Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Shaun Woodward

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Woodward]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Government brought forward what would become the Inquiries Act 2005. The purpose of that was to try to control costs. The issue of Lord Saville’s report touches on the crucial issue of the independence of inquiries. The House must seriously consider whether it would wish to compromise the independence of a judicial inquiry by saying, for example, that witnesses would not be allowed legal representation. That would have saved half the cost of Lord Saville’s report, but would we have got the truth if legal representation had not been allowed? By the same token, if we were to say to judges in future inquiries that we wanted to limit the number of witnesses and the amount of evidence that they could take, would that compromise their independence? It is a proper question for the right hon. Gentleman to ask and I take my share of responsibility for allowing this inquiry to go ahead as it did so that its independence was not compromised. That is why I make the careful distinction between the price and the value of the inquiry.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s explanation on that issue, but if the principles that he has outlined are followed in future inquiries—and there are already calls for inquiries on Murphy and other issues—the danger is that we could face huge bills in the future. Do not we need some means of curtailing costs and to put aside the argument that including any restriction will impinge on the independence of inquiries?

[Mr Woodward]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point and I may address it specifically a little later in my remarks.

What we have learned from this inquiry is shocking truth, and it is all the more shocking because what Lord Saville uncovered—and we are speaking of uncovering—runs so counter to what we would all want to believe of our armed forces. Hon. Members may have a difficult dilemma this afternoon, because they may feel that they have to make a choice between being supportive of the British Army or of the families. That is a false choice. The Prime Minister was right to assert that Bloody Sunday is not the defining story of the service that more than 250,000 men and women of the British Army gave during the 38 years of Operation Banner. Their courage, dedication and commitment to public service for every community in Northern Ireland saved countless lives.

However, as the Secretary of State said, the Prime Minister was equally right to say that

“we do not defend the British Army by defending the indefensible.”

What happened on Bloody Sunday was and remains indefensible. With no ambiguity, we know that the consequences of an order, which should not have been given, was the

“serious and widespread loss of fire discipline”

by members of Support Company of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, who entered the Bogside.

The Prime Minister informed the House on 15 June that decisions on what would happen next would be for the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland. That was five months ago. In fairness to the families whose loved ones lost their lives, and to the soldiers named in Lord Saville’s report, it is unfortunate that the Secretary of State has not been able to update the House today on progress on the issue of prosecution. When he was in opposition, the Secretary of State was quick to criticise the time taken by Lord Saville to produce his report. Can I gently remind him that he should hold himself to the same standards in government as he set for others when he was in opposition? Perhaps he will take an early opportunity to share with the House a progress report, not least for the families and for the soldiers.

The Prime Minister also told the House on 15 June that he would want to take some time

“to digest the report’s full findings and understand all the implications.”

He told the House that he would ask the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and Defence to

“report back…on all the issues that arise from it.”

Given that five months have now elapsed, would the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State for Defence now agree to place their reports in the Library, if they have been concluded?

The Secretary of State will know that the implications of Saville go much further than the events of Bloody Sunday. They are not just relevant to the past of Northern Ireland, but to its present and to its future. The Prime Minister quoted from Lord Saville:

“What happened on Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the Army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed.”

What now happens in how we respond to this report, and in how we deal with the legacy issues of the past, also has the capacity to strengthen the peace process. The Secretary of State referred earlier to the “what if” factors in the report. His response today is also one of those factors. He should recognise that he is holding a very precious object in his hands. If we handle this wrongly, it also has the capacity to weaken the peace process.

There are those who will watch genuinely to see how the British Government responds to Saville because they too have lost loved ones. They too still seek the truth. Their cause is genuine. Their loss is genuine. Their grief is all too real. But they still understandably seek justice for their loss. Those families respect the truth that this inquiry has revealed. But they too now will seek their truth. This inquiry may, in their eyes, have answered the questions of the families whose lives were devastated by Bloody Sunday, but their questions about their loss remain. Indeed their expectations have been heightened by this report.

