00:00Can I just ask, I know you spoke some on this yesterday about the Legacy Act, and the Labour
00:06commit to making families front and centre of any revised or new plans for legacy and
00:12dealing with the troubles here?
00:14Yes we will, because what is the whole purpose of having a structure, a new structure for
00:21dealing with this really difficult issue of legacy, other than for the families?
00:29I have met many, from my first visit when I was appointed Shadow Secretary of State
00:33and I went to the Wave Centre, and I have met a number of families of those who lost
00:39their lives during the troubles since, and what is quite clear is that the Legacy Act
00:46as it is currently on the statute book does not have support from the families, and it
00:51doesn't have support from political parties in Northern Ireland, and that is why we are
00:55committed to repeal and replace it.
00:58Now there are component parts of that process.
01:01I say repeal and replace because you can't just strike it from the statute book and leave
01:05a void, because that isn't going to help anybody either.
01:09So first of all, conditional immunity, that has already been struck down by the High Court
01:17in Belfast, and we are committed to remove that from the statute book.
01:22Secondly, we will work in consultation with families, political parties and others, including
01:28talking to the Irish Government, and I met Michail Martin last Saturday at Hillsborough
01:34Castle and this was one of the issues that we discussed, how can we restore civil cases
01:40and inquests in particular, those inquests that were brought to a crashing halt by the
01:45May 1st deadline kicking in and stopping all of those.
01:50When it comes to the independent commission, I have made it clear previously that I am
01:53not proposing to abolish it.
01:56For this reason, we have talked about wanting to get back to the principles of the Stormont
02:00House Agreement, that envisages actually two separate organisations, one dealing with information
02:05recovery, the other dealing with continuing investigations, they are in effect combined
02:11in the commission.
02:12I welcome what Sir Declan Morgan has said about the way in which he wants the commission
02:16to go about its work, for example, having public hearings, I think that is a really
02:21positive step and I am looking forward to meeting him soon in my new capacity to talk
02:26about how that can be taken forward, but in the end, coming back to the heart of your
02:33question, the success of the commission will be judged ultimately by the families, does
02:41it work for them, does it give them what they have been looking for, that all the previous
02:46efforts at trying to resolve the question of legacy have not been able to do, and one
02:52other point, one of the reasons why inquests have had difficulty is because they have no
02:57mechanism for dealing with what are called closed material proceedings, when you are
03:03dealing with information, some of which does have to be withheld for reasons of national
03:07security, whereas the commission does have the capacity to do that, so you have inquests
03:14that don't, currently the commission that does, and I hope in time, I also want to make
03:20some changes to the governance of the commission, people have claimed it is not independent
03:25from the Secretary of State, and I accept that argument, but in the end it is the victim's
03:32families who will judge, does this process work, nothing is going to bring back those
03:37who have been killed, nothing, and the grief and the pain I have seen etched on every single
03:43face, and I have heard it in every single voice that I have listened to, in talking
03:48to those families, but I want to have a system, it may not get everybody's support, but the
03:54current Legacy Act has no support at all, and that is why we are committed to repeal
03:57and replace it.
03:58Thank you.
03:59Do you have a time frame for when you want to see the changes?
04:04Yes, the honest answer is as soon as possible, some things we may be able to do relatively
04:10quickly, others if they require primary legislation, well you need to draft that, but when I say
04:15that I am committed to consulting with families, with political parties in Northern Ireland,
04:21with the Irish Government, I mean it, and that takes time because you need to consult
04:28on the various options, try and get as broad a consensus as possible, and then to draft
04:34legislation to put that into effect, but nobody should be in any doubt about our commitment
04:40to do what we have promised to do, both in our election manifesto as the Labour Party
04:44and as set out in the King's speeches.
04:47Thank you.
04:48BBC News.
04:49Secretary of State, could I ask you, given what you have just said, do you not feel under
04:53increasing pressure, given what relatives have been saying, what Amnesty International
04:58has been saying, what Baroness Nill-O-Long has been saying, there is no faith or confidence
05:04in that commission, it needs to be scrapped in their view, and you need to start again,
05:09it's tainted, some would say, because it's a Tory Act and it's a component part of all
05:13of that, do you not need to start again, do you feel under pressure, do you see a building
05:17of pressure there?
05:19Look, I'm trying to take a pragmatic approach.
05:22So go back to the Stormont House Agreement.
05:25Not everybody, but most people agreed, you need a mechanism for finding out what happened,
05:33and you need a mechanism for continuing investigations.
05:36I mean, one of the things about the commission, there is a misunderstanding.
05:39Some people say that would be the end of any possible prosecution, that is not correct,
05:44if you listen to what Sir Edward Morgan has said.
05:47He's made it clear that if in the course of their work they come across information, evidence
05:52that they think might lead to a prosecution, then they would pass it to the DPP for it
05:58to be considered in the normal way.
06:01Many of the families that I've met are aware that the prospects over time of prosecutions
06:06is diminishing, and I've heard families say to me, look, I know that no one's going to
06:10be held to account for what happened, but I want to find out what happened.
06:15And since the Stormont House Agreement said we need these two functions, since these two
06:20functions now exist in the form of the commission, I would ask people just to put on one side
06:26what the motivation was from the last government in putting the Legacy Act in place,
06:30and judge what I'm saying that we intend to do on its merits.
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