Mr Paul Kohler

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The Supreme Court judgment lays bare the consequences of the previous Government’s catastrophic approach to legacy, which drew a wholly unjustifiable moral equivalence between terrorists and those who serve the Crown. That scheme was declared unlawful and incompatible with our human rights obligations by every court that considered it, and has now been repudiated by this Government. Those on the Conservative Benches who championed it in this House did our veterans no favours, and neither has their ill-disguised and cynical party political mischief-making regarding the remedial order and today’s statement. The Liberal Democrats have opposed the granting of immunity from the outset and maintained throughout that removing it was a legal necessity, not a political choice, and this judgment confirms that we were right. The Supreme Court set aside the Court of Appeal’s declarations that the ICRIR was incapable of discharging its article 2 investigative obligations. However, that was not an endorsement of the ICRIR’s design. The Court held that the challenges to the absence of legal aid, the absence of provision for next-of-kin questioning of witnesses, and the Secretary of State’s power to restrict disclosure could not succeed as abstract prospective challenges; rather, each of those questions would need to be assessed on the facts of individual cases. That “wait and see” approach is part of the uncertainty that our veterans and their families fear. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what concrete steps he will take in Committee to ensure that genuine, independent protections for veterans are built into the Bill, rather than leaving those safeguards to be resolved on a case-by-case basis?