Lady
Hermon: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman when he
is speaking in such a passionate manner about an issue that he knows
particularly well, and by which he has been personally deeply
affected. I am
concerned that article 10 of the order restricts to the Office of the
First Minister and Deputy First Minister the authority to pay grants to people
who consider themselves victims and survivors, or other bodies. The
order does not even enable the new commissioner to make grants to
people who are in very straitened financial circumstances. Does the
hon. Gentleman have similar concerns?
Mr.
Donaldson: I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and
I commend her for the work that she has done, not only in her
constituency but with the many victims she has personally helped with
their plight. She makes a good point that we need to
consider.
The hon. Member for Foyle made
an important comment on the issue of the involvement of the offices of
First and Deputy First Minister, and the efficacy of those offices. We
know that victim-related issues can be contentious. They must not
become bogged down in that office. I hope that the Minister will look
at that and reflect on it.
Certainly as regards the payment
of grants to individuals, I know something of the difficulties there
have been, even with the operation of the Northern Ireland Memorial
Fund, the Northern Ireland Police Fund and other funds that are
designed to benefit victims. It can be problematic and I know that
there is the victims unit in the Office of the First and Deputy First
Minister, but the commissioner ought to have a meaningful role in this
matter. I echo the comments of the hon. Lady. The Government need to
look at this and ensure that the financial support that victims need
reaches them with the minimum of bureaucracy and the minimum of
political interference in that
process.
Mr.
Hanson: The hon. Gentleman will be awarethat the
interim commissioner, Bertha McDougall, is undertaking a study, which
we organised and helped her to commission, into the very point he
mentions: the distribution of grants, the overlap of grants and the
bureaucracy expected in grants at the moment. I hope to have a report
from her by December 2006, which will detail some recommendations for
the Government to take forward on those
issues.
Mr.
Donaldson: I thank the Minister for that intervention and
for the further information he has given the
Committee. Other hon.
Members have touched on the definition of victim, and I note the
definition in the order. I feel it is an advance on some of the things
that we have had before. Nevertheless, I know from my work with victims
across Northern Ireland that, although it is not a matter of people
feeling that there should be a hierarchy of victimhood, there is a
problem and we need to recognise it. The hon. Lady alluded to it
earlier in an intervention.
It is extremely difficult for
those who have sufferedat the hands of paramilitaries, whether
loyalist or republican, to participate in a process where perpetrators
and victims are treated on an equal basis. That is extremely difficult
for many people to come to terms with. I am aware of people who have
excluded themselves from certain processes in the past because they
could not deal emotionally or psychologically with that prospect. We
need to be sympathetic to that in terms of the operation of a future
forum, but also in terms of how we define the victims and
victimhood. Like the
hon. Member for Aylesbury, I am not here to judge anyone’s sense
of grief, loss and suffering. I remember being with my own party
leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian
Paisley), in a meeting when he was asked this question. He recognised
that there are people in Northern Ireland whose kith and kin, whose
brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, often unbeknown to them, got
involved with paramilitary groups and became embroiled in all of that.
We must recognise that those people suffered as a consequence, through
no fault of their own. At the same time we must be very sensitive to
the situation where victims feel that it creates a great problem for
them if they are put on a par with
perpetrators. There is
also an equal requirement to ensure that individual victims receive
adequate financial support to meet their needs. The Prime Minister
recently gave a
commitment in the House of Commons to long-term funding for the victim
sector. That is welcome because the victim sector hitherto has relied
heavily on peace funding and we know that that has a finite lifespan.
We need to ensure that there is adequate funding for the work of the
commissioner but also for victims groups and those who work with
victims in the community. I have already mentioned the issue of
compensation. The Government have to address this matter. I urge the
Minister and his colleagues to work closely with the commissioner to
ensure that there is greater flexibility and generosity when assessing
and meeting the needs of victims and their families. I commend the
interim report prepared by Mrs. McDougall, which deals with
the funding of the victims
sector. I strongly
welcome the creation of the commissioner in Northern Ireland. We have
had commissions for many things over the years and sometimes they
become a bit of a crutch and a means of dealing with problems that we
cannot come to terms with ourselves. However, this is one issue and one
group of people who are most deserving of the maximum support that we
can provide and they need a champion. That champion can be the
commissioner, whoever he or she may be. It needs to be a permanent post
as it will take at least a generation to heal the wounds and deal with
the legacy of more than 35 years of violence in Northern Ireland. It
will take a long time for all the issues that surround it to be
resolved. We have the historical inquiries team who are looking into
various issues; it is true that there is a lot of concentration on what
happened in the past, and we need to deal with its legacy.
