Oral evidence: Administrative scheme for ‘on-the-runs’, HC 1194Wednesday 9 April 2014

Oral evidence, 9 April 2014.

Witness

Rt Hon Shaun Woodward MP, Former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, gave evidence.

Chair

I will open the public session with apologies to Mr Woodward for keeping you waiting for the best part of an hour. I am sorry about that, but thank you very much for joining us. You sat in through the previous session and probably have read the transcript of the sessions last week. Can I invite you perhaps to make a brief statement before we might ask questions?

Mr Woodward

Thank you very much, Chair. I certainly welcome this inquiry, and especially also the inquiry of Lady Justice Hallett[11]. This issue has generated a great deal of heat so far; I do not know how much light it has generated. That is why I welcome this inquiry. It is important that your inquiry, Chair, establishes all the facts and does that within the timeframe in which this issue really needs to be understood. It is not an issue to be looked at only in the context of 2014 and a judgment in relation to one individual; it is important to see it in the context of a peace process and a political process that begins with the Good Friday Agreement and goes forward to the Hillsborough Agreement and beyond in 2010. A number of opinions have been expressed—a number of impressions—which at times are judgmental. The public understandably are concerned by this, and I share the worries that have been expressed by a number of colleagues about this issue. Getting the context and getting the facts together is really important. For example, in relation to Mr Colvile’s question to the Chief Constable earlier, when he said it was the biggest issue, I just remind the Committee that in 2007-08, when I became Secretary of State, the biggest issue was actually a political process that was falling apart at the seams. We were about to see the succession from Reverend Paisley to his successor. We were seeing a Stormont Executive that was increasingly ceasing to function. We were seeing a resurgence of Republicanism violence. We were seeing a whole series of problems, and indeed the whole thing broke down. We would see the murders of police officers again in 2009. I just simply say that sometimes we can sit here in 2014 and we can forget the context in which this was operating. This does not for one moment in any way, should something unlawful have been done, validate that, but I put in there the context within which we have to be looking at what the Chief Constable was doing and therefore understanding why it might be the case that he was not spending every single waking second only worrying about how to deal with the so-called “anomaly” of on-the-runs. It is also, it seems to me, extremely important to remember that had we not got a peace process, we would not only be talking about the victims of those who died during the Troubles until 1998; we would probably be dealing with several thousand more victims and victims’ families now. I share, as Mr Baxter and Mr Sheridan did last week and the Chief Constable did today, as much concern about victims as anybody else. There is no hierarchy to be had here of who cares most about victims; I think everybody in this Committee and in this room cares passionately about this. In dealing with the on-the-runs issue, it is not in any shape or form to say that somehow one did not care about victims. All of those who are concerned with that issue care deeply about the victims. In the debate a few weeks ago, Lady Hermon put out something that is as important as the issue of the background of on-the‑runs. While I was Secretary of State—and I was the longest-serving Secretary of State in the Labour Administration—I was always of the view that this was an administrative process and that these letters were statements of fact. Should it be that the judgment that has been produced in relation to Mr Downey has allowed these statements of fact, as I understood them to be and I believe as all others understood them to be, to have a legal force beyond being statements of fact, that transforms a number of things for the future. Regrettably, the Secretary of State currently serving in Northern Ireland in the debate did not quite seem to take the point that Lady Hermon was making, and that was why I intervened at the end. Despite her resistance to take the intervention, I remain grateful to Lady Hermon for taking my intervention on her at the end of the debate. If Lady Justice Hallett’s review and yours, Chair, do not really go to this crucial issue, which is not only what then, but what now is the status of these letters—have these letters got a new status as a consequence of the judgment?—then this would indeed transform the position that we are looking at, and it would make the inquiry that you are currently doing a pale shadow of the inquiry you will need to do if these letters have this new legal position. I say this because I think this is an incredibly important inquiry that you are conducting. Those who were involved in on-the-runs, whether they were Northern Ireland officials, whether they worked in the PSNI—wherever they were—were doing this in good faith, in the context of a peace process, and they were doing it in the context of something that was at all times, however unusual—to borrow the Chief Constable’s words—always lawful. Therefore, as I said at the beginning, a lot of heat has been generated, not least by Mr Baxter’s evidence, which I am afraid in parts was misleading last week, certainly in some of the opinions he gave and certainly in some of the outrageous comments that were made about my predecessor, Peter Hain, in relation to the evidence that he supplied to Mr Downey’s case. The idea that he had any glee in seeing anybody who might allegedly be involved in such a serious charge is absolutely outrageous. I say that because I do not think that should be allowed to go uncommented on a single day longer, and it would be a great pity if this Committee allowed a forum for people’s unsupported, uncorroborated views to prevail. This is a serious issue. It affects many, many victims. If the victims and the victims’ families were to feel that there were by me or my predecessors or successors any delight in seeing any criminal going free—avoiding justice—by a process called “on-the-runs”, it would be as outrageous as I could possibly imagine.

