The British government is to introduce further changes to its planned Northern Ireland legacy legislation, Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said.
Speaking to The Irish Times on a visit to Washington DC on Wednesday, Mr Heaton-Harris said the legislation would go ahead but that it was likely to be amended further in the weeks ahead.
Mr Heaton-Harris on Wednesday met a number of senior US politicians on Capitol Hill, including a cohort who had expressed their opposition to the legislation in writing to British prime minister Rishi Sunak last week.
The group of nearly 30 US congressmen said in a letter on Friday that the proposed measures would “undermine the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, the bedrock of peace in Northern Ireland”. They also maintained that the legislation would deny justice to “thousands of families”.
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Mr Heaton-Harris said the British government had announced some changes to the Bill last week and that he was seeking cross-government consent for a further batch of amendments “which I am confident people will understand will improve it greatly”.
The British minister also said he would have to make a decision in about four weeks on whether to call new Assembly elections.
He also said he told the US politicians that talks on the future of the Northern Ireland protocol were continuing between the UK and EU.
Some movement
Mr Heaton-Harris said many had seen the recent joint communique between EU and UK and noticed that there had been some movement.
“I reminded them it was not very big movement but it was the first movement of its kind. It is generally good news but there is a lot more work to be done in this space,” he said.
Asked if he had a contingency plan in the event of an EU-UK agreement being reached on the protocol with which the DUP was unhappy and still refused to go back to Stormont, Mr Heaton-Harris said there were a lot of “what ifs and whataboutery” on that issue and one step should be taken at a time.
He said there was “a long way to go before we get a deal on the protocol”.
Mr Heaton-Harris said no details had emerged from his talks to officials in Washington about a possible visit by US president Joe Biden to Ireland.
The planned British legacy legislation for Northern Ireland will create a new truth recovery body – the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery – which will offer immunity from prosecution to perpetrators who co-operate with its inquiries.
The body will take over responsibility for all Troubles inquiries, and other avenues of criminal and civil investigation and inquests will be closed down.
The plans have been widely condemned, including by the North’s five main political parties, victims and human rights groups, the Irish Government, and other parties in Ireland and in Britain and internationally. The legislation is, however, supported by veterans’ groups.
‘No gap in justice’
Mr Heaton-Harris said new amendments in one area would aim to ensure that there was “no gap in justice”.
“As things stand the commission we will set up comes into function on May 1 this year, and obviously it is not going to be ready to conduct any investigations or anything like that.”
“I want to get cross government consent to change that a bit. Also there is no statute of limitations in this Bill. We want to make sure that if you do not co-operate and then you are found to have done something heinous in the Troubles and then you go through the judicial system as it is now, so there is a penalty.”
“If you perjure or lie to the commission then there are penalties that are commensurate with that”, he said.
Mr Heaton-Harris said he had gone through the proposed amendments with the US politicians to show them what the Bill would look like at the end of the process. He said “this is the last time the British government will look at anything in this legacy space and incumbent on me to get it right”.
