Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for his kind comments. I pay tribute to his work over the years as Minister of State for Northern Ireland. He is still fondly remembered by the people there for all his good work.

I would like to take the opportunity to record my gratitude for the hard work of my officials and the Department in successfully managing the report’s publication. As the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) said, we built on some of the plans left by my predecessor. I met the families and discussed the matter in detail. The publication was a major international event, with 419 press passes issued for the Guildhall square alone. It is also right to draw hon. Members’ attention to other responses to the report that received less coverage, but which are none the less important in illustrating the broad acceptance that Lord Saville’s report received.

The leaders of the three main Protestant churches in Ireland made a symbolically important visit to the Bogside shortly after publication. The First Minister, Peter Robinson, publicly indicated his acceptance of Lord Saville’s findings. Senior military figures, including the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir David Richards, and the former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson, joined the Prime Minister in his apology for the events of Bloody Sunday.

I want to make it absolutely clear, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did, that Bloody Sunday was not the defining story of the Army’s service in Northern Ireland. Between 1969 and 2007, more than 250,000 people served in Operation Banner—the longest continuous operation in British military history.

Our armed forces displayed immense courage, dedication and restraint in upholding democracy and the rule of law in Northern Ireland. We should not forget that more than 1,000 members of the security forces lost their lives, and many thousands more were injured, for that cause. Nor should we forget that the security situation in Northern Ireland had been deteriorating steadily since 1969. As Lord Saville outlines in volume I of the report, those who lost their lives included two RUC officers—Sergeant Peter Gilgunn and Constable David Montgomery were killed by the IRA three days before Bloody Sunday. They were the first police officers killed in the city during the troubles.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The point that the right hon. Gentleman is highlighting is extremely important. It is right to put on record our remembrance of, and gratitude for, the service and sacrifice of so many in the armed forces and police who served over the years in Northern Ireland and who continue to serve. That is why most of us are today wearing the poppy with pride.

May I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on this? Many people in Northern Ireland feel that while there is a very close focus on this one major incident, for the reasons he has outlined, they have received no justice and no attention for the murder of their loved one by the IRA or paramilitaries on all sides. They want to know what the Government will do to address that.

[Mr Paterson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for supporting my comments on the service of those in the security services. He is quite right that without them, the peace process would not have happened. We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to those who served in Northern Ireland. I will turn to the problems of resolving the past in a few moments, but I should point out now that the Historical Enquiries Team is working its way through 3,268 cases, which is valuable work.

The hurt and suffering that victims of the troubles from all parts of the community continue to feel must be recognised and acknowledged. Finding a way of dealing with the painful legacy of the past is one of the great challenges facing Northern Ireland today, as the right hon. Gentleman says. Our approach to the conclusions of reviews and reports on individual cases is clear. Where wrongdoing or failings by the state are clearly identified, the Government will accept responsibility and apologise. We have demonstrated that in our rapid responses to this report, the police ombudsman’s report on Claudy published in August, and to the Billy Wright inquiry report published in September.

More widely, there cannot, of course, be a Saville-type inquiry for each person killed during the troubles, but there are ongoing processes that are helping to provide some answers. As I just mentioned, the HET is investigating all 3,268 deaths during the troubles, including soldiers and police officers who lost their lives. The 86% satisfaction rate that the HET achieves among families who have received reports demonstrates the success it is having in helping to bring a measure of resolution.

The police ombudsman continues to investigate legacy cases and there are a number of ongoing inquests relating to deaths from the troubles. I welcome the very important work that the Northern Ireland Executive, the victims commissioners and many voluntary organisations are doing in providing health care and practical support to victims.

The future of those processes is in the hands of the devolved Administration, and for my part, I am fully supportive of the important and difficult work that the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains continues to carry out. The Government’s views on new public inquiries are, of course, well known. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear, there will be no more open-ended and costly inquiries. That policy is based not solely on financial calculation. Continuing to pick out selective cases to subject to a lengthy public inquiry is not a viable approach to dealing with the legacy of a conflict in which thousands of people from all parts of the community were killed.

Nor should we be under any illusion that public inquiries provide any guarantee of satisfaction for victims’ families. The Billy Wright inquiry report showed that even an inquiry lasting six years and costing £30 million can be accused of not having answered critical questions. Many commentators pointed out that that report recorded the panel’s regret that it had no explanation of how the guns used to murder Billy Wright were smuggled into the high security Maze prison.

