Welcome to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland. I thank our witnesses for their attendance today. This is a busy week for veterans, starting, as it did, with our Victory in Europe Day commemorations on Monday and culminating tomorrow with the 80th anniversary of VE Day itself. Thank you very much for your time. Could we start with you saying who you are and what your role is?

I am Axel Schmidt, the advocacy support manager of the Ulster Human Rights Watch advocacy service.

I am Chris Albiston, a retired police officer here representing the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association.

I am David Johnstone, the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner, in post since 1 January. I served with the Royal Irish Regiment army reserve for 26 years, with an operational tour of Iraq in 2004.

I am Dave Holmes. I am here to represent the Northern Ireland Veterans Movement, which, in itself, represents the group that I lead, which is Rolling Thunder UK, as well as 16 other veterans groups.

David, in your submission you note how critical it is that veterans feel their concerns around legacy proposals are listened to. What is your view on the Government’s approach to the consultation thus far? Do you believe that veterans’ voices are being heard?

It is significant, just starting off today, that we are here this week of all weeks, marking and celebrating VE 80, the end of the Second World War. It is poignant that, when we consider how we, rightly, recognise and honour veterans from the Second World War for the price that they paid going to war on behalf of this country, and then compare how veterans in Northern Ireland are treated, there is a huge contrast there and a stark, marked difference. I had the pleasure of speaking with Captain John Gough. He is a 100‑year-old veteran. He served in Operation Market Garden. I was with him on Monday night. He is an amazing man and, rightly, he was given plaudits and huge honour. I could not help thinking of Dennis Hutchings, who, at 80 years old, in ill health, having served his country and been sent to Northern Ireland by the then Government, lawfully, found himself in an elongated process of legal warfare and, as people know, died in a hotel room on his own. There is something fundamentally flawed with how we approach legacy. In terms of engagement, the Secretary of State and the Government have been very open to having conversations, so they are hearing the views of veterans. I have had meetings with the Secretary of State. We have had some robust exchanges around some of the issues, but his door is open and I know he has met with a number of veteran groups. There is, though, a difference between hearing the stories of veterans and their views, and listening to what their feelings are. That is where the divergence comes. There is a feeling that, irrespective of the views of veterans, the Government have a trajectory that they are going down. There is definitely a hearing; I am not sure that there is a listening. To make one more point, veterans in Northern Ireland have been encouraged by the Minister for Veterans and People, Al Carns—someone who has served in the military and is a decorated military veteran himself. I had the opportunity of sitting him down with some veterans in Northern Ireland and he definitely both heard and listened. Certainly there was a feeling among the veterans that he gets it. He understands the complexity; he understands the hurt and pain that veterans are going through as they watch this legacy process play out.

Dave, what is your view on the Government’s approach to the consultation with veterans?

As David has said, it is one thing where we feel that we have been heard. I have had meetings myself, along with colleagues, with the Secretary of State. Yes, we sat there and had a very good meeting, but, when it came to the end of it, as David has said, it became obvious that it was very much, “Yes, I have heard you”, but it is not a case of, “We have been listened to”. I am not saying by any means that lip service is being paid or anything like that, but it was, “Okay, thank you very much. This is what we are doing”. I do not know whether we had made any difference at all. I do not see any difference being made. We were quite shocked that we actually had access to information that is in the public domain that he did not know about. I found that quite shocking.

Would you like to detail that?

The one thing in particular that stuck in my mind was the communication between the then Prime Minister Tony Blair and then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland John Reid. I am not quoting the line; this is off the top of my head. In there, it basically says that there is nothing in the agreement that is able to stop any prosecution of any of the security services. One thing that the veterans have always been very concerned about was the feeling that they were deliberately thrown to the wolves. That is the belief of the vast majority of those who served under Op Banner.

Chris, with regard to the voices of retired police officers, are they being listened to?

At the risk of sounding like an echo, there is a difference—

You can say that. You can just say—

There is a difference between being listened to and action being taken on what is discussed. The Northern Ireland Office past and the Northern Ireland Office under the current Government has always been very helpful and keen to meet with us and hear our views. That is at both political and official level. In terms of the present Government, we have had very cordial meetings with Mr Benn and with Baroness Anderson. Like many before them, they have expressed appreciation for the work done by the women and men of the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross. When it comes to doing what we would like them to do, in terms of legacy, it is not quite the same thing. Governments have other things to worry about than what retired police officers think, but we have been a little disappointed now for 25 years about the way that legacy is going. Without straying too far away from the specific question, most people in Northern Ireland, and probably here as well, seem to agree that the way legacy has been handled so far this century has not been satisfactory. A factor that influenced why our association was one of the few groups to offer qualified support to the previous Government when they were negotiating their way through the legacy Act was that something must be better than what has gone before. The problem is that, unless you can get people to agree on what the best way forward is, the people who do not like the proposal will chip away at it and we will be back to square one again. We could end up with another 25 years of trying to do something about legacy. Incidentally, it is not just Government here in Westminster and the Northern Ireland Office that have listened to us. We have regular meetings with politicians and opinion formers in Northern Ireland, two of whom are present in this room today, who our association has had good meetings with. Whether those meetings were productive remains to be seen over the next few years. We have had 25 years of not being very productive.

Axel, what are your views on the Government so far?

Our advocacy support service deals mainly with victims of terrorism. When I say “mainly”, it is essentially with victims of terrorism. Over many years, the voices of victims of terrorism have not really been heard in Northern Ireland. There is a major problem in relation to the legislation that applies to victims and survivors in Northern Ireland. We have the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, which provides an interpretation of who a victim and survivor is, but this interpretation is so wide that it covers innocent victims as well as perpetrators. We have constantly advocated that this interpretation should be done away with and replaced by a proper approach to victims and survivors in relation to the Troubles. That is that we should apply the definition of victims of crime now enshrined in the law in the justice Act 2015. Also, this victim of crime definition applies to the rest of the United Kingdom. If that approach was taken by the Government, that would clarify many issues. That would put things right in relation to how the security forces were confronted by terrorism and in fact were there to defend and protect human rights and democracy in Northern Ireland. If we had that approach, that would change tremendously not only the way we deal with the legacy of the past in relation to the independent commission, but also the memorialisation of the past. If we have that approach, we will have a clear distinction between who the perpetrators and the victims of terrorism were. That will clarify how we approach all these issues and the outcome of the way the legacy of the past is dealt with by the independent commission.

David, your predecessor told the Committee that he resigned as he felt that his office was being run by the NIO. What is your view on the independence of the Office of the Northern Ireland Veterans Commissioner?

