Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Tony Lloyd Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

I am slightly confused by that question, given the Government’s commitment to hand over pretty much all the evidence—[Interruption.] I want to say something to the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party; by the way, I could say this to pretty much any section of political society in Northern Ireland. He says that they just do not believe us, but if everybody goes around telling them not to believe us, there is very little chance—[Interruption.] There is a reason, and I have just referred to it: the people who will be asked, tasked and made responsible for this will be independent of the Government. They will be given a huge degree of leeway in how they set this up, so that it gains the maximum possible public confidence and support.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, the Minister was interrupted in mid flow. He was about to make the point that the Government will give all available evidence to the recovery body. Two children were killed by plastic bullets, and the evidence around that has been sealed for 45 years, but none of us can understand why national security should mean that that is the case. Will he give a direct answer on this? Will that information be available to the recovery body?

[Conor Burns]

The hon. Gentleman is a distinguished parliamentarian and a former very effective Minister, and he was a police and crime commissioner for a time. He will understand that I cannot possibly comment on an individual case from the Dispatch Box—no Minister could refer directly to that specific example.

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[Carla Lockhart]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. It is well made and has been noted.

New clause 4 seeks to ensure that terrorists receiving immunity cannot proceed to laud their evil activities; it is about ensuring that the book deals do not follow, and the fundraising tours and storytelling events cannot happen. Vitally, it is about protecting victims, for whom such events cause huge hurt and distress. The terrorists gave no thought to the victims and survivors before they made them such, and the activities of terrorists and their political proxies to this day show that they still have no regard for victims and the trauma they continue to inflict upon them. This Bill would be plunged to even deeper depths of moral despondency if it were to facilitate the further glorification of terrorism by those granted immunity in this process. I hope the Government will consider whether this is an outcome they would allow in England and, when they answer that question, act accordingly to amend this Bill to eradicate this extolling of evil in Northern Ireland.

Let me touch briefly on new clause 5, which stands in my name and those of my colleagues. The Bill is lacking in many areas, but it certainly lacks in the whole sphere of the revocation of immunity. It is vital that this Bill does provide for situations where new evidence emerges showing that condition B in clause 18 was not met because the terrorist has lied. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that such instances will occur, given the types of people we are dealing with. Let us not forget that for many years senior members of the IRA have denied ever being members of the IRA; the truth is very much secondary to the cause. The granting of immunity is in itself abhorrent, but just how abhorrent would it be if someone had been granted immunity on the back of a tall tale and then the appropriate mechanism was not in place to revoke that ill-gotten immunity on the back of new evidence? This must be addressed, and we ask that the Government consider it carefully.

My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East covered our other amendments in his contribution, passionately setting out why we believe they can at least make the Bill more robust. I reiterate his remarks, especially on the need to cut off at the pass any idea that immunity will give terrorists a platform to revel in their deeds and inflict more pain on victims who are already hurting so much because of this Bill.

[Tony Lloyd]

Let me begin by saying that this is an astonishingly important Bill and this is an incredibly incompetent way for this House of Commons to deal with it: to have had two days, in which we have been unable to get into the detail of the Bill, is frankly no way to deal with legislation of this import. The Minister is making valiant attempts to move a little with the mood of the Committee, but he must realise that we have not had the opportunity to get into the level of detail that we ought to on a Bill of this import.

I establish that because, interestingly, people from every party represented from Northern Ireland have spoken, at one stage or another, strongly against what this Bill seeks to do and indeed against individual parts of the Bill. That reflects the mood not only of victims and victims’ groups—I have talked to many of those over the years—but the opinion across the piece of the north of Ireland. It is important that we establish that because one problem with that the position is that it plays into different parties’ existing concerns. We have heard DUP Members say that they see this as a get out of jail free card for those who committed acts of terrorism, and I understand why. Those from the nationalist community will see this, again, as simply another attempt to gloss over the action of the state and the collusion that took place. In that context, the real danger is that rather than being something that moves us towards reconciliation, the Bill will establishes in people the rectitude of their own views of the injustice of the situation. That is very, very dangerous.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying in relation to the nationalist community, but I am sure the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) would agree that the sense of injustice on the part of that community is not just related to the state; there are many, many victims in the nationalist community of paramilitary terrorist organisations who are also looking for justice and who join other innocent victims in regarding this legislation as very harmful to them.

