Hilary Benn begins repeal of ‘completely wrong’ NI Legacy Act

The controversial Legacy Act was “completely wrong”, Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has said as he begins the process to formally repeal it.

Brought in by the Conservative government, the act put a ban on inquests and civil actions that were related to incidents during the Troubles.

Hilary Benn said it cannot be justified that “there is one part of the United Kingdom where people are denied their right to bring a civil case or to have an inquest”.

The act also offered the conditional amnesty to people suspected of Troubles-related crimes in exchange for co-operating with a new information recovery body.

On Wednesday, Benn told the House of Commons he was laying a “remedial order”, which would formally remove the conditional immunity clause from the act and the ban on new civil actions.

Speaking to BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme, Benn said the conditional amnesty was “deeply offensive to many people in Northern Ireland” and that there was “almost universal opposition” to the act.

Victims’ groups and all the main political parties in Northern Ireland objected to the act and Labour pledged to repeal it if they won the general election in July.

On Wednesday, Benn also said he would seek to reform the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), a new commission for investigation Troubles killings set up by the act, instead of scrapping it.

A number of victims’ groups had called for the ICRIR to go, but Benn said he did not believe abolishing and starting again is a “sensible way forward”.

“No one is getting any younger and they would like to get the answers as quickly as possible,” he said.

Benn indicated the commission would continue operating and that legislation would be brought forward by him in response to recent court judgements to ensure it complied with human rights law.

“In the end families will be the judge of whether ICRIR has worked to provide them with the answers they they have been looking for,” Benn told Good Morning Ulster.

Benn has urged those affected to not “make a judgement in advance” on the ICRIR.

The act was introduced by the government to controversially attempt to “draw a line” under the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

It was first proposed in 2021 by the then prime minister Boris Johnson as a solution to ending what he called “vexatious prosecutions” of former soldiers, and was passed in 2023.

It created a new legacy body known ICRIR to take over all Troubles-era cases from 1 May 2024, including those on the desk of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

The act shuts down all historical inquests and it also offered conditional amnesty to suspects.

The court ruled the conditional immunity part of the act was incompatible with human rights’ legislation and the Windsor Framework.

In late July, the Labour government wrote to the Belfast courts abandoning an appeal against the striking out of the amnesty clause in the legislation.