The Report of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Contents

Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-52)

RT REV LORD EAMES OM AND MR DENIS BRADLEY

25 FEBRUARY 2009

  Q1  Chairman: Could I now formally welcome you, Lord Eames, and Mr Bradley, as the Co-Chairmen of the Consultative Group on the Past. We have followed your work with considerable interest. The Committee reported on the cost of policing the past, some months ago, as you know, and we were grateful for the meetings we had with you and your colleagues in the preparation of that report. We deliberately refrained from making a number of recommendations in areas where you were also operating because we did not wish to pre-empt your report or to create any problems for your important work, but now we wish to examine you on your report and the Committee may, as a result of that examination and our deliberations, decide to make a further report itself, but you are, as I say, both of you most welcome. All of this questioning is on the record and I think it would then be fair, especially in view of the announcement on the Nolan Show, a strange show on which to do it but nevertheless much listened to in Northern Ireland, to mention that the Secretary of State made a very important statement this morning about the so-called recognition payments and about the Government's decision not to proceed on that front. Is there anything by way of opening submissions which either you, Lord Eames, or Mr Bradley would wish to say to the Committee before we begin the questioning?

Lord Eames: Chairman, if I may, I would like to make a statement on behalf of both myself and Mr Bradley. As Co-Chairs of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland, we want to express our appreciation for this opportunity to discuss the report which we issued on 23 January. The Group has met, as you have said, with this Committee on several occasions during our consultation period and we greatly appreciated the opportunity to update you on our work. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we were appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 22 June 2007 and we were given two main tasks: one, to consult across the community on how Northern Ireland society could best approach the legacy of the events of the past 40 years; two, to make recommendations as appropriate on any steps which might be taken to support Northern Ireland society in building a shared future which is not overshadowed by the events of the past. After 18 months of extensive consultation we presented the report. The recommendations came from an extensive period of listening, questioning and debating with Northern Ireland society. We want to have it on the record that we want to pay tribute to the members of the Group, our international advisers, legal advisers and staff for their work, which was both demanding and emotionally draining. Many told us, as we began the work, that we faced an impossible task, such were the divisions and raw feelings throughout our society because of the legacy of the past. There were those who believed that it was too soon to attempt such a task. Some felt the past should take care of itself. "Leave well alone", they said. Some had high hopes that we would find ways of dealing with the past which would produce the proverbial line in the sand. There were also those who questioned whether a group set up by a British Secretary of State had the necessary credibility to produce recommendations which had integrity for a divided society. When we began our work we were overwhelmed by the numbers of those groups, individuals and representatives who wished to make contact with us. They ranged from victims and victims groups, from political parties, churches and groups already achieving much in our society with their approach to remembrance and victims' needs. They ranged from paramilitaries to security services, government agencies, retired security forces personnel, academics and private individuals. We think it is fair to say that we engaged on one of the most extensive consultation periods imaginable. We held public meetings, received written submissions and travelled throughout Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain. Our report is consultation-based. We have endeavoured to reflect the main points people put to us. Those views were varied, at times contradictory, but always passionate. We listened to the agonies of human tragedy. We were moved by the stories of individual victims and the heartache of those who continue to carry on their minds and bodies the results of Northern Ireland's conflict. We heard calls for justice which typified the community today when we analysed what people meant by "justice". Some wanted retribution for the loss of a loved one. They wanted a successful prosecution. Some wanted to know more about what had happened to a loved one. Some interpreted "justice" in terms which they themselves recognised had no answer. We met with the entire ambit of human feelings and we felt emotionally drained by the experience. We also studied how other nations have dealt with post-conflict situations. Chairman, what we have in this report is the consequence of all that experience. What you have is by no means the most perfect report ever written in a post-conflict situation but what you have is, I submit, an honest attempt to ask the questions we believe Northern Ireland needs to be asked at this time, to produce a blueprint by which society could respond to those questions, and above all to challenge politicians, the victims' groups, the churches, education, the media and the ordinary people of Northern Ireland. The past is never going to go away. The ghosts of the past will continue to haunt this generation and the next, feeding on sectarian attitudes, unless some way is found to move forward but to move forward with real respect for the sacrifice and trauma of the past. If there is one consensus the Group found it was simply this: it must never happen again. In concluding this brief introduction I want to face up to that recommendation which has so dominated the public perception of our report. I refer, of course, to the recommendation of a recognition grant to the families of those killed during the Troubles. The Secretary of State has stated this morning that this recommendation is not to be furthered at present by the Government. None of our recommendations caused greater heart-searching within the Group, and indeed divisions within our Group, than this one. Let me say quite clearly, time and again during the consultation period we were urged to produce something which would give recognition to the trauma and suffering of those left behind. They range from the families of security forces, including families of British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland but then still lived on the mainland, from families of the UDR and the RUC victims of the Troubles to civilians caught up in the tragedy. There was a widespread feeling that once the media spotlight and sympathy from their local community passed away from a family after a funeral, society forgot about them. Politicians, social workers and victims' groups were among those who urged that some recognition of this human reaction must be found in our report. There were words like, "There is no difference between a mother's tears". This report is victim-sensitive and we listened to many such pleas which in a purely human service came from the heart. It was inevitable that any such recommendation would call forth a knee-jerk reaction and cause more pain to those already feeling the depths of mental and physical trauma. Chairman, perhaps I can emphasis what I am saying by the fact that I suggest that of all the people in this room I have stood beside more graves than any of you of those who were victims of the Troubles and I therefore speak with some feeling at this point. This was not about compensation. None of us have the moral right to put a figure on any human life. It is about humans and human suffering. At the root of this question is simply this: who is a victim? Irrespective of the Secretary of State's statement this morning, this will remain a highly contentious issue, but may I remind the Committee of the current legal situation in Northern Ireland regarding who can be classified as a victim? On the statute book the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 states that a victim is someone who has been physically and psychologically injured as a result of or in consequence of a conflict-related incident. That word "someone", Chairman, is repeated throughout the Order and there is no reference to any hierarchy of victims. That is the law as it stands and sometimes I have to say that there are those who conveniently or otherwise forget the generality of the term and the law. The 2006 Order is on the statute book and any change to the definition of "victim" is a matter for the legislator. The Commission for Victims and Survivors was entirely involved in our discussions and in a statement prior to the publication of our report it said this: "The Commission for Victims and Survivors has a duty to address the needs of all who have suffered regardless of their background or circumstances", and later, "We believe that compassion for the bereaved, regardless of how we might view those for whom they grieve, should be an important feature which helps our society in its struggle to deal with the past and build a better future". Chairman, it must also be remembered, and I say this in conclusion, that the Government of the Republic of Ireland had previously addressed this issue in its jurisdiction through an acknowledgement payment some years ago. This action passed largely unnoticed in Northern Ireland, but we were told that there were those families in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom who felt disadvantaged because they lived in another jurisdiction and had not been accorded such recognition. Chairman, we are encouraged by the Secretary of State's assurance this morning that he is taking serious note of the other recommendations in our report, and to quote the Chairman of the Police Federation, Mr Terry Spence: "Let us not throw out the baby with the bath water". We therefore submit that this report should not stand or fall on any one recommendation. I thank you, sir, for your patience.

  Q2  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, Lord Eames, for that. That is a helpful beginning and we note carefully all that you say. Could I just say at the beginning that the questions we ask you—which I hope will be searching and some may be robust—all come from Members who recognise and do not in any way impugn your integrity, your good intentions, your attempt to come up with a report which would truly help. The question is, is your judgment right and do we believe that your report is going to further the cause? So I want to begin with the most contentious aspect of it, as you will not be surprised, and I would have done so whether or not the Secretary of State had made his comments this morning, but in the light of those comments and in the light of what you have just said, quoting Mr Spence (who is familiar to this Committee and who has been before us on a number of occasions), would it not be wiser now to put that recommendation on one side, to accept the Secretary of State's verdict on it and to argue persuasively for the other aspects of your report, or do you intend to continue to press the recognition payment point?

