Alex Burghart

My right hon. Friend has very succinctly summarised the central argument behind the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023: drawing a line does not mean covering up the past; drawing a line was an opportunity to open the past in a way that the adversarial system was never going to allow. Incidentally, I do not believe that the adversarial system will bring justice for very many people. We must remember that the peace process concluded in 1998, which is 28 years ago, and the troubles, by most reckonings, are deemed to have started in 1966, which is 60 years ago. We have recently seen the case of soldier F, in which one of the longest public inquiries in British legal history presented the most forensic evidence that could be imagined, but the court was unable to reach a conclusion. This means that the chances of any prosecution reaching a conclusion are very limited. That does not matter, because for many veterans it is the process that is the punishment. We saw that in October last year, when a former SAS veteran, who was accused of having behaved wrongly in 1991, was dragged through the courts. Eventually, the judge in Belfast said the case was “ludicrous” and should never have come anywhere near him, but that individual had been pursued for four years. There are many such cases. If the process is the punishment, the fear of the process is a punishment for so many people.