Editorial: The Northern Ireland courts must be stopped on legacy because they are now at risk of being allowed to dictate who gets inquiries

​Something of the utmost seriousness was confirmed in the Belfast courts yesterday, and if you listened to BBC Northern Ireland you wouldn’t realise it.​

The NI Appeal Court has effectively taken control of policy making on legacy. This goes back to the order by a Belfast judge that a public inquiry be held into the murder of the GAA official Sean Brown in 1997.

The justification for this is that there has not been an investigation into the heinous loyalist murder sufficient to meet an article of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Lady Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Dame Siobhan Keegan, has called this failure “shocking”.

It is indeed shocking. But then so many Troubles murders, and their subsequent treatment, are so. It is shocking, for example, that the barrister, academic and politician Edgar Graham’s 1983 murder by the IRA was considered by the former Historical Enquiries Team (HET) who wrote to his family to say that there was no new evidence, so no investigation. This is the fate of hundreds of families. It is not possible to order public inquiries into all or indeed even many of them costing tens of millions each.

It is thus a basic legal and political principle that the government has discretion in whether or not to hold an actual public inquiry, as opposed to a robust but lesser probe of a nature that other victims could also avail.

The coverage of this case, not least by the national broadcaster, has been lamentable. It is as if a callous, secretive government is acting wickedly, as opposed to responding in the only way possible, given the existing deluge of legacy demands and the utter failure of victims of the biggest Troubles killers, the IRA, to get anything even approaching proper scrutiny.

If the courts prevail on this, and in effect decide who gets full inquiries, then the legacy crisis will deepen, and Keir Starmer will be to blame for allowing it.