  Mr Bradley: Firstly, we will press nothing from here on in. Legally we are no longer in existence as a consultative group. That finished on the day of the launch of our report, so we will be pressing no one and we will not be lobbying any politician about anything. I think that is proper and correct that in some ways this consultation has now been done, been given to the Secretary of State and it is up for analysis and it is proper that the debate begins and continues. It is a very complex report, it is a very detailed report, and I think there is no aspect of post-conflict that it does not deal with and try to come to terms with and takes very strong views on it. The reason we took very strong views is because the past in some ways, in Northern Ireland terms, is the toxicity of Northern Ireland. It is the most difficult area, particularly for politicians, to deal with. It is also very difficult for victims to deal with the past because there is a very, very strong danger that for the next 20 to 30 years we will continue fighting the Troubles, whatever word one decides to put upon that period of time, and even within that there are difficulties because many people who came to us and said to us, "Forty years is not long enough, you should be looking at 400 years". So even the context in which that is laid out does not achieve consensus. But having said that, coming to the actual recommendations to which you referred and were requiring an answer, it was also part of our brief to look at the landscape of that which was already in statute or that which was already happening on the ground, whatever actions were being carried out, to actually deal with, to grasp the past, to help us all through the past. There were many excellent things happening, from storytelling through proper remembering, through research, through academic studies, and so forth, but it actually struck us as particularly peculiar that this House in 2006 not only gave the definition which Robin has already referred to but in paragraph C it actually defines that a victim is "someone who has been bereaved as a result of or in consequence of a conflict-related incident". That is the definition of this House. We were not in a position, nor did we desire to go and seek the changing of that definition. That definition came about not out of the blue, it came as a result of a number of reports. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield had already done two reports, Bertha McDougall, who was the Interim Victims' Commissioner, had also done a report, and it was quite clear that within those reports this issue about who a victim was could not be grasped.

  Q3  Chairman: No, Mr Bradley, but we have seen both of those people as witnesses and even though Sir Kenneth argued before this Committee, and we listened most sympathetically to the argument, that there should be more money available to compensate people—he used the word "compensation"—neither of them argued that £12,000 or any other particular sum should be paid to everybody.

  Mr Bradley: Which brings me on to the second part of what I was trying to develop, which is that we have set up a mechanism in Northern Ireland with the appointment of four Victims' Commissioners to deal with the injured and the traumatised and those Victims' Commissioners have informed us that it is almost going to be impossible to do their work unless we grasp the nettle of the dead of the conflict because part of their remit is to set up a forum of victims who will be their oversight or their helpers within the work they do. The truth of the matter is that in Northern Ireland we are still fighting about who a victim is or who a victim is not and they made the plea to us, on top of the number of people who came to us privately and said to us, "There has been no acknowledgement made to us about the death of my beloved person", and they came, as Robin has already pointed out, from all sections of our society. It is very clear that within the debate in the last period of time people have forgotten what the definition of a victim is. No one in making an acknowledgement payment is saying that the actions of a particular person who was killed were either right or wrong. That is not the issue that victims live and breathe and have their being within. It is the fact that their loved one, son, father, mother, daughter, has been killed and the only way to take that off the table to allow the rest of the work to go forward is actually to make an acknowledgement payment. The Secretary of State has said this morning that he wants to leave that aside because there is no consensus. We recognise that and we acknowledge that. What we will say to that is that when this issue resurfaces, either within the Victims' Commissioners or within your group, you will find the exact same problem. If you go and meet victims' groups from divided communities, if you meet a group of people whose sons were in the IRA or the UDF who were killed either by the British Army or the UDR, or the RUC, and you say that you are not a victim, then they will argue very intensely with you and you will not come to the resolution that you believe you may do.

  Q4  Chairman: The last question from me for the moment, and then I want to go on to Mrs Robinson and others. Mr Bradley, I have listened to the passion with which you advance your case and I do not for a minute doubt that you feel very strongly on the issue, but something which I personally find difficult to accept and I know many others do as well—and we have met many of these people, too, not as many as you but we have met many of them and some of my colleagues have met far more—is how can one begin to say that you treat equally the widow of a member of the security forces, the husband, daughter or son of an innocent bystander blown up as a result of a terrorist outrage and a terrorist killed whilst planting a bomb or shooting a policeman? How can you conceivably reconcile that?

  Mr Bradley: Because you just changed the premise. You mentioned a widow of an RUC man, the widow of a British soldier and then you mentioned a terrorist. There is no recommendation within our report that a terrorist should be treated the same or that a soldier who kills somebody should be treated the same as the widow. We are talking about victims and a victim is someone who has been bereaved. Someone who has been bereaved.

  Chairman: I appreciate that, Mr Bradley, but the fact is that the consequence is as I actually described, but let me bring in Mrs Robinson first and then other colleagues want to come in.

  Mrs Robinson: I think what we are hearing is a play on words here and I think the general consensus across Northern Ireland is that there is only one type of victim and that is the innocent victim, not the people who set out to murder or if they are killed in the process of attempting to murder people. I can almost still smell the burning when we went up to the La Mon site where we saw 13 innocent people incinerated after attending an Irish coley dinner and if any of those terrorists who planted the lethal petrol bombs on the grills of that hotel knowing that there were no security forces there—not that I believe they were a legitimate target, of course—had been killed in that action what you are saying is that the families of those who set out to do the murder would be equally treated with this so-called acknowledgement payment. I, for one, could never accept that the parents of those terrorists who set out to maim and kill—and remember these bodies were so intensely burnt that bodies were fused together bone on bone and to date we have never had anyone brought before the court charged with the murder of those people, one of the worst atrocities in my constituency and indeed across Northern Ireland, so I cannot and I do not think any reasonable person in Northern Ireland or across the United Kingdom—and I think you are setting a very dangerous precedent by equating one with the other, and I totally concur with the Chairman that he, like me, cannot equate the victim with the perpetrator. Would you agree that the credibility of your consultative group is now so badly damaged because of this particular issue, and now having it withdrawn at such a very appropriate moment before we meet today, that not only has the credibility of your Group been affected but it also renders all of the other points difficult because the Secretary of State has made it clear that there has to be consensus around all the proposals and at this moment in time I do not see consensus?

  Q5  Chairman: Could I just make an appeal to everybody, and I include myself as well, we want to ask questions of our two witnesses and we must all try—and I must try as well—not to make too many statements. What Mrs Robinson said was highly relevant and we can build questions upon it, but let us now have as much interchange as we can because that will be very helpful. Lord Eames, respond to that, please.

  Lord Eames: Mrs Robinson, thank you for your question. Of course, at one level in my experience there is all the difference in the world between the motivation of the relatives of an RUC man, the UDR man or woman involved in the Troubles and in terms of service to the people of Northern Ireland and the family which knowingly supports someone involved in taking human lives as a paramilitary. Of course I accept this distinction at one level of my experience. I said earlier that I do not need to be taught what that experience is, and I think you might accept that, but when we looked at the entire situation, first of all in other countries which had looked at post-conflict situation, when we looked, as I said in my introduction, at the law which is administered in Northern Ireland through, I accept, direct rule legislation but is now endorsed by the Northern Ireland Assembly as the law of the land, when we looked at the way in which the compensation machinery years ago looked at the question of who might apply for compensation in Northern Ireland we were faced with the brick wall of the definition of who or what is a victim. So it is a question for anyone trying to go down the 18 month journey which we have been on as to where your heart and emotion reacts to a situation and where in fact at a very human level another consideration comes into the picture, and the phrase "a mother's tears are the same" came on several occasions in our consultations from politicians who asked us to accept that in their constituencies there were those who had relevant experience of that, and we had to take that on board because, as I said at the beginning, we were a consultation-based inquiry. The second and final point I would make is that no one needs to tell me in this room of the service of the RUC, the UDR and the security forces in Northern Ireland, or the sacrifice of their families going home at night into the very area in which they had to operate, but I have to tell you that in terms of this divisive issue—and I say again it was a divisive issue within our work—one has to face the reality that there is truth in the fact that a family which suffers at the level of the suffering we are talking about has no distinction.

  Q6  Chairman: But the logic of this is that the families of the London bombers should be paid the same amount of money, if payments were being made, as those who perished in the London bombings?

