Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill — House of Lords, 2016-04-12
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Henry Alexander Eames (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I declare an interest as the co-chairman of the Consultative Group on the Past. I am grateful to noble Lords who have kindly referred to that group’s report already in this debate. I also pay a warm personal tribute to the Minister for the care with which he has undertaken the portfolio for Northern Ireland, particularly with respect to this legislation. I would like to put on record that it has been careful; he has listened, consulted and gone far beyond what could have been expected of him The phrase which is uppermost in my mind tonight, as I listen to this debate, will be familiar to noble Lords. They are the words spoken by Her Majesty on a recent occasion. She said that progress could be defined as, "being able to bow to the past but not be bound by it". The report that I was privileged to have a hand in linked legislation, the disclosure of the past and investigation of particular incidents with one other theme: reconciliation. But you cannot legislate for reconciliation. You cannot pass laws to have reconciliation in a divided society. You can put in the framework which will allow political progress to take place The noble Lord, Lord Empey, rightly reminded us of the work that has still to be done, but I beg your Lordships to realise that, no matter how perfect this legislation may be, it is by no means the end of the story. I can assure you that that story is, as the noble Lord said, on the streets of Belfast. We are a divided society; we are a society looking for leadership. We are a society where victims and victimhood stalk the memories of too many people. I have buried them; I have buried the victims of the violence and consoled families. I have tried to suggest ways in which civil society could address the vacuum left by that violence. In my declining years, I am more and more convinced that you cannot gain reconciliation through legislation alone The paramilitary situation that is addressed by this legislation—and I welcome the establishment of the monitoring group—is still stalking our streets. To quote the noble Lord, Lord Empey, again, it is still affecting the lives of young people. But it is even more sinister than that. One generation of paramilitary leaders—the people whom I had to try to deal with in my professional life—has gone. We now have young people growing up in these ghetto areas surrounded by peace walls and the remnants of a history and a time that they are taught in school but never knew. They are being influenced by sinister elements and, until we tackle that position, it will continue. I welcome the efforts which I know the Minister intends to take to help us address the legacy issues, I hope that he will bear in mind that we have to tackle a new generation who have new ideas but who are being taught the old grievances in what they are told is their history My memory goes back over the years. It is a question not just of the Consultative Group on the Past report but of the days and nights that I was involved in trying to do something to bring about reconciliation, not in a political sense but because of the sickness in our society. If this legislation is to take us on in a fresh start, so to speak, it has to have a realism about it—which so far I am afraid parliamentary democracy has failed to deliver. That failure is caused by many different reasons, not least the fact that there are still those who wish to manipulate the gift of parliamentary democracy for reasons that lie far beyond the debating chamber. There has been reference already to this and Northern Ireland is not immune to that sickness today. I hope that the various provisions of this legislation dealing with the parliamentary procedure in the Assembly and otherwise will help us move further towards realising the difficulties that that procedure involves I said just now that we have to recognise our past but not be bound by it. Of course, I am disappointed that this legislation does not represent an agreement that has been reached by the local parties on how to deal with the past. The report that we produced, which, as your Lordships have been reminded, is gathering dust on someone’s shelf somewhere, linked legislation with reconciliation. We listened endlessly for two years to what people said and it was an evidence-based report. From what I am told, the architecture of that report remains—not the detail but the architecture of it. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, just now and going back in my memory to the days when he had responsibility and some of us had dealings with him on behalf of the community, I venture to suggest he will agree that when the architecture of that report is re-examined, as I understand it is being re-examined, it will be judged still to contain certain principles that are worth following Much has been said tonight about the current situation. I want us to look forward. I want us not to treat the situation as it is as the end, because reconciliation is work in progress. I want to pay tribute to those former paramilitary members who are doing heroic work. They are not all continuing in a criminal way. Recently I had occasion to meet some of them and I am convinced that they are making a real effort, particularly among the loyalist paramilitaries, to try to see a new future. I hope that when we get to the next stage of this Bill there will be some recognition that these people need support—and they need it urgently Finally, reconciliation is nothing to do with legislation, as I say. It is born in the hearts and minds of people when they feel it is in their interests to be reconciled. It is as simple as that. Until we can create a panorama in Northern Ireland that says, "Do you remember the peace walls? Do you remember the paramilitaries? Do you remember this incident? Do you remember that horrific incident?", and until we can get to the situation where we can say that we are truly an example to the rest of the world in what we can do—then and only then, if some of us live long enough to see it, will we have succeeded I thank the Minister for bringing this Bill before us; I thank those in this Chamber who have played a vital role in that process in the past; and I issue the earnest prayer that we are taking one more simple step towards the new Jerusalem that the people of Northern Ireland so richly deserve.