Colum Eastwood
Main Page: Colum Eastwood (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)Department Debates - View all Colum Eastwood's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(1 day, 22 hours ago)
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Hilary Benn
The provisions that apply exclusively and only to service personnel are: first, the arrangements to prevent cold calling—a protocol will be agreed with the commission in relation to that—and secondly, not being required to rehearse the history when the Ministry of Defence would be perfectly capable of providing that information. The hon. and learned Gentleman, being a distinguished lawyer, will know that, in respect to other arrangements for witnesses, the law requires that they are available to all witnesses.
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)
Many families have been struggling and campaigning for years for truth and justice, and they are now hopeful that we can get to the truth. We know that MI5 admitted only a few months ago that it had not given all of the files over to Operation Kenova. I am also aware that there are many Northern Ireland Office and MOD files that have not yet gone through the freedom of information process and are therefore not available to the National Archives. Will the Secretary of State commit today to ensuring that those files are available to the new legacy commission?
Hilary Benn
The legacy commission has the right to receive all information that it requires to do its job. We are proposing in the legislation to amend the arrangements for disclosure, to require the Secretary of State to conduct a balancing exercise, which was not in the previous Act, and to require the Secretary of State to give reasons, in line with standards that apply across the UK. In addition, any decision of the Secretary of State is open to be judicially reviewed. Those are important changes that I hope will give people in Northern Ireland greater confidence.