  Lord Eames: If the basis is on that of human suffering, which is not a political slant, not a political definition. I know it is hard. I have found it very hard to accept that sort of reasoning.

  Q7  Chairman: Yes, but it is just important to get this on the record, and you are indeed agreeing with what I am saying there, that the logic of the argument advanced—

  Lord Eames: On one level, Chairman, yes. On one level.

  Mr Bradley: Could I just add to that? It is very important to point out that the Victims' Commissioner for Northern Ireland—actually, to be totally fair, probably three out of four of them—agreed with the recognition payments and that was expressed at twelve o'clock today on Radio Ulster.

  Chairman: Thank you for that. I have got Mr Simpson, Mr Fraser, Lady Hermon and Kate Hoey. I will get you all in. As briefly as you can, please. Mr Simpson first.

  David Simpson: I will be as brief as I can, but there is a couple of points I do want to make. In relation to this overall report, this obnoxious report, I have to say, has been contaminated, as my colleague has said, with the £12,000 so-called payments. Lord Eames will know that what I say publicly is what I say privately, and what I say privately is what I say publicly, and I have to say in relation to this report—and I listened to Lord Eames when he said that he attended many funerals. Lord Eames has buried four of my family and I have to say that when I look at this report and the detail of this report I am somewhat disappointed, Lord Eames, that your fingerprints and thumbprints are all over this. I have to say that very honestly and very openly today. I cannot say that I have to say that, Chairman, with Mr Bradley because I believe that Mr Bradley, before going onto this Group and in this Group, had an agenda and I believe that when we read this report he certainly has got an agenda—

  Stephen Pound: Chairman, we are moving into an area—

  David Simpson: Yes, we are moving in but, Chairman, I did make the point—

  Dr McDonnell: Can I just intervene?

  Chairman: Please sit down. I am chairing this meeting and I am not going to permit, Mr Simpson, any personal attacks. We are here to question these two gentlemen on the report. We are not here to recite history and we are not here to make personal accusations about integrity. We are here to put questions. Now, if you have got questions, please put them.

  David Simpson: I have questions, Chairman, but what we have listened to thus far, with the greatest respect, is oratory and a spin with words.

  Chairman: You are pretty good at that yourself!

  David Simpson: Well, I may be, Chairman, but at the end of the day there are a lot of people in Northern Ireland today who are hurting over this report and the way it was handled.

  Chairman: Ask your question.

  Q8  David Simpson: I will come to the point, the questions that I have, but that is something that I had to get off my chest and I have said it. In relation to the report itself, you make the point on p 32 that you are ruling out a general amnesty for the next five year period but in reality that is not the case because on p 157, on the wrongs, it has been suggested that we draw a line after the five year period but in fact it is an amnesty. Also, on p 144, you state that the decision to re-open a case would rest entirely with the Commission. Does this mean that in fact justice is subject entirely to the discretion of the Commission? One last point: on the £12,000, who was it within the consultative group who suggested £12,000 and was it a unanimous decision?

  Lord Eames: Chairman, may I deal with the first part of Mr Simpson's question? Obviously, Mr Simpson, I respect you enough to understand that it is true that what you say in private you will also say in public. I have no argument with that because I have known you a long time. I also recall that I have been privileged to perform the burial ceremony for four of your family, therefore I know the weight of emotion which you bring to your remarks. So far as amnesty is concerned, there is absolutely no doubt that there is no wish in Northern Ireland at present for a general amnesty, but in proposing the structure for a Legacy Commission we cannot foresee, if that is implemented by Her Majesty's Government, what way that Legacy Commission will reach its conclusions. What you are referring to on several of the pages you have mentioned in our report is simply and solely the discretion which we feel in law and in practice should be given to this proposed Legacy Commission. They may very well say at the end of five years—and perhaps I could refer to that—"These are certain options that have been disclosed to us during the five year operation and we therefore feel this is what the Northern Ireland people should conclude", but we are not in a position as a consultative group to make any decisions for that Commission, but we believe we have outlined an important way in which that Commission could play a role. There is no amnesty proposed in this report and certainly an amnesty was quickly dismissed in terms of our discussion. You asked the question who in our group brought up the idea of the £12,000 sterling. I referred in my introduction to the action of the Government of the Republic of Ireland some years ago and when we were discussing this at an initial stage, when they gave their bereavement grant they did so because of their jurisdiction in euros and according to the advice we received at the time we were discussing this the figure of £12,000 sterling was a rough equivalent of the number of euros the Irish Government had given its citizens. You can put a horse and cart through the reasoning for the £12,000 in terms of the figure. I cannot defend that—

  Q9  Chairman: You would have to recalculate it now, would you not?

  Lord Eames: I can simply tell you that in fact that is how it arose. I cannot remember who actually produced the suggestion, in all honesty, but I do know that is the way in which it arose as an equivalent because it happened after the family of a British Army officer who had been killed in Northern Ireland—and they lived on the mainland—said, "Look, we feel disadvantaged because look what's happened to the relatives of people involved in death in the Republic because of the Troubles. We feel disadvantaged", and therefore that took us down that road. There is much more, but I think that is as quickly as I can put it.

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

  Q10  Christopher Fraser: First is a point of clarification and second is the question. Can I understand, could you have challenged the classification of who is a victim should you have wished to have done so?

  Lord Eames: In theory we could comment on that particular legislation. We did not do so because we had to be confronting the fact that that was the law as it was. Therefore, I suppose we could have challenged it, but I am telling you that we had to face the brick wall of this legislation because if we had gone beyond that we would have been accused—not necessarily here but we would have been accused by many people of simply deciding to re-write the law of Northern Ireland.

  Mr Bradley: Just for clarification on that, we were aware that had we not grasped that nettle—it is difficult, we realised that and we realised that it would create a lot of confusion on some people's behalf, hurt on other people's behalf, but if we did not grasp it then actually there would have been an outcry from those people who had been bereaved that there was no recognition of them in the report, that it was all to do with the injured, that there were four victims' commissioners specifically established to deal with the injured and the traumatised but nobody had grasped the nettle of those who had been killed.

  Q11  Christopher Fraser: Secondly is the question: in your opinion has the recognition payment made tensions worse between communities in Northern Ireland?

  Mr Bradley: I do not think so. Northern Ireland is at a very important stage of its development at the moment. This is the toxicity of Northern Ireland. This is probably the most difficult issue ever. This one could not have been dealt with at the Good Friday Agreement and was not dealt with at the Good Friday Agreement and now that I am a free civic human being can I just say I think our politicians have dealt with this one obnoxiously, to use a word which was used earlier on. I think they have led people to bad places. I think they keep fighting this issue. I think they keep using it as a reason for the fight continuing to go on. Thank God the violence has gone, but I think that this one actually faces all of us with the issue of reconciling ourselves to a new place, of moving forward and recognising that a mother's tears is a mother's tears no matter where they exist and that actually the definition which is in the statute is as good as you get and if you try to undo it you run into more difficult and more complex definitions.

  Q12  Christopher Fraser: You did not think by that recommendation, given what you have just said, you were actually adding flames to an existing problem?

  Mr Bradley: No, because I think the greatest hurt which can be done to the victims of Northern Ireland is a feeling that they have been forgotten about, and they are feeling that very strongly at the moment and people recognise that this is probably the last report that will ever be done into this issue and that if it does not move forward from this issue nothing else will happen and they will be left behind. Probably 80% of the community of Northern Ireland wishes to put the past behind them.

  Chairman: Thank you. I want to move on from this issue myself in a few minutes.

  Q13  Lady Hermon: Given the enormous controversy which has undoubtedly been caused by this one particular recommendation and which has undoubtedly damaged and harmed the rest of your report, do either of you—and I would like both of you to reply, please—in your quiet moments, in your heart of hearts actually think that this recommendation was a mistake?

