Boris Johnson and Brandon Lewis treat NI people like fools 

How Brandon Lewis and Boris Johnson had the gall to stand in the House of Commons and come out with the guff they did last week is beyond me.

It is clearly not on Brexit alone that both men are prepared to treat the people of Northern Ireland like fools.

In order to prevent even the odd Army veteran standing in the dock, they casually discard the rights of thousands of bereaved mothers, fathers, daughters and sons to justice.

The so-called party of law and order has ensured that those who wreaked death and destruction can sleep easily in their beds, knowing that the knock will never come to their doors at 6 am.

The thought of that knock has kept so many victims going over the years. Even if they know the chances of it happening are slim, the fear it instils in the hearts of perpetrators provides some comfort.

If the statute of limitations was put to a referendum here, it would be overwhelmingly rejected.

Boris Johnson and Brandon Lewis can be in no doubt about public opinion.

The Government’s plans are in complete conflict with the Northern Ireland Office’s (NIO) public consultation on legacy, which drew over 17,000 responses.

The NIO document, published in July 2019, says: “The clear majority of all respondents to the consultation argued that a statute of limitations or amnesty would not be appropriate for Troubles-related matters.

“Many were clear that victims, survivors and families are entitled to pursue criminal justice outcomes, and such a move could risk progress towards reconciliation.”

An accompanying NIO press release quoted a government spokesman pledging that it would “move forward sensitively and with as much consensus as possible”.

Fast-forward two years and the Tories are pushing ahead with an amnesty which every political party and victims’ group in Northern Ireland opposes.

The Prime Minister said that veterans in their 70s and 80s “face the threat of vexatious prosecutions”, but the witch-hunt claim is total tripe.

Since 2011, four republicans — Gerry McGeough, Seamus Kearney, Declan Duffy and Joseph Magee — and two loyalists — Robert Clarke and Robert Rodgers — have been successfully prosecuted and jailed in legacy cases. Not one former member of the security forces has.

Over recent days, we have seen unprecedented numbers of individual victims coming forward to lambast the Government.

Eugene Reavey, who lost his beloved brothers Brian, John Martin and Anthony at Whitecross, said families had been retraumatised.

Kathleen Gillespie, whose husband Patsy was turned into a human bomb, fought back tears as she said that “ordinary common people” had been pushed to one side.

Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine was blown to bits in the Birmingham pub bombings said that, like other bereaved families, hers was “incandescent with rage”.

It is not just prosecutions which the Government is ending. It plans to stop legacy inquests, Police Ombudsman investigations and civil litigation by families.

This is the state shutting down all avenues for the airing of its squalid little secrets in public.

Its proposals are likely in contravention of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but a legal challenge will take years.

There’s nothing accidental about any of this. Buying time — to bury the truth and the bereaved — has long been the gameplan.