[Tony Lloyd]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that. I have spoken to many victims, from all quarters, and to hear the pain that still exists all these years on is a measure of the intensity of their grief. It is not just individual familial grief; it is about how communities are seeking to grapple with this, and that applies across the different communities. Bizarrely, there is a common bond that ties people together that goes way beyond individual families—it is societal. That is why this Bill is so inadequate and so dangerous, and that is the central issue we have to grapple with.

Let us look at some of the issues that have been raised today and pick up on the point about collusion, which touches on the role of the state. It would be seen as collusion were Operation Kenova now simply to be wiped from the face of the troubles, as the investigations under it have been so important in trying to establish truth, place it on the record and bring to prosecution those who were involved. In all quarters that would be seen as a form of state collusion. It would lead to the suspicions that already exist. We know that when Dr Michael Maguire was police ombudsman and he was looking at the investigation of what happened at Loughinisland, he discovered references on documents from the security services saying, “This is a slow waltz”; this was about slowing down the pace of investigation. All those things feed into the paranoia that collusion took place.

Then there was the Ormeau Road bombing, about which there is very little doubt. Again, the ombudsman was not provided with evidence by the PSNI; it came out through a civil case. The capacity of discovery through that court process meant that it was seen clearly that an agent of the state—I think it was Brian Nelson—provided weaponry to those who took part in those killings. The question of collusion is real. It does not go away because we skim over it through this new legislative framework.

[Johnny Mercer]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tony Lloyd]

I will, although I am reluctant to, because the hon. Member has monopolised a lot of this debate.

[Johnny Mercer]

I apologise, but we have to be fair. The hon. Member is talking about collusion. If we dealt with different groups all over the world, they would all have their views about what have been termed collusive behaviours. Unless we get to a point where we actually prove stuff in court, what have we become?

[Tony Lloyd]

If the hon. Member had listened to me, he would know that the reference I made—the case of the Ormeau Road killings—was precisely that: a civil court process that revealed that collusion had taken place. [Interruption.] Well, it was a court process that led to the discovery; I am not sure where we go beyond that.

[Ian Paisley]

In the debate about the difference between murders that have occurred, and whether they have affected one section of the tribe in Northern Ireland or another section, I often remember often the words of John Hume, speaking from the Bench in front of us, when he once said that Irish Republicans killed more people in the name of Ireland and Irishness than all the other groups on our island put together. I think, whenever we get things into proportion, we see where the real killing fields were, and we should not allow any piece of legislation to distract us from getting those people to justice.

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[Tony Lloyd]

I agree, particularly for this reason: killing is killing. We do not have a statute of limitations for murder more generally. It is hard to understand in this most brutal of backgrounds—when a whole society has been traumatised and continues to be—that we are now moving on. I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely. I refer to the issue of collusion not because the state is any more guilty than others, but because every murder deserves the same proper and complete investigation, and we will not see that under this Bill.

I will make a couple of other points. I am seriously concerned that the new independent commission for reconciliation and information recovery simply will not have the powers of an inquest or the capacity of civil cases. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is not intervening, but I think he is assuring me from a sedentary position, “Yes, it will.” Let me tell him this: if we go back nearly 20 years, the British Government—a Labour Government at the time, by the way—were taken before the European Court of Human Rights, and one of ways in which the Court concluded that our country’s actions were incompatible with article 2 of the European convention was on the inability of the process at the time to lead from investigation and inquest through to prosecution. That is a significant issue, because there is no capacity in which the new body can deliver that prosecutorial process. Therefore, in the same way we will be in default on our article 2 obligations here. That is a serious point about which we should be very worried.

[Colum Eastwood]

The hon. Member is making an important speech. I wonder whether he has heard that the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights has today said that the Bill

“raises serious questions about the extent to which the proposed mechanism…is compliant with ECHR standards on independent and effective investigations. The possibility to grant immunity…on a low evidentiary bar raises concerns that this could lead to impunity.”

