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Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) (Order) 2006

I am grateful for all the contributions. I do not want to start another debate, but they were not all as helpful as each other to the settlement of a good future for the people of Northern Ireland. I will stick to the order because I would go into dangerous territory if I deviated from it. As I have made clear, the order involves a lot of sensitive issues, but I have been asked some questions that go way beyond the order and, if I can respond to those points with a degree of comfort, I will. Give that we have the order, it would be difficult to open up a debate on who is more of a victim than anyone else or who is an innocent victim. Should the partners or families of people who have been involved in the Troubles be classified as victims or survivors or be excluded even though they are ordinary citizens but, nevertheless, have been tied up in the Troubles because of the actions of partners or other members of the family? I realise that there are problems of legal definitions anyway; if people are really upset about them, they can always resort to going to court if they are so minded. If we exclude categories of people because they, let us say, have served a term of imprisonment, some might even want to exclude their partners and families in future. I fully accept that there are some dodgy issues here. We cannot completely rewrite the order. There would be substantial difficulties in pursuing that. A lot of voluntary groups, some cross-community, are involved in this. It would in no way be a good idea to open up legal niceties that stopped even cross-community approaches. To answer one point, nobody is going to be forced to sit in a room with people they do not want to sit in a room with. There is no idea of specific performance here. The remit of the commissioner is set out. It may not be as powerful as some would wish. For example, there is no facility for the victims commissioner to be involved in giving grants. However, if anything, that would create far more scope for hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds spent on parliamentary Answers to Questions about the grants—as, indeed, happens now with the voluntary sector. Let us get this absolutely clear. The funding of the victims commissioner is effectively by the Government of Northern Ireland: the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. In other words, it is taxpayers’ money. Let us leave aside direct rule for the moment, because that does not change the funding mechanism. The victims commissioner is funded by public funds. There is no voluntary sector funding issue, or overseas funding. It will be part of the budget for Northern Ireland, which will be clear for everyone to see. A good number of bodies and organisations provide services. I do not have a full list, although I came across many of them in my year in Northern Ireland as one of the Ministers. I have seen many more lists, as answering parliamentary Questions requires. The provisions of the order relate to the commissioner looking at services for victims and survivors provided by all bodies. We should not try to second-guess the commissioner, whoever he or she may be following an appointment. We will ask them to do a specific, professional job, and we should let them get on with it. They will be accountable in the court of public opinion in any event. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, asked me a specific question about the Alliance proposals in the recent discussions. We are grateful for the Alliance’s paper, and careful consideration is being given to the ideas in it. However, no decisions have been taken yet. I am grateful for the welcome of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. I am unaware of a plan of work set up by the Secretary of State. To be honest, given how we have gone with the order over the summer, the reasonable assumption of the Secretary of State’s office is that he would not be doing this after 24 November anyway. In that sense, there is no plan. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, that our intention is—as I have said, and will say in relation to other orders—to progress what it is in the pot at the moment. We sincerely hope, however, with advertisements and public consultations through the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments, that by the time a victims commissioner is appointed in 2007, the work would be done by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, actually there and responsible in Northern Ireland. It would not be done by the Secretary of State, subject to the vagaries of fate—it takes quite a while to advertise. I am not saying that this would happen, but it is our sincere hope that it does—people in Northern Ireland should be making these decisions, not direct rule Ministers. In the absence of that, however, we are making progress. We now have an interim commissioner, and we want to put the commissioner on a statutory footing. That requires going through due process, which is what we intend to do.