argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Giacomo Lopresti (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with the sentiments that the hon. Gentleman expresses about our servicepeople and the injustices they have suffered. Does he not accept that this Bill is a huge step forward in righting some of those injustices, so that people can retire and live without the fear of being prosecuted and hounded to their dying day?
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the hon. Gentleman not accept, though, that where we are is nowhere close to perfection? We have had 25 years, broadly, since the troubles. To my knowledge—I stand to be corrected—there has not been one successful prosecution—[Interruption.] I do apologise; there have been a few, but they have been pitifully small in number given the scale of the troubles. We need to move the process forward. The Bill allows a step forward in the sense that people are encouraged to co-operate by the prospect of immunity, and if they do not co-operate, they can still be liable to the full force of the law. That has to be a move forward.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: International Affairs
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. All the parties in Northern Ireland oppose the Bill, and that is respected. I will speak later about the 25 years that have elapsed in which other and better ideas that might have brought happiness could have been implemented. We talk about Tony Blair, his Government and the 1998 agreement, which everybody recognises is a huge piece of work. Jonathan Powell, who had a huge part to play in that, endorses these plans. What, therefore, would the shadow Secretary of State say to Jonathan Powell?
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Julian Richard Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this issue is also important for attracting the right people to be chief investigator and lead the unit? If the Government do not confirm that legal commitment to investigations, that will have a net effect on the types and quality of people who will be attracted to come in and do the work that we need them to do.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: International Affairs
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great care—this is what Committee is all about. May I take him back to what he has just said about pressing the amendment to a Division? His point about the overseas operations Act is a powerful one. I was involved in the development of that legislation. There is, I think, a difference between that Act and this Bill, which is the terms in clause 18. He has been striving valiantly to find a solution, and I commend him for that; he knows that there are people on the Government Benches with equally good intentions. I make the gentle plea to him that it would be better to try to resolve the point without a Division today. I undertake to work as hard as I can on my side of the House to achieve the common goal that we share.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: International Affairs
Fay Alicia Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): The Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee speaks about the membership of the commission. He also referred to the final episode of "Derry Girls"; the two are linked. Does he agree that, where possible, international experience ought to be brought to the commission?
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: International Affairs
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have an amendment to that effect: amendment 74, which is about bringing in one or two people with international experience, an international perspective, no particular skin in the game and a fresh pair of eyes—an honest broker, if you will. The credibility of their international experience could be drawn from the United Nations, from Rwanda or from other conflicts in places such as South Africa, where different sides have been brought together and a path to peace has been found—sometimes with baby steps, halting or retracting along the way, but slowly and surely making the progress that we wish to see.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Government Operations
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. and gallant Friend makes a perfectly respectable point that is sustainable under scrutiny. I do not seek to challenge him on it Let me set out to the Committee the thinking that underpins my amendment 92. We are aware that all the political parties in Northern Ireland are opposed, in whole or in part, to the proposals before the Committee. We also know that a vast swathe of civil society in Northern Ireland is concerned about the Bill. I know that of itself, amendment 92 will not address all those concerns, but the argument that my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and I have heard in the Select Committee—and, indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) and other Committee members on both sides of the Chamber have heard—the Secretary of State, by dint of office, is part of Her Majesty’s Government, and state actors representing Her Majesty’s Government, in the armed forces, the security services or the Royal Ulster Constabulary, were part of that "Government machine". A concern that amendment 92 seeks to address relates to the imprimatur, the democratic imprimatur, of a pre-appointment hearing—I was responding to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham, but he seems to be about to leave the Chamber.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
James Sunderland (Conservative, Centre-right): I spoke in support of the Bill on Second Reading, although I highlighted several frictions and concerns that may merit further work, which is where we are today The people of Northern Ireland, our veterans and those directly affected must be at the heart of this Bill, and I hope to offer a wider perspective that may be of use. On Second Reading, the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), said: "Is the Bill perfect? No, of course it is not, and no legislation is, but let us not lose the good, or at least the intent to achieve the good, in pursuit of perfection."—[Official Report, 24 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 195.] That is where I think we are today We know what the Bill does, as it has been covered a lot over the past few weeks and months: it establishes an independent commission for reconciliation and information recovery; it grants immunity from prosecution to those who engage with the commission—this is a key point—on a case-by-case basis; it ends, in theory, troubles-related criminal investigations and protracted legal proceedings; it commissions a historical record of every troubles-related death; it covers memorialisation; and, importantly for me and for many others, it does not provide moral equivalence, which is an important improvement on the draft Bill The lingering concern of many I have spoken to, both here in England, Wales and Scotland and over the water in Northern Ireland, is that perpetrators may now never be brought to justice and the truth may never be known, notwithstanding what the Bill says it does on the tin.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my good friend for allowing me to intervene. One thing the Bill might do, and I hope it does, is ensure the names of those who go before this reconciliation body are made public so that people know who they are and understand who carried out the deed, whatever the result for the person concerned. Victims and families may understand who did it, and I hope that will be considered in the Bill.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
James Sunderland (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right, and I hope the Minister heeds his point Having looked at what the Bill does, and having discussed it on Second Reading, I ask: where can we go from here? Where do we need to go as a Committee? First, I would urge the Government to reconsider the exclusion of rape and sexual offences, which merits further work, although I fully understand the arguments that exist in law. It may be a political point as opposed to a legal point, or it might be both, but it requires extra work Secondly, clause 18 currently says that the ICRIR must grant a person immunity from prosecution if conditions A to C are met. Condition B states that a person needs to have engaged and stated the truth to the best of their "knowledge and belief". That is a very low and subjective expectation of one individual’s account, for which the immunity panel is not required to seek corroboration. What if that individual is not telling the truth?