I am trying to see where the legacy is in that. I am pleased that you have asked that, because it gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to Danny. He deserves a lot of credit. I know that he is very passionate about the veteran space and about supporting veterans. He started this process. It was a brand-new structure. He is the first commissioner and he came in during covid, which added a whole layer of complexity for him and the staff. He deserves huge credit for the building blocks he placed. As I have said many times, he walked these shoes for over four years. I am now in them. Regarding his frustrations, the first thing I did when I started this role on 1 January was go and meet Danny for coffee, because I had heard different things floating around the space, if you like, about his views. I wanted to hear it directly from him, and we had a good conversation. In terms of his frustrations and ultimate decision to resign, I was not there, so I do not know the rights and wrongs of how he felt about things. I do not think that I can add anything or comment on his personal decisions. I have been in post now just over four months and certainly I have had absolutely no impinging of my ability to work. I have had no contact from the NIO about anything operationally within the role. The two staff I have are excellent. They are very committed. From my point of view, I have been quite robust in some of my public statements about the Secretary of State on legacy. We have had private conversations. We have had conversations with the NIO around legacy. I have been very forthright in that and there has been absolutely no attempt to put me in a straitjacket. I suppose that time will tell, as it always does in life, but my experience to date is that I knew the terms of reference when I was offered this role. I knew where the limits of exploitations were and I was certainly satisfied that I would be able to speak up for, advocate for and be a champion for veterans. If I felt that I could not do that or that I was being curtailed, I would not have taken the post. I hope that that answers your question.

Good morning, gentlemen. Mr Holmes, can I ask you to outline why you would be opposed to the reintroduction of inquests? What impact do you think the reintroduction of inquests will have on dealing with the legacy of the past?

The issue, we believe, with the inquests is that they are looking at events that happened 40 or nearly 50 years ago. Everybody’s memory is short. For people who were there, as time goes on, with conversations with other people et cetera, their real memories become corrupted, not deliberately. We believe that, with people who try to give evidence after so many years, there is also some myth in there. There is some colouring of what happened and the circumstances or the times. Obviously, their own beliefs come into that, depending on which side of the divide they may have been on. The inquests have run their time. It is very difficult to do the inquests and to do them properly. The inquests take a lot of time, where the events took a very short period of time to actually happen, and people did what they believed they should, from a veteran’s point of view. They made decisions based on what they saw in front of them and the information they had. They made decisions based on belief, which is part of the rules of engagement. When you decide that you are going to take lethal action, that is not an easy thing to do. That is the very last step when you have exhausted every other possibility in your head, and that is probably done in a matter of one, two or three seconds. Wait any longer and somebody will die. If you are going to have to do that, there is no time for everything else. There is no time to consult with anybody. You have to make that decision. The military are very highly trained and do not take that step easily. It is the final step. It is the step you do not want to take. You do not want to take life. The problem is that that is taken apart over a six-month period, or whatever the timeframe is of the inquest. A lot of the evidence that is presented is discovered afterwards, so there is hindsight in there. That is not known at the time, obviously. There is the coloration, as I say, of people’s memories. Finally, when it comes to that, what comes out of it is somebody else’s opinion of what happened at the time. Whoever is presiding over it, it is their opinion of what happened at the time. We see over the last few inquests that have been done—the last ones that were remaining before they were stopped that had to run through and the ones just before there—that decisions are made and people’s belief is being questioned. How can you question somebody’s belief? It is just not possible. What somebody has in their head and what they see at that time is all there is. It is based on belief from that point onwards. When you are talking about highly-trained individuals, both from the military and from the police, their belief has to be believed, as it were. Finally on that, the inquests have a tendency, or can have a tendency, to lead to an investigation based on the findings of the inquest, and then potentially back to prosecutions, or at least, even if it does not become a prosecution, punishment by lawfare.

Mr Schmidt, I am going to ask you the same question about your view on the reintroduction of inquests. Drawing on what Mr Holmes said, there has been recent commentary around a number of inquests that highlights the fact that their role is to establish what happened, where it happened, when it happened, how it happened and to whom it happened, but not why it happened. There seems to be this encroachment into the “why” space, which is then leaving open further explorations of investigations that go beyond the balance of probabilities and into the realm of criminal thresholds for prosecution. What is Ulster Human Rights Watch’s view on the reintroduction of inquests and your view on how they have been almost used as a preparatory tool for further prosecution opportunities?

Our approach has been a human rights approach to this issue. Clearly, the courts, the trial judge and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland stated that it was not necessary to have inquests reinstated, or even to simply have inquests being done, to abide by and conform to the European Convention on Human Rights. Taking that approach that has been taken by the courts and looking at what the courts said in relation to inquests, they have stated that the independent commission has more powers than a coroner. Therefore, there is more to gain in going through the independent commission than going through an inquest. The only issue raised in relation to not having inquests and being replaced by investigations carried out by the independent commission was in relation to the possibility for the next of kin to be involved in the process. My understanding is that the Secretary of State is going to introduce in the remedial order a position that will enable the next of kin to take part in public hearings. There will even be a possibility for the next of kin to have their own lawyers. That will be funded by the commission itself. If we look at what is there, coming from the courts, and what is going to be done by the Secretary of State, there is no reason to reintroduce inquests.

That is quite interesting. Some of the criticism around ICRIR and the need for inquests is what you have mentioned: next of kin participation, legal representation, an independent judge, the inability for anyone from the Executive side of Government to rewrite findings or to be the conduit through which findings are published. It is your understanding that that will form a key part of the changes the Secretary of State is going to bring forward?

Yes.

Are you able to share with us the basis of that understanding? Is that through consultation with the NIO? Is that through public commentary from the NIO?

That came out of the last meeting we had with the NIO just a month ago.

Commissioner, I was going to ask you the same question anyway; I can see that you are keen to answer. Can I ask for a view, please, on behalf of the commission, on the reintroduction of inquests?

It is important to say that there are differing views among the veteran community on the whole issue of legacy and, indeed, in terms of the reintroduction of inquests. However, I am pretty confident that the vast majority of veterans in Northern Ireland would be totally opposed to the reintroduction of inquests. It is very important, though, for the Committee to understand that the reason for the opposition is not based around any fear of past actions. It is not based around any fear of justice or the natural pursuit of justice where rules of engagement have been broken. The issue is around the fundamental unfairness of the inquest process, and that is absolutely key. I will give one very quick tangible example. The Secretary of State recently met the sister of Patrick Kelly, who was the OC of the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA. The press reports indicated that the Secretary of State assured Patrick Kelly’s sister that there would be an inquest into Loughgall, where Patrick Kelly lost his life as he committed the act of terrorism. Veterans looking on are incredulous about that. When it comes to the activities of the East Tyrone Brigade, where are the inquests into that? I recently did a podcast with a man called Glen Espie, who is an Ulster Defence Regiment soldier. He makes the point that he never wore a mask. He stood out in the streets of Cookstown and did his job lawfully, because he was ordered by the Government to do so. Patrick Kelly is widely believed to have been one of the men involved in two assassination attempts on Glen’s life. He was shot both times, but survived. He asked me, as the veterans commissioner, “Where is my inquest? Where is the inquest into the literally thousands of deaths by republicans and loyalists?” In this whole legacy process, there are around 33 inquests that will reopen if the current government policy plays out. Of that, only two are for republican actions and the rest are by either state forces—there are around about 17 where a member of the security forces pulled the trigger in an incident—or loyalists. When you see the overall breakdown of the deaths in the Troubles, there is a fundamental unfairness in the process.

