Hilary Benn

I can agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he describes the judgment as a complex one; he is absolutely right about that. I should make it clear that protected disclosure relating to the location of remains of those murdered by the IRA—in almost all cases, they were buried in the Republic of Ireland—is covered by separate arrangements that were introduced when the independent commission for the location of victims’ remains was created. That had support right across Northern Ireland, because people rightly judged that the most important thing was to enable families to be reunited with the remains of their loved ones. Sadly, there are four individuals whose remains have not yet been found. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the conditional immunity scheme. The fact remains that if a terrorist who committed one of many horrendous crimes—some of which are being investigated at the moment, such as the M62 coach bombing, what happened at Warrenpoint and the Kingsmill massacre—came to the commission and told the full truth, the last Government’s legislation said that the commission “must”, not “may”, grant them immunity from prosecution.