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
James Sunderland (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and she is not wrong, but the point I would want to make to her is that the Bill provides for a truth and reconciliation process whereby the truth could become known. After 24 years of the Good Friday agreement, and with prosecutions limited so far to date, it is important that we move on and not only offer hope to families wanting the truth but draw a line in law under the endless prosecution of vexatious complaints Let me return to the issue of people potentially stating falsehoods to the commission. There are numerous reasons why a perpetrator may give a false account to gain immunity, with the obvious one being to play down their role in an offence. There is also the potential for cynical abuse of the immunity process, perhaps by political elements. We must also address the issue of someone who acquires immunity for pre-1998 offences yet may still have been involved in terrorism post-1998 and still perhaps to this day. A distinction is required in that regard.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Fay Alicia Jones (Conservative, Centre-right): I think my hon. Friend is referring to amendment 97, which has been tabled by DUP Members and calls for a file to be passed to the Public Prosecution Service if it becomes clear that lies have been told to the commission. Although that is incredibly well intentioned, does he share my concern that it confers a status on the commission that it has not necessarily asked for and may not even want?
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
James Sunderland (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and she is not wrong. My personal view is that we need to do a little more to ascertain that proof. It may be that the word of one individual may not be enough to grant them immunity; independent evidence and independent corroboration over a period of time may be needed to secure that immunity.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my good friend very much for allowing me to intervene, and I totally endorse what he has said. Those of us sitting here utterly understand how awful it is, and we totally understand why the parties in Northern Ireland cannot accept allowing people to get away with it. I feel the same, and when I vote tonight I will be using quite a long spoon because I totally understand where they are coming from. It hurts me, too, that anyone might get away with cold-blooded murder.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention, and I pay tribute to his extraordinary service in Northern Ireland in some of the most appalling atrocities of that conflict That is a really important point. We think about the mother of Stephen Restorick, a lance bombardier from one of my regiments, who was the last soldier killed in the troubles in Northern Ireland. He was asking for the driving licence of a lady passing through his checkpoint, and she said, "All I can remember about him was that he was a beautiful boy, and his smiling face as he leant down to the window to take the driving licence", when he was shot in the back by a sniper. No planet exists where people such as me, from exactly the same organisations, would want an individual who had committed that to be released The individual who did it was convicted and sentenced to 490 years, yet was released under the 1998 Good Friday agreement. There is no comparison here. My friends from Northern Ireland live over there in their communities, but the truth is that pragmatism has to win—it has to—because to continue doing the same thing and expect it to be different is a definition of insanity I have not seen anybody else in the Committee sit through such trials in Northern Ireland, but I have seen the absolutely ludicrous nature of them. We talk about victims. I know this will make me unpopular in some circles, but I actually feel sorry for a lot of the victims for being dragged down this pathway now. Everybody there knows that we will never reach the threshold for a criminal conviction, but nobody has the courage to say to them, "Do you know what? I’m so sorry, but this is unlikely to be successful so we have to take the next best option. The best option is that we find somebody and we put them in prison. I’m so sorry—and it’s the state’s fault, it’s lots of people’s fault; we didn’t investigate properly—but that is not an option. So you now have to deal in this space, which is the pragmatic space. What are you going to do? Do you want to know what happened to your loved one, and that they mattered, in their final hours—or do you want to continue to progress down this path where you will never get an answer?" That is my experience of dealing with victims, and I totally respect that other people have different experiences.