Mr Albiston, do you have a view from the Retired Police Officers Association on the reintroduction of inquests?

We do. We have a view on that. Our view is that there is no reason why the ICRIR could not effectively discharge the responsibilities that were once envisaged for it in respect of inquests. Looking at some of the written submissions of evidence to this Committee on this subject, it seems to me that you read the Dillon case in the way you want to read it. You draw from it the bits that you like and ignore the bits that you do not like. All sides of the argument are probably guilty of doing that. In principle, we say that there is no reason why the commission should not undertake this responsibility. I would defer to Axel Schmidt, as a trained lawyer, on the legal aspects of this. There are, though, practical difficulties. If you are going to have an article 2-compliant inquiry conducted under the auspices of the ICRIR, that still requires a lot of time, a lot of staff, a lot of proper evidence from civilians, retired police officers and retired soldiers, and a lot of legal expertise. There are practical difficulties whether you have inquests or the ICRIR. In relation to inquests, there are problems. I will not specify particular cases but there are certainly inquests where the views of the person conducting the inquest seemed to impinge on the way that the thing was run and produced some rather strange, in our view, outcomes. Another problem we have experienced with inquests, and it might seep over into ICRIR inquiries if it was to undertake them, is what you might call a sort of jigsaw identification or construction of a narrative. Particular legal firms and barristers participate in a series of inquests, some of which seem to them to have a similar theme, and questions are asked in an effort to identify security force methodology. Indeed, there are ways of identifying individual members of the security forces who may have been involved. We are a bit concerned about the way that that is handled. I understand that there are legal problems with trying to restrict that, but perhaps, under the auspices of the ICRIR, that might be more manageable. Finally, I have a brief word on belief. The lawyers in the room will know better than I do about rational and irrational belief, objective and subjective belief, and so on. As police officers, we have a great deal of sympathy with the position in which soldiers were placed in making instant decisions. This Committee, if it is not aware, might be interested in some of the remarks surrounding the fatal shooting of Mr Kaba, where some activists are now saying that subjective belief should not be a proper defence for public servants who take life in the execution of their duties and that that belief should have to be rational and reasonable. Those are legal arguments that, I am glad to say, I am far too old and insufficiently qualified to discuss. That is for the next generation, but it is something that you might want to consider is on the horizon.

That is important. Drawing on some of the comments you made, Mr Albiston, you talked about the coronial process and how some inquests may be infected by the person conducting the process, the coroner. I do not think that it would be helpful to talk about distinctions between individual judges in this forum. Casting our mind back to the most recent times, there were two inquests that were conducted by the exact same coroner. A concern has been shared that, in one inquest, the coroner very clearly outlines the context, the environment in which the individuals were operating, what had happened in the preceding days in terms of other terrorist atrocities and murders, and the emotion, concern and apprehension surrounding all of that for the officers before the inquest. Yet, in the next inquest by exactly the same coroner, there is no contextualisation at all. There is no recognition of what happened in the preceding days. There is no understanding of the emotion or apprehension on the part of officers. How concerning is that for retired police officers who look to see that, even in one judicial figure, there can be contextualisation to the atmosphere and operation of the time and, the next day, nothing?

Context is certainly something that we are very aware of. In fact, one of our officers is currently researching a paper on context in relation to the Omagh bombing inquiry, because we hope that his lordship will take full account of the context of the time and not assume that facilities were available on a certain date that did not actually come into play until several years later. So far as individual figures in the judiciary are concerned, I do not want to highlight individuals or pick them out. If my remarks sound as if I am suggesting that inquests are not being properly handled, that is not what I am trying to say. You can take one case recently where an inquest into an event had a report published by a coroner and subsequently the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland published a section 62 statement on the same incident. If you look at the quality of the statements, the coroner is way ahead of the police ombudsman in understanding the context of the time. There is no objection in principle to inquests at all. If the question is, “Can the ICRIR do the same job?”, the answer is that, yes, it can.

Good morning, gentlemen. It is good to have you with us. I will stick with ICRIR, if I can. One thing that we have found is that, in many submissions that we have had, both written and from witnesses, there are a lot of stakeholders who struggle to trust ICRIR, especially victims’ groups. I would like to ask first the veterans commissioner, but I would like to open this to everyone, what changes, if any, you think need to be made to ICRIR to meet the Government’s aspiration of increasing trust in the organisation.

To answer that maybe in a slightly different way, part of the challenge around the legacy process in general, of which ICRIR is now in focus, is that I am not sure that any changes that can be made to ICRIR are actually going to achieve trust. Certainly, we could spend time and list a number of ways of tinkering around the edges, so to speak. Fundamentally, I do not think, as veterans commissioner and talking to veterans, that there is a belief among veterans that there will ever be a structure around legacy that will gain the trust, or sufficient trust, of the communities in Northern Ireland to make it workable. While I agree and accept your point that there is perhaps a trust deficit, the view of veterans would be that the ICRIR right now is the only show in town. If not the ICRIR, even though it might be flawed in some areas and have some trust deficits, then what? Do we scrap the ICRIR, go back to the drawing board and try to produce another structure that then has to try to gain the support and trust of the communities? Again, we could kick that down the road five or six years, come back with another iteration, and I do not think we are any further on in terms of solving this. Some tinkering around the edges, as I say, with the ICRIR could happen, but it is as fit for purpose as we are going to get. I think that most veterans would say, “Engage with it. Look at legacy and information recovery”. If there are any proceedings that come out of it, that all can be dealt with within that body, and that is the best way forward for where we are.

Can I open that up, perhaps, to Chris?

We can look at this in two ways: in the general way and then in the specific retired police officers’ factional interest way, if you like. In the general way, Commissioner David is implying, I think correctly, that, if you can produce something that wins plaudits in one part of the community, it will automatically be opposed by another part of the community. You can think that that is a negative approach and we ought to be able to get round that, and indeed the association has tried to encourage people to go with the proposed changes, but we accept that, if it appears to certain elements that their control over the legal processes is slipping, they will do their best to oppose it. Looking at it in terms of factional interest of retired police officers, how would you build trust in the ICRIR? We have some trust in it already through our meetings with it, and it has been very forthright. We do not agree with everything it is doing. We have explained in lengthy, wordy letters to it how we think it might improve its processes. Put very simply, we want fairness and due process in any system for investigating legacy issues. While some people might not agree with this, the perception of retired police officers in Northern Ireland, individually and collectively, is that there has been an effort since about 1998 to denigrate the Royal Ulster Constabulary and to seek to prosecute police officers for imaginary offences. When the DPP is having none of this, resort is made to alternative methods of castigating the police to a lower standard of proof. That has been done by public statements where allegations are made about the conduct of police that have not been substantiated to a level that required judicial process. We think that due process, which has been built up over hundreds of years, should not be cast aside so quickly simply in order to enable the castigation of a body of men and women who serve the public, we say, very well.

Could I interrupt there? This is just a quick ask from me. Do you think that the Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association would agree to publish or to share with us your lengthy and wordy letters to ICRIR?

