The Ulster Unionist Justice Spokesperson - Doug Beattie MC MLA - has said that the Secretary of State’s appearance at today’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster provided a revealing insight into the Government’s thinking with regard to its proposed legacy arrangements, and warned that a failure to investigate thousands of Troubles related injuries and to focus solely on fatalities, minimises the crimes of terrorists, fails victims and breaches the human rights of tens of thousands of people.
Doug Beattie MC MLA said:
“Today’s appearance by the Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee raised more questions than answers with regard to the Government’s proposed legacy arrangements.
“Today the Labour MP Kate Hoey raised a number of points which the Ulster Unionist Party has been consistently making. Unfortunately, the response from the NIO Official accompanying the Secretary State was less than impressive and did nothing to reduce concerns about the Government’s legacy proposals meeting the NIO’s own tests of being balanced, proportionate, transparent, fair and equitable.
“The Ulster Unionist Party has been highlighting the major flaws in the proposed Historical Inquiries Unit (HIU), not least the fact that it will only investigate
Troubles related deaths, and will disregard the almost 47,000 injured. The inescapable fact is that the vast majority of these 47,000 injuries were caused by terrorist action, not least by the 15,000 explosions that were exclusively the work of terrorists. To disregard those who were injured but not killed, is to remove a huge number of terrorist crimes from the entire legacy debate.
“At Westminster today, Kate Hoey MP pressed the Secretary of State on this matter and another key point which the Ulster Unionist Party has been raising, namely that in choosing a policy of ignoring serious crimes - up to and including attempted murder – the HIU is setting a course that will inevitably lead to the UK Supreme Court, in light of the February 2018 UK Supreme Court ruling in the case of the serial sex attacker John Worboys where it ruled “the Metropolitan Police breached the human rights of John Worboys’ victims by failing to properly investigate reports of his crimes.”
“The response from a senior official that non-fatal crimes would be investigated by the PSNI if new evidence emerges, simply begs the question as to why the PSNI cannot be properly resourced to investigated Troubles related deaths, and why we need the HIU in the first place.”