Al Carns

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, and for his consistent analysis, scrutiny and support of all things Northern Ireland. As my new clause is not going forward, we will continue —unfortunately, in my mind—with a twin-track approach. We will have the legacy commission on one hand, which in some cases is underfunded, and inquests on the other hand. We will waste a huge amount of money through that process, because I genuinely believe that that illusionary justice is very unlikely to come about. We will allow the process to drift on, potentially for up to 15 years. Think about what that means to someone who is 80, 75 or 70 years old—15 years of not knowing, of having to be worried about whether they will be called back or have to provide evidence in some way, shape or form about an incident 30 or 40 years ago. Sometimes, I cannot even remember what I did yesterday. We will keep our brave veterans, who I think have served valiantly, waiting in limbo. Importantly, a lot of this activity is based on several factors, the first of which is the willingness of Ireland to support us. I completely support the Secretary of State’s move to hold Ireland to account for what it has said it will do, but let us see whether that happens. The second factor is the costs, which are astronomical. At minimum, an inquest costs £20 million. There are tens of inquests to go, and even if they go into the legacy commission, we are still talking about £5 million per inquest. That is significant. Then we have politics to think about. As this process progresses, it will consider Sinn Féin’s activity—either in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland—and how that affects both the legislation and the agreements Sinn Féin have made recently. On top of all of that, if new evidence—new biometrics, the smoking gun—is found, people will only go to prison for two years, so what is the point? As for information recovery, there is no new information unless it comes from Ireland.