At the risk of sounding as if I have been rather lazy, some of the lengthy and wordy letters actually appear as our submission of evidence to this Committee. They say that plagiarism is a terrible sin, but if you are plagiarising from yourself it is perhaps more forgivable. It is about due process. I will say to this Committee what I have said to your predecessors, every Secretary of State, every Security Minister, Baroness Anderson and all the NIO officials. Retired police officers, individually and collectively, do not wish to protect any of their colleagues who committed criminal offences from prosecution. We have no wish to do that. We have always opposed amnesty, unlike certain Governments, both in London and in Dublin, who have been very generous with the amnesties that they have accorded to people. We have never asked for amnesty for any police officer, serving or retired, who committed a criminal offence. What we think is happening is that, where you cannot prove that they committed a criminal offence, you just produce a report that says, “We cannot say that they committed criminal offences, but they were a jolly bad lot and here is what they did”, and all this sort of thing. That is what we do not like. The criminal justice system has always had protections for suspected persons. In fact, from 1984 onwards all this was enshrined in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. There are processes that take place that are designed to try to prevent injustices. In relation to discipline matters, in other words behaviour by police that does not reach the threshold of criminal behaviour and therefore is not a matter for the DPP, there is a discipline system. The discipline system replicates some of the protections that appear in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. We feel that Sir Declan Morgan’s proposed systems perhaps do not replicate those protections for people whose reputations are going to be damaged, even though they are not in jeopardy of a criminal prosecution.

I wanted to draw others in. It seems pretty unequivocal, from what we are hearing, that veterans—there may be a variety, as the commissioner said—are largely in support of ICRIR. The Government are committed to root and branch reform. I suppose that the simple question for anyone, perhaps especially Dave and Axel, who we have not heard from, is this. If that is undertaken, do you envisage that veterans will stop supporting ICRIR and why?

I believe that to be true. There is a tacit trust in ICRIR as it stands at the moment. There is a slight difference between the veterans from the mainland and the veterans who reside in Northern Ireland, and obviously those from the Ulster Defence Regiment, et cetera. I suppose that it is a cultural thing as well as to whether you reside there or here, the way the job was done and the slight differences in what they had to do. There is a tacit trust. We have met with Sir Declan Morgan and had very open and frank discussion. From those meetings, we believe that ICRIR is trustworthy. There is trust there. It is tacit because, until you get the evidence, you are making an opinion. The opinion is that there is a tacit trust, as it stands. The worry is this. With a root and branch reform, will ICRIR be ICRIR as it stands at the moment? The answer there, I feel, is no.

Axel, would you like to add to that?

From the very start when the Act was enacted, it was very clear that it still was a work in progress. Even the court mentioned that. The trial judge mentioned that. His view was “wait and see”, in the sense that Sir Declan Morgan and the independent commission were going to think through the system and processes, and add to the Act whatever procedures or guidance were necessary to be produced. The key principle—and I have it here in front of me—mentioned by the independent commission, and obviously supported by Sir Declan Morgan, is compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights. That is its first principle. If we start there, in the understanding that there is still work to be done, and obviously there is the remedial order coming in the future, if the remedial order addresses the points that were highlighted by the trial judge and the Court of Appeal, we will have a fully human rights-compliant and European convention-compliant system. If we get there, we need to trust the system as it is. We of course do not know what the outcome will be, but we will be sure that, at this stage, we will have a human rights-compliant commission and the processes will be human rights compliant. Therefore I believe that, at that stage, trust should be given to the commission on that basis.

It is actually really important. Chris, I think, pointed to the elephant in the room regarding legacy and specifically this discussion around the ICRIR. Yes, we can get into the mechanics and the weeds on the legalities of it all. The reality is that, as far as veterans in Northern Ireland are concerned, the republican movement has absolutely no interest in justice, truth and reconciliation for all. It is continuing its struggle. The armed struggle has stopped but it is now using lawfare to achieve its aims. It wants selective justice. As long as it is soldiers and policemen and women in the dock, it is happy. There is no scrutiny of terrorists. It is happy with truth recovery, as long as it is on the state side. While it continues its current trajectory and policy, the discussion around structures on legacy is somewhat moot because it is never going to have legs to go anywhere. That is a challenge for the republican movement. If it is serious about a future post violence, it has to grasp the nettle and stop this demonisation that Chris rightly pointed to of those who wore the uniform and went out to save life and protect property. They did not go out in balaclavas. They did not go out to cold-bloodedly murder people. Therefore, there has to be a recognition that the republican movement needs to change its tactics going forward.

In the light of that picture you paint, do you have any concerns with ICRIR’s investigations and its approach to investigations?

No. As I said earlier, I think that most veterans would willingly support ICRIR. I have met Sir Declan Morgan on a number of occasions. He is a man of integrity. He is doing his best to make his contribution to society in Northern Ireland. I echo what Chris said. Where a soldier went outside rules of engagement, they should be held accountable. There are no concerns or pushback on that. Fundamentally, the issue is that soldiers were sent here lawfully, under military law, were given rules of engagement to operate under and believed that, if they kept within those rules of engagement, they had nothing to worry about. Now, 50 years on, they are being examined by a civilian legal system. I have to say that, in Northern Ireland, there is certainly a question mark over its independence. Perhaps it is biased in terms of how it views the situation in Northern Ireland. Therefore veterans feel that it is fundamentally unfair to have a civilian coroner try to get into the mind of a soldier or a policeman or woman who is making a split-second decision of whether to take life. That is not who can adjudicate whether they have kept laws of war and conflict or rules of engagement.

Thank you all, gentlemen, for coming today. As you will appreciate, the Committee has been speaking to a number of organisations and has heard about a number of approaches. While, Commissioner Johnstone, you referred to the ICRIR process as the only show in town, we are also considering other provisions and certainly other suggestions. I wanted to go back to the provisions of the Stormont House agreement. A suggestion has been made to us that we should consider being able to separate the investigative processes that existed within those, so that the investigation processes sit separately to the truth-seeking processes, with two very distinct, firewalled bodies. Focusing on all of you, is this a process that would work for the veterans community, or particularly something that would be able to build a level of trust within it?

In an ideal world, where you could separate out truth recovery and the other aspects of that, that would be good, but I suppose we are where we are, where, right now, both those processes play out within the structures of the ICRIR. I suppose that, if there was an ability to silo them in some way within ICRIR, that would be preferable, because there is definitely a crossover. If the same people are looking at the facts from the past, but coming at it looking for a different perspective, that leads to a contamination of the outcome. I do not know whether that answers your question. Ideally, you would separate them out, but currently they are in ICRIR and I do not think that there is any real possibility that they will be separated out.

