Editorial: Unionists and Tory MPs seem not to see that plans to tackle the legacy of the Troubles are again gradually turning on state forces

Yesterday the junior Northern Ireland Office minister Lord Caine published amendments to the government’s legacy bill.

He said that ministers had moved a long way from their proposals of three years ago, of a blanket statute of limitations for all Troubles-related offences.Lord Caine then went on to detail various changes to the legacy legislation.

Anyone looking at it all at a glance would think that this was a move away from an amnesty for terrorists.

But that is not the thrust of what is happening. In fact the whole legacy structures are being moved back towards a process which vindicates terrorism and demonises the state.

We have been reporting on this for years in this newspaper, almost alone. You would think now that unionism as a whole and that the government would know what is going on. But they seem not to do so.

Yes, London has tried to stop disproportionate prosecutions of soldiers, which are of course an outrage given that no senior IRA terrorist mass murderer will ever face charges. As the political and legal establishments know, if a republican leader was so much as to be arrested there would be uproar, and if proceedings against them gathered pace there might be disorder.

So instead the government sought to shut down all prosecutions. But now the legacy monster of 2014 Stormont House is re-emerging.

Below see link to where we publish (again) the distinguished lawyer Neil Faris, who has been one of a small number of persistent critics of the anti state legacy scandal (the handful of others including the human rights activist Jeff Dudgeon, the barrister Austen Morgan and the academic Cillian McGrattan).

When will unionism, and Tory MPs, pay close attention to what these people are saying about how the revised legacy plan will again turn against the UK state?

• Neil Faris: Legacy will give excess powers to investigatory teams