For some, this is genuinely about reconciliation. For others—only a small number—this inquiry and others like it may become a means to keep old hatreds and antagonisms going. I recognise that. Most worrying, there are those—the so-called dissidents—whose only wish is to bring chaos and violence back to the streets of Northern Ireland, and who will watch very carefully how the British Government now respond to the Saville report. Those people wish to see how the grief of others can be exploited, and how justice can be turned to injustice. Their wish is to pervert the outcome and to twist the truth into a perverted logic that can be used to build community support for a violent struggle for the years ahead. The response of the Government today must ensure that this group have no opportunity, no chance to make cause from a grievance or a sense of justice denied. Likewise, the Government should ensure that the resources and means are available, should the buck be passed, to enable the Executive and the institutions of the political process in Northern Ireland to respond appropriately.

There are two essential issues here. The first is to ensure that how we handle the past is fair. The second is to ensure that the response is appropriate, adequate and proportionate. For as we think of the families affected by Bloody Sunday, so too we must think of so many others whose lives were altered irrevocably by the troubles. Lord Saville may have offered the beginning of peace of mind to those affected by that terrible day, but what of others, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) asked. How can this process be fair for others? What of the other families of the more than 3,500 men, women and children who also lost their lives?

One example—and I am sure that all hon. Members will have been moved each time they have heard it—comes from the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), who asked:

“How do we get closure, how do we get justice, and how do we get the truth?”

Justice cannot be the possession of one community, but not another. Justice can no more be the province of a nationalist than of a Unionist. The process must be felt to belong to all. The search for truth loses its value if it may be owned by one community, but not another. The Government must be very careful in how they tread.

The Prime Minister said:

“It is right to pursue the truth with vigour and thoroughness, but let me reassure the House that there will be no more open-ended and costly inquiries into the past.”

I understand what led the Prime Minister to these remarks. Indeed, the whole House shares the concern about the cost of the inquiry, but to state unequivocally that

“there will be no more open-ended and costly inquiries into the past”

is in my judgment rash, and it is a huge risk. It is a risk not just to the political process, but one that could yet shake the foundations of the peace process itself. The House will know the importance that Justice Cory attached to the inquiries that he recommended to the British and Irish Governments should be set up.

Given what the Prime Minister said in this House on 15 June and given the Secretary of State’s comments in the House, where does this leave the Finucane inquiry to which the British Government committed themselves? The family were promised an inquiry. The House will recall that delay in its establishment was occasioned by a disagreement over such an inquiry proceeding under the terms of the 2005 Act. However, I made it clear when I was Secretary of State that if the difficulties continued once Lord Saville had published his report, we would as a matter of urgency make it clear how we would proceed.

Of course the cost of an inquiry would be relevant to weighing up the public interest, but the public interest would crucially also be weighed by the good faith established by the promise itself—faith that drew strength both from and to the stability of the political process and the stability of the peace process. The Secretary of State has kept us all waiting for nearly six months. He knows that he must be straight with Mr Finucane’s family, the people of Northern Ireland and this House, and he must be straight with the Irish and American Governments. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that as recently as 2008, during the presidential elections, the then Senator Obama made very clear his unequivocal support for an independent judicial inquiry, as recommended by Judge Cory.

In the words of the Prime Minister about Lord Saville’s report, these inquiries

“demonstrate how a state should hold itself to account and how we should be determined at all times—no matter how difficult—to judge ourselves against the highest standards.”

Perhaps the Secretary of State will explain and make it clear what has so changed that today the state need no longer hold itself to account on these issues? Indeed, if he has decided not to go ahead with an inquiry, when will he tell the House, and why the further delay? At the very least, will he take this opportunity to tell the House whether, as he promised, he has met Pat Finucane’s family? It is, after all, several months since he said he would.