We need to build for the
future. What happened in Belfast last night is part of the past, not
the future. Bombs and guns are no way to resolve our differences;
violence is not the way to deal with the problems of Northern Ireland.
It is only through the political process that we can build a future so
that those who have suffered—the victims and survivors of what
we have come to call the troubles—will be provided for and
supported. I know from talking to them that the greatest thing that
could happen is for them to know that no one else will have to face
what they did or have to suffer as they have
done.
The
Chairman: I call Lady
Hermon. Lembit
Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD)
rose—
3.22
pm Lady
Hermon: The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit
Öpik) has many attributes, but to be a look-alike for the hon.
Member for North Down is not one that we could endorse.
[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Foyle has a well-known, very
good sense of humour and that was meant as a joke. I will take it on
those terms. It is an
honour and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Lagan Valley
(Mr. Donaldson). This is one of those occasions when I
sincerely and deeply regret that the hon. Gentleman chose to join the
alternative Unionist party rather than staying put with the Ulster
Unionist party.
We are considering a very
important measure and I regret that it is an Order in Council that
cannot be amended, which is a shameful way to legislate for Northern
Ireland. Be that as it may, I preface my remarks by saying that I
strongly support the order, and will not clamour for a vote at the end
of thedebate.
I, too, wish to record my warm
thanks to and appreciation of Bertha McDougall, the first interim
commissioner in Northern Ireland who, while the furore of a judicial
review was going on round her, kept her head, kept her cool and just
kept going with the work to which she is so obviously committed. I pay
warm tribute to her. I
was slightly disappointed that at no stage did the Minister recognise
the valiant, work of the first victims commissioner, Sir Kenneth
Bloomfield, who is a constituent of mine, although I was not a Member
of Parliament in 1997 when he produced his seminal work. At the time,
the then Secretary of State—sadly, the late Mo Mowlam—had
the vision to appoint a victims commissioner in November 1997, before
the Belfast agreement. I am glad to say that how best to look after
victims was therefore on the agenda of the Labour Government early on.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield produced a wonderful, moving, detailed and
lengthy analysis entitled “We Will Remember Them”.
Obviously, we do not wish to tie the hands of the new commissioner who
I hope will be appointed by spring 2007, if not before, but I should
like an assurance from the Minister that the work of Kenneth Bloomfield
and his team, which I accept is a comprehensive document, will become
the basis of the work of the commissioner and the
staff. Let us move on
to staff and the budget. No mention has been made of the finance for
the office. It is a matter that I am raising deliberately because I
have considered so many Orders in Council when we have introduced a new
commissioner, a new office or a new inspectorate to Northern Ireland. I
am sure that we have more commissioners for police, justice and
criminal justice than any other region in the United Kingdom. However,
I do reflect on the worthwhile office of the chief inspector of
criminal justice. Here again, I must say that the chief inspector lives
in North Down, but if he did not live in that wonderful constituency I
would have said that about his office
anyway. The chief
inspector of criminal justice has the important oversight function in
Northern Ireland of building confidence throughout the criminal justice
system. When it was known publicly that an appointment to that office
had been made, there were high expectations of that inspector and his
staff. He laboured alone for a long time before staff were appointed. I
want the Minister to give assurances about the budget allocation for
the commissioner. We need a generous budget allocation because victims
and survivors will have high expectations of the new permanent
commissioner. There must therefore be an adequate budget and adequate
staffing for that office because whoever is appointed will have an
enormous responsibility towards thousands of people throughout Northern
Ireland, whose voices have not been heard
and whose voices we look forward to hearing when they will be recognised
by the forum and the
commissioner. I shall
be happy if I receive satisfactory clarification from the Minister on
several points. I welcome the definition of
“victim and survivor” under article 3 of the order. It is
broad, and I am pleased that it includes an individual
who “may be
psychologically injured as a result of or in consequence
of...witnessing a conflict-related
incident” or “providing
medical or other emergency assistance to an individual in connection
with a conflict-related
incident.” On
that aspect, I wish to bring to the attention of the Committee and
specifically to that of the Ministerthe fact that, during the
awful times of the troubles,St. John Ambulance, especially the
service attached to Belfast City hospital, was used as a regular
ambulance service on call-out during the terrible bombings in central
Belfast. Other emergency services and the security services have
rightly and properly been recognised—in the case of the Royal
Ulster Constabulary by the George cross and in the case of the Ulster
