Ms Judith Thompson:

Regarding the issue of an amnesty, it does not matter whether I talk to people in Ireland, the United Kingdom or other parts of Great Britain, I do not for the most part meet victims and survivors who want there to be an amnesty. I meet many people who say prosecutions are not that important to them, but that is different from saying there should be no attempt to uncover the truth of what happened. It does not matter whether one talks to soldiers’ families – soldiers were often killed – or to people who died at the hands of the army. None of these people wants to be told that the way to draw a line under this is to bury it. That is what they have been told already and it just feels like a lack of acknowledgement that what happened mattered. The point is that to move on, to draw that line, information needs to be given to those who want it and there must be an acknowledgement at a much more civic level of the wrong and the harm that was done. That is how one draws a line and moves on. One does not do so by suppressing investigation. I think everyone in this room is very familiar with the arguments about the legality of an amnesty. It is very clear. It can be legal if it is universal for all parties to the conflict and is accompanied by an information retrieval process. That is not the conversation I hear happening. What I hear is a conversation about whether this person or that person should not be pursued or held accountable. I am afraid that uncomfortable accountability is part of this process. It is not about pillorying individuals who are elderly now, no matter who they are, but it is about saying harm happened and that people who were harmed and who want information are entitled to it, regardless of what happens to the person who caused that harm. At the end of the day, under the law, there should be a fair, impartial, competent investigation into somebody’s death. That is all people are looking for.

The terms of the Good Friday Agreement, as people in this room are very aware, still apply. They apply to everyone, including soldiers. No one will do more than two years in prison, even if they were convicted, and the likelihood of anyone being convicted is pretty low.

What is important is access to information and an acknowledgement. Talking about amnesties is a distraction in providing it and in moving on. It is not lawful to provide for amnesties in the way in which it is often proposed to provide for them and I do not believe it would meet the needs of victims and survivors or society more generally in dealing with the past in a way that would allow people to draw a line and move on. That is my take on the question of amnesties.

On costs, yes, this would be expensive, but I ask the committee to consider adding up what it is now costing to do nothing. We are not doing anything. Certainly, in the United Kingdom there are repeated legal actions and mounting costs arising from judicial reviews. We finally have funding to properly equip coroners’ courts to deal with a backlog of 50 cases. We also have a legacy investigation branch within the Police Service of Northern Ireland which is neither equipped nor constructed in a way which enables it to have the confidence of the public and the courts in doing its job, but it is still costing money to run it. In 2013 the criminal justice inspectorate produced a report in which it added up what it thought was the cost of dealing with the past in Northern Ireland. It stated the figure was £30 million a year. I think those costs have gone up, not down, and we have been spending this money for decades, but it should not be about money. However, if we are going to talk about it, I ask the committee to consider adding up the cost of what we are now doing and set it against how the money could be spent better. I argue that we need to do different things to deal with the past in terms of justice, as well as spending more on mental health, advocacy and support services for victims and survivors. The long-term results would be much better for people, families, victims and survivors and, naturally, communities and civic society also.

Regarding conversations with the Government, we are delighted to be here. In the consultation we were certainly helpfully assisted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We also worked with Justice for the Forgotten in contacting people, as well as with Austin Stack and others connected with him to get people together, but the proof of the pudding will be in what is implemented. I know that there is ongoing work on legislation to enable information to be passed between jurisdictions on civil matters, but more is needed. As Mr. Bracknell described, there is a need for a counterpart to this investigative unit working here. I have had the same conversation with families in Birmingham. There is a need for something to happen in parts of the United Kingdom also. People who have been left wanting for decades do not expect the system that has failed to deliver to date to do better for them next time and why should they?