Veterans: Investigations — House of Lords, 2019-05-16
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat, in the form of a Statement, the Answer given by my honourable friend the Minister of State for Northern Ireland to an Urgent Question in the other place. The Statement is as follows: "We have concluded, at least for the moment, that it would be better to try to respond to the right honourable Member’s comments about soldiers serving in Northern Ireland—obviously the Northern Ireland Office addresses that directly—particularly because the rules were different when soldiers were serving in Northern Ireland. They were there in support of the police, in support of civil powers, which is a different legal basis from the one that applies if they are fighting abroad in other kinds of conflict. Therefore, I will endeavour to be as helpful as I can to my right honourable friend. If he has any remaining questions about this which he wants to address, I am very happy to follow them through with him later, but let me at least try to address the burden of his UQ right here, as it is asked Can I start by saying, Mr Speaker, that I strongly agree, and I suspect that everybody on all sides of the House will strongly agree, that my right honourable friend is absolutely right that the current system—the current situation—in Northern Ireland is not working properly for people on all sides? It is clearly unsupportable and it is unfair in many ways. Whether you are a former soldier or a former police officer, perhaps now in your 70s, who is worried about being pursued through the courts about events that happened 30 or 40 years ago, that is a constant worry to you, and to your family and friends. Equally, if you are a member of the family of a victim of republican terrorists where the perpetrators were never brought to justice, there is great worry, concern and difficulty in moving on. That concern affects people on all sides of the community in Northern Ireland, and my right honourable friend is absolutely right that it has to be addressed. That is why not just the Government but, I think I am right in saying, parties on all sides of the House and right across Northern Ireland believe that a new approach is vital to put this right. It is why the original Stormont House agreement was announced some years ago and why, most recently, we have been running a consultation on views about how it should be taken forward There were more than 17,000 responses to the consultation, which I think shows the breadth, depth and intensity of concern about the current situation. We have almost finished going through those returns and some trends are starting to emerge. We will of course bring them to the House as soon as we decently and responsibly can I think that one thing is clear: everybody agrees on the aim. The difficulty is that, 30 or 40 years after some of the events of the Troubles, we need a process which may have a judicial element—I am sure it will—but which will have to be broader than just judicial. It should allow all sides of the community in Northern Ireland to establish the truth where it can be established, be fair to all sides and allow society as a whole to draw a line and move on. While comparisons cannot be exact, because the situation in Northern Ireland is unlike anything else on the planet, this has been done in other societies; famously, for example, with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. That clearly would not work precisely in Northern Ireland, but some equivalent process which aims at the same outcomes and allows people to feel that justice is being achieved, that truth has been delivered wherever it can be and that, so far as is possible, closure can be achieved for all sides on an equal basis is essential. That matters particularly for soldiers and police officers who served in Northern Ireland but also for the families and grieving loved ones of victims. I will endeavour to respond to my right honourable friend’s further questions—I am sure that he has many—but I hope that my Answer at least helps to set the scene".