Mr. Daniel Holder:

In terms of interventions, again, we go back to the issue of an inter-state case. I am not overly optimistic that there will be a change of direction in terms of whatever is currently happening with the UK Government. I am not sure how much has changed since we came into this room. It was correct to highlight the issues in Brandon Lewis's resignation letter speaking about honesty and integrity. The command paper he produced was an example of big-lie politics. It was deeply dishonest, both the reasoning and what was set out in it.

In terms of the Bill itself, it is through the House of Commons. The only amendment that I think went through was an opposition amendment from the Labour Party that sought to remove sexual offences from the scope of immunity in the Bill. However, that does not actually change it. If that has gone through and it remains within the Bill, someone cannot apply for immunity for having committed conflict-related sexual offences, but they still have a de facto amnesty from being investigated for those offences because the Bill still bans anyone - the police, the police ombudsman or whoever - from actively conducting a criminal investigation. Whatever the role of the prosecutor, the prosecutor cannot prosecute without an investigation preceding that. The very limited powers of the information recovery body may come into play in some of those cases, but they are very limited. A review is not the same as an investigation. It is almost as if we are not just replacing the word "review" with "investigation" but, given the historical distrust for good reason, about the lack of independence and effective Article 2-compliant investigations, there were huge amounts of safeguards built into the Stormont House Agreement Bill in everything that should have been in there. There was a lot in there about how the historical investigations unit would have conducted Article 2 compliant investigations, what were the steps that it had to go through, what were the investigative powers it would have in particular circumstances; how it would comply with Article 2 and; what the final product would be that was delivered to families. There were guarantees in the legislation that the reports had to be "as comprehensive as possible" and to include findings. It is as if someone has gone through this current Bill and taken out piece by piece each and every single one of those safeguards. The type of desktop reviews that will be conducted by these new bodies will not meet those standards. There are no guarantees that families will even know if anyone has been given immunity in a particular case, let alone whether there are any findings in the reports that they get.