Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, before I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Caine, on his promotion as Minister, with his long service in Northern Ireland I hope he will be able to bring much greater understanding to the Northern Ireland Office, which I once had the privilege to lead with some of the finest-ever civil servants and advisers. As things stand under the stewardship of the present Secretary of State, I am sorry to say that it will certainly need that.

As a former Secretary of State I, along with other noble Lords across this House who worked for many years to establish stable political structures in Northern Ireland, will support efforts in this Bill to safeguard power sharing and improve the sustainability of the Executive and the Assembly. There were hard lessons to be learned following the collapse of the Executive in 2017, and during the three long years until their restoration with the New Decade, New Approach agreement at the beginning of 2020. In so far as the Bill represents a sensible evolution of the arrangements for the appointment of Ministers following an Assembly election, or in the event of the resignation of the First or Deputy First Minister and restores the original purpose of the petition of concern mechanism, it should command the support of the House.

My serious concern, however, is that the legislation which the Government agreed to implement nearly two years ago will come too late to deal with the political crisis that will inevitably ensue if the current leader of the DUP carries out his threat to bring down the Executive and Assembly over the entirely predictable outcome of the Brexit deal negotiated and agreed by this Government—namely, the Northern Ireland protocol to the withdrawal agreement. There is no shortage of ironies in this potentially disastrous scenario. The DUP would bring down the painfully hard-won Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly over Brexit, which is way beyond its competence to deal with, and the political representatives of the people most adversely impacted will be kept out of the room while the negotiator-in-chief who got them into this shambles in the first place has another go. This is not an oven-ready Brexit; it is an Eton mess.

There are other aspects of the New Decade, New Approach agreement, which the noble Lord, Lord Caine, helped to negotiate, that are yet to be implemented—one of which, we are told, will imminently be legislated for—which cause me great concern. The NDNA agreement promised that within 100 days from 9 January 2020 the Stormont House agreement of December 2014, which set out the structures to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s violent past, would be implemented.

Although noble Lords will have their views on the efficacy of the Stormont House agreement, it is an agreement not least between the UK and Irish Governments. On 18 March 2020, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland announced in a two-page Written Ministerial Statement that the Government were unilaterally repudiating the agreement. There was no consultation with the victims and survivors sector in Northern Ireland, who are most directly affected, no consultation with the political parties in Northern Ireland, and no consultation with the Irish Government.

Fast-forward to July of this year, and the Government produced a Command Paper which in so many ways is the most shocking document I have come across in my 50 years in politics and in government. It proposes what is, in effect, a blanket amnesty which would include those who carried out some of the most unspeakable atrocities imaginable during what is still euphemistically called the Troubles. It would halt all court proceedings on crimes related to the Troubles, both criminal and civil. It would halt all inquests, even those currently listed for hearing. It would say to traumatised and still-grieving victims that what happened to their loved ones is no longer of any interest to the state, and it says to the perpetrators that what they did to those victims is no longer of any interest to the state—and this from a Government who purport to respect and uphold the rule of law. These proposals are legally dubious, constitutionally dangerous and morally corrupt, in my view. I am raising it here in an effort to get the Government to think again before the Bill is brought to Parliament.

On 24 October 1990, Patsy Gillespie, who worked as a civilian cook in an army base, was chained to the steering column of his van, which had a 1,200 lb bomb placed in it. While his wife and young family were held at gunpoint, he was made to drive the van to an army post. He shouted a warning but, while he was still in the driver’s seat, the bomb was detonated, killing Patsy and five soldiers. No one has been made accountable for this horrendous crime and, if the Government have their way, no one ever will be. The police in Northern Ireland are convinced that one of those responsible is today part of an active dissident republican group in Derry/Londonderry. If the legislation as currently proposed is enacted, who do you think will sleep easier in their beds: Patsy’s wife, Kathleen, or the people who turned her husband into a human bomb? Could any of us look Kathleen in the eye and say: “I voted for a law that will offer succour and protection to the men who robbed you and your children of the love of your life”? I could not, and I urge the Government to think again before their Bill is presented to Parliament.

In our joint letter in September 2018, a cross-party group of Peers, each with direct ministerial or parliamentary experience in Northern Ireland, suggested another way forward. So does Operation Kenova, so ably headed by former Chief Constable Jon Boutcher; having observed how Kenova is working, my thinking on dealing with legacy issues has evolved. In essence, Kenova prioritises an information-recovery process rather than a prosecutorial process, but—and this is crucial—it leaves open prosecutions if the evidence uncovered sustains those.

Victims and survivors will be properly served only through a criminal justice process that is compliant with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. I urge the Secretary of State, through the Minister, to change his proposals and follow a Kenova-type model, or I predict his amnesty for some of the most terrible crimes will face certain defeat in your Lordships’ House.