Schedule 2 - Special Tribunal
Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill
9:45 am
Jeffrey M Donaldson (Lagan Valley, DUP)
If the hon. Gentleman is as adept and skilful on his feet as he is with his words, perhaps we could enter him for “Strictly Come Dancing”. He would have my full support.
The hon. Gentleman has made a valid point. Perhaps we ought to be questioning not the mental capacity of the judges to deal with these issues, but their physical capacity to lift their arm and apply their rubber stamp to whatever the deemed pronouncements are. When the rest of the Bill is considered—the fact that the police will not be able to arrest, detain or question on-the-runs, or take samples, fingerprints and so on from them—the prospect of securing convictions is pretty minimal.
The Minister has said that the scope of the tribunal goes much beyond the question of OTRs; it includes addressing the issue of cold case review and cases that will emerge from that, which might involve serious crimes, including murder. There is an issue here, which he needs to address. That is why we have tabled amendment No. 42, which would require that the judge who sat on a special tribunal held high judicial office. We believe that current judges should be involved, and there is no reason why the Government could not appoint additional judges.
I do not accept the Minister’s argument that the arrangement is temporary. If he had accepted amendments discussed at earlier sittings, when we sought to limit the lifespan of the tribunal to six or 12months, I might have accepted his argument. Currently, the reality is that the process is open-ended. If a 75-year-old judge were appointed to sit on one of the tribunals—we are talking about things that might happen in five or 10 years—it would beggar belief.
It is not a sufficient defence to argue that the inclusion of the cases in the normal judicial system would clog up the courts and that judges would not be able to cope with the case load. There is no doubt that the number of cases under the anti-terrorism legislation in Northern Ireland and under the Diplock court system has reduced significantly in recent years. If there were to be an upsurge in violence—the Minister says that is unlikely; maybe so—how could the judicial system cope?