By Tony O’Reilly-
Former South Down MP Baroness Margaret Ritchie has called for clarification over whether proposed new duties on public authorities will apply to investigations into Troubles-related deaths and other legacy cases in Northern Ireland.
Questions have been raised in the House of Lords over the potential impact of the proposed Hillsborough Law on Northern Ireland’s efforts to investigate the legacy of the Troubles. Baroness Margaret Ritchie, who represented South Down in the House of Commons before entering the Lords, said greater clarity was needed over whether the legislation’s proposed duty of candour would apply to the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) and any body that may eventually replace it.
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The Public Office (Accountability) Bill is commonly known as the Hillsborough Law because of its origins in the long campaign by the families of those who died in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. The Bill is intended to strengthen accountability within public authorities by requiring officials to act with candour, transparency and frankness when responding to inquiries and investigations. It has already completed its stages in the House of Commons and received its second reading in the House of Lords. It remains subject to further parliamentary scrutiny before it can become law.
For victims and survivors in Northern Ireland, the precise scope of the proposed legislation could have important consequences. During the Lords debate, Baroness Ritchie said she had been contacted by the Victims and Survivors Commission and Amnesty International in Northern Ireland. She said both organisations supported the principle of a statutory duty of candour but wanted assurances that it would apply equally to all relevant public authorities. In particular, she said victims’ organisations wanted the duty to extend to the security services.
“Those bodies representing victims in Northern Ireland want the duty of candour to apply to all, including the security services,” she told peers.
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Baroness Ritchie said the issue was particularly important because of the history of secrecy surrounding some Troubles-related investigations.
She then turned to the question of how the legislation would interact with the ICRIR, which was established to investigate deaths and other serious incidents connected with the Troubles.
She argued that the Bill’s definitions of an “inquiry” and an “investigation” required further examination.
Baroness Ritchie warned that if the duty of candour did not apply to an ICRIR successor, there could be an unfair distinction between different forms of investigation.
She told the Lords that there could be “a serious and deeply concerning inequity” between reinstated inquests and investigations conducted through a future legacy commission, particularly where inquisitorial proceedings were involved.
The issue is significant because the arrangements for dealing with Northern Ireland’s past remain the subject of continuing political and legal debate.
The ICRIR was created under the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. The current Government has proposed changes to the legacy arrangements, including reforms to the existing commission. A central issue throughout the debate has been the extent to which information held by government departments, law-enforcement agencies and the security services should be made available to families and investigators. Some legacy investigations involve highly sensitive intelligence material. This creates a difficult balance between the public interest in transparency and the need to protect information whose disclosure could have implications for national security. The Hillsborough Bill itself contains provisions dealing with sensitive information and the intelligence services.
During the Lords debate, peers raised concerns about how the new obligations would operate in relation to agencies including MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Baroness Manningham-Buller, who served as director general of MI5 between 2002 and 2007 and previously held responsibility for Irish counter-terrorism work, stressed the importance of protecting information that genuinely needs to remain restricted.
At the same time, the debate highlighted the importance of ensuring that national security considerations do not become a mechanism for avoiding legitimate scrutiny. That tension is especially relevant to Northern Ireland, where questions about intelligence, disclosure and state involvement have featured in a number of long-running legacy cases. The proposed Hillsborough Law has its roots in the experience of families who spent decades seeking accountability after the Hillsborough disaster. Ninety-seven Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed at the football stadium in 1989. The subsequent campaign by bereaved families exposed serious failures by public authorities and ultimately led to a prolonged struggle for truth and accountability.
The legislation seeks to apply lessons from that experience more broadly by placing stronger obligations on public authorities when dealing with people affected by serious wrongdoing or major public failures.
For Northern Ireland’s victims and survivors, however, the question is whether those principles will operate consistently across the different mechanisms used to examine the past. Baroness Ritchie also questioned whether sufficient consultation had taken place with the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly over the legislation and its possible consequences for legacy investigations. Her intervention comes at a sensitive stage in the Bill’s parliamentary progress. The legislation has completed its consideration in the Commons and is now being examined by the Lords. Further scrutiny will provide an opportunity for peers to seek clarification and, if necessary, propose amendments to its provisions. They want to know whether public authorities will be required to provide information openly and whether the same standards of accountability will apply regardless of which body is responsible for investigating their case.
The Government has presented the Hillsborough Law as an attempt to shift the balance of power away from public authorities and towards ordinary people seeking answers and accountability. The Northern Ireland debate demonstrates one of the challenges involved in putting that principle into practice. As the Bill progresses through the Lords, ministers may face increasing pressure to explain precisely how its duty of candour would operate in legacy investigations and whether it will apply to the security services and any future body responsible for examining the Troubles.
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