The peace process is built on trust and fairness. The institutions that have grown out of the peace process have many parents. The process is undoubtedly less than perfect—sometimes carefully planned, sometimes a response to circumstance, sometimes a mechanism to find a way forward when roadblocks lie ahead. Let us imagine that the Secretary of State has taken the decision that, regardless of circumstance, there will be no more inquiries, and let us give the benefit of the doubt about why he has not yet been able to convey that to Pat Finucane’s family or to tell the families of those who lost loved ones at Balllymurphy, Omagh or Claudy that they will have no inquiry.

What are the Secretary of State’s alternative proposals? What is the mechanism he truly proposes for them to seek the truth, to seek justice? We must all hope he understands that he cannot leave nothing in its place. Others have tried to tempt an answer from him. Let me again acknowledge the hon. Member for South Antrim, who I am sorry is not in his place today. Although I do not share his particular prescription, he asked the Secretary of State to consider whether he would use the resources of individual inquiries, and put them at the disposal of the Historical Enquiries Team. The Secretary of State replied that he was “absolutely right”, but absolutely right about what? The Secretary of State may correct me, but I am not entirely sure that in saying that he was proposing to hand over the money, resources and additional funding that the British Government has used to fund judicial inquiries.

The House will rightly acknowledge the work of the Historical Enquiries Team. It is charged with examining the facts behind the deaths of more than 3,000 people in the troubles, and it has indeed done amazing work. It continues to bring closure to so many families who were denied for so many decades even the most basic information about how their loved ones may have died. But the Secretary of State must understand both what it is and what it is not, both what it has the means to do and what, given its limited resources, it cannot do. Its budget was set at £34 million over seven years to handle the 3,000-plus cases. That budget is virtually spent and it is half way through its case load, so it will need more money. However, its task and purpose are not to be compared, in any shape or form, with the work of a judicial inquiry.

Of course not every family wants a judicial inquiry, or a judicial-style tribunal. Indeed, most families—let us be frank—do not want any kind of inquiry. They simply want to leave the past where it is—in the past. They want an end, no more. Others just want the available facts, and, having been given them, they want to bring closure to their loss. That is what the HET does so well, and why its £34 million is appropriate for the work that it was asked to do, although clearly it will need more.

Complex or multiple cases that are linked by circumstances and need investigation are hugely time-consuming and sometimes very difficult to investigate. Even with the resources of a fully funded legal inquiry, the truth may remain evasive. The Secretary of State gave the very good example of Billy Wright. The inquiry answered many questions, but it left some unanswered—not least, how were guns smuggled into a prison regarded at the time as having the highest security in the whole of Europe? Some may say the inability ultimately to provide satisfactory answers to these questions throws into doubt the integrity of the inquiry system itself. Again, however, we should be very careful of reaching such a conclusion. Sometimes we may not get answers, but that does not invalidate the reason for asking the questions, and it does not invalidate the creation of a process that allows those questions to be asked.

The Billy Wright inquiry was complex. Its work cost more than £30 million, much of it on legal fees. Perhaps—I say this to the right hon. Member for Belfast North—we could find ways of doing that without some of the cost, but if a judicial inquiry could not find the answers to the questions posed by Bill Wright’s family, how would the HET have fared better? It is an institution whose overall budget is less than that spent by this single inquiry.

I do not question the Prime Minister’s motives when he told the House on 15 June

“I think that it is right to use, as far as possible, the Historical Enquires Team to deal with the problems of the past”—[Official Report, 15 June 2010; Vol. 511, c.740-55.]

but perhaps the Secretary of State should be a little more candid with his right hon. Friend. Is he really wise to suggest to the Prime Minister that the HET is the appropriate vehicle, adequately resourced, to handle such a complex inquiry, and to ask the HET to take on the work of a Billy Wright investigation, or complex investigations into, for example, Pat Finucane’s death or, as it touches on 1 Para, the death of those who died at Ballymurphy in August 1971? To ask that of the HET is, frankly, as burdensome and as impossible as it borders on being incredulous. With present resources, some things can be done, but some cannot. Even if resources were made available, some investigations, such as that into the death of Pat Finucane, could not be carried by a body such as the HET. Although it is fair and works impartially, it is clearly not as fully independent as a public inquiry, and it is not, as Justice Cory would want, international.