Like David said, there is an ideal world and, unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. There would be a duplication of effort and a duplication of process, investigation and interviews. One thing I can see from that is that veterans will be saying, “I have already done this. I did this back in 1972, 1973 or 1974, when I gave my post-action report. I have answered questions over the years. I am trying to engage and I now have two bodies asking very much the same questions from a slightly different direction”. We talk about men here, veterans and retired police officers, who will be, depending on when it happened, in their 60s, 70s or 80s, going through this again. A lot do not want to be going through this again. A lot of people have made their peace with what happened and it is bringing up memories. You now have two bodies. Then you would have two bodies looking at it from a different perspective, going down exactly the same lines again. To hold it all in one place with ICRIR, as it stands at the moment, is fine. There is the trust in that. If you then split it out into two bodies, how do you separate and change your—not “change your answers”; that is not correct. How do you phrase your answers to satisfy the two different bodies without muddying the waters, as it were, because obviously they will be asking the questions in different ways? As I say, it is a duplication of effort. It is going to prolong what happens and, ultimately, it is also going to cost a lot more money, which has been spent in the millions and millions of pounds. I believe that my colleague David here has looked at that. It is about £350 million, I read the other day, and we have really got nowhere. I suppose that you can use the expression, “It’s only money—the cost does not matter”, but the cost ultimately does matter, both from a financial point of view and the cost for people’s lives.

We take the view that the ICRIR could handle both the investigations and truth recovery, but we would not be opposed to the separation of those things. There are problems, because, if one body is to do both jobs, we have said—and you will have seen reference to this in our written submission—that there is a danger of crossover between different functions. That can lead to contamination of people who are going to make determinations almost of a judicial nature further down the line. There are difficult issues there and one way of dealing with that might be to say, “You have to have two separate bodies”, but that probably does not solve the problem. If you have information recovery or truth recovery, your recovery of the truth may lead you to find things that would require a different type of investigation and then you would be switching backwards and forwards. I do not think that the answer is to go back to what was being proposed a decade ago in terms of the Stormont House agreement. Certainly, the association took a very strong view on the proposals around the historical inquiries team, which seemed to us to be a terrible mess. Our view in the last few years was that the proposals for the ICRIR were such an enormous improvement on what had been proposed 10 years ago. One last thing about truth recovery is that there are great advantages to truth recovery, and a lot of people may get a lot of comfort from knowing what actually happened, but there are a lot of people in Northern Ireland who will find it most uncomfortable if certain truths are recovered and made public: “Little Jimmy down the street was a tout after all. I am sure of it now that I have seen this thing here”. Little Jimmy’s family will have to move out. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong with truth recovery. While maybe there are philosophical reasons why truth is always the best thing, there are dangers in Northern Ireland.

There is a logic in what has been proposed in the 2023 Act. How do you review a historical case? We start first by trying to find out all the information. That is what the ICRIR is about. It is going to have unfettered access to all the information available. Having that in hand, there are then three possible processes. The first one is the family answer examination. That will go no further. In other words, answers will be provided to the families on the basis of what would have been recovered. The second one is the liability-focused examination. That leads to prosecution. That means there is more information available, which offers the possibility of prosecution. Then the last one is the culpability-focused examination. In other words, there is information there, but no possibility to prosecute. However, there is a possibility at some stage maybe to release, for example, the names of those who were the perpetrators of acts of terrorism. There is a logic there that is implemented by the commission and that we support. The other possibility would be to create some kind of commission that would be like the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains. We have constantly opposed this proposal. Why? The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, as you know, has led to a lot of digging, not only in the Republic of Ireland but also in France. Most of the time, or on several occasions anyway, the remains were never found. Therefore, we only knew that the information provided to this commission was right when the body was found. If we have the same commission being set up to find out truth about what happened in the past, there will be no way to check whether the information is right or wrong. For that reason, we have opposed it and my understanding is that the Secretary of State is not too keen to have that reintroduced.

Thanks, everyone, for being here today. Some of you I know and have talked to on many occasions. This is just to take it back to Katrina’s question about truth recovery. I have some real concerns about the truth recovery. It is very clear that there are some people in Northern Ireland, and further afield, who want to equate terrorists with those who served in the security forces, and that really concerns me. It is really important that both of you, David and Chris, have said clearly today that you have no fear whatsoever of people who have acted outside of the law being held accountable for that. That would be my own view as well. During the Troubles, the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland rejected terrorism. They did not want to have anything to do with it. The record shows that clearly at the time. I fear now that, if a truth recovery process was to start and commence, there would be those who would be very keen to rewrite themselves as heroes. If we are dealing with people who were part of terrorist organisations or proscribed groups coming forward, who is going to verify that? There literally will be nobody to verify that, unless we are relying on terrorists to mark the homework of other terrorists, which to me, and the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, is completely repugnant, regardless of political opinion. To me, that would be a real fear that I would have. Would any of you share that fear?

Yes.

Yes, very much so. It is often said that, in any situation such as we experienced in Northern Ireland, every individual who lives through it will have their own perception of what went on and what happened. I have no doubt that there are many people in Northern Ireland whose view of the last 50 years will be very different from mine. My concern is that, if you go into the Public Record Office in Northern Ireland, or if you go on to Google and try to find references to the dreadful C word, “collusion”, you will be bombarded with a lot of nonsense, complete myth and fallacy. If we are going to have an official record, it has to be properly managed and monitored. I think that this has been said, certainly in front of perhaps not this Committee but its predecessors. Rather than have lawyers create the history of legacy, can we not have historians create the history of legacy? Historians, we hope, might have a different view.

I certainly concur, Sorcha, with what you have said there. What comes to mind is a fellow soldier who I talked to in January about this whole legacy issue and what you have just said there, giving a tangible example of a veteran’s feelings, which will align with what you have just said. He is a man I have known since I joined the Royal Irish in 1988. He then went on to the Ulster Defence Regiment and lives in a border area. His community has suffered terribly at the hands of republican terrorists. I asked him, on taking up this post, “What is your view on legacy?” I got a totally different answer than I expected. This is, as I say, someone who has walked in the shoes of the people we are talking about. He looked me in the eye and said, “David, regarding legacy and justice, forget about it. We are never going to see the terrorists in Northern Ireland, loyalists and republican, in the dock and facing justice. Forget about it”. He then went on to say, “Accountability? Forget about it. No British Government, Tory or Labour, is ever going to hold Sinn Féin particularly to account for the part that the wider republican movement played”. There is just no appetite by successive British Governments to hold the terrorists to account in Northern Ireland. He then said that the history of the Troubles is the key. We cannot allow the rewriting of what happened. We cannot allow our children to be taught a false narrative where somehow those who wore the uniform and went out to save life are demonised and those who went out with the intent of murder and literally slew thousands somehow are heroes. That cannot be allowed to happen. He was passionate about that and I think he speaks for many veterans, and probably all veterans, which concurs with exactly what you just said.

Mr Albiston, you were talking earlier in answer to Ms Murray about people’s perceptions and how two individuals who come from different backgrounds could read the same material and will take from it what they wish. You will know from your experience in Northern Ireland that, since the Belfast agreement, there is an awful lot of linguistic gymnastics. You have to accept things that really jar, but you are asked to accept them through the prism of equality and parity of esteem, by understanding other people’s perspectives and walking a day in the life in the shoes of someone else. Could I ask you for your position, and the retired police officers’ position, on how, while these things seemingly apply to everyone, there seems to be an incapacity for them to apply to former police officers? This inquiry has heard not only from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission but from a panel last week with a former police ombudsman and the current chief constable of the police, suggesting that it is somehow inappropriate for individuals who have a past in policing to form part of the staff complement of the ICRIR.

