Gavin Robinson

First, I welcome the Minister to his place and to the Department, and I welcome the new shadow spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. I personally thank the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) for the role she played in her time in the Northern Ireland Office. That the announcement with the Irish Government was made during a House of Commons recess, one could consider as cynical; that we stand here today during a statement on legislation that has yet to be introduced, and therefore we have no detail on, as disgraceful; and the suggestion that the Irish Government have committed to legislate at all as entirely fanciful—they have not. But the detail we do have is that the Secretary of State wishes for the Solicitor General to be the person to carry out the sifting process on whether cases should go to inquest through the coronial system or to the legacy commission. In Northern Ireland, we have an Advocate General. The Advocate General is England and Wales’s Attorney General. I am clear in my mind that Richard Hermer would be wholly inappropriate to have his hands anywhere near cases touching on the legacy of the past, given how he has conflicted himself. Will the Secretary of State indicate: has the Attorney General of this country recused himself from this process? Has he, as Secretary of State, decided to exclude the Attorney General from this process? Is he legislating in a way that will exclude every Attorney General from this process, or is it just Richard Hermer?