  Lord Eames: I think, Lady Hermon, first of all had it not been in some way expressed we would have been breaking faith with the people who asked us to do it. I have to say to you that they represented in a sense in the present controversy a voiceless community in Northern Ireland. I received a letter from the mother of someone who died in the Omagh bomb and she said that at first she found it repugnant that we should suggest £12,000 sterling. She said, in retrospect and thinking it over and, I have to say, in her prayerful way she now felt it was an important step forward. I know that I cannot quantify what the percentage of people in Northern Ireland who felt that would be, but I have to tell you they exist and they have spoken to us. The second thing about it is obviously with the benefit of hindsight anything we do in public life could be done in a different way. I felt most keenly during the controversy, when it was known that this proposal was in the book, for those I knew, particularly knew, and had been with over those 30, 40 years who had to suffer because of the way in which the debate developed in our community and there were those whom I honestly and sincerely believe politicised what was a human suffering situation.

  Q14  Lady Hermon: So do you think your recommendation was actually deliberately leaked in order to scupper your report?

  Lord Eames: No, I do not, Lady Hermon.

  Q15  Chairman: Do you want to add something, Mr Bradley?

  Mr Bradley: Well, just because you have asked me to answer it, no, I do not because I think this goes to the heart of something. Because of the controversy, I think we were surprised—not by the controversy, we expected the controversy, but I think that we were surprised by the depth of the controversy. We were surprised by the amount of hurt that still exists. We were surprised by the lack of reconciliation that had actually happened, that the emotions are as raw now as they were when the war or the conflict was on. The emotions are as raw, but they are as raw on all sides and it depends which room you enter. If you enter a room of people who are not from the security forces or who are not innocent victims but who are mothers and fathers of IRA or UDF or UDA you will get a rawness in there which is as equal and which is equivalent to the rawness you will get in the other room. There is not a conflict in the world that has resolved itself that has not grasped this nettle and neither will this group nor any other group be able to get this one passed. This will come back. This will come on the table and our politicians have a way out of it. They have a very easy way out of it because the politicians who said that a mother's tears are the same came from the Unionist community and it was said very strongly and it was a strong recognition that you must not punish the victims because the victims' definition is a very clear definition. It is those who were bereaved. It is not those who perpetrated or carried out anything, it is those who were bereaved, and if you do not grasp that nettle then you actually cannot really move forward to a new place.

  Q16  Kate Hoey: Mr Bradley, on that last point, who actually said the bereaved were the victims? I keep hearing this phrase "a mother's tears". Just how many people actually said that?

  Mr Bradley: Well, a number, but some very important people said it.

  Q17  Kate Hoey: So in other words you have equated the importance of people rather than the vast numbers of ordinary people. Can I just first of all thank you for all the work you have done because I know that whatever the strong feelings are about this you have put in a huge amount of work, all of you, and that has not been easy, but it is in a sense terribly sad that we have spent all this money, taxpayers' money, my constituents in Vauxhall are paying for this as well, and ended up with something now that, quite honestly, I do not think any of these recommendations will ever see the light of day for all sorts of reasons, I have to say. However, can I just say on the question of the so-called "payments", just common sense tells anyone that you cannot equate the life of the person who went out and put the bomb in the Shankill fish and chip shop with the lives of the people who were murdered and the word "murder" does not seem to appear in this document at all. Murder seems to be a word that now you do not even want to use and I am genuinely disappointed, I have to say, Lord Eames, in what came out of this report. Can I just ask you, relating to this Parliament, did you actually get a telephone call from the Secretary of State telling you that he was going to go on the Nolan Show and make this statement this morning?

  Lord Eames: No.

  Q18  Kate Hoey: Mr Bradley, did you have any idea that this was going to happen today?

  Mr Bradley: No.

  Q19  Kate Hoey: Are you pleased that this has been said today, in the sense that it is now in the public domain and that it is not going to go anywhere?

  Lord Eames: If the suggestion involved in your question is that it was convenient for our presentation of this report for this announcement to have been made—and I have not heard it, I have been in London—if it was to be for the convenience of this, I certainly was not aware of it.

  Q20  Kate Hoey: No, and I do not think I was suggesting that. I was suggesting that it was more likely to be for the convenience of the Secretary of State than either of you two.

  Lord Eames: I cannot comment on that.

  Kate Hoey: Just one final point on the question of, again, the payment and it relates to a question from one of my colleagues earlier. In relation to a murderer in the mainland, the bereaved murderer's family in a conflict, say, between two gangs that has been going on for a very long time and somebody ends up being killed, have they got the same rights as the people who have been killed? I think common sense and ordinary people in the United Kingdom will just not see the logic of this and I am trying to grasp it, and I know Northern Ireland and I know the history and I know the terrible, terrible pain that is on all sides, but you cannot equate murder with the life of an innocent person.

  Q21  Christopher Fraser: Because one person chooses to kill.

  Mr Bradley: I cannot get the logic of what you are saying because you keep talking about somebody who is murdered. There is nobody recommending that anybody get a recognition payment who has murdered anyone.

  Q22  Chairman: Just a minute, Mr Bradley. I do think we have got to get this absolutely clear because if these recommendations are implemented the bereaved of the murderer would receive the same as the bereaved of the murdered?

  Mr Bradley: Correct. It is the bereaved.

  Q23  Chairman: Yes, but you have to recognise that there is a great degree of opposition to this and it seems to go right across the community.

  Mr Bradley: I need to ask the question again, why has this House made that definition?

  Q24  Christopher Fraser: But you could have challenged it?

  Mr Bradley: We could have challenged it. Can I tell you that the reason we did not challenge it is because we believed it came out of some kind of wisdom.

  Q25  Christopher Fraser: But you could have challenged it?

  Mr Bradley: Yes, we could have challenged it, but we do not desire to challenge it. I have already said that.

  Chairman: I would like to move it on now, Mr Bradley. Had you, for instance, said that there should be a sum to money for which all bereaved could apply so that their cases could be judged on their merits—and one accepts that some families of murderers are as deeply revolted and distressed by the murder as the victim, one accepts that—if you had said that this was a pool of money for which people could apply, I do not think that this great furore would have erupted. It is the fact that you want to give everybody the same regardless of the circumstances. I must move on then to the Legacy Commission because there is much in your report that we must look at, but I would just ask that when you go away today, both of you, you do reflect on that point. We all of us in public life from time to time make mistakes and I would put it to you very quietly and I hope with some degree of humility that I have made many mistakes in my political life but this, frankly, was a mistake of judgment and I would just ask you to reflect on that, but could I bring in Alasdair McDonnell.

  Mrs Robinson: Chairman, could I just ask just one tiny question?

  Chairman: If it is very, very quick.

  Mrs Robinson: Mr Bradley talked about a war and that was the first it appeared, so there was a war, but the reality of the decision today by the Secretary of State in terms of equating the victim with the perpetrator is that now the victim gets nothing. So again they are equated in the same light because now the victim is getting nothing as well as the perpetrator.

  Chairman: The point is well made and I am sure that is worth making. Could we bring in now Dr McDonnell?

  Q26  Dr McDonnell: I just want to congratulate Lord Eames and Denis Bradley for the very good job they did with an impossible task. There is no answer, there is no simple answer, there is no clear-cut answer and there is no answer that will satisfy everybody in terms of dealing with the victims issue. Yes, we can all pick holes and we can all with hindsight disagree. I think for my money and from where I am sitting the victims' issue is now well at the top of the agenda and you have, for better or for worse, put it up for people like me and others around this table to deal with it. Having said that, I want to just probe a little bit the Legacy Commission. What is the overall aim of that Commission? How do you see that? What do you see as its terms of reference? Maybe my next question is a bit superfluous in the context of our previous discussion, but do you think we are ready yet? I know some people said it will take 40 years and we should wait 40 years. Another one said to forget it. How do we get to grips with the issue? You have suggested the Commission. How do you see that? Can you flesh it out a bit for us and what is your assessment as to whether we are ready for such an organisation, and if we are not ready when might we be ready?