I would like to answer that question in two parts. I will do the suitability of recruitment second and the bit about what happened after 1998 first. To be honest, in the association that I represent and among many individuals in it—I am as guilty, if not more guilty, as anyone of this—there was a certain naivety. I was a senior officer under Ronnie Flanagan at the time of now Lord Patten’s review. As a senior officer team, we supported the chief constable in supporting the implementation of a lot of changes. There was a lot of hurt about the changes to the name and the badge, and all the rest of it. We, as a leadership group—and we tested the feelings of the people we were leading—thought, “We want the next 25 years to be rather better than the last 25 years. If we have to make certain sacrifices that we do not think are entirely fair or just, that may be a price to pay”. We were naive, because I do not think that we saw the way that the next 25 years were going to go. What I mean by that is that the figure is often quoted that deaths during the Troubles—the conflict, or whatever euphemism you want to give to the period of terrorism—were caused 60% by republicans, 30% by loyalists and 10% by the security forces. Whereas the security force deaths are up for examination, the other 90% were clearly wrong and nobody says that they were right. What has been happening is that the republican movement has decided to allocate the 30% of deaths caused by the loyalists to the state, “because the state was running all the loyalist organisations; there was this massive collusion taking place”. If you can persuade the people in the bars of Philadelphia, Boston and all the rest of it that, actually, the figure is not 60/30/10, but 60/40, you start to rewrite history. You start to produce this narrative that it was a conflict, that there was equal merit on either side and, as Ms Eastwood has alluded to, that there was a sort of moral equivalence. There was not a moral equivalence—not at all. On the recruitment side, I watched the discussion in this forum. I accept that there is a strong case for saying that no former RUC officer should be involved in investigations into legacy, but I do not agree with it. The reason why I do not agree with it is that, where you have an absence of experience and knowledge, you can sometimes produce reports that appear to be naive or misguided. That is not the same thing as prosecutions, because prosecutions depend on evidence. In relation to the criminal justice system, the DPP is not looking for an opinion. He is looking for evidence that has a reasonable prospect of convicting somebody of a criminal offence. Everyone in this room knows that the section 62 statements published by a succession of police ombudsmen are a bit of a bête noire to the Retired Police Officers Association, because we see in them a failure to understand as well as, it has to be said, a bias in the approach and outcome. Mr Boutcher had a very pure investigation team and a pure set of writers writing his interim report, and he came up with, to me, some peculiar conclusions. There is a problem. If you are going to be so pristine and clean, and not have any of the dirty RUC involved in your investigations, you are going to possibly run into trouble.

It has been raised since that evidence session that we had—because there was a bit of surprise, particularly given that a lot of this seems to focus around one, or potentially two, individuals, is quite personal and does not feel legal, safe or sensible to me, and certainly not to others within any normal course of how you engage in these discussions—that, within the Operation Kenova team, there was an investigatory oversight board that had a former police ombudsman on it, who was also a member of the RUC police authority. One jump to the next clearly did not compromise their personal integrity in a way being suggested in this case. The chief constable making these remarks is appointed by a policing board that has former terrorists sitting on that policing board and the recruitment panel, and their personal or professional integrity is not in any way questioned, and yet we have this conundrum being put to us today. The main thrust of the argument was not that they were accurate about the view that there would be a contamination of approach or some lack of professionalism, but that there could be a perception. It was all based around perception, or you could substitute that for “prejudice”. In the view of your association, and then I will open it up, is there not a stronger need for the Northern Ireland Office, because it is responsible for these structures, to push back against misguided, ill-informed or deeply prejudicial perception?

If a police officer has integrity, and you trust them and let them work in the police, do they suddenly lose that integrity when they go to work for another body, doing the same sort of job that they did when they were in the police? I would say no. I would say, “Take the expertise”. If you have a doubt about the integrity of a particular individual, challenge them, or do not recruit them. I felt very uncomfortable with the discussion that I was watching because I know the individual involved and this is a man of integrity, but that is not the issue. You could take the same issue and say, “Hang about, why do you have, as a chief commissioner, a man who was previously the Lord Chief Justice?” Surely he cannot be independent, because he has already been involved in the judicial system of Northern Ireland at quite a high level, shall we say. I found some of the discussion that took place from this table on that day to be not very fair or accurate.

Can I come in there a minute? You mentioned, Gavin, the policing board. It is not the chief constable who decides the policing board. It is the political parties.

Yes, correct. My point is that he is appointed to that role. My point is that he is appointed to the role of chief constable through a panel including a former member of the IRA. Do you mind if we open that up?

I would like to ask Chris what engagement you have had, if any, with Chief Constable Boutcher and Sir Iain Livingstone?

I personally have had limited contact. Since he was appointed chief constable, Mr Boutcher has had meetings with us as retired police officers, at the first of which he objected to a letter that I sent to the News Letter about his Kenova report. When he was the head of Kenova, as Sir Iain is now, a colleague of mine had regular meetings and updates, and indeed my colleague gave advice. Perhaps that is not what people want to hear, that Kenova was corrupted by a retired police officer giving advice, but there are things known to us that you will not discover by looking through dusty books or old corrupted computer files. There are clues that can be given that will point you in the right direction. There is information about context that you might need if you are conducting an inquiry of the type that Mr Boutcher was conducting and that Sir Iain Livingstone is now conducting.

One thing that fascinates me—and you mentioned it a lot earlier—is the discipline system within PACE and how it is different in ICRIR. It seems that, in Northern Ireland, things are done differently from the rest of the UK. Is that right?

The principles of the criminal law are very similar, and the experiences of victims, witnesses and suspects will be very similar. The point I was trying to make was that the system in relation to the behaviour of police that may attract public criticism but does not constitute a criminal offence, which, for serving police officers, is the discipline system, has a parallel set of protections, which are designed to enable a complainant to have their case properly heard and investigated, and to have an accused officer afforded similar—but not exactly the same—rights to a suspect in a criminal investigation. When you come to a disciplinary hearing, which is the equivalent of a judicial hearing, you have what Mr Schmidt would probably call Article 6 equality of arms. It is fairness. The HIT was a classic example, but we feel that even ICRIR is not going down the equality of arms path. It will have investigations that may start out as criminal investigations and veer off into what it calls liability or culpability investigations, in which deceased police officers could be criticised without ever having had a chance to address the issue. Their families get very hurt by this sort of thing. Then you have very elderly police officers, and I have met many of these, who come to me because they have had letters saying that they are going to be criticised in this or that forum. “What can we do about it, because what is being said here is not right?” They get a letter, which is supposed Maxwellisation. They are given 30 days to respond to a discussion on an event that took place 40 years ago, after an investigation by a body that has maybe lasted 15 or 16 years. Suddenly, they have 30 days to think about it and defend their reputations. This is what we have to get past and this is why we thought, with the ICRIR, we might have the chance of a new beginning. If indeed, as Mr Schmidt was saying earlier, there is going to be a fundamental change to it, we would want to see the changes including proper protections for people who are going to be criticised. That is not an inability to name names when a terrorist commits an offence, but a protection for the reputations of people, many of whom are dead, and many of whom are very old and get quite upset when the knock comes on the door, because they do not know what it is all about. You probably would accept if I say to you that most retired police officers want to help. They still have the ethos that they had when they were serving. Sometimes they are tempted to try to remember things that they do not actually remember. They forget their police training, which is to say, if you do not know the answer, “I don’t know the answer”. They think that they are helping the investigator by trying to remember things that they do not actually remember at all. There are all sorts of things that go wrong and you have to have a proper system in place to ensure that you do not make these mistakes.

