Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

I sympathise immensely with my right hon. Friend’s intentions, and I want to work with him to achieve the aims that he has set out so eloquently, but, for the reasons I have stated, I simply cannot support the amendment, and I urge him to withdraw it.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Let me begin where the Secretary of State ended, in saying that there can never be moral equivalence between the acts of the broad mass of those young men and women who were asked to serve in Northern Ireland at the behest of our society and those who instead sought to damage, maim and kill through the paramilitary groups of either side. As with other Members, I wish to pay tribute to those who served our nation. I wish also to follow the words of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) in recognising as well the important role of the RUC during the troubles.

I recognise the argument put forward by the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), and he rightly was struck by and acted on the claims farming that he saw as a result of the situation in Iraq. However, there is no equivalent that reads immediately across to the situation in Northern Ireland, and it is important to establish that, even though I recognise that his motives are honourable in what he proposes.

I again follow the Secretary of State’s line in saying that there is currently a consultation on the historical inquiries, and it is important that that is allowed to take place and to go forward. It is important that we take the opportunities of the Stormont House agreement to move forward in the way that she outlined. In the debate on Second Reading, I said that we should make progress with exactly those kinds of institutional arrangements. It is important that we bring things to a rapid conclusion in the interests of victims on all sides.

The right hon. Member for Sevenoaks was challenged by the hon. Member for North Down on why the RUC/PSNI has been left out of the amendment. It is helpful to quote Mark Lindsay, the chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, who says:

“Let me be clear: This organisation is totally opposed to any legislation which proposes an amnesty”—

a loaded word—

“for any crime. That’s any crime, whether committed by a police officer or terrorist from any side of the divide. Society must now decide, whether the solution is a political solution or a criminal justice solution.”

He goes on to say that it would be a “monstrous injustice” to his members were we to go down those lines. It is important that we listen to those words.

I met Mark Lindsay recently, and one point that he made to me was about the enormous importance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland having the trust of people across all communities. One way to damage that trust would be to open the PSNI up to the accusation that it somehow gained special treatment for its members, when the Police Federation for Northern Ireland does not want that kind of special treatment. That is important.

In response to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), I should say that even the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, Arlene Foster, has expressed her own doubts about going down this road. She makes the point that the DUP has not been pushing for this as a party, and her concern is that it could lead to demands for a wider amnesty. That is important because, as the Secretary of State said, she has to sign off the legislation as compatible with the UK’s human rights obligations under international law—not things that we can change or arbitrate; things that we have signed up to as part of the UK’s global commitments. These are things that the UK signs up to as exemplars to be applied not just here in the United Kingdom but all around the world. They give us the freedom to criticise those who transgress human rights obligations. A strong body of opinion—I know this opinion was given to the Defence Committee—makes it clear that if the state is seen to act partially in a way that denies victims access to justice, it is transgressing its obligations under international law. In particular, if in doing that the state is seen to be partial and to be protecting state actors while not offering the same kind of procedure to others, the state is, in that partiality, accused of breaching its wider human rights obligation.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

The comments by the leader of my party were directed specifically at the legacy proposals for Northern Ireland. To legislate for a statute of limitations on the narrow ground of Northern Ireland would not in our opinion be appropriate, because it would exclude deployments in the Gulf war and Afghanistan. It needs to be done on a UK-wide basis. My party would be supportive on that basis, but not if it is exclusively about Northern Ireland, because that would open it up to the risk that it would be used by others to try to bring about an amnesty, which is not what it would be.

[Tony Lloyd]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification, which leads me to begin to bring my remarks to a conclusion.

I stand strongly with the Secretary of State on the fact that the consultation process is already abroad. That consultation process now should be allowed to come to its full conclusion. That is the right way forward both for this House tonight and more generally for this country. In the context of Northern Ireland, it is important to take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks that the possibility of seeing a wider amnesty will defeat the ambitions of victims of the violence during the troubles and those who were left bereaved by that violence. It could, of itself, allow off the hook those whom we would all want to see—even these years on—brought before our justice system and the courts. Within that, it is right and proper that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks recognises the force of the argument that this is the wrong vehicle. It is the wrong occasion for this and it will almost certainly lead to the wrong kind of rules—temporary at very best. I do hope that he will consider very seriously whether this is the right approach on this occasion.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I believe some form of consensus is emerging that a statute of limitations might be the correct way forward, especially if it could be applied in a wider context than just the Northern Ireland scenario. I know that the Conservative manifesto at the last election talked about protecting troops from malicious charges such as had been posed most irresponsibly and on an industrial scale in relation to Iraq by invoking the law of armed conflict for future conflicts and ensuring that the criteria of the civil law could not be applied to them. That is where a problem might creep in in connection with Northern Ireland, because there is no way in which the law of armed conflict could be said to apply to that situation, which was internal to the United Kingdom.

We heard from the Secretary of State that, earlier today, the Defence Secretary made the very welcome announcement that a dedicated unit is being set up inside the Ministry of Defence to try to grip this problem, and I think that it will try to grip it at every level—not just for Northern Ireland, but for these wider conflicts. However, for this evening, I will obviously concentrate on the Northern Ireland situation. I wish to start by making brief reference to the report previously produced by the Defence Committee, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) in his very strong contribution to this debate a little while ago.

Our report entitled “Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel”, HC 1064, was published on 26 April 2017. The Government response, HC 549, was published on 13 November 2017, and there was a Westminster Hall debate on these reports on 25 January 2018, all of which bear future study. The Defence Committee has put in our entire report as evidence under a covering letter to the consultation process that is going on.