Terrorism Act 2000 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) (Northern Ireland) Order 2020

Lord Kilclooney Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as set out in the register of interests. Perhaps I may say how strongly I support what has just been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, about the condemnation of paramilitary terrorism in Northern Ireland. That is consistent with her position when she was the leader of the SDLP, and it is consistent today with most members of the SDLP in Northern Ireland, although sadly there are one or two exceptions. However, I am glad to say that the current leader of the SDLP, Mr Colum Eastwood MP, has roundly condemned any member of the party who is making excuses for paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland.

This statutory instrument arises from UK legislation, and replaces video recording with digital recording. As the Minister has said, it is a revised code of practice. I thank him for his presentation of the instrument, which will bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom.

However, several issues have occurred to me, the first of which is a constitutional one. Policing in Northern Ireland is once again a devolved matter. As the Minister has said, we have a Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Assembly and we have the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I would have thought that a procedure such as this would normally be dealt with by the Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland, but I assume that the reason it is being taken through this House—perhaps the Minister can clarify this—is that the original legislation was passed when the Northern Ireland Assembly was not in Session. It was therefore British legislation, and that is why this instrument is being taken through this House, rather than through the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The second point I want to mention is about the consultation procedure. We have nearly 2 million people in Northern Ireland. As everyone knows, policing is a very controversial and sensitive issue in Northern Ireland, yet out of those 2 million people, only six responded to the consultation. That truly is not a great example of the procedure. Indeed, it turns out that one of the six was the Police Service of Northern Ireland itself, so there were only five respondents. One would be interested to know who those five others are.

It seems the form of consultation in Northern Ireland was not adequate. I think the people in Northern Ireland did not really know that this consultation was taking place. It was probably done by a short notice online, which is never noticed in Northern Ireland. It should have been advertised in the press so that 2 million people could have seen it. For example, there are newspapers such as the Irish News, a nationalist paper in Belfast selling 29,000, and a cross-community paper called the Belfast Telegraph selling 27,000. There is a nationalist group called the Ulster Herald Group in the west of Ulster selling 27,000, the News Letter in Belfast, a unionist paper selling 14,000, and the Alpha Newspaper Group selling 40,000 right across Northern Ireland.

It seems that some people in government—not just on the exercise we are discussing today—are almost going out of their way to avoid the people of Northern Ireland being consulted by just having short entries online and not advertising in the press any more. In what way was this consultation exercised? Was it simply online or was it in the press?

In so far as historical statements are concerned, this will take a lot of money as some of them refer to events of 40 or 50 years ago. Who will provide the finance for these historical statements? Will it be Westminster or the Stormont Exchequer?