  Mr Bradley: When this group was established one of the first things it asked itself was the appropriate time, because we were as aware of, I suppose, the impossibility as the next person was. Some countries leave this for 100 years after the conflict has come to a resolution and others grasp it. There was a number of reasons why I think it was important for Northern Ireland to come down on the side of doing it now. This is affecting the soul of our society and it is also affecting the outworking of many of the institutions within our society. It affects the soul in that the type of disagreement that we get here today can take place in any room where you put two sets of victims. You get the exact same argument, except that you will get them stronger because one of the groups will say it was a war, it was a conflict and it has been going on for 400 years, and that does not always get reflected in a Westminster situation, for its own reasons, but you will get that reflected. The second thing is that it is interfering greatly with policing in Northern Ireland. It is greatly interfering with the Ombudsman's Office in Northern Ireland. In fact there was strong representation to us that it is becoming very difficult to actually carry out the day to day current issues around policing or the oversight of policing because of the past and the amount of money, manpower, womanpower, energy, effort and dispute that is going into those two institutions. If it were to end there, then that is possibly a handle. It is going into the judicial system at an enormous and frequent level and the truth of the matter is that this report is not off the table and will not be off the table, not because of the wisdom and the brilliance of Lord Eames and Denis Bradley, that is nothing to do with it, but it is to do with the hard politics and the hard politics is that we can fight this in the courts for the next 40 years and our community is ready to fight this in the courts for the next 40 years, and it will cost the judicial system and the devolved system an absolute billion pounds in our estimation. £1 billion it will cost to fight it within the judicial process and there are people raring to get into court and if it is not the normal criminal courts it is public inquiries. While we have recommended many things, what we have said is that it is impossible to say simply, "Take away the public inquiries", if you do not put something in its place. The Legacy Commission is an effort to do it better, to do it more cleanly, to do it more appropriately and to do it faster, and to do it without 40 lawyers in the room and to get to situations that are gettable at. An example: we are going to spend £100 million in the next five years on the HET, the Historic Enquiries Team, £100 million, and in our estimation we will have covered about half of the cases they are tasked with examining because with every case they list and every file they open they have to bring proper policing procedures to that particular case. The standards that are appropriate to any investigation have to be brought to that case under the present statute. What we are suggesting is that under the Legacy Commission if it is utterly clear that there is no possibility of a prosecution and the family agrees, having been informed that there is no possibility of a prosecution, they can move into a new system which gets to some truth, some of the facts they want to know but not under police procedures, which means that you can do it within five years. In fact when they moved it in some of the other conflict situations throughout the world they discovered that they did it even quicker than they had realised it was possible to do, as long as you get the lawyers out of the room. Now, that is two things. If we have devolution of policing and justice going into Northern Ireland in the next period of time one of the questions which I think this Committee will have to grapple with is, is it the British Government in conjunction with the Irish Government who should take ownership of this issue, because our politicians may not be capable of dealing with it, or in fact do you hand it to our politicians in a devolved situation and say, "Go and try and work this out because in working out this you will come to perhaps a more reconciled position on a very, very difficult issue".

  Q27  Chairman: Who do you think should run it?

  Mr Bradley: I do not know if I have the wisdom, I do not know if I have the knowledge or the parliamentary or legislative experience. I think that is an issue outside of my—I think he would be much more experienced than I would be.

  Q28  Chairman: With great respect to you both—and I truly meant that, I do have great respect for you both—if this Commission is going to be set up, what is its governance going to be, to whom is it going to be responsible and what sort of person is going to be able to chair it? I think we have already demonstrated this afternoon that this is not going to be the easiest job in the world.

  Lord Eames: First of all, Chairman, so far as, may we say, the office bearers are concerned in our proposal we recommend that there be an international figure appointed as the senior person in this Commission.

  Q29  Chairman: I cannot have cross-party discussions while our witness is answering questions. It is incredibly rude to him. I want to hear what he has got to say and then you can come in with your questions. Lord Eames.

  Lord Eames: We recommend that there be an international person appointed as the chief of this triangular system of the Legacy Commission, to be assisted by two others, and that the four strands of the Legacy Commission that we recommend—thematic cases, historical cases, reconciliation issues, and so on—should all in a sense be of a triangle to the appointment of those three figures. The question of who is actually in legislative terms or in parliamentary terms responsible for this, quite frankly, is something that we are not here to answer as a consultative group. We were appointed by a Secretary of State and the report was to a Secretary of State. A devolved government, which at this moment has not got police and justice powers devolved to it, is one issue but a devolved government which has police and justice issues devolved to it is a totally different situation and it could very well be that in fact what is recommended in this part of our report would fall neatly into that devolved situation. But with respect, we are being asked purely theoretical questions on this issue and I personally would not wish to comment further.

  Q30  Dr McDonnell: Another point I want to make is how much of our victim backlog, our victim closure, would you estimate we would be able to effect in the five year term? Would we get 50, 60, 70% sorted out, leaving only a residue for historic inquiries, or whatever?

  Mr Bradley: The HET are making quite an amount of progress but they are slowed down by the fact that they have to bring policing standards to every case. Even though the family is not asking for that, they still have to do it. That slows them down. Freed up from that, it is their estimation that it can be done within the five year period, freed up from the present procedures under which they work, because it actually comes down to what a lot of families do not want, the whole regalia. They just want to know a few things. Robin tells a very good story of one mother who just wanted to know if her daughter had got fed before she went out that morning. It is just as simple as that. Other people want to know other things. Some people, of course, want to use the process to make the British Government as responsible for the conflict as the IRA or the UDF were. So you have that whole spectrum and that whole spectrum exists. What we are recommending we think is the most dignified and the most achievable methodology of getting to a place where after five years you can begin to bring down the shutters and say, "We have done our best", because you cannot undo the past. It is not undoable.

  Chairman: Thank you.

  Christopher Fraser: You passed a comment earlier, Mr Bradley, something to the effect that a politician is not capable of dealing with this issue. That has been recorded. Just a straight question, a straight answer: do you not have faith in the politicians in Northern Ireland to deal with this?

  Dr McDonnell: I do not.

  Q31  Christopher Fraser: I was asking Mr Bradley. Mr Bradley, what is your opinion, sir?

  Mr Bradley: My feeling is that the past is the "third rail", as I think they describe it in American politics. If you touch it, you get burnt!

  Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

  Q32  Mr Murphy: Just following on, gentlemen, from the discussion with my colleague, the bringing together, as you suggest, of the historical inquiries team, the Police Ombudsman's team and part of the PSNI, compared with its current size what number of personnel would you see being required to set up this new unit?

  Mr Bradley: We think it is roughly the same as what is presently in existence, it would not be any more. In other words, there are, we think, about 20 people working within the Ombudsman's office and we think there is about 100, so you are talking about those types of numbers. We do not think it will cost any more money. It is a matter of changing—and this is where the legislation is vitally important—you have to change the legislation to allow them to do things that are not doable at this moment in time. That would not be the only thing because there would be a lot of powers put into the Commission which would need primary legislation.

  Q33  Mr Murphy: You also suggest in your report that every single case should be reviewed again. How can you reconcile that with managing to do everything which currently is expected to take seven to 10 years and with the review of every case that is already being examined within the five year period?

  Mr Bradley: Because, again, you are not bringing the same standards. You are not bringing policing standards to that. It will only be reviewed if there is some desire for it to be reviewed, otherwise it will be reviewed very, very quickly. But say there is a family—there is an example that the HET would, I think, concur with so I will give you the example. When the HET was set up they did the Ballymurphy 11 (as they are described). There were 11 people killed over a period of three days in Ballymurphy. They were shot dead by paratroops, including the Catholic priest. When they did it, they did it as single individuals. Each individual case was done because that is the legislation which the HET had to initially work on. They discovered that it was not worth doing under that because actually people saw this and felt this to be a single incident, even though it happened over three days and there were 11 people involved. That case would probably have to be reviewed and the HET would agree that that case would have to be, in fact they have taken steps to begin to do that. The second thing is that a lot of this work is not so much about the outcome, a lot of it is about the process. A lot of it is about what the HET describe as the palliative side of this, which is looking after the needs of the families and liaising with the families and keeping them informed, and they have now come to the position where they have got much better at that, they are much more responsive to that and they are much more, I think, subtle around those areas and they are making much better progress. Not everybody will be satisfied, just as there is no full justice in this, there is no full truth. You cannot un-dig the full truth about the past and you cannot un-dig a situation which gives you full justice. What you are trying to do is to provide an adequate position to those who are most intimately involved. Finally, may I say this: one of the disappointments but which is beginning to come is that the articles are beginning to be written by the academics and by the commentators, but this is not all about victims. In fact the biggest part of our report is about our society. It needs to face up to the fact that it is still fighting the past through different methodologies, politics included, to answer the question, politics included, and until this is removed from that agenda this will continue to be fought with venom.

