Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Kenova

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)]

My Lords, I first put on record my sincere thanks to both Jon Boutcher and Sir Iain Livingstone for an extraordinary piece of work. They have set the standard both for gaining the trust of victims and ensuring that we have an Article 2-compliant investigation, which has given us very sobering reading. The noble Lord is aware that, yesterday, we published a Written Ministerial Statement, and he is aware of the ongoing litigation concerning many of the issues in the report. We will be discussing them in more detail once some of that litigation is completed.

On the noble Lord’s points about our security services, I completely agree with him. As he knows, because I have said it from this Dispatch Box, I agree that our security services and all those who wore uniforms during the Troubles ran towards danger to keep us all safe. They continue to do so every single day, both in Northern Ireland and in the rest of GB.

On “neither confirm nor deny”, the noble Lord is right: the first duty of any Government is to protect national security, and we must therefore ensure that sensitive information that is injurious to the public interest, including information that could damage national security or present a real risk of harm to life, is not released. NCND is an important protection, particularly where disclosure of information might otherwise compromise the recruitment and retention of CHIS, but it also covers a broad range of other sensitive national security activities. There will be no change.

On the role of the Irish state, noble Lords are aware that in September we published a joint framework on how we will work together on legacy. We hope and expect to see that delivered in full.

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, this is an important and detailed report that is a welcome further step in trying to get to the truth of what happened. Like the Minister, I commend its authors. Families have had to wait such a long time for truth and justice. Do the Government accept the finding of serious organisational failure by MI5, as outlined in the report, and can the Minister say whether she is confident that the current legislative framework and oversight provisions will prevent similar lapses in future?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

There is ongoing litigation regarding the first point, so I cannot comment. However, I remind noble Lords that since the Troubles, there has been a new legislative framework that includes both the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 and RIPA 2000, which means that many of the practices outlined in the report could never be repeated.