Sorcha Eastwood

I want to make some initial comments on new clause 50 and the role of the Attorney General. I will be fairly straightforward in my opinion on that: I do not support it, and I have severe concerns about where it will go—a political appointee and a member of the Government consenting to the prosecution of serious troubles-related offences. New clause 50 matters greatly in Northern Ireland because it unpicks a key reform that flowed directly from the Good Friday agreement. The criminal justice review mandated by the Good Friday agreement was explicit that “there should be no power for the Attorney General to direct the prosecutor, whether in individual cases or on policy matters”. That reform was not created out of nowhere; it was not in the abstract. It was a result of proven politicisation of the Attorney General’s power to overturn DPP prosecutions. A system that allows such disparity cannot be relied on, and that is why the Good Friday agreement sought to take that power away. New clause 50 would give it back. Our concerns about the new clause are not theoretical; they are based on past experience—experience that the Good Friday agreement had to rectify. That power for the Attorney General cannot be allowed to return. Let me make some wider points. Yesterday, along with many others, I made the point that this cannot be a debate about victims versus veterans—I note there are still some veterans in the Gallery, and I wish to reiterate that before the Bill goes to the other place. I would posit a different version of events. We heard some excellent remarks from the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson), and yesterday the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) hit on the same theme. Many of the people who came to Northern Ireland to serve were teenagers, or people from largely working-class communities. People have sometimes told me that they felt uncomfortable in another part of the UK with how they were expected to react to events or to some of the conversation and chat around and among them, or even about them. Earlier, the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) referred to the operation at Loughgall, which he said had been approved by the general officer commanding. That is something to consider. I know that some ground has been gained in the contemporisation of the operational environment in which people served in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the British Army and the RUC, and for that I have the utmost sympathy, but we will not have a situation, will we, if something arises, where the GOC will be in the dock? That is just not going to happen, and I am not sure that that is correct, accurate or fair. I want to have my final say on veterans, because there is a concept of natural justice at play and we should not seek to supress it. We should not seek to make that dirty or something that is at odds with every other member of society. Where I depart from some others is that I think something has entered the discourse. I have been involved with veterans for many years, and this is something that entered the discourse recently. I made this point yesterday and I will make it again today: some sort of thesis seeks to suggest that people who served inherently did something wrong that could lead to the so-called knock on the door 10, 20 or 30 years later. That troubles me deeply.