  Lord Eames: Could I add briefly, Chairman, to Mr Bradley's reference to HET? He mentioned the role and the receptivity of the families. We were struck throughout our consultative period by the fact that in the cases where HET had proved to be extremely helpful to families there had been a person to person relationship in the investigation. There had been great effort made to speak to the families on a personal basis and it emphasises—and I beg the Committee to recognise this—that throughout this system and this very serious situation where people are suffering and people are hurting that the solution to moving us forward has got to be on a personal level and personal basis. It is individuals who are hurting, it is families who are hurting, it is grandfathers, fathers and mothers who are hurting and no matter what way we look at the political labels, no matter what their own political outlook would be, we have been left with no other conclusion but that Northern Ireland is a very small place, many people know each other and that in that situation the sort of general rules for reconciliation and the general rules for moving us forward that would apply in a much bigger society, a much more complex society, simply do not exist. Somebody asked us, "Why don't you bring into the suggestion the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission?" From an early stage—and I personally took responsibility to investigate this—I was quite convinced that system would be useless in Northern Ireland. So, if I may coin a phrase, what is contained in this report is a Northern Ireland suggestion to ameliorate a Northern Ireland problem.

  Q34  Lady Hermon: What made the South African model and other models around the world unacceptable in Northern Ireland? What would you put your finger on as making those inappropriate?

  Lord Eames: If I could make use of the information source which I drew mostly on from a South African situation, many of those involved in the South African Truth and Reconciliation system would not do the same again. They said to us, "There were mistakes in what was done. There were errors of judgment", and I think we have admitted to the fallibility which exists around this, but they told us that some of the things that were asked of people coming before that system were to "Tell the truth", to confess, whatever way you want to describe it. They would not do this again. It is a very complex issue and they would not do it exactly the same way again because if you go to South Africa now and look at the consequences of what lies at the root of the consequences for that truth and reconciliation process there are many, many outstanding problems in the "Rainbow State" as it is called. A close colleague of mine over the years who was very much involved in the South African process was very open with me and said, "Look, I cannot see this system working in Northern Ireland. I just can't see it being translated into Northern Ireland, (a) because of size, (b) because of the colour issue that they faced, and (c) because it is a totally different situation where almost unanimously we wanted this to end". I am afraid that was one of the reasons why I felt I could not recommend that that system would apply to Northern Ireland. I hope that is a fair answer.

  Kate Hoey: Thank you. That is helpful.

  Chairman: That is a very fair answer.

  Q35  David Simpson: Lord Eames, you had indicated at the beginning that a wide range of consultation was carried out. My understanding in my own constituency of Upper Bann is that there was one victims' group, the HURT group, which was never consulted on this issue, but maybe you could look into that and see if that is the case and come back to me. I am informed that is the case. Could I finish with this: why were there no public meetings held outside Northern Ireland?

  Lord Eames: There were public meetings held in Dublin with the Dublin-Monaghan Group. In fact we were overwhelmed by the number who wished to come to that meeting. So far as the mainland United Kingdom is concerned, we went through the MoD to ask of the soldiers who had served in Northern Ireland did any of them or families wish to contact us. I cannot give you, Mr Simpson, the exact figures but there was a response to that, but we did not have a public meeting, that is true, on the mainland UK. If I could just very briefly add, as I said in the introduction, we were overwhelmed at a stage and in a sense I have to say from my experience of other commissions, doing other things over the years, it is a miracle we got through it in 18 months.

  Q36  Chairman: This must have made the Church of England a doddle for you!

  Lord Eames: I would rather not comment on that, Chairman!

  Q37  Mr Murphy: In your section on reconciliation, gentlemen, you make little mention of integrated education and I was surprised to hear Barry McGuigan on the radio this morning campaigning for something he has long argued for, that is more integrated education as part of reconciliation. Is it something you would consider?

  Mr Bradley: I do not accept your premise that we did not. I think the report, without being waylaid, makes very strong recommendations around education and challenges to churches particularly to look at the issue of education and it says very specifically that to educate our children separately may be an issue that has to be looked at by the churches because it continues the division and the separation that happens within our society. We talked much more and we are much more persuaded, not so much by integrated schooling but by integrated education, which is slightly different and on which there is much happening in Northern Ireland and more, in our opinion, will happen because of economic issues. Schools are not going to be kept open unless they actually participate with each other in a lot of places and they are going to have to, for economic reasons, find ways of doing that. Now, the Bain Report, which was done by Professor Bain of Queen's University, has made a big reference to that, but I think if you read our report very closely there is actually strong suggestions and strong issues around and particularly the Church is grasping this issue.

  Q38  Mr Murphy: Do you find that the Church is one of the biggest opponents to integrated education?

  Mr Bradley: Well, that is my own personal view. I would not speak on behalf of the Group on that one, but my own personal view is that the churches need to grasp this very difficult nettle. I think there is a very strong tension between tradition on the one hand and the need for the core of what I believe is the Christian position, which is the reconciling of old hurts, old wounds, and old conflicts, and that has to be grasped and put ahead of the desire to keep old traditions and ethos going. I think that gets us into the heart of where some of the churches would have strong views.

  Lord Eames: Perhaps, Chairman, I speak with particular feeling on this question for obvious reasons. It is very, very easy for the churches, this great phrase "the churches in Northern Ireland" to take so much of the blame for the divisions of Northern Ireland and for what went wrong and what we did wrong. I accept that degree of criticism because the people I worked with, and privileged and thankful to work with them for 40-plus years, are people who cared, people who wanted earnestly to forget about the labels of denominationalism and to reach out in a purely Christian sense to try and heal their community. That was a privilege that I will take to my grave with me. But to simply say that integrated education on one hand is going to answer everything is to question the sanctity of schools which over the years have been the oases of peace for so many of our children and I do beg the Committee to recognise that fact, and those of you from Northern Ireland I hope will agree with me. But I think it is vitally important to recognise that at the present time in, for example, the grammar schools structure there is far more integrated learning and integrated service than there has ever been in my lifetime and I would want to push that because I am not trying to fly a flag for the so-called grammar school—I have to return to Northern Ireland tomorrow—but I have to say to you that over the whole field of education the responsibility for the schools in Northern Ireland doing something to bring us forward must be equalled by the service that we should pay tribute to for what they have already done, and I refer particularly to the teaching profession in Northern Ireland.

  Mr Bradley: I just need to add one thing to that. As with anybody in Northern Ireland there are differences around this, theological differences. They end up in a pub in the Shankill as they end up in a pub in the Bogside, except they become much cruder by the time that distillation takes place, and when people wear Rangers shirts or Celtic shirts it is partially theological and people get killed daily for that theological division, and that is a challenge. It is not about the cosy comfort of the school, it is about the actual crudeness that you find in particular communities. That is not particular to Northern Ireland, you will find it in many parts of the world. You will find it in the east and west divisions, but theological divisions result in that and we argue about that on a daily basis.

  Q39  Kate Hoey: Except, Mr Bradley, you can be a Rangers supporter or Celtic supporter and wear your shirt with pride and not be involved in any kind of activity that you are mentioning, so I do not think we should label all people who wear football shirts—

  Mr Bradley: Sorry, I was not labelling all people who wear Rangers shirts, I was just pointing out that actually on the streets of Northern Ireland young people get kicked because they are wearing a Rangers shirt or because they are wearing a Celtic shirt.

  Chairman: I am afraid it happens here too. I want to bring in Mrs Robinson and then Kate Hoey.