Our position on new inquiries is clear, but we cannot simply shut down the past. I recognise that there are no easy answers. The previous Government’s consultation on the Eames-Bradley report ended in October 2009, and this Government swiftly published the responses to that consultation in July this year. The responses clearly showed that there is little consensus currently on a wider mechanism to address the past, but we have not let that stop us continuing to listen to the views of people in Northern Ireland and to find a way forward.

My hon. Friend the Northern Ireland Minister and I have met victims groups, community organisations, academics and politicians from all parts of the community to move forward the debate on this important issue. We will continue to do so. Many different views have been expressed, but one clear theme emerges from those discussions and from the experience of existing mechanisms such as the HET—namely, the desire of the families of victims of the troubles to understand those traumatic events better. Helping families and wider society to achieve that greater understanding and closure is vital, however difficult it may be. It will require leadership from all those involved in the events of the past 40 years in Westminster, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

I plan to continue exploring ideas on the contentious issues of the past over the coming months. Our approach will remain measured, sensitive and realistic. Lord Saville’s report closes a painful chapter in Northern Ireland’s troubled history. In so doing, it makes an important contribution to helping Northern Ireland to move forward to a genuinely shared future.

[Mr Shaun Woodward (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

First, I pay tribute to the men and women who were killed on 30 January 1972. While honouring them, I also want to pay tribute to those who were injured and, indeed, to all the families whose lives have been so painfully damaged by the events of Bloody Sunday. Few of us can ever begin to know the pain that they have endured, but on 15 June this year, we could all see from the relief and celebration on the streets of Derry the powerful impact of Lord Saville’s inquiry, as the reputations of those whose lives were lost and those who were injured were fully exonerated.

When the Prime Minister gave his unreserved apology, he truly spoke for us all. For nearly four decades, despite enormous resistance from some, those brave families have waged their campaign for justice. Their conduct and their dignity have been exemplary, both before and since publication of the inquiry. The inquiry stands in stark contrast to the travesty of truth in the Widgery report. The Saville report did what it was intended to do—it established the truth.

There are many lessons to be learned from Bloody Sunday, and many lessons for those who for too long clung to the Widgery report as truth revealed and justice served—for truth Widgery was not and, in the name of justice, Widgery gave none. For a generation to come, the inquiry that Lord Widgery was asked to conduct will be synonymous with whitewashing the truth—for, at best, its wholly inadequate terms of reference and for being conducted too quickly. Perhaps more damningly, is the greater indictment of all those who preferred to continue to cling ever more desperately to the wreckage of Lord Widgery’s findings. They did so when the evidence increasingly suggested that his report was fundamentally flawed and misleading, and when its conclusions were increasingly shown to be unsafe and wrong.

The House owes a debt to all those who campaigned for the truth to be established, and I pay tribute to those in the then British Government, and the Irish and American Governments, who would not settle for what increasingly looked like a whitewash, and to all those who never gave up and who campaigned for new evidence to be considered.

Over the past few months great praise has rightly been given to the work and honesty of Lord Saville’s inquiry. There was nothing inevitable about the inquiry. A few short years ago, in 1998, establishing such an inquiry was a bold and courageous step. Without that step, it would have been so much harder to have established the bona fides for a peace process to succeed. In the 5,000 pages of his report, Lord Saville has finally established the truth. Yes, there are undoubtedly rightful questions to be asked about the time taken to produce the report and indeed, at £200 million, its cost, but let those of us entrusted with authority never confuse the price of truth with the value of truth. What we learn from the inquiry is shocking truth.

[Mr Dodds]

On the issue of costs, the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State in charge of the Northern Ireland Office for part of the time when these costs were run up, as they were under his predecessors. Does he take any responsibility for the overrun of time and costs? Does he believe that the NIO could have done more to curtail costs and make the inquiry more efficient in terms of time, or does he believe that nothing could have been done?

[Mr Woodward]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Government brought forward what would become the Inquiries Act 2005. The purpose of that was to try to control costs. The issue of Lord Saville’s report touches on the crucial issue of the independence of inquiries. The House must seriously consider whether it would wish to compromise the independence of a judicial inquiry by saying, for example, that witnesses would not be allowed legal representation. That would have saved half the cost of Lord Saville’s report, but would we have got the truth if legal representation had not been allowed? By the same token, if we were to say to judges in future inquiries that we wanted to limit the number of witnesses and the amount of evidence that they could take, would that compromise their independence? It is a proper question for the right hon. Gentleman to ask and I take my share of responsibility for allowing this inquiry to go ahead as it did so that its independence was not compromised. That is why I make the careful distinction between the price and the value of the inquiry.