[Tony Lloyd]

The only thing that I would disagree with there is “could”; the reality is that it will lead to impunity for people from many different backgrounds. This is not where we ought to be at this stage in our society.

Although I clearly support my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in amendment 116, which is a serious attempt, I wish we could recognise that the inquest process provides something valuable. The five-year inquest process that the former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Declan Morgan, laid out was a very time-limited, credible process that itself was originally frustrated by the refusal to provide the finance to make it work. Had that been done, we would be massively further on than we are today. If we look across the piece at the obfuscation, and the sometimes deliberate attempts in the past to stop the justice process taking place, we can see why people are cynical.

The Minister said to us some moments ago, “Give these new processes a chance to work.” There are two problems with that. First, the real danger is that wiping away the existing mechanisms will mean that there really is no chance of getting properly to the truth that he seeks, with good intent, to create. That is why it is so fundamentally difficult to accept this legislation. Were the inquest process—the continuation of that which Declan Morgan set out in his five-year plan—to be completed, it would go a long way in taking us away from that concern. Secondly, the fact that civil cases are taken out from day one—not day one when the Bill becomes law, but day one when the Bill is published—is quite astonishing. We claim that we do not have retrospective legislation, but this comes desperately close.

I hope the Minister will think about that, because I can see he is moving in the direction of wanting to offer some concessions, whether in the Lords or elsewhere. I agree with the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) that even with those improvements, the Bill will still be bad legislation, and, as bad legislation, it will do nothing to move the reconciliation process further in Northern Ireland.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I rise in support of the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle).

As a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, I have sat through countless evidence sessions and have heard evidence from victims’ groups across the communities, and what comes through above all else is a genuine desire for healing and reconciliation. People will naturally have different ideas about how we can get that, and it will be far from easy. However, there are common themes: people want justice, truth and closure. Those are the criteria against which we should measure the Bill, and, sadly, it is clear that it just does not measure up.

We have already debated how clause 18 will provide a virtually unconditional and completely irrevocable immunity for perpetrators of serious troubles-related crimes. Once immunity has been granted, any hope of justice for the victims vanishes. The review process under the ICRIR is completely inadequate and offers little hope of learning what truly happened to many victims, and much of what would be gathered would simply be the word of a murderer, who could gain immunity for the thinnest account possible. We cannot, as the Bill stands, have any confidence that this body will be fit for purpose.

Despite that, today we must now debate clauses that seek to end almost all other investigations into troubles-related crimes and force victims and their families to pin their hopes on the ICRIR as the only forum for investigation. One justification for that is that the current system of inquests and investigations is broken and offers little value, but that is simply not the case. Yes, those inquests and investigations might be imperfect. They can be slow, expensive and generally have little prospect of securing a prosecution, but there have been successes. These investigations have gathered enormous amounts of information that is of great comfort to the victims’ loved ones. As we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and for Hove, the Ballymurphy inquest demonstrates that perfectly. Joan Connolly, whose mother was wrongly declared an IRA gunwoman, spoke of

“the joy and the peace and the mixed emotions that my mummy has been declared an innocent woman.”

John Teggart, whose father was killed, said:

“We have corrected history today.”

That is the value of these inquests.

In her evidence to our Committee, Alyson Kilpatrick, chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, was clear that while there may be concerns with the current system, it is at least underpinned by the rule of law and is largely working as it should. She pointed out that most victims are getting a lot from the current system and that, if we want it to be more successful, we could better fund the existing processes and allow them to work.

Sadly, rather than helping communities heal, part 3 of the Bill will do the opposite. Let us take the case of Patrick McVeigh. Patrick was 44 when he was gunned down by the military reaction force. He was an innocent civilian who was murdered in the street by agents of the British state. His daughter, Patricia, has said that

“truth and justice mean so much to us.”

The clauses that we are debating today could end his family’s hopes of an inquest. Similarly, the Denton review, which was scheduled to be completed in 2024, could now be prevented from finishing, leaving the 127 Denton families uncertain as to whether they will ever get justice.

