Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to repeal a controversial attempt to impose an amnesty for atrocities committed during Northern Ireland’s Troubles if a bill progressing through the UK parliament is law when the party next wins office.
In a speech on Friday excoriating the UK government, Starmer told political and civic leaders in Belfast that the Northern Ireland Troubles (legacy and reconciliation) bill was “wrong”.
“We wouldn’t do it and we’d repeal it if it’s on the statute book when we come to power,” he said, to applause.
Starmer added that the draft bill showed “how far this Conservative government in recent years has moved from a genuine understanding of the principles and values of the Good Friday Agreement”. The 1998 deal, brokered in part by Sir Tony Blair, then Labour prime minister, helped end Northern Ireland’s three decades-long conflict.
“No government in Westminster in my view should ever introduce legislation which has no support from any of the political parties in Northern Ireland and no support from the victims who are at the heart of this,” said Starmer, who served as a human rights adviser to the region’s policing board between 2003 and 2007.
Defending the bill, now before the House of Lords, the UK government has previously said a line must be drawn under the past, given the difficulty of securing convictions half a century on.
It wants to end inquests into Troubles crimes but has promised to set up an independent body with powers to conduct criminal probes.
Chris Heaton-Harris, UK Northern Ireland secretary, described Starmer’s call to repeal the legacy bill as “a retrograde step that would prolong the wait for answers and accountability that many families have been after for decades”.
He said London had proposed changes to address key concerns raised, adding that, although the bill “will remain challenging for many, the complex issue of legacy must be tackled in Northern Ireland”.
Gráinne Teggart, deputy director for Northern Ireland at the advocacy group Amnesty International, said it was “not too late” for London to scrap a bill that “makes a mockery of the rule of law and denies victims justice while shielding perpetrators of murder, torture and other serious crimes”.
In his speech at Queen’s University, Starmer promised a “grown-up approach” to politics in the region — which has been hamstrung by divisions over post-Brexit trading arrangements — if Labour won the next UK general election.
Meanwhile, he offered his party’s support to prime minister Rishi Sunak to pass any deal on the so-called Northern Ireland protocol at Westminster without the backing of influential Eurosceptic Tory MPs, whom he described as “siren voices that always hold Northern Ireland back”.
“The time to put Northern Ireland above a Brexit purity cult, which can never be satisfied, is now,” he said.
Starmer was in Belfast as a diplomatic push to clinch a deal between the UK and EU before the Good Friday Agreement’s 25th anniversary on April 10 intensified following the first tangible breakthrough this week.
Northern Ireland’s political institutions have been paralysed since elections in May last year as the Democratic Unionist party, the largest pro-UK force, demands sweeping changes to the protocol.
Heaton-Harris will on January 20 face a legal deadline to call fresh elections between March 2 and April 13 if, as is likely, the power-sharing executive has not returned by then. But he is widely expected to delay calling a vote.