  Q40  Mrs Robinson: I am going to move away from the integrated education because my belief is that the state system was for all and that that is what we should be looking at. However, Chairman, I would like to ask the two gentlemen whether they have read Frank Mamour's comments as espoused by Peter Smith QC, who served as a member of the Patten Commission on the reform of the RUC, where he says basically under the HET "the Eames-Bradley report laid stress on the need for its proposals to be Human Rights-compatible and recognises that witnesses may need access to legal advice". Against that Mr Smith said the apparent guarantee against self-implication sat alongside a power to compel witnesses and the production of papers in proceedings intended to be non-adversarial in which it appeared a person accused of serious wrongdoing or criminality would be denied the basic courtroom rights to face his or her accuser and to challenge them by means of questioning by their lawyer. "The position in the common law world is that where serious allegations are to be made an individual must have these rights", said Mr Smith. "For any commission or tribunal to adjudicate on a person's alleged criminal behaviour without these essential safeguards"—talking about human rights safeguards—"would be revolutionary". Are you gentlemen revolutionaries?

  Mr Bradley: Yes, and I believe Peter Smith is wrong for this reason, if I can follow this through. First of all, Peter Smith is a QC and a very eminent one, and one for whom I have the strongest, highest regard. I think his interpretation of the report is wrong. In the truth recovery there is no placing of blame on any individual. That is very clear in the report. There is placing of blame on organisations and that is completely different. If you read the article you are referring to, Peter talks about the laying of blame on an individual and within common law you cannot do that, according to Peter's definition, without actually having a lawyer present. We are saying—and it is very clear in the report and I think Peter has misread it—that there will be no blame within the truth recovery process, laying any individual blame, and that is why I disagree with Peter on that.

  Q41  Kate Hoey: If you strip away the section which the Secretary of State has ruled out this morning, for all of the suggestions you are making, all these different almost kind of job creation schemes, what is the overall cost you have estimated? Is it more than what is being spent at the moment on all the various bodies that we have met through our various inquiries or is what you are proposing in any way a rationalising of this? It seems to many people to be a huge amount of money being spent and perhaps not necessarily ending up with any real result in terms of changing what is actually happening on the ground in Northern Ireland.

  Mr Bradley: Well, we know our prices, we know our costings. We do not know the other costings, so we are not necessarily comparing like with that which we know. I will give you two examples on that. There is a strong call for an all-Ireland tribunal public inquiry into the Omagh bombing.

  Q42  Kate Hoey: Where is that coming from?

  Mr Bradley: From the Omagh people.

  Q43  Kate Hoey: That is not in your report.

  Mr Bradley: It is not in our report because it does not fall within our brief. The timing does not fall within our timescale and the Omagh people asked us to keep them outside of our report, but what we have said in our report is that we actually think they should come into our report because our mechanism would get some of the answers which we believe they desire and have the right to. So when we do our pricing it depends on whether there is an all-Ireland tribunal, which I think there will not be, and we have told the people of Omagh we do not believe it. We are not too sure the politicians have told the people that they are highly unlikely to get an all-Ireland inquiry. If, for example, you take in that under the Weston Park agreement there was an agreement between the Irish Government and the British Government for a tribunal/public inquiry into the Finucane case, if one were to cost the Finucane case then we are cheap at half the price because it is our believe that the Finucane case would cost in excess of what the Saville inquiry has cost.

  Q44  Chairman: Yes, and that is £200 million at the moment.

  Mr Bradley: In excess of that.

  Q45  Kate Hoey: So you think your report is value for money if you were looking at it in that way?

  Mr Bradley: It depends where you start and where you end. What we will say is that even if nothing happens, this report never sees the light of day in legislation, there will be £100 million spent on the HET and the Police Ombudsman's office dealing with the past and that is only the up-front part, that is not all the hidden cost. The second part is that if any other inquiry of any kind comes into the reckoning then the figures get blown out of the water. The other thing is that we have actually tasked the Irish Government with supporting this financially because we do not believe that the contentious issue around the Dublin-Monaghan bomb, to take one example, can be settled unless there is a procedure the likes of which we have recommended. If they put in a certain amount of money then that reduces the amount. Thirdly, if you take out the £40 million, which was the cost of the recognition payments, then you are down to £260 million. We know where it starts and we know where it ends in rough figures. No one knows how much all of this is going to cost if it continues to be fought through the policing system, the Ombudsman system, the court system and the interchange between the British and the Irish Governments.

  Lord Eames: May I add briefly to that, please? We did not set out on this exercise to produce a report which would cost less than any particular—it was not financially driven. The conclusions Mr Bradley has referred to, the figures are round figures, but may I just add this to that dimension: if there is one thing that frightens me about the whole judicial situation in Northern Ireland at the moment it is that no one can tell where it could lead to given the present situation, where inquiries are concerned, coroners' courts are concerned, both the civil and criminal cases that are pending from those who now believe that the law interpreted shows that they would have a redress because of the way in which information was gathered from an informant, and so on. The potential for the cost to Northern Ireland of that situation remaining as it is is unbelievable. Mrs Robinson, quite rightly, a few minutes ago referred to the question of the expenditure right across Northern Ireland. There is one aspect of it that worries me considerably. How in moral terms, let alone factual terms, Chairman, can you justify the amount of money that is being spent on the Bloody Sunday inquiry? I am sorry, but I am a person who pastorally feels for people and I feel for the people in the city that my colleague comes from, but I have to say over the whole picture some nettle has to be grasped to find a different way of doing this. The second point to make about this is, Chairman—and I am sorry to go on, but it is important and I referred briefly to this in my introduction—people say to us, "We want justice", and you begin at one end of the rainbow of seeing somebody in the dock and you go through a huge range of things and you end up with the case you quoted of the mother of a security forces person who said, "I simply want to know, did she have her dinner before she died?" I am sorry, and you may be different from me, but a story like that goes through me like a knife. That means we did not set out necessarily to present a nice, neat budget so that you and other legislators, because you have the responsibility in this, could quite quickly say, "That's lovely. We'll grasp this because we're going to save £X million". I could not tell you how much this will save, but I can tell you that in the depths of our hearts and the depths of the way we have gone about this—all right, mistakes could have been made in the way it was presented, but at the end of the day we believe this is moving Northern Ireland towards the justice that Northern Ireland deserves and Northern Ireland needs for the next generation and I certainly do not want to end my public career not playing some small part in moving that forward, whether you agree or disagree with the recommendations.

  Chairman: Thank you very, very much for that. We are moving towards the end, but there are specific questions I want to bring in. I think Mr Murphy had one.

  Mr Murphy: My question has been dealt with.

  Q46  Dr McDonnell: I have a brief question. I was taken by the point that you talked to the victims and talked about injuries, Lord Eames, when you spoke earlier in your introductory remarks. You talked about the injured, the victims, and you laid some emphasis on the psychological damage. Did you detect in the course of your 18 month inquiry a failure on the part of our Health Service to pick up on the needs of people, because it is my personal belief that there was a lot of failure around there and it was only in the middle 1990s that I found the Health Service trying to give people the support they deserved?

  Lord Eames: Two answers very briefly to that, if I may. Yes, there was evidence given to us that in fact collectively the health authorities were not conscious or sensitive to the psychological trauma. We saw excellent work of people like Dr Boulton. We saw excellent work of practitioners now, but could I say, secondly, in a sense this has been late coming but now people in Northern Ireland in the medical profession—and I have to be careful what I say here, but in the medical profession people are now recognising that there are totally new avenues in the treatment of psychological cases and that the trauma is often hidden even from nearest and dearest until it is detected. You, as a doctor, sir, will know exactly what I am talking about. The third thing I would say about it is this: in our recommendation under the heading of "Reconciliation" we not only mention some of the things which have been discussed today like education and the churches, et cetera, but we do make an appeal—I cannot give you the page, but we do make an appeal to the medical profession and the hospitals and the health system to recognise afresh that this hidden consequence or legacy of the Troubles is probably just as desperate a need to meet as any of the physical. I saw this in the case of two people who came to me during the course of our process, one with no arms and the other who came and who looked totally normal until we began to talk. I had to say to myself, "Both those are victims of the Troubles". One happened to be a former member of the security forces and the other what is generally described in this room as "an innocent victim" but that did not matter. I had to look at them as two human beings who were suffering the legacy of the Troubles and we were trying to put some proposals forward to move us on, and that is the point I am making, that in answer to your question the depth of feeling among those who suffer the ongoing day and night trauma of the Troubles because of psychological illness is beyond our estimation.