It is really just for other panellists at this stage to outline your view of perception and whether it is important to consider families’ perception of independence, or lack thereof, but then to contextualise that. Should the NIO be stronger, as in my view it should, in pushing back on perception based on prejudice?

You have raised a very good question. If you were looking to have a process for truth and justice, you would surely want the best resources, the best investigators and those with the most experience to be on your team to establish truth and bring justice if it was needed. Unfortunately—and I say “unfortunately” because of the tragedy of the Troubles—the RUC is exceptionally experienced in investigations and understands the context that the Northern Ireland Troubles happened in, which is not insignificant and not irrelevant to the truth and justice process. To not want someone of the stature of the individuals who we are speaking to in that process, when they bring the experience and knowledge, you have to ask the question of why. I think I alluded to it earlier. There are some, unfortunately, who are not interested in actually finding truth and justice. They have their own agenda and therefore they will object and create obstacles that, in reality, would not exist in any other walk of life. It is important that there is pushback. Again, going back to this whole process of fairness, society in Northern Ireland was asked to accept unrepentant terrorists in Government and those who have been convicted of crime. That had to be accepted as part of the peace process. I have already alluded to members who have been convicted who are involved in policing now. I have alluded to the justice system, and certainly those high up in the justice system, who have had political opinions very publicly expressed in the past. That all seems to be okay in legacy. “Don’t go there. Don’t look there”. When someone who has experience at the coalface of terrorism and the investigation of terrorism is then involved in a process within ICRIR, all of a sudden there are objections. I think that it is obvious why that is.

I totally agree. From the veterans’ point of view, if you are using former police—that was their job to investigate—they are trustworthy people. They are people of integrity. Whatever the outcome is, they will not try to fudge around the edges, to go with an agenda or anything like that. The ones who are doing the complaining about that are the ones who have fear of the investigation being done properly. From the point of view of the veterans—and it has been said before with the police—if somebody overstepped the mark and did the wrong thing, and that comes out, something needs to be done. People were convicted along the lines and during the years who had overstepped the mark and done the wrong thing. If it comes out, fine. In essence, I suppose, some parts of society would want the best investigators going after the security forces, but they do not want them anywhere near their own investigations. There is a definite bias in there.

I fully agree with what they have said and I would support entirely their point of view. It is totally unfair to raise this issue against very noble men who, as I said, fought for the protection and the promotion of human rights and democracy in Northern Ireland. If there is any issue in relation to a police officer who would have known a certain case, he can always recuse himself, but apart from that I would not add anything else.

The question is far too difficult. I would like to think that many good brains in the UK, and our neighbours and friends abroad, would have given some thought to this over many years. I am not sure how you achieve reconciliation after the events of the last 50 years. The way that they do it in some countries is to have a Tito figure who makes sure that Serbs and Croats, and so on, do not go around killing each other. That survives for a certain amount of time until the power at the centre goes. That would not be our tradition in this country. We have to work a lot harder at this. It is not a problem for Ulster Human Rights Watch, retired police officers or military veterans to deliver reconciliation, but we all have a part to play. Being open and honest with people we do not share views with might be a start, but who is going to go first? Who is going to jump first? This is the problem. It is a long-term prospect. Educationalists would have a view about how we might improve things in Northern Ireland. Our religious leaders might have a view about how we would improve things in Northern Ireland. Speaking personally, I would far rather see taxpayers’ money spent on education and the health service than on a massive security presence. We were hoping for the peace dividend, but we seem to be spending it all on lawyers, as Mr Boutcher alluded to in his evidence. I do not know whether this Committee has considered the paper produced a few weeks ago by Policy Exchange. I know that many people here will not share the political outlook of Policy Exchange, but it produced a paper on the costs of legacy. When I discussed this with the current Secretary of State, he said, “Some of their predictions for the future are a bit off. They are not quite right. They are guessing in the dark”. I accept what he says; he has a better factual knowledge of these things than I do. All I would say is that some of the figures that Policy Exchange produced in relation to past inquiries were clearly underestimates, for example in relation to the Saville inquiry and so on. There is an argument that says—and in principle I agree with it—that you cannot put a price on justice. When you move away from principles to practicalities, if you want some of the elaborate mechanisms that we have been using for the last 25 years, the cost will be in investment in infrastructure. The cost will be in making sure that the roofs of the schools do not leak, which they do in many parts of Northern Ireland. There are balancing acts. Thank goodness I am only a policeman; I do not have to make these decisions. The politicians in this room have to make these decisions about allocation of resources, and there are ways that you can improve the chances of reconciliation by the appropriate allocation of resources.

Our association has encouraged its members to be positive about the prospects of reconciliation, even though we think this is difficult. We have said publicly in our answers to questions that the very fact that the job that has been given to the ICRIR is difficult—to put it at its lowest—should not be a reason for not trying to do it. In fact, the more difficult the task is, perhaps the more we should be trying to do it, because if we took the view, as senior officers of the RUC in 1998, that we want the next 25 years to be better than the previous 25 years, perhaps, as retired officers in 2025, we should be taking a similar view: that we would like the next 25 years to be better than the last 25 years. If that means making sacrifices and so on—for example, in terms of the purity of the staffing of investigative bodies—okay, let us do it, if that brings confidence.

Chris, those are three very good questions at the heart of the ICRIR. The whole concept around reconciliation is a noble pursuit, and is one that every right-thinking person should aspire to. Until there is a willingness of all parties to pursue reconciliation, in some ways the structures in place and the cajoling of that do not really matter. Again, I am trying not to be negative today, but I do have to reflect the views of veterans. That is my job. Chris rightly alluded there to this concept of who jumps first. Many veterans have said to me that in 1998, with the Belfast agreement, veterans did jump, and, as Chris has alluded to, the police force did jump. You could argue wider society did jump on this promise of peace and on this step towards reconciliation. We accepted terrorists in Government. We accepted prisoners just having their records effectively expunged and prison doors opened back into society, and yet the veterans are not allowed to move on. They are still faced with this demonisation and this whole concept of being dragged back to never‑ending inquests. There certainly will not be reconciliation while there is this ongoing demonisation and deliberate attack upon the security forces. As Chris said, we all hope that, 25 years on, we can get to a point of reconciliation. When I came into this post, I remember early on looking at legacy and making the comment to someone, “I do not think there will be reconciliation until this current generation passes away, those who lived the Troubles”. Unfortunately, that view has changed, because through the inquest process and through this legacy process we now see the children of participants of the Troubles continuing with the legal avenues that are open to them. I therefore despair somewhat of the prospects of reconciliation, even with the passing of everyone who was alive during the Troubles. We are now 27 years on and still it is headline news; we are still here at a Committee such as this, 27 years on. That is longer than the Troubles themselves actually lasted and yet we do not seem any closer to reconciliation. There has to be a will of all parties for reconciliation.

