Contribution
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for making herself available today to take this Statement and answer questions on the important Supreme Court judgment; I appreciate that she has a very busy portfolio, so I am grateful.
Can the Minister tell the House what the urgency was that required the Secretary of State to make his Statement in the other place last Thursday when many of Northern Ireland’s MPs, along with members of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, were attending the Balmoral agricultural show? One can only speculate as to what would motivate the Government to make a Statement on a day when they would have known that a significant number of interested MPs would be unable to attend.
Turning to the judgment, the Opposition welcome that the court found in favour of the Government in respect of article 2 of the Windsor Framework. I remind the House that this relates to measures introduced by the previous Government, of which I was a member. The appeal in this area is a continuation of the one we lodged following the High Court judgment of February 2024. We were always very clear that the human rights protections in the Windsor Framework were intended to cover those specific to Northern Ireland, as set out in the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity section of the Belfast agreement 1998. It was never our intention that article 2 of the framework should apply more broadly than that and enable the courts to disapply primary legislation where they believe it engages provisions of EU law that no longer apply in Northern Ireland.
However, as the Statement points out, the judgments in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal had implications for the effective implementation of government legislation on a UK-wide basis, not just in areas of national security as the Statement refers to but also, for example, in tackling illegal migration. We are naturally pleased, therefore, that the position we took has now been vindicated.
Turning to the issue of conditional immunity, I regret that the Statement continues the current Government’s wilful mischaracterisation of what is contained in the 2023 Act. There was never a general immunity—to which I would emphatically have never agreed—but a conditional scheme in relation to specific cases where an individual co-operates fully with the commission, with tough sanctions including revocation, fines and possible prosecution where somebody knowingly sought to mislead or hide the truth. The effects would have been to facilitate information recovery, helping to provide answers to victims and survivors while ensuring that individuals, including veterans, could speak freely without fear of further consequences.
Notwithstanding what it says about ECHR compatibility, which is more nuanced than the Statement implies, the court’s judgment is also clear that the immunity provisions in the 2023 Act do not breach article 2 of the Windsor Framework and therefore do not need to be disapplied. Can the Minister confirm this is the case and that, as the law currently stands, any veteran engaging fully with the commission could apply for conditional immunity and this could be granted? Does it not also follow that the decision by the Government to use the Human Rights Act to remove these provisions is a political choice, rather than a legal requirement, and one that will once again lead to the prospect of investigations and prosecutions? It is a political choice that will not be lost on so many of those who served to keep people safe and secure from terrorism during 30 years of Operation Banner.
The court also ruled that the current commission can carry out investigations to an article 2 and 3 standard and can operate independently of the Secretary of State—not least in part thanks to the amendments passed in your Lordships’ House. Does this not render the sweeping changes in the Government’s own Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which had its Second Reading in the other place as far back as November and has not yet had its Committee stage, almost completely unnecessary? We all know that the reason for the delay has been an impasse between the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Defence over additional protections for veterans after the ones announced last September were shown to be wholly inadequate, with all but one applying in equal measure to paramilitaries. Can the Minister tell the House whether these new protections have now been agreed and, if so, when they will be published? Have they been backed by the Dublin Government, who have been seen by many as driving this process, over which they have effectively given themselves a veto?
The commission that was established in 2024 has, from a standing start, so far received requests from 290 individuals from all parts of the community. It is conducting 123 live investigations, involving approximately 200 deaths, with its first reports expected imminently. Rather than burdening this House with yet more unnecessary legislation, the Government should get behind the commission and ensure that it has the tools to do its job. Instead, they have made the political choice to embark on a course that will once again leave veterans exposed, facilitate the republican rewrite of history and, regrettably, only delay the provision of answers for so many victims and survivors of the Troubles.