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

Lord Wood of Anfield Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for the clear and collegiate way in which he introduced this proposal. I am happy to support the order. I shall not repeat the questions that noble Lords have already asked, but I want to ask two further brief questions for clarification.

First, as the Minister said, the proposed code of practice shadows the code for England and Wales, and for Scotland, but it is different in one important respect. Unlike the other codes, this one for Northern Ireland contains no reference to post-charge questioning. This is because under the 2008 Act, PACE codes need to be amended first to reflect how post-charge questioning should be dealt with, which is now the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive.

As someone who had the privilege of serving as a Northern Ireland adviser to Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister and was involved in so-called “phase 2” of the devolution of policing and justice, I was disappointed to see that the necessary changes to PACE code H have not been agreed by the Northern Ireland Justice Committee. Do we have any idea of timescales and can we all urge the Justice Committee to do this as soon as possible?

Secondly, I have a related question about the preservation of existing evidence: will it remain technically viable? The need to switch to digital recording technology raises the question of what steps are being taken to preserve long-standing evidence on pre-digital formats. I know from my time in government that there is a significant challenge for legacy investigations—some of which can stretch back over many decades—in ensuring that existing records do not decay and degrade. The Police Service of Northern Ireland has estimated that digitisation of this catalogue of evidence could cost many millions of pounds. Can the Minister assure us—for the sake of existing legacy investigations and for those that may be necessary in the future—that the Government will fund this vital preservation work? Can he also assure us that this commitment to evidence preservation will extend to the Stormont House oral history archive, which is a key historical, community and national public resource in documenting the Troubles?