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): There has to be a landing zone. We are never going to reach an agreement that allows us to adhere to those standards. The hon. Gentleman’s point about trust in the state is valid. When it comes first to opening the books—I have experience of this not only as a Minister, but when I served in secret organisations, and I know there is an attitude or appetite to overclassify things and so on. Families have really felt the brunt of that over the years, and if I was part of one of those families, I would be deeply mistrustful of the state. I totally get that, and the Department must work harder to bring that integrity to the process However, I do not think we should throw away what is probably the last chance to get this right—well, "right" is not really the word, because we are not going to make it right: we are not going to bring anybody back. But we have to get to a space where we can deliver something for victims and veterans. We talk about prosecutions, but there have been no successful prosecutions of security force personnel since the Good Friday agreement. That is a fact What these victims are looking for is not there. If it was there, I would be the first to champion it. People such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) are absolutely repulsed by those who think that uniform is a place where they can commit crime. The idea that we would not want people who have done those things to be held to account is for the birds. People who promote that—I see it in Northern Ireland about me all the time, but I never respond to it because it is totally false. Nobody wants those people convicted more than those who served there and adhered to the standards, showing extreme courage.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a good example of technical details in the Bill that need work. Aspects of this do need work. I think I have spoken individually to everybody on the other side of the Committee who opposes the Bill, and I agree with their technical changes to it. The idea that immunity cannot be revoked, or that there is no real compulsion to get involved because of jail sentences—I do not agree with that. At the same time, however, I am not going to say, "Don’t vote for this Bill", because this is it; this is as good as it gets. There is an opportunity coming down the line, when the Bill goes to the Lords, when things such as that will happen.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): I have huge sympathy for the hon. Member, whom I am close to and have huge affection for. He can imagine my views on Gerry Adams—thankfully we are in the House, so I will not get sued just for uttering his name—and on the incident that he refers to. However, I would say pragmatically that it has been a long time since that incident and, if that justice were possible, it would have happened. I want that more than anybody else, but it has not happened, so we must deal with the world as we see it, which is incredibly conflicted: evidence was not gathered correctly, the crime scene was a mess, and it is very difficult to reach the threshold of criminal conviction.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): We are here because over many years our predecessors looked at this issue and thought that it was too difficult. I focus on two groups: the victims, who have been dragged down the legal pathway; and veterans, for whom—I am sorry—the experience is equally unacceptable. I have seen 85-year-old men in court who needed a loo break every half-hour—they could not remember what happened yesterday—getting spat at on their way in. They were not guilty of anything. Their cases got thrown out and the judge said, "I can’t believe this has come this far." So there are two sides to the ledger, and we are here because we have not had the courage to deal with the issue as we find it.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Luther Mercer (Conservative, Centre-right): This will be deeply unpopular on the Opposition Benches, but the reason we have inquests and they do not result in criminal convictions is that they do not reach that threshold. Obviously, the evidence is there in the inquests, and I do not decry them—they are very important—but they are not at the criminal threshold, which has driven the experiences of veterans and so on. Yes, inquests have made findings—they have found things around collusive behaviour—but they have never been proved in court. While people will have very strong views—I have seen that across the Committee—we have to go with what is proved in court. That is the lie of the land. Even cases that I cannot believe have not been prosecuted have not been proved in court. It is a desperately sorry situation for everybody—the victims, veterans and so on. While I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, I just do not see what good end point that achieves I understand that we must be open. The Department could be more open with this process than it is with inquests, because of all the legalities included in that. The idea behind this immunity from prosecution is that there could be total transparency. I accept that people think, "They won’t be transparent," but what do we do? Do we just throw away this last chance—do we let these old guys die in a hotel room in Belfast and let the sectarianism continue, the protests outside the courts continue, the spitting at me when I walk in continue—or do we try to do something just a little bit different I have never asked for favours for anybody. All I have asked for is fairness—just fairness. There are some people you will never find me defending, because I have my own thoughts about it. All I have asked for is fairness, and I have been treated in a particular way in Northern Ireland. I just urge colleagues to think about the art of the possible. We all have a duty—to victims and to veterans.
Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-06-29
Topic: Law and Crime
John Charles Baron (Conservative, Centre-right): I will keep it very brief. I commend my hon. Friend for his excellent speech, but may I suggest that what has been underplayed in this debate is the fact that for the victims, just knowing answers can help people move on? This is about justice, but it is also about providing and knowing answers, and we have not heard too much about that.