1 Introduction
1. As we prepare this Report, Ministerial responsibility
for policing and criminal justice in Northern Ireland remains
with the UK Government. These will be the last major policy areas
to be devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive, on a date as
yet to be determined. For as long as the Northern Ireland Office
continues to hold these responsibilities, it will remain the duty
of this Committee to exercise scrutiny on behalf of the electorate
of Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
2. The inquiry that has led to this Report grew
out of the Committee's discussions during one of its frequent
visits to Northern Ireland. It became clear that there is great
concern in the Police Service, in the Police Ombudsman's office
and elsewhere that the cost of 'policing the past' is compromising—and
will increasingly compromise—these agencies' ability to
carry out their core functions. The more police resources that
are committed to servicing the needs of the various historic inquiries,
the fewer resources are available for crime prevention measures
or for apprehending present-day criminals. Similarly, if the Ombudsman's
staff are investigating an historic case, they cannot at the same
time be working on a more recent one. A related concern is that
the need to supply full evidence, including sensitive material,
to historic inquiries may compromise the personal safety of covert
sources of intelligence and undermine the position of those who
still operate covertly.
3. We therefore announced in November 2007 our
intention to produce a focused Report as part of a continuing,
broad inquiry into policing and criminal justice in Northern Ireland.[1]
The terms of reference we adopted for this initial phase of our
inquiry were to inquire into:
- The financial and operational
consequences for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI)
of servicing the various 'historic inquiries' into past events
in Northern Ireland; and
- The effect on the ability of the Police Service
of Northern Ireland to bring accused persons to trial of provisions
in the Inquiries Act 2005 and in other legislation requiring the
police to divulge information which might identify a covert source
The bulk of our evidence, and therefore the bulk
of this Report, centres on the first of these concerns.
4. In the course of this inquiry, we visited
Northern Ireland three times and the Republic of Ireland once,
hearing formal evidence from several witnesses and holding a large
number of informal meetings with interested parties. We also heard
oral evidence at Westminster from witnesses and we received written
evidence from a wide range of groups and individuals. To all of
these we are most grateful. Our advisers for this inquiry have
been Ken Armstrong, a former PSNI officer, and Jane Gordon, human
rights lawyer and senior lecturer at Kingston University; we thank
them for applying their considerable experience and expertise
to the complex legal and procedural issues that arose during the
inquiry.
5. The wider context for this quite narrowly
focused exercise has been the whole question of how the people
of Northern Ireland should deal with the legacy of their past.
Various proposals were made to us in the meetings we held. These
included the creation of a memorial to the victims of violence;
a day of remembrance; story-telling; and the establishment of
a truth commission.[2]
For us as a Committee to give full consideration to and to reach
firm conclusions on such important matters in this Report would
take us beyond our current terms of reference and into the issues
that are being considered in great depth by the Consultative Group
on the Past, which is co-chaired by Lord Eames of Armagh and Mr
Denis Bradley.
6. The Chairman met Lord Eames and Mr Bradley
at Westminster in January 2008, and the Committee met them, together
with other members of the Consultative Group, in Belfast in May
2008. We had a wide-ranging discussion, in an informal setting,
which we found very helpful. We welcome the moving and inspirational
speeches of Lord Eames and Mr Bradley of 29 May and we await the
report of the Group with great interest. While the Committee hopes
that the conclusions it reaches and the recommendations it makes
in this Report will be of interest to members of the Group, it
does not wish, in this Report or elsewhere, to anticipate any
conclusions the Group may reach. Our inquiries may have taken
place at the same time, but our work has been entirely separate.
7. Some of those whom we met, or from whom we
heard evidence, expressed a clear desire to see an end to the
constant delving into Northern Ireland's past. We heard suggestions
that a time limit on such work of five, seven or ten years should
be set. It is not for us at this stage to endorse the setting
of any arbitrary deadline. However, we do strongly believe that
it is important that Northern Ireland moves towards a time when
investigations into the events of the past are no longer needed.
This does not mean that the past can or should be forgotten; and
in particular, it does not mean a cessation of help to those who
bear the scars of the Troubles. We endorse the suggestion made
to us by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, the first Victims Commissioner
for Northern Ireland, that the whole question of compensation
for the victims of violence and their families should be reconsidered.
Too many people in Northern Ireland continue to suffer today as
a result of events that took place in some cases decades ago;
if the money spent on the public inquiries into the past had instead
been spent on relieving the plight of such people, a real difference
might have been made to their lives.
8. Whilst any crime committed by a person in
authority is particularly reprehensible and must be investigated
as thoroughly as possible, it is important that the establishment
and conduct of inquiries into such crimes is not allowed to distort
the overall picture. This clearly shows that responsibility for
more that 90% of deaths attributable to the security situation
during the Troubles rests with paramilitary groups. According
to the respected publication Lost Lives, there were 3703 deaths
attributable to the security situation between 1966 and 2003.
The publication attributes alleged responsibility as follows:
Republican paramilitaries: 2158 deaths
Loyalist paramilitaries: 1099 deaths
The security forces: 365 deaths. (Most of which have
not been attributed to criminal activity.)
9. In this Report, we look first at the work
of the Historical Enquiries Team of the Police Service of Northern
Ireland. We then consider the historical investigations of the
Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, before turning to the various
statutory inquiries into the past. Finally, we look ahead to the
burdens likely to be imposed by the forthcoming contentious inquests.
The Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office, Paul Goggins
MP, told us that he would take our conclusions and recommendations
very seriously; we welcome that statement of intent, and we await
the Government's response with interest.
1 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Press Notice,
No. 2 of 2007-08, 22 November 2007 Back
2
These initiatives, together with others, were identified by Healing
Through Remembering as essential components of an integrated approach
to dealing with the past in its report "Healing Through Remembering
Report 2002" Back
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