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Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

My amendment, Amendment No. 34, is in this group and attempts to achieve something quite similar. These amendments handle the restrictions that the commission has on what information it can request. Currently the Bill prevents it asking for anything from before 1 August 2007. I think that the commission has a point that documents or information from before that date could be relevant to a current investigation, so we have tabled an amendment to allow the county court to let through a request, even if it breaches the timing restriction, as long as it is relevant and appropriate. That is the difficulty. I do not think that the commission should be given a free hand to decide this, since its ideas about what was relevant might be very different to that of the courts. We do not want all the restrictions lifted, by any means, which is what I think some Members of the Committee would like to see happen. I and my party are very much against any more investigations raking up old cases from the past. However, we see that there is some sort of anomaly here and, if Her Majesty's Government could find their way around this so that access could be allowed in a restricted way and confined to a particular case, that is what we would like to see. We are not supporting any form of wholesale investigation before the date stated in the Bill.