  Mr Bradley: Just to add to that very briefly, Chairman, there are some tensions still existing—it is getting a bit better but there are some tensions still existing between the voluntary independent sector and the statutory sector around this particular question you are asking. That has not resolved itself and part of what we put in to the Legacy Commission was a task that would actually coordinate some of that. Good work has been done on both sides but little coordination and a fair amount of tension still exists.

  Q47  Lady Hermon: I need clarification, please, on two points in relation to the five year lifetime of the proposed Legacy Commission. Number one: we have already taken as a Committee evidence from the Police Ombudsman, I think it was. The Police Ombudsman felt that seven years was much more realistic. Why are you so convinced that all of this work, a huge volume of work, could be undertaken and completed in five years? Are you adamant that five years is the right timescale? The second point is clarification of a very sensitive issue which appears on p 157 of your report and that is at the end of the five year mandate of the Legacy Commission it might bring recommendations to embrace a procedure for dealing with historical cases in respect of "on the run", a very sensitive point and it is just full stop. Could you give some clarification to the Committee as to what you actually have in mind?

  Lord Eames: Yes. First of all, the question of five years. We could have picked any figure. We chose five years for the simple reason that one of the things that came through virtually all the evidence that we had presented to us in the 18 months was that if we were not careful of setting some sort of time limit this would go on and on and on. I am obviously not wishing to defend just the figure five, but we had to choose a figure which would be realistic.

  Mr Bradley: But it actually is seven. We are in agreement with the Ombudsman's Office because we believe that it will take two years to get this Commission set up, so two plus five, and the HET will be working and the Ombudsman will be working during those two years, so that will be seven years.

  Lord Eames: Which is what I was coming on to say, that it is in fact seven but the work of the Commission, as it gets going, we think and are advised by those who advise us could be done in five years.

  Q48  Lady Hermon: Okay. On the runs?

  Mr Bradley: Well, on the runs is a very, very difficult one and you are the first person who has actually asked us the question, which I find shocking, the lack of the question coming from certain quarters.

  Q49  Lady Hermon: I think Mr Simpson did mention this.

  Mr Bradley: Sorry. I did not mean in here today, I meant out in public.

  Q50  Chairman: When you said "you" you meant collectively "you". We must not be too touchy!

  Mr Bradley: On the runs has been through this House and it has been thrown out of this House and it has created enormous strife between one of the sharing parties in Northern Ireland sharing power and the rest, so it is the most contentious, except that legislatively the field has been made very muddy and we had strong representation from the parties and from politicians that actually we should grasp this nettle too, and we said, "No, we will not grasp this nettle because too much damage has been done, too much obscuring of the issues has been done". But we did say that at the end of the five year Legacy Commission all things should be put to bed, including that, and that will be up to the Commission.

  Chairman: Thank you very much. Did you have one quick question?

  Q51  Mrs Robinson: I have one very, very small point to make. Is it not really the case that we are giving people a false hope that all the issues around the 40 years of the Troubles could be dealt with in five, seven years, whatever it is going to be, but at the end of the day there is not going to be an outcome that will satisfy anyone because no one is going to brought to book and charged with any of the offences? Would it not be more appropriate—and I am trying to say this in terms of trying to help—for people to come and record their own individual experiences and have them put on public record in archives for perpetuity, to let folk see exactly what their hurts are and what it did to them, their families and the grandchildren, all of that, that we should be able to record that?

  Lord Eames: You have touched, Mrs Robinson, on a vast part of our research and our thinking. Two quick answers to you. First of all, storytelling is the phrase many people use in a post-conflict situation and many of the political representatives who met us emphasised storytelling, if I may presume to say so, including your own party. There was a suggestion put to us from a very reliable source that we should, in terms of a museum or a memorial, or whatever, have some sort of receptacle whereby people's stories could be kept and kept in a sense as a living memorial to what they have gone through. There was also a suggestion at the same time, because I am going as far as I can with your question, that in fact confidentiality of this should be reflected on something like the 25 year rule, that there should be a period when people would feel, "My story has not really come into the public environment". But there was against that the suggestion from several of the experts we interviewed who said, "Look, in other countries the important thing was to get a society that was willing to listen to the story of other people, not just tell their story but listen to the stories and the suffering of other people". So somewhere in that is the balance. Now, underneath your question is, in my humble opinion, an even bigger question and that is the meaning of the word "remembrance". In the community I come from 11 November is sacred. There are those in our society who would not see it the same way as I see it, I accept that, but one family's remembrance is a very individual act on their part, what they want to remember, how they want to remember it, and I would always want to protect the right of a family to have their say in how they are left to remember a loved one. That I think is vital. The trouble with our report and the trouble with our thinking which produced the report is that to magnify that onto a community site, a community level and a community broad site it is almost impossible to encompass all the various attitudes to remembrance that there are in Northern Ireland society at the moment. Therefore, we would have hoped—and it gets back to Lady Hermon's question and my answer to her a few minutes ago, it gets back to how long does it take to remember and how long does it take to forget not to remember because the forgetting of remembrance is not necessarily sacrilege, it could be healing for a family or a person and I have had a lot of experience of that with people. Therefore, our problem was to try and take that and translate it into a community-wide basis. That is the most honest answer I can give you.

  Mr Bradley: Just to add to that, the four Victims Commissioners are tasked with that and have already grasped some of that and are trying to promote it. It is going to take a certain amount of money to do it properly, but I think it is a very, very good, important suggestion. I do not fully agree with you that we could not on the basis of what we were consulted by people take any recommendations that said the hope of prosecution should be taken off the table. The number of people who appeal to us, who cried to us that the possibility of prosecution remained open are numerous and the reason why this is a complex report and a complex piece of work is because it was a consultation, and there were very strong appeals from people to actually keep the possibility, even if it is only a possibility, that somebody will be charged some day. We were true to the consultation to keep that open and that was partly why we went away from amnesty. There were other reasons, but that was part of the reason, and that is why the HET process actually comes into being.

  Lord Eames: There were some people, Chairman, going back to Mrs Robinson's question, to whom we said, "Look, in all honesty do you ever believe there will be a prosecution in your particular case?" and to some of them that was a question which promoted this answer: "Our heart says we hope there will be; our mind says and our experience is that we will probably die before that happens". May I be personal? One of the hardest things during our process was to say to a family like that, "We cannot propose any recommendation that will help you because we have heard your cry and we know there is no answer". That is what I meant by saying at the beginning that one of the definitions of justice was, "We have not got an answer". I am sorry, but that is a very personal thing.

  Q52  Chairman: Lord Eames, you have tried very hard to give us answers this afternoon and I know I can speak for the Committee in thanking you very much. This is an emotive and contentious area. I admire the integrity and the courage with which you have faced up to your task as a consultative group. It would have been impossible for anybody to expect you to produce something on which there would be immediate unanimous agreement, but I hope that what the Secretary of State has said today will perhaps enable us to concentrate on those other aspects of the report on which both of you have spoken with passion and feeling, and I could see heads that earlier in the session were not nodding were nodding towards the end when you talked about aspects of education and health and the role of the churches, and so on. Thank you for what you have done and thank you for coming before the Committee. We will certainly reflect on what you have said today. The Committee will very possibly want to make a report. We may well wish to correspond with you both and ask for some supplementary information and I know from our previous contacts that you will be as helpful as you can be, but we do appreciate your coming.

  Lord Eames: May we say to you all, thank you for allowing us to talk to you. Thank you, Chairman, for the invitation and while you may agree or disagree with what we have in this volume, I think I can say with integrity that it has been a very, very difficult task and it has been emotionally draining.

  Chairman: I think that is very apparent to all of us and even with our investigation we felt, when we had seen certain witnesses, very, very emotionally drained too and you did very much more of it than we did. Thank you, gentlemen, very much and a safe journey back. The session is closed.

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Prepared 16 December 2009