The UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the rights of victims and their families have not been diminished by the amended operation of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) all but guarantees the final passage of the UK government’s replacement Troubles Bill. But it does little to satisfy its critics. The Supreme Court rejected the NI Courts’ finding that the Windsor Framework was the proximate cause of diminution, leaving open the possibility of a referral to the European Court of Human Rights and other legal challenges case by case. However there will be some confidence in official circles that the European Court of Human Rights will not frontally challenge its ruling.
Disappointed republican-leaning and other victims support groups and critical lawyers will now have to decide whether further long drawn out legal action serves the best interests of truth recovery for the people who matter most, the survivors and families themselves.
It is not that the UKSC has answered all questions or settled all doubts. The persistent chronic distrust of successive UK governments’ legacy legislation obviously inhibited confidence in the main instrument of truth recovery, the so ambitiously entitled Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. Criticism of the legislation forced a immediate Labour rethink to go further with a wholesale rebranding of the ICRIR.
But the result so far has not removed suspicions that Starmer’s Labour has followed its usual trend and has bent to pressure from the Army lobby to end prosecutions of veterans – pressure that enjoys widespread patriotic support in Great Britain. Can Labour satisfy the opposing pressures on the one hand, putting elderly veterans beyond the reach of the courts and avoiding so called double jeopardy without a formal amnesty ; or on the other, facing challenges for breaching Article 2 the right of victims to justice? This is the very measure that forced the removal of the ICRIR’s ability to offer conditional amnesty believed to have been targeted on former paramiliitaries. The final form of the new Act is awaited.
The Army lobby’s satisfaction is countered by critics’ claims of continued coverup of state collusion with paramilitary murderers and alleged summary executions by
soldiers. The Court tried to provide reassurance on this crucial point. The Secretary of State’s powers to withold information are neither unrestrained nor the final say. They do not mean that the Commission will lack independence in disclosing sensitive information to the next of kin, victims and the public”.
Under the new Legacy Bill grinding its way through Parliament to become The Troubles Act , civil actions have been restored and 24 outstanding legacy inquests will be pursued. Meanwhile the ICRIR will continue with truth recovery in over 260 cases . It will hand over the state of progress to the new Legacy Commission next year or early 2028. The rebranding of the Commission comes closer to complying with the original Stormont House legislation without creating the proposed independent investigations unit with powers to trawl all over state records rejected by the previous Conservative government. It will attempt to address criticisms the abandoned unit was designed to address such as conflict of interest whereby commission staff recruited from among ex local police officers digging into the record of old comrades. The Troubles Act will we’re assured strengthen the commission’s independence from controversial government influence. Whether the Commission would blow the whistle on refusals to disclose on security grounds remains to be seen. Courtroom type examinations which could lead to prosecutions have been added to its procedures and public hearings, substituting a bureaucratic process with a more open one. All of it supervised by that old favourite from early GFA days, an oversight body. Crucially the Irish government will cooperate with it. A separate truth recovery body will create other routes to finding out the truth, ( like reminiscences from former paramilitaries that don’t incriminate, like the Republic’s Bureau of Military History covering the war of independence ?) . We need to know more.
The acid test of confidence in the Legacy Commission ( always my preferred title incidentally) will crucially depend on victims’ willingness to put its effectiveness to the test and their response to the actual results.
Former BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London
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