dealt with those issues, it was not done on the basis that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Unfortunately, Sinn Fein has introduced a new precondition that all these issues must be dealt with or none of them will be dealt with. That is a mistake. We have the potential for an agreement on the parades issue. We are relatively close to one. Given the time of year and the backdrop, I would have thought that we should bank whatever agreement we can get and move on to try to solve something else, rather than leaving everything frozen until you get agreement across the board, which will be very difficult.

It is to that issue that I want to turn. Had we had an agreement at the beginning of January on issues pertaining to the past, what would we have looked like a few weeks later when the on-the-runs issue, of which people were unaware, emerged? It emerged that 350 people had been given royal pardons under the royal prerogative of mercy but, even worse, that 10 years of records of that royal prerogative of mercy have disappeared. How on earth can a record of the royal prerogative of mercy given between 1987 and 1997 have disappeared? Surely, it must be possible to reconstruct a record. I ask the Minister to respond on this. There must still be people serving in departments who were part of it. The office of the Attorney-General must have been involved along with the court office and, of course, the Royal Household itself because Her Majesty has to sign these pardons. Are we to believe that for 10 years Her Majesty’s Government have no record whatever of a royal prerogative of mercy? I am not trying just to make a cheap point. This issue is undermining confidence. People assume that some other dirty deal has been done under the table of which we are unaware. Those are not the circumstances in which positive negotiations can take place to solve our outstanding problems.

I appeal to the Government to address this matter. I have no doubt that they would get whatever help they needed from the previous Government. There must be a way to solve this problem and produce the records. If there is nothing to hide, that is fine; that is one less obstacle. Will the Minister assure us that there are no further deals or understandings with the IRA, Sinn Fein, loyalist paramilitaries or anybody else on issues of justice and matters pertaining to who has been sought and who has not? Such issues are corrosive given the two years of unending elections that we are facing—we have had elections this year, we will have the election next year and there will be Assembly elections in 2016. We have obtained agreement in the past only in circumstances where we have built up confidence. Such agreement is vital for our long-term peace and stability. I appeal to Her Majesty’s Government to tell the House how 10 years of records on such a sensitive issue have disappeared. Will they assure the House that we are in possession of all the information on any understandings that were reached with paramilitary organisations or others so that we can move into the talks with a genuine prospect of reaching a peaceful and successful outcome?