It is 'unbelievable' that Labour has given Ireland joint control of legacy without demanding it drop its legal action against the UK, says Tory peer
It is ‘unbelievable’ that the Labour did not demand that Ireland drop its legal case against the UK before being allowed to present a joint Britain-Ireland legacy plan, a former UK government minister has said.
Lord (Jonathan) Caine, a long-time Northern Ireland Office advisor before becoming a peer in 2016, and later a junior NIO minister, was speaking about Hilary Benn’s recent announcement with the Irish deputy prime minister Simon Harris of a way forward for dealing with legacy.
Lord Caine told the News Letter: “As anyone in Northern Ireland will tell you, the devil is very often in the detail. But on the reading of the joint framework that the government published a few weeks ago, it seems to me that however much they try and dress this up with protections [for veterans], so-called protections, the consequences of their proposals will inevitably mean that veterans are going to be hauled once again before the coroners courts either remotely or in person. And remotely believe you me doesn’t make a huge amount of difference in this context. But also these proposals will open up once again the prospect of prosecutions, now we all know that that is going to be more likely in the case of veterans than it will for former paramilitaries for obvious reasons.”
Lord Caine, who was at the Conservative conference in Manchester when he spoke to us, said: “The protections themselves, the prime minister said, around the time of the Labour conference, that they are exclusively for veterans, the first briefing I had with the Northern Ireland Office on these proposals, they admitted that five out of the six of the protections for veterans will be available to former paramilitaries. The only one that is exclusive to veterans is that they will be contacted in the first instance by the Ministry of Defence, not a route that I suspect formers members of the IRA or the UVF would want to take.”
He added: “Unbelievably the government did not make it pre-condition that the Irish governmentt drop the interstate case against the UK. It should have been drop the case and we will talk. Instead it is still hanging over the UK almost as a threat and a blackmail. The legislation has to be satisfactory to the Irish government, which has done nothing on legacy within its own jurisdiction since the Belfast Agreement.”