Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I have said it before and I will say it again: collusion is totally unacceptable, and this was made clear by David Cameron back in 2012. We believe that the way forward is to allow the independent reviews of the PSNI and the ombudsman to follow their course. To perhaps reassure the noble Lord, as the Secretary of State said on Monday, some new information is being published today from two sources—the 2015 PSNI review, or the de Silva report, and the government-commissioned review by the independent counsel. The new information will, we hope, through the independent reviews, lead to some progress. It includes the failure to identify RUC security services and secret intelligence services officers who failed to warn Patrick Finucane of threats to his life, and the failure to identify RUC officers who probably proposed Patrick Finucane as a target, and I could go on. This is part of the decision to allow these two independent reviews to run their course.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I support the Government in their decision in this case. The murder of Pat Finucane in 1989 has been, and should be, condemned as wrong and wicked. So too are the murders of all innocent victims, in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. There have been other, all too often forgotten, judges, lawyers and family members murdered by the IRA, whose brutal murders Sinn Féin—which is very prominent in this case—and its fellow travellers refused to condemn. Indeed, it still eulogises and glorifies their terrorist killers.

We should remember resident magistrate William Staunton, murdered in 1972; Judge Rory Conaghan, murdered in 1974; resident magistrate Robert McBirney, murdered in 1974; Judge William Doyle, murdered in 1983; Mary Travers, murdered in an attack on her father, Tom Travers, as he left church in 1984; Lord Justice of Appeal Maurice Gibson and his wife Cecily, murdered in a savage attack in 1987; the dear family Robin and Maureen Hanna and their six-year-old son David, murdered in an attempt to kill High Court Justice Higgins in July 1988; and Edgar Graham, who has been mentioned by the noble Lord previously, a human rights barrister, law lecturer and Assembly man, murdered in December 1983. Sadly, these dear people do not receive the same attention, concern, calls for inquiry or media coverage. Their families, too, deserve to know who planned and colluded in their murders. We remember them also this evening.