To have the reconciliation, everybody has to be willing to do it—and not only do it, but do it properly. Tell the truth, because without truth there cannot be a final reconciliation. You need the truth to have the reconciliation. That is the only way that it will ever work. There has to be the willingness. Somebody has to jump first, but, when somebody jumps first, everybody else has to jump as well. You cannot just have it from one side. You cannot have one side willing and the other one saying, “Well, when you have finished, we will start”, because it will become, “Oh, no, it is not finished. We need to know about this. We need to know about that”. Everybody has to move at the same time. As soon as one starts, everybody has to get involved. That is the big problem over there.

What was the problem in Northern Ireland? What is the source of all the difficulties? Terrorism. Terrorism in a democracy is never, ever justified. That has been the stand taken by all democracies and, of course, the United Kingdom. Therefore, those who engage in terrorism were obviously on the wrong side of things. These men were on the right side of things. What do we need? We need an acknowledgement from those who engaged in terrorism that what they did was wrong. The Ulster Human Rights Watch has a Judeo-Christian interpretation of human rights. Therefore, if there is acknowledgement of wrongdoing, there is the door open for a change and a door open for forgiveness, which leads to reconciliation. It is a very noble aim that is being pursued to have reconciliation. Of course, it will happen in some circumstances; it will not happen in other circumstances. One thing is for sure: terrorists who were terrorists must be reconciled with democracy. They must stop glorifying what they did in the past, as they still do today. If that happens, there will be an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a possibility to lead to forgiveness and reconciliation.

Thank you for all that you have provided us with so far. This is the last one. What is your view on the Irish Government’s engagement with legacy issues? We were in Dublin recently speaking to them about this. I do not know whether that is an intentional wry smile on David’s face; I am just intrigued.

I am very happy to take this one on behalf of the veterans of Northern Ireland. The truth is that the ability of the Irish Government to duck out of the legacy process thus far is probably one of the biggest scandals of legacy. The Irish state was a player in the troubles. Over 500 murders happened along the border corridor, and those who carried out those murders either came from the Irish Republic or went back into the Irish Republic after committing their acts of terrorism. The biggest single loss of life in the Troubles was 18 British soldiers blown up at Narrow Water. Those bombs were detonated from the Irish Republic, and yet the response from the Irish Government and this whole legacy process has been woefully inadequate. Again, from a veteran’s point of view, why is it that veterans are held to a standard? You have the Irish Government taking the British Government through a legal process over legacy. It is certainly time veterans feel that the British Government start to demand the same scrutiny that they have to go through. That is just fundamental. Collusion was mentioned by Chris. Again, he has certainly lost colleagues as a result of collusion from organisations within the Irish Republic. Yet again, if you talk about collusion in terms of legacy, it seems to be a focus only on allegations of so-called British state collusion. There is collusion on both sides. Sir Declan Morgan has been very clear on this. Under the Belfast agreement, the Irish Government did commit to engaging with recovery of information and disclosing relevant information. They have not lived up to their commitments. From a veterans’ point of view, it is definitely time that they come forward, they engage with this process, and they provide the information that is necessary to have a complete picture of the Troubles.

I will actually defer to David on that, to be honest with you. He has said what I was going to say, and more. The Irish state was a player. It is very obvious. It was also a safe haven. It was a safe haven with the Irish state’s permission.

At the policing level, there has always been co-operation between the Royal Ulster Constabulary and An Garda Síochána. I am sure that co-operation continues with the PSNI. It is partly a product of political agreements and so on, but, more than that, it is the product of the natural camaraderie that exists between police officers in different jurisdictions, because they recognise people who are doing a job that is similar to theirs and they experience the same difficulties. There is a culture: “No police officer could make a decision to save his life”; “All judges are useless”. All these little cultural things are shared between different police forces. At the political level, I have to say that I was rather astonished at the inter‑state action, which, as I understand it in my non‑lawyer’s reading, is a suggestion that the British Government were attempting to introduce amnesty, which was contrary to the European convention, and therefore the Irish Government felt obliged to do something about it. They did not do very much about it when the British Government were giving letters of comfort and reducing prison sentences for the most heinous crimes to two years. They did not do very much about it in relation to their own jurisdiction in the period between 1922 and 1998, so there is a difference between the practicalities and the politics of this. If you are in government in Dublin, there are a number of different constituencies that you have to manage, just as you ladies and gentlemen sitting around this table do, when you are in your own constituencies and managing your party associations, or when you are in the House of Commons. I do not belittle the job that politicians down south do, but I do think that it is a bit of a cheek to take the UK Government to the international court over an issue in which they are hardly guiltless themselves.

I entirely agree with what Chris has said. There is in fact very little, if anything, being produced by the Republic of Ireland in order to facilitate any form of investigation or even information and truth recovery in the Republic of Ireland. We have to deal with a number of cross-border cases and we basically do not get anything. Chris has mentioned camaraderie between police forces. Yes, that is always possible, but what is really needed and required from the Republic of Ireland is for it to do exactly the same as is going to be done here. Here, the independent commission will have unfettered access to all the information and material, et cetera, that is in the hands of the security forces, MI5, MoD, et cetera. It should itself provide, by some form of process, unfettered access to what it has in relation to all the cross‑border cases that have been mentioned, and the 500 people who were murdered over the border. If we have that, yes, we will be able to sort out a number of cases, but, if we do not, we are going to be left without the possibility of having the essential information that will allow many of these cases to be resolved.

You touched on some practicalities there. ICRIR’s chief commissioner has called for the commission’s information-gathering powers to be extended to Ireland. I just wonder if anybody has any thoughts on how that could possibly work. Could negotiating an agreement with Dublin delay the introduction of all the other measures? Is that something that we should be considering?

You are tempting me, as a policeman, into the area of international relations, in which I would tread even more warily than I did in certain parts of Northern Ireland. This is an issue that the House of Commons is going to have to address. It is also pertinent to Lord Turnbull’s inquiry into the Omagh bombing, because so much of the evidence that would be relevant to the matters that he is considering can come only from full co‑operation by the Republic of Ireland. If the commission remains in existence and Sir Declan continues to be chief commissioner, he will be looking for a great deal from the Republic, but he can get only what the politicians negotiate with their counterparts in the Republic.

Mr Schmidt, Mr Albiston, Mr Johnstone and Mr Holmes, thank you for your time today.