Chair

Thank you, Mr Woodward. You have made a great defence of the peace process, understandably, and you have put this into context. You have very passionately suggested that this was crucial to the peace process. It is difficult to square that with the fact that these letters were just a statement of fact. You did go on to say that we ought to look at their current status, but it is difficult to square those two arguments: that this was so crucial to a failing peace process, as you described it, and yet these letters were just a statement of fact. How could a statement of fact save a peace process?

Mr Woodward

Let us get back into context, Chair. What was crucial to building a peace process up until 1998 was getting people into the room together, and there were a number of people who would not even go into the same room with each other to talk. What became crucial to the survival of the Good Friday Agreement was decommissioning, and there was a long period in which all that was falling apart. Again, in a hierarchy, I do not think that getting people in a room to talk is less important than dealing with on-the-runs. I do not think that the decommissioning of weapons is somehow less important than on‑the‑runs. Of course it was not. But as a series of issues that needed to be addressed, yes, it was one of the issues. If you go back to the conversations that were taking place in the run-up to not only Good Friday but subsequently St Andrews and Hillsborough, that was one of the issues that one of the political parties brought to the table. Again, as somebody who was leading for the British Government in those negotiations in what was a political process falling apart at the seams in 2007, 2008 and 2009, I can tell you that each political party would bring in their shopping list of issues they wished to have dealt with. It is an obvious given that when you are building a peace process you are going to have different conversations with different people. However, what was never, ever on the table was that anything would be done that was unlawful or that interfered in the proper processes of the police and of the prosecution services. That was testified by Assistant Chief Constable Sheridan last week and again by Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable, today. The only person who has suggested something perhaps else is Mr Baxter, whose reasons I do not understand, but let us again be clear. From what I heard today, had Mr Baxter told his superior, he would not have had to have done any of the things he suggested to the Committee last week. He simply had to tell his boss, “I think we have got a problem here”. I think the public would be most astonished to learn that it did not require a Prime Minister to solve this, it did not require a Select Committee to solve this, and it did not require endless Chief Constables and Secretaries of State to be summoned to solve this; it required a policeman to tell his boss. The question I do not understand and I would like to know the answer to—and I think the public would—is why he did not tell his boss, Mr Sheridan, that he knew something rather different.

Chair

That was made quite clear by Sir Hugh and it was a line I followed in questioning last week; I was confused about that. But the letter to Mr Downey did not come from the police.

Mr Woodward

No, it did not.

Chair

Who did it come from?

Mr Woodward

The letter to Mr Downey[12], which I have a copy of here, came from the Northern Ireland Office, and says: “The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been informed by the Attorney General”—and again I stress “informed by the Attorney General”—“that on the basis of the information currently available, there is no outstanding direction for prosecution in Northern Ireland”. The letter goes on; I am happy to read it. I think you already have a copy of this.

Chair

We do not, no. If you would be so kind as to read it.

Mr Woodward

Of course. “There are no warrants in existence, nor are you wanted in Northern Ireland for arrest, questioning or charge by the police. The Police Service of Northern Ireland are not aware of any interest in you from any other police force in the United Kingdom. If any other outstanding offence or offences came to light, or if any request for extradition were to be received, these would have to be dealt with in the usual way.” In other words, the police, if they have reason to, would interview this individual; if they had reason to believe they could have a prosecution, they would prosecute the individual.

Lady Hermon

Who signed it?

Kate Hoey

Who signed it?

