Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 (Extension of duration of non-jury trial provisions) Order 2019 — House of Lords, 2019-06-04
Topic: Law and Crime
Paul Murphy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords will join me in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, all the very best Recalling my first visit to Northern Ireland as a youngish shadow Minister 24 years ago, the situation was hugely different from what it is today. There were Diplock courts, of course, and juries before that had been severely intimidated by paramilitaries from both sides. Extreme sectarianism meant that that you were not guaranteed, in the proper sense of the word, a fair trial if that trial was to be held with a jury. As the Minister said, Northern Ireland is a very small place and it was even smaller, in population, in those days. We had to have these necessary evils: there had to be some system which meant that justice was fair and outside the realms of intimidation. It is also fair to say that between that time and 2007, when the Diplock courts went and the new system came in, we saw an enormous difference in Northern Ireland. The landscape changed considerably. Not least of this, of course, was that the nationalist and indeed the republican communities began to accept the criminal justice system and the police system, so that people from those communities sat on the Policing Board and involved themselves with the PSNI as well So there were huge changes. The Minister touched on the fact that in recent times—the last couple of years in fact—non-jury trials in Northern Ireland have become a tiny proportion of the whole. In 2016 there were only 12 non-jury trials out of 1,640. In 2017 it was nine out of 1,409. Those figures clearly indicate that there has been a huge shift in what happens in Northern Ireland. He is right, of course, to say that the security situation in Northern Ireland is still such that, at the end of the day, you cannot totally rule out a trial that would be unfair because of intimidation or extreme sectarianism. The points made by my noble friend Lord Reid and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, are very significant in terms of working out when we will actually see the complete end of non-jury trials in Northern Ireland Of course, in a general sense it is about security, and if the security situation improves to such an extent that they are unnecessary, then it will change by the next time we look at this legislation, in two years’ time. But we have to be a bit more scientific than that; as long as you have a system which is different from the rest of the United Kingdom—indeed, from the rest of Ireland—Parliament should be informed as to how and why it should continue, if it does. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us how the oversight occurs and how this might eventually end The other issue is that, so long as there is political instability in Northern Ireland, the possibility of terrorist activity, which we have seen over the last couple of months and even in the last couple of weeks, fills the vacuum of political instability, albeit nothing like how it used to. But it is still there. In that context, I am sure the Minister can reassure the House that the talks in Northern Ireland are going well and that there is a possibility that the institutions might be brought back—bearing in mind that it is not long before the marching season and the holidays are upon us, which is always a reason why we cannot do things in Northern Ireland. The fact that there is political stability hopefully means at the end of the day that the dissident republican threat, if not evaporating, is certainly very much less and that, as a consequence, normalcy can come to Northern Ireland and all trials in Northern Ireland, where relevant, can be trials with a jury.