Troubles bill: 'We need to stop people like Gerry Adams getting internment compensation' House of Lords told

The matter was discussed in the House of Lords on Thursday, as part of the government’s widely-opposed legacy bill, which seeks to halt prosecutions for Troubles crimes.

Whilst the bill is rejected by everyone from the TUV to Sinn Fein – with Nigel Dodds damning it as “unwanted, unloved, and obnoxious” – the Tory government is still intent on making sure it becomes law, and with that in mind, some lords are trying to amend it.

One such amendment came from Lord Faulks (a former Tory, now independent) and Lord Godson (a Tory peer).

It seeks to nullify what Lord Faulks called “the Adams technicality” – a quirk of the law which led to a Supreme Court ruling in 2020 that Mr Adams had been wrongly interned in 1973.

This was because his internment paperwork was not signed by the Secretary of State, but by the Minister of State – his junior.

Mr Adams had been among those swept up by security forces as the bodycount in the Province began to rocket during the early 1970s, with nearly 700 murders by the start of 1973.

He was convicted for trying to escape, twice – but since his internment was technically unlawful, these convictions were quashed, so Mr Adams sought compensation.

By the end of 2021, the number of similar such claims had ballooned to roughly 400 or so.

Lord Faulks said of his amendment today: “It does not revive any criminal conviction quashed, as with Adams’s attempted escape from prison, but it does prevent any damages being recovered where the only basis for claims is the Adams technicality, if I may call it that...

“It represents an opportunity to put right an erroneous decision and prevent unmeritorious claims being pursued.”

Baroness Hoey, the Newtownabbey-born former Labour MP, warned the house that “although the whole issue around Gerry Adams has not got a huge amount of publicity, everyone who thinks they have got a chance of getting compensation will apply, and it will be a huge amount of money” – quite likely in the millions of pounds.

"This amendment is crucial to ensuring that people in Northern Ireland feel confident that the injustice of people getting compensation for an administrative error is going to be dealt with,” she said.

And cross-bench peer Lord Butler agreed, saying: “I submit that the Government are entitled to protect themselves from having to pay compensation from the public purse for what is not an injustice but a procedural glitch.”

In the event, despite the support it received, the amendment was not moved.

In addition, there was a lot of discussion about the glorification of terror.

On that topic, Lord Dodds tabled a pair of amendments, aimed at changing a little-remarked-on part of the bill – namely, the section dealing with state memorialisation of the Troubles.

BILL PROPOSES STATE MEMORIALISATION OF TROUBLES

Whilst the overwhelming media focus has been on the bill's central feature, the ending of Troubles prosecutions, Part Four of it deals with the government memorialisation of the dead.

It says the government will ensure "Troubles-related oral history records are created and are collected and preserved in Northern Ireland, especially oral history records which recount the personal experience of persons in groups and communities in Northern Ireland that are under-represented in current collections".

A "catalogue" of these will be "made available on a website which the public can use without charge".

The bill also calls for "a study of relevant memorialisation activities" which happen in Northern Ireland, and says "consideration must be given to whether the establishment of a new museum, memorial or similar project".

Whoever is doing all these things must ensure that "there is support from different communities in Northern Ireland for the way in which that programme is carried out" and "a variety of views of the Troubles is taken into account in carrying out that programme".

This, said Lord Dodds, could be a problem.

"This focus on ‘a variety of views’ is problematic given that, sadly, a significant number of people in our community repeatedly not only refuse to disavow violence and terrorism but go further and eulogise and glorify acts of terrorism,” he said.

"They want to put on a pedestal those who carried out acts of violence. They do this through parades, vigils, rallies and the installation of memorials and so on at sports grounds, on housing executive property and on roadsides.

"This is to continue what has been referred to throughout these debates as the revision of history – the rewriting of the history of the Troubles, so that those in the security forces who stood fast in the way of terrorism are denigrated to a large extent in the eyes of some.

"The terrorists are elevated by some to have been engaged in noble acts of warfare.”

He proposed amendments to “ensure that designated persons responsible for making recommendations about the initiation and carrying out of relevant memorialisation activities are under a duty to prevent the glorification of Troubles-related offences,” and to “ensure that only innocent victims are included as victims”.

Both the Dodds amendments, and the Faulks / Godson one, were not voted on; this may happen during the next stage of the bill’s progress (the report stage), whenever that may be.

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