Member

I am really glad that my friend, the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby, said something in this debate that is never said—and I will say it: this happened in the United Kingdom, in the modern day. He mentioned the Hillsborough law. We would not for a second in this House think twice about whether that was sensible or not, whether we should be the arbiters of whether the families would find it useful, or whether the passage of time was too great. We simply would not take that decision upon ourselves. I am glad that I was involved in the passage of the Hillsborough law, and I pay tribute to the campaigners, but there seems to be an othering of Northern Ireland. It seems that we are saying that a national security veto should be in place. Are we saying that the family of Julie Livingstone, the teenager shot and killed by a plastic bullet, should not receive the file until 2054? She was murdered with a plastic bullet; they know that. Why is retaining the file a national security issue? That does not make any sense to me.