Mr Woodward

In absolutely no shape or form do I believe that this letter of July 2007 could have been read or should have been read as anything else other than a statement of fact. That it has taken a life in which, in the context of a judgment that looked at a process that I remind the Committee included the fact that what was noticed by the judge in those two sections of his judgment, which is that within the PSNI it was known that a mistake had been made but that the NIO was never informed, again, I simply say, both before and after this letter, two opportunities for co-ordination to have happened could have taken place, and they did not.

Chair

Okay. Obviously there are security issues here. Are you able to tell us who signed the letter?

Mr Woodward

I was Secretary of State at the time. There is a fashion these days for Ministers and Secretaries of State not to be prepared to take responsibility for their officials.

Chair

So you signed it.

Mr Woodward

I did not sign the letter, but I am taking responsibility for my officials. That is good practice, and I hope that Ministers get back to doing that.

Chair

Yes, the police should have passed on that information, in my view, but should the Northern Ireland Office be involved in writing letters? The Northern Ireland Office is not a legal officer. The Attorney General is a legal officer. You, as Secretary of State, are a political appointee. The Attorney General is semi; he is a legal adviser to the Government. He is a politician, but he has a separate role. You do not have a separate role. Should the Northern Ireland Office at any point be involved in writing letters to people? Surely that is not the Northern Ireland Office’s job.

Mr Woodward

I have the benefit now of not being the Secretary of State and therefore I can have the benefit of giving a view on this. My view begins with again recognising that this is a process that began in 1998, not 2007. There was a policing operation, we now learn. I never, ever saw the words “Operation Rapid” but I was aware there was an operation going on. I never knew the name of it. But the work for dealing with the so‑called on-the-runs has to be seen in genesis back in 1998. It is a mistake to simply take a slice of a moment in the story of this and say, “Well, how on earth can that have been happening? How on earth could the Northern Ireland Office be writing these letters?” It goes back to a discussion in 1998, then in 1999, then in 2000, then at Weston Park, then the joint agreement, then St Andrews, in which British and Irish Governments, but crucially the British Prime Minister, agreed to use the offices of the Attorney General in order to elicit information—not to interfere with a prosecution but simply to inform. There is no secret about this; it is available in a lot of places. If you read Jonathan Powell’s book—he was, after all, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff for a number of years; it is a reasonably authoritative record of the period—it is very clear that this is an issue that was being discussed. I could produce for you other instances when it was being discussed, but the crucial point I am trying to make here is there is a very big distinction to be made between what is sensitive and what is secret. One of the things again that has been formed is a view that this was such a secret thing. Yes, it was sensitive, just as, for example, Unionists had sensitive issues. And yes, it would have been insensitive had we simply have said, “I tell you what. We shall be discussing tonight every issue that Ian Paisley wishes to discuss” or “We shall be publishing tomorrow in the Belfast Telegraph every issue Peter Robinson thinks should be out there, or any disagreement that takes place between the leadership of one part of the DUP and another”. In other words, being sensitive is not the same as being secret.

Kate Hoey

Can you just say, ex‑Secretary of State, whether you ever discussed this with the Attorney General? You heard the evidence earlier that the Attorney General was to be the person who was going to check about whether Mr Downey was wanted in England.

Mr Woodward

Absolutely I did.

Kate Hoey

So did he check?

Mr Woodward

Let us get the nomenclature right: she. It was Baroness Scotland. Her predecessor had, with the previous Prime Minister to Gordon Brown, discussed the issue of what could be done given the failure of the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill.

Kate Hoey

No, I am talking specifically about who was meant to check. The police did their bit and then the Attorney General was meant to check whether—

