Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Mel Stride Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak, although I recognise that I do not possess as intimate a knowledge and involvement in Northern Irish politics, or the troubles, as some other speakers—including my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who spoke particularly movingly about his experience in Northern Ireland—and I therefore speak with some humility.

Any armed conflict that continues over many years and arrives at the point at which it has arrived in Northern Ireland—where it can be said that we are at least in the arena of peace—is likely to involve many significant and often critical events along the way. The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) rightly reminded us of the turmoil, both political and in terms of the violence in Northern Ireland, that was occurring at the time of the beginning of the troubles and the establishment of the civil rights movement. We saw internment in 1971 and the creation of the Provisional IRA in 1970; in political terms, we saw the rise and false dawn of Sunningdale and its collapse early in 1974.

However, it seems to me that, for better or worse, there is no getting away from the fact that Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, sits as a fatal day, a fatal moment in Northern Irish history. It was a recruiting sergeant for the provisional IRA, and, as was stressed by the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), that in itself led to the inexorable rise of violence. I also believe that the publication of the Saville report on 15 June this year marked another of those critical moments in the journey towards peace, not just because the report pursued the truth for the individuals who lost their lives that day and their families, but because, as many Members have said, righting the wrongs of Widgery was such an important part of the mix. In my view, it has helped to restore confidence in British justice, not just here and on the island of Ireland but further afield. It is also a critical moment in the journey to peace because of the reconciliation it has brought between the various communities in the north of Ireland.

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) spoke of the response to the Prime Minister’s statement from the Guildhall square in Londonderry. Who would ever have imagined that a British Prime Minister would have been applauded and cheered there at that time? The Prime Minister said that the actions of the soldiers on that day were unjustified and unjustifiable, and the Taoiseach described his words as brave and honest. These are all important moments that we need to take into account when considering Saville.

The hon. Member for South Down said that we should consider the report with humility. That is a good word. In the debate on Saville in the other place, Lord Eames used the phrase “very sombre”, explaining:

“I use the word sombre because I can think of no other appropriate word which would remove triumphalism, or any other equivalent word, from that occasion.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 October 2010; Vol. 721, c. 524.]

It is important that we go forward from Saville bearing in mind that no triumphalism should be associated with any aspect of either what happened on Bloody Sunday or as a consequence of the Saville report.

The report’s conclusions were, in part, extremely damning. I do not intend to rehearse them now as many speakers have talked about the actions of the soldiers on the day, but some more sympathetic comments were also made which I think should be given an airing in this Chamber. Lord Saville said the acts on that day were the acts of some, not of all, and he commended the restraint shown by many soldiers. He also pointed out the difficulty in separating the rioters from the ordinary marchers and, as we have heard from the Secretary of State, he rejected the idea that there was some kind of intentional plot to set out to kill people that day. He noted, too, that there was paramilitary activity that day. Martin McGuinness was probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun, and it is probable that he fired his weapon.

I have read the Saville report—not every word, but a substantial portion of it—and the following extract is one of the most poignant and important passages:

“It is a well-known phenomenon that, particularly when under stress or when events are moving fast, people often erroneously come to believe that they are or might be hearing or seeing what they were expecting to hear or see.”

I am very thankful that I have never been a young man of 19 with my finger on the trigger of a gun and having to take a split-second decision as to whether a failure to fire might cost me my life.

It is important that we recognise, as some speakers have, the sacrifice and service of our security forces, intelligence services and the Royal Ulster Constabulary—and the Police Service of Northern Ireland today—for all they have done to try to bring peace and a better quality of life to Northern Ireland. More than 600 service personnel have died and more than 6,000 have been wounded since the troubles began. We owe them a very great deal.

I wish to talk briefly about the costs, an important topic about which we have, perhaps, not heard enough this afternoon. The figures speak for themselves: Saville has cost £191 million and taken 12 years even though we were initially told it might last for only two years. One reason for that is that the scope of the inquiry was very broad—a decision taken by Lord Saville himself, I believe. Also, all the details were drilled down into—every single soldier who fired every shot, and all the other evidence surrounding the incident—instead of a more general view being taken which might have come to just the same conclusions and made the whole process quicker.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

One of the criticisms rightly levelled at the Widgery inquiry and report was that the scope had been too narrow. Does my hon. Friend agree that Lord Saville was right to go into all of the circumstances surrounding the events of that dreadful Sunday?

[Mel Stride]

My hon. and learned Friend makes an important point, and I am certainly not here to defend the Widgery inquiry, which sat for just three weeks directly after Bloody Sunday and came out with what most of us now accept was a complete whitewash. However, there is a balance to be struck and on the point that my hon. and learned Friend raises, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, writing in The Guardian on 17 June, said:

“The overriding factor in the expansiveness of the oral hearings was a misjudgment about the nature and scope of public inquiries. The purpose of an inquiry is not primarily to apportion blame on any individual participant in the event under inquiry. Specifically, the tribunal positively may not determine civil or criminal liability; that is for the courts.

The aim is to find out what happened and how it happened, and to learn lessons.”

So one aspect that we need to examine closely is the scope that Saville chose.

We also need to take into account the fact that this happened 38 years ago; the interested-party status that was afforded to a number of people and the legal bills that went with that as a consequence of the wide scope; the various appeals from the Ministry of Defence; the fact that the case was not heard entirely in Londonderry—for a period of 13 months it was heard in London, which alone apparently had a price tag of £10 million—and the use of technology, with the virtual reality reconstruction of Londonderry as it was on that day. All that, bit by bit, incremented the cost to the level that we have heard.

I believe that there was an overarching dynamic at work on the costs, and we have heard about it from the Secretary of State and others. Given the history of Widgery, for the Saville inquiry to be seen as effective, valid and uncompromised it had to be left alone to do its work. The problem is that when that situation is arrived at, and with a judge who is not a business man, the control of the costs is let go. I shall quote one example in this regard. It is very important because, wherever the control of costs might be expected to have lain, the reality is that because of the sensitivities of the peace process and the historical context of Widgery, they inevitably could have lain only with Lord Saville and the tribunal.

I shall quote part of the question that I asked Lord Saville during the Select Committee hearing. I asked:

“would you not accept that, if you have a process––an inquiry––that lasts 12 years and costs over £190 million, it is inevitable that there would have been efficiencies that could be applied––maybe only discovered with hindsight––that could have delivered the same quality of result but at less money and less time? And if you do accept that, what, with hindsight, would those changes have been that would have delivered it quicker and at less expense?

He replied:

“I am not sure I can accept your premise”—

that being the idea that something could have been saved. He continued:

“I strongly suspect that you could have gone and got 10 quid a night off the hotel accommodation costs or something like that, or you might have been able to, but if you are talking about really substantial sums, I am not aware of anything, looking back, where we could…have done better.”

That illustrates the point more powerfully than any other I could make that we had a judge in charge who was not a business man—of course we should never have expected him to have been that. He was a good judge, and he has produced a very thorough and detailed report, but he and his tribunal would never be expected to control costs.

I wish to talk briefly about future inquiries. As the Prime Minister has suggested, we have to draw a line under future inquiries of this nature. If we do not, we will get into the business of some kind of hierarchy of victimhood, involving those who should be given this kind of opportunity and those who should not. We must not go down that road. It is time for Northern Ireland to move on. It is time for Northern Ireland to start focusing on the big issues, such as the economy, rather than the past.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—