It is my belief that the Bill cannot be fixed. However, I shall support amendments 116, 117, and 118 as they seek to protect the valuable inquests that are already under way. Similarly, I want to voice my support for amendment 114, which seeks to prevent a person who is granted immunity under this Bill from profiting from their crimes. From speaking to victims’ groups, I know that many are worried that their loved one’s killer will not only be granted immunity under the Bill, but, as we have heard, be able to write a book or exploit other ways to make a profit from someone else’s pain. Supporting amendment 114 would be a compassionate gesture from the Government, and I wholeheartedly urge them to make this concession, as they did on the issue of crimes of sexual violence.

Before I finish, I wish to register my opposition to clause 38, which, if allowed to stand, will retrospectively ban any civil action that was not begun before the First Reading of this Bill—a measure that makes a mockery of our legal system. As the human rights group Liberty has said:

“Another form of scrutiny cut off, another route to justice denied.”

I understand that the troubles are a difficult issue for any Government, and, indeed, it is an enormously difficult matter for the people of Ireland to deal with. However, although it is frustrating, it feels to me as if this Bill is the Government trying to force a conclusion with an incredibly blunt instrument. The healing process has not been prioritised as it should have been. We believe that this will only cause more hurt in the communities in Ireland, so I cannot support it.

Sadly, the Government seem intent on ripping up the rights of people in the UK—from our right to take industrial action to our right to protest, and now our human rights—and destroying the Good Friday agreement in the process.

Ministers should be ashamed that they are attempting to destroy the very backbone of the UK, and presiding over the destruction of our values and our access to truth and justice. Rather than giving families the answers that they have been waiting for for years, this Bill, in seeking to end almost all other investigations into troubles-related crimes, removes all possibility of them ever getting the full truth. Those who have unlawfully killed or committed torture will be handed immunity from prosecution in return for almost nothing. This is not a healing process. There is no justice, no accountability, and no closure for the victims of the troubles and their families.

I wish to end with the words of Alyson Kilpatrick, because they have stuck with me:

“When people say that things have been tried and failed, I struggle to see what has been tried. I see many things that have begun but not been allowed to complete”.

The Bill is being presented to us as a choice between this or nothing, but that is simply not the case. Let us work to improve the current system, or keep trying to find a better solution, because what is before us today will achieve little other than to let murderers sleep a little easier in their beds at night and ensure that their victims’ families get a little less rest.

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Turning to new clause 6, the Bill already includes a provision that goes further than ever before in statute in terms of requiring relevant authorities, including state bodies, to release any material to the ICRIR that they may reasonably require for the purposes of its investigations. On amendments 108 and 109 and new clause 3, the Government understand and sympathise with the principle that lies behind the new clause. We recognise the importance of ensuring that individuals are sufficiently incentivised to co-operate with the commission both financially and, potentially, in terms of sentencing, and that the removal of early release provisions for those who do not participate could indeed act as such an incentive. I reiterate to hon. Members who have raised this that we are willing to look at it, but it is vital that in considering any amendment of this nature we look at the potential legal implications, and I commit from the Front Bench, on behalf of the Secretary of State and myself, to doing so. The Government remain absolutely open to constructive dialogue with all parties about how this might be reasonably and appropriately addressed as the Bill continues its passage.

[Tony Lloyd]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) is trying to achieve in his amendment. If I were to lie before a court in a murder case and that was discovered later on, I would of course be brought back with the charge of perjury. Is it not possible to look at whether the same concept can apply to the ICRIR?

[Conor Burns]

Clause 20(2) makes very clear the obligations of the body to look at the totality of the information available to it, not solely to rely on the testimony—the account—of the individual who is appearing before it. As I just reiterated, it will be led by a judicially experienced figure. The team that that person will assemble will comprise people who are expert and professional and have had careers in investigation and information retrieval. They will be able to look at biometrics and other things as well. We therefore think it is highly unlikely that the commission could be duped by somebody who has come forward, particularly given that, as I said, there is an obligation in the Bill on institutions of the state to provide full information.