Mr. Daniel Holder:

Okay. Let me give Ms Gildernew an example from the command paper itself, which includes the following sentence: "Security Forces were responsible for around 10% of Troubles-related deaths - the vast majority of which were lawful." That is a position put forward by the UK Government. First of all, the 10% figure clearly represents an absolute denial that any collusion ever took place because that is just the figure for persons directly killed by the security forces. Clearly, the phrase the "vast majority" of killings by the security forces were lawful is problematic on a number of levels. Clearly, that assessment cannot be made when state killings were never effectively and independently investigated. It is also problematic in the sense that it implies that most of the people who were victims of the state were guilty of very serious offences at the time they were killed, otherwise the killings would not have been lawful.

We put in a freedom of information request. It is a very grand claim to make. We put a freedom of information request into the Northern Ireland Office to get hold of the assessment it conducted to reach that particular claim. The response we got was that it held no information in relation to that particular claim. We pushed back at it to ask how it made the assessment. Did it just make it up or was there something upon which this was based? What it came back to was that very few people were convicted and, of course, we know the reason that is the case. We have been through it already today. The rule of law was simply very rarely applied to the security forces in those circumstances and that explains the very few convictions. Other areas of law were alluded to earlier, where there were sexual offences, in particular, where there are very few convictions. It does not mean offences did not take place. It is, therefore, extremely problematic to have that type of official truth, which is clearly not grounded in any credible assessment, being produced in an official policy paper. If this legislation goes through, I would anticipate seeing much more of that.