NI Secretary of State Hilary Benn on Legacy Act and victims
Hilary Benn has said victims’ families will be central to future plans to deal with the legacy of the Troubles here during his first visit to the city as Labour’s new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
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00:00Can I just ask, I know you spoke some on this yesterday about the Legacy Act, and the Labour
00:06commit to making families front and centre of any revised or new plans for legacy and
00:12dealing with the troubles here?
00:14Yes we will, because what is the whole purpose of having a structure, a new structure for
00:21dealing with this really difficult issue of legacy, other than for the families?
00:29I have met many, from my first visit when I was appointed Shadow Secretary of State
00:33and I went to the Wave Centre, and I have met a number of families of those who lost
00:39their lives during the troubles since, and what is quite clear is that the Legacy Act
00:46as it is currently on the statute book does not have support from the families, and it
00:51doesn't have support from political parties in Northern Ireland, and that is why we are
00:55committed to repeal and replace it.
00:58Now there are component parts of that process.
01:01I say repeal and replace because you can't just strike it from the statute book and leave
01:05a void, because that isn't going to help anybody either.
01:09So first of all, conditional immunity, that has already been struck down by the High Court
01:17in Belfast, and we are committed to remove that from the statute book.
01:22Secondly, we will work in consultation with families, political parties and others, including
01:28talking to the Irish Government, and I met Michail Martin last Saturday at Hillsborough
01:34Castle and this was one of the issues that we discussed, how can we restore civil cases
01:40and inquests in particular, those inquests that were brought to a crashing halt by the
01:45May 1st deadline kicking in and stopping all of those.
01:50When it comes to the independent commission, I have made it clear previously that I am
01:53not proposing to abolish it.
01:56For this reason, we have talked about wanting to get back to the principles of the Stormont
02:00House Agreement, that envisages actually two separate organisations, one dealing with information
02:05recovery, the other dealing with continuing investigations, they are in effect combined
02:11in the commission.
02:12I welcome what Sir Declan Morgan has said about the way in which he wants the commission
02:16to go about its work, for example, having public hearings, I think that is a really
02:21positive step and I am looking forward to meeting him soon in my new capacity to talk
02:26about how that can be taken forward, but in the end, coming back to the heart of your
02:33question, the success of the commission will be judged ultimately by the families, does
02:41it work for them, does it give them what they have been looking for, that all the previous
02:46efforts at trying to resolve the question of legacy have not been able to do, and one
02:52other point, one of the reasons why inquests have had difficulty is because they have no
02:57mechanism for dealing with what are called closed material proceedings, when you are
03:03dealing with information, some of which does have to be withheld for reasons of national
03:07security, whereas the commission does have the capacity to do that, so you have inquests
03:14that don't, currently the commission that does, and I hope in time, I also want to make
03:20some changes to the governance of the commission, people have claimed it is not independent
03:25from the Secretary of State, and I accept that argument, but in the end it is the victim's
03:32families who will judge, does this process work, nothing is going to bring back those
03:37who have been killed, nothing, and the grief and the pain I have seen etched on every single
03:43face, and I have heard it in every single voice that I have listened to, in talking
03:48to those families, but I want to have a system, it may not get everybody's support, but the
03:54current Legacy Act has no support at all, and that is why we are committed to repeal
03:57and replace it.
03:58Thank you.
03:59Do you have a time frame for when you want to see the changes?
04:04Yes, the honest answer is as soon as possible, some things we may be able to do relatively
04:10quickly, others if they require primary legislation, well you need to draft that, but when I say
04:15that I am committed to consulting with families, with political parties in Northern Ireland,
04:21with the Irish Government, I mean it, and that takes time because you need to consult
04:28on the various options, try and get as broad a consensus as possible, and then to draft
04:34legislation to put that into effect, but nobody should be in any doubt about our commitment
04:40to do what we have promised to do, both in our election manifesto as the Labour Party
04:44and as set out in the King's speeches.
04:47Thank you.
04:48BBC News.
04:49Secretary of State, could I ask you, given what you have just said, do you not feel under
04:53increasing pressure, given what relatives have been saying, what Amnesty International
04:58has been saying, what Baroness Nill-O-Long has been saying, there is no faith or confidence
05:04in that commission, it needs to be scrapped in their view, and you need to start again,
05:09it's tainted, some would say, because it's a Tory Act and it's a component part of all
05:13of that, do you not need to start again, do you feel under pressure, do you see a building
05:17of pressure there?
05:19Look, I'm trying to take a pragmatic approach.
05:22So go back to the Stormont House Agreement.
05:25Not everybody, but most people agreed, you need a mechanism for finding out what happened,
05:33and you need a mechanism for continuing investigations.
05:36I mean, one of the things about the commission, there is a misunderstanding.
05:39Some people say that would be the end of any possible prosecution, that is not correct,
05:44if you listen to what Sir Edward Morgan has said.
05:47He's made it clear that if in the course of their work they come across information, evidence
05:52that they think might lead to a prosecution, then they would pass it to the DPP for it
05:58to be considered in the normal way.
06:01Many of the families that I've met are aware that the prospects over time of prosecutions
06:06is diminishing, and I've heard families say to me, look, I know that no one's going to
06:10be held to account for what happened, but I want to find out what happened.
06:15And since the Stormont House Agreement said we need these two functions, since these two
06:20functions now exist in the form of the commission, I would ask people just to put on one side
06:26what the motivation was from the last government in putting the Legacy Act in place,
06:30and judge what I'm saying that we intend to do on its merits.