Mr. Paul Butler:

The current situation reflects that the North has not been a priority for both Governments, and, primarily, the Tory Government. The difficulties with Brexit and the collapse of Stormont mean there has not been a focus on dealing with the past, hence we are at the point where none of the mechanisms that all of us agree would give some measure of resolution and that try to deal with the past is being used. In that situation, it is important for the likes of this committee to try to emphasise to the Government that this needs to be done. The committee has done good work. When the Good Friday Agreement was set up, the North was the focus of attention constantly for both Governments and we need to get back to those days.

The origin of Relatives for Justice was state violence. We represent people, however, whose loved ones were killed by the IRA. We also have the quilt project where loved ones put a square on a quilt. There are perhaps 40 squares on the quilts. We are up to our 11th quilt. Most of the people were killed by loyalists, the RUC, UDR and British army but some people were killed by the IRA.

I was trying to give the committee a sense of where things stand. As the other witnesses mentioned, the only mechanism people in the North have is the Police Ombudsman, whose office has been starved of resources despite the fact that a judge in the High Court in Belfast was scathing during a recent judicial review and said more resources should be provided to it. The office has 400 complaints. It primarily deals with complaints against the former police service in the North, the RUC. The complaints are grouped and the investigations are given names such as Operation Achilles and Operation Greenwich. Most of them relate to RUC misconduct and to RUC handlers running agents in both the UDA and the UVF.

A big issue with the investigations is preventability. Could the murders have been prevented? Yesterday, for example, the case of Gary Hegarty, who was involved in five or six murders of Catholics, came up before the High Court. He made strong claims about two handlers to whom he had given that information, yet the five Catholics were murdered. Operation Achilles relates to killings in a bookmaker's shop in south Belfast by the UDA and three other murders in the area. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland is looking at collusion between the UDA and the RUC. Operation Greenwich involves 20 murders. Most of the victims were members of Sinn Féin or the IRA and they were killed by the UDA acting on information from the RUC. Members of the UDR were also involved. A report on that is imminent.

The Loughinisland report focused on the UVF and a shipment of South African weapons that were used. Operation Ashton is an investigation into 19 murders in east Tyrone. Some involved republicans and nationalists who were killed by the UVF. Operation Newham relates to Glenanne and 120 murders. Operation Medfield is examining the activities of the UVF and UDA in the greater Belfast area from the 1970s until the end of the conflict. It is a major investigation into RUC misconduct, with RUC special branch handling agents killing both republicans and Catholics. There is a major investigation by the ombudsman into the South African weapons shipment, about which British intelligence knew. The DUP and the Ulster Resistance were involved in bringing it to the North. There is an investigation around Stakeknife, which relates to allegations of an informer who was in the IRA. This gives a sense of the state collusion involving the RUC and British intelligence.

That is what we primarily deal with. The relatives of people the IRA killed are entitled to the truth about what happened to their loved ones but there is a higher threshold for the state. This was the state acting with impunity through British soldiers, RUC men and UDR members.