Defence Regiment and the Royal Irish Regiment by the conspicuous
Gallantry cross. However, I ask the Minister to look at what seems to
be to be an oversight—not a wilful or deliberate one, but an
oversight nevertheless—of St. John Ambulance and other emergency
service men and women who gave their best in terrible conditions,
particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. We forget that hundreds of people
died in bombings in Northern Ireland—close on 400—in 1972
and again in 1973. Particularly in light of the recognition given
rightly—I hope—to the emergency services after the 7 July
atrocity here in London, I would like to think that Northern Ireland
and the particular emergency personnel will not be forgotten. I would
like some clarification on
that. I
am interested in the schedule to the order, which, for the purposes of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000, defines the commissioner as a
public authority. In that case, will the Minister clarify whether the
commissioner and his office will have section 75 obligations, under the
Northern Ireland Act 1998, to “promote equality of
opportunity” and “good relations” between people
of different faiths, religions, sexes and all other equality groups? Is
the commissioner a public authority also for section 75
purposes? I am married
to a former Chief Constable of the RUC who voted for the Belfast
agreement in the firm belief that if it meant that not one more police
officer would be killed in Northern Ireland it was worth voting for. I
am relieved that since 1998 not a single police officer has died as a
result of the troubles in Northern Ireland, unlike in the rest of the
United Kingdom. I pay tribute to all police officers who defend all of
us in sometimes very precarious circumstances and who have paid the
ultimate price. May I
have an assurance that police officers in Northern Ireland who might
well have availed themselves of the Police Rehabilitation and
Retraining Trust—I encourage those who have not done so to make
inquiries—will not be excluded from the advice, services and
counselling of the commissioner that
we are providing for this afternoon. I think that clarification on that
issue would be very
helpful. Mr.
Donaldson: The hon. Lady will be aware that as the home
service battalions approach disbandment,the Royal Irish
Regiment is putting in place welfare arrangements and support for
former soldiers, widows and families. Does she agree that it is
important also that those soldiers and families have access to the
benefits provided by the commissioner, as well as to whatever services
are put in place by the regiment and the regimental
family?
Lady
Hermon: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that
valuable contribution. I agree entirely with every word that he spoke.
UDR soldiers served alongside RUC officers and were often
murdered—shot and blown up—in the same events. There is
no moral justification that I can see—I am sure that no one in
this Room can see one either—for differentiating between police
officers and those who served gallantly with the UDR. Again, we would
welcome that reassurance from the
Minister. Finally,
as has been touched, we do not want a hierarchy of victims. No one
wants that. However, one of the advantages of being on my own in the
Ulster Unionist party is that of necessity I have to cover a wide range
of legislation. Last year saw the introduction of the Domestic
Violence, Crime and Victims Act—no, it was in fact introduced in
2004. Time flies when one is enjoying oneself. It is interesting to
note the comma after “violence”. The first two parts of
the Act, on domestic violence and on crime, extend to Northern Ireland,
but for some very curious reason the part concerning victims does not.
I mention that because, as I said, I do not wish there to be a
hierarchy of victims. For the rest of the United Kingdom, or at least
for England and Wales, a commissioner for victims and witnesses is
specifically appointed under the legislation, with
“victim” being defined as a victim of an offence or of
antisocial
behaviour. We are
rightly establishing the permanent appointment of a commissioner for
victims and survivors. However, although we may like to pretend that
there is no antisocial behaviour in Northern Ireland, that is sadly not
the case—even in the wonderful constituency of North Down. There
are victims of such behaviour in my constituency and there are families
such as that of Lisa Dorrian, a young woman who was murdered by those
with loyalist paramilitary connections at the end of February 2005. She
was “disappeared”, and her body was never recovered in
almost 20 months. No one has been charged with her
murder. The Dorrian
family is having to live through a nightmare—without a body, or
a funeral, and without any closure to their loss—but I am not
sure they would come within the definition in the order, because I am
not sure that the incident was a “conflict-related
incident”. Nevertheless, I should certainly like to think that
the Dorrian family would have the benefit of a commissioner to whom it
could turn for advice and guidance. If that means that the remit of the
victims commissioner in Great Britain is extended to Northern Ireland,
so be it, but I cannot see any justification for a hierarchy of
victims.
I do not expect the Minister to
answer off the cuff this afternoon, but perhaps he will reflect and
write to me later, and put his response in the Library for the benefit
of everyone in the Committee.
3.37
pm
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