Professor Kieran McEvoy:

For us the driver is very clear, and the driver for this is to achieve impunity for state actors. The Secretary of State has said as much on the Conservative website home page. I suspect he did so without taking advice from the Northern Ireland Office, NIO, lawyers because if they had been beside him I do not think he would have written what he did. I suggest the committee have a look at the website. The UK Government is being quite frank; it is something it planned to do.

The fact that this has been railroaded through the House of Commons in the face of complete opposition from all of Northern Ireland's political parties tells us that this is not about achieving reconciliation in Northern Ireland. If one was serious about achieving reconciliation in Northern Ireland, one would have worked much harder to bring Northern Ireland's political parties and civil society together. All of the major victim groups in Northern Ireland are opposed to the Bill. The UK has also abandoned its partnership approach with the Irish Government. If people were serious about achieving reconciliation in Northern Ireland, they would have worked on bringing all of those constituencies with them.

Our strong view is that the evidence all points to the fact that it is not about what is happening in Northern Ireland; it is about what is happening in Britain and on the right of the Tory Party. There has been a vocal campaign from elements, but not all of, the veterans community, which has lobbied for some form of amnesty. As the committee knows, a version of an assumptive amnesty was put through in the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 for British army veterans who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and other international operations. The assumption was that after five years had passed, veterans would get an amnesty. At the time, the UK Government promised it would do something similar for British army veterans who served in Northern Ireland. What the driver is, to achieve impunity for state actors, is not a secret.