The HET is currently the subject of approval and admiration from all communities in Northern Ireland, but asking it to carry out such investigations might risk damaging its reputation in its other crucial and vital work. The Secretary of State must be very careful how he proceeds with changing the HET’s remit, if that is what he proposes.

The Secretary of State must also be careful to avoid suspicion about his motives. We cannot maintain a peace process on the cheap. We all want to save money, but some savings risk being false economies, and some are cleverly disguised, being more about passing on the bill while still expecting it to be drawn from someone else’s cheque book and account. At present, it is the Government here in Westminster who pay for inquiries into the past. The funding for the HET comes directly from the Executive and the Northern Ireland block grant. Unless the Secretary of State specifically intends to make additional financial support available from Westminster to the HET, it is little short of disingenuous to ask it to take on these hugely onerous responsibilities, even if that were the right thing to do, without significant additional funding. Again I remind the Secretary of State that good faith is as vital in ensuring the peace today as it was in building its foundations.

So what are the Government to do if they wish to keep faith? The Secretary of State has at his disposal the advice and work of the Consultative Group on the Past. The work of Lord Eames and Denis Bradley was extremely important. Their different, but collective, experiences drawn from the years of the troubles made them absolutely the right people to co-chair the consultative group. However, although the Prime Minister referred to their work in his statement of 15 June, I fear that he was directed at only one part of their report. The Secretary of State will know that we share the view that the idea of universal recognition payments should be completely rejected, so that is not a reason to ignore their report. I remind him that it contains nearly 30 other proposals that are very much worth considering and developing.

The Secretary of State has described the impasse in which he finds himself, given the absence of a consensus in the public consultation to the report. I really think he is going to have to do better than that. Yes, it is difficult, but that is what government is all about: making difficult choices, being determined and taking responsibility for finding consensus, even when it eludes everyone else. Building the peace process in Northern Ireland was difficult. There was no consensus, no prescription for a peace process and no route map to a political process. That is the responsibility of the Government. Their job is to find consensus, not to despair or wave a white flag in a declaration of defeat. For it is now that Northern Ireland needs to develop a process for reconciliation. Just as it built a peace process, and then a political process, so now it must establish and develop a comprehensive reconciliation process to deal with the legacy issues. This does not have to be by judicial inquiry, but we cannot leave nothing in place of that. Of course, such a process, and such a determination, will meet opposition, and some of it will be truly genuine, truly felt and deeply sincere. We can respect that, but the job of the British Government, and the Secretary of State, is to help to build and nurture such a process.

Northern Ireland is devolved, but the problems of the past are not. They are not cast off simply because policing and justice have been devolved by this House. Northern Ireland is, after all, part of the Union, until it becomes otherwise by consent. It is our responsibility; it is part of the family. We cannot walk by on the other side of the street. For the past, we all bear the burdens of responsibility and accountability. For the future, we all bear the responsibility to ensure the success of the future shared.

This inquiry speaks not just to those whose lives were changed for ever by Bloody Sunday. The lessons today are for us all. As Lord Eames observed in another place, it is a mark of real hope for the long term that the inquiry has been genuinely embraced, and embraced beyond sectarian lines. This hope is like a window: it is open now, but we should not presume that it will be open indefinitely. The duty of the Government now is to capture this hope, and use it as a resource to marshal and foster reconciliation. The past is not another country; it is as much our country. The past cannot be painted out of history; nor can it be wished away.

Saville reveals that the opportunity for reconciliation has truly come. Let the authors of this process be drawn from the communities of Northern Ireland, but let the Government give leadership. Out of the terrible loss and pain of these Derry families, let the Government seize the challenge. Let us not just say that we are sorry; let us mean that we are sorry. Let us provide the leadership, establish a due process for reconciliation, resource the present and meet the legacy of the past. We must take that next step and help to release Northern Ireland from the grip of its deeply troubled and continuingly painful past.