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It is worth noting that the Tory manifesto pledges were in fact quite limited.
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Brandon Lewis’ statement following this year’s Queen’s Speech openly pitched his new legacy approach as one that would “deliver manifesto commitments to veterans.”
BLUEPRINT WESTMINSTER DRIVER
The key driver now of course is to protect British Army veterans and if that requires gutting the SHA then that is what the government plans to do. It is a strategy of gaslighting in plain sight. Having made the deal with the parties, repeatedly renewed promises to them, the Irish government the European Court and affected families that the legislation will be introduced, it has proceeded to intermittently consult, delay, procrastinate. This has not happened as the UK repeatedly reneged on commitments to introduce the SHA legislation, not least in its periodic answers to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers as to how it would address European Court of Human Rights’ findings that conflict cases have not been properly investigated.
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BLUEPRINT WESTMINSTER ARCHIVE
The Independent Commission for Information Retrieval (ICIR) an individual-case information recovery mechanism with immunities for statements (similar to the model used for the disappeared commission) and the Oral History Archive would also be well established.
BLUEPRINT WESTMINSTER FULL
The Historical Investigation Unit (HIU) –a fully independent unit conducting police-type investigations with full police and disclosure powers– would also by now have completed much of its work. To recap, the SHA, as well as agreeing that legacy inquests would remain a separate process, was to set up a number of mechanisms. Had the 2014 SHA been implemented at the time the legacy inquests programme would by now be completing its work. In addition, many families affected by Operation Kenova and other ‘called in’ investigations must be wondering whether the reports completed by Jon Boutcher and his team will now ever see the light of day or whether, like the reports of Stevens and Stalker before him, his work will be condemned to gather dust because it might expose too much. Another key question is whether the British Government also intends to make a fresh attempt to pull down legacy inquests to curtail the type of truth recovery recently witnessed over the Ballymurphy massacre. Needless to say, the British government directly interfering with cases before the courts, because it does not wish soldiers to be held accountable on murder and other serious charges, represents a fundamental attack on the separation of powers as well as the GFA devolution settlement. One key issue is whether the ‘legacy bill’ will try to legislate to derail ongoing criminal proceedings. The details were promised in ‘coming weeks’ but remain to be seen.The NIO, already under investigation from the Equality Commission for declining to release equality documentation from its original 2020 internal legacy bill process, and much criticised for failing to engage at all after the March 2020 statement, has finally begun to do so. This contained further details on almost every other one of the dozens of planned bills in the Queen’s Speech, except the NI legacy bill. Alongside the 11th May Queen’s Speech, No 10 published a 163 page ‘background briefing note’. That unilateral move came just two months after his predecessor had promised to implement the SHA within 100 days as part of the deal to restore Stormont.įurther official detail has yet to emerge. Yet these leaks contained the first hint of what government plans to do with regard to legacy since the Brandon Lewis’ Westminster Statement of the 18th March 2020 suddenly departed from the Stormont House Agreement. The leaks appeared on the same day as gun boats were despatched to ward French fishers off Jersey fish. The recent Whitehall legacy leaks to the London Times and Telegraph on the NIO’s proposed legacy bill undoubtedly had an element of (English) election day propaganda about them.