Eastwood urges Benn to drop plan to give himself power to appoint judges to legacy inquisitorial mechanism

Transcript

00:00I suppose the Secretary of State will forgive some of us for being cautious

00:04before we are ready to believe that the government will and the state and any

00:08paramilitary organisation will give over the information that's required. We know

00:12there's a pattern in this. When it comes to inquests will he look again at the

00:18sifting process and will he put family views and will we give family

00:22views primacy when it comes to deciding which cases will have an inquest and

00:27will he drop his proposal will he drop his proposal to give himself the power

00:32to appoint judges in that inquisitorial mechanism because the very

00:38important principle of the independence of the judiciary needs to be held up well on

00:45the subject of inquests there will be three statutory tests that the

00:52Solicitor General will have to apply and I've just indicated in answer to an

00:57earlier question what they are family views will be one of the considerations

01:00but if if inquest can't proceed because of sensitive information well wouldn't it

01:08be more sensible to put it into the Commission which can deal with sensitive

01:11information because he has provision for closed hearings and no doubt my

01:18honorable friend will make the point about appointment processes when we come to

01:23discuss the bill I would however just point out and it's also relevant to the

01:28point that's been made from the opposition benches the agreement on the

01:33information retrieval mechanism this was something that the previous

01:38Conservative government negotiated with the Irish government and formed part of the

01:44Stormont House agreement what is the purpose of it the purpose of it is to enable those who have

01:49information to pass it to the body which can then pass it to the families and that

01:56information will be a protected disclosure which is not the same as immunity it will be a

02:01protected disclosure that system has worked very well in recovering quite a number of the

02:07remains of those who were abducted tortured murdered and buried by the IRA through the ICLVR and I hope

02:15that that is a step forward in going back to what was agreed at Stormont House by the last government

02:20and the Irish government and the political parties well not all of them will be welcome on all sides