Mr Woodward

Yes, but I fear that one of the things the Committee does not have is the context for why any discussion would take place at all. Again, it is the taking out of context that is causing so many of the problems that are now running there. With the failure of the Offences Bill and with the whole definition of on-the-runs having quite significantly changed from 1998 to the time the Offences Bill is being dealt with, the position you are now in in 2006 is: what do you do with this issue that the British Government, as part of a peace process, said it would wish to look at as an anomaly and how do you go forward? We were absolutely clear that what we could not do was issue pardons, immunities or any of those things at all. That remained at the heart of British Government policy and it did not change. There was an issue in 2005, 2006 and 2007 about how those who had been wanted or those eight, for example, who had escaped from prison, were they to return, would be dealt with. The ones who had escaped from prison could, under the sentences Act, be dealt with very clearly, but there was a whole bunch of people who did not know, so they were asking how they would be dealt with. Crucially, the issue was, bearing in mind that many of these were pre‑conviction, whether the evidential test would mean that there could be a chance of a successful prosecution. The reason for the Attorney General’s role in this is that the public interest also now weighs into this. This is not a public interest about giving people immunity from prosecution; it is about the public interest that weighs in in the cases of many things that we look at in relation to a prosecution. Your question was whether I had conversations with the Attorney General. The answer is I did have conversations with her about the review process that would take place. Did I try in any shape or form to interfere or suggest we would like a particular outcome in the way that Mr Baxter most misleadingly put forward to this Committee last week? Not at all at any time.

Kate Hoey

You talk a lot about the context, and that is probably very important. Everyone is now trying to say it was all Mr Baxter’s fault: he did not pass on something. The reality is that what the public in Northern Ireland want to know is how, with all the expertise, all the Special Branch and all the money that has gone in, anyone could not have said, apart from Mr Baxter, that Mr Downey—someone who the English police knew they wanted in relation to the Hyde Park bombing—was wanted in England.

Mr Woodward

The answer to that is as simple as the Chief Constable gave, which is: a mistake happened. I am not condoning a mistake. I share the public’s view.

Kate Hoey

Who made the mistake? Are you just blaming Mr Baxter too?

Mr Woodward

The police were the only people who—

Kate Hoey

What about the Attorney General? According to that meeting that happened—

Chair

Let the witness answer, please.

Mr Woodward

Let us deal with the police first of all. The police operate themselves. We do not tell the police how to operate. The police have their own way of running whatever operation it is that they are doing. We were told, through the Attorney General’s Office, that “we have no reason”, therefore we issued the letter. What went wrong, very clearly, was that within the PSNI somebody had information that did not go into somebody else’s hands. A mistake happened.

Kate Hoey

No, but you know about the meeting—and no one is disputing that the meeting did not take place—on 9 June 2006[13], where the Attorney General gave an undertaking they would check if people were wanted in England.

Mr Woodward

I am talking about why Mr Baxter did not pass the information that he knew later to Mr Sheridan.

Kate Hoey

I am putting that to one side for a moment.

Mr Woodward

I am not trying to lay it all on Mr Baxter.

Kate Hoey

I am just trying to see where the Attorney General—

Chair

Order. Can we have a question and then an answer?

Kate Hoey

Yes. What was the role of the Attorney General?

Mr Woodward

The Attorney General’s role was to do exactly what the Attorney General should do, which is to review, in these cases, as had been agreed by Tony Blair and her predecessor, those cases where it had been cited that there would be a prosecution to see if the evidential tests would stand up. That was the role in this.

Lady Hermon

Could I just come back to your description, please? A number of us live in Northern Ireland. I do not remember the 2007 that you have described to us this afternoon. You said to us in evidence—I have taken it down—the political process was “falling apart at the seams” in 2007. I remember the opposite. I remember suspension of the Assembly having been lifted on 8 May 2007. I remember very happy photographs of Ian Paisley senior as the First Minister and enjoying very much being the First Minister with Martin McGuinness as his Deputy First Minister.

Mr Woodward

And I remember a stream of leaders from political parties coming to see me in the autumn of 2007—I had only been in the post at that point three months—saying, “Are you aware of the material that is not being discussed at the Executive at Stormont? Despite the fact that it all looks very good”—and for goodness’ sake, nobody is imagining that anything that was positive was anything other than good—“are you aware of what is not being dealt with?” I would see political leaders of the smaller political parties coming in saying, “We are not being consulted”. I was constantly being advised that problems were building up, including by parties inside the respective political parties on both sides—that there were real problems there that were going to need to be dealt with. What I am trying to describe here, Lady Hermon, is the idea—and it was in response to the question from Mr Colvile to the Chief Constable—that he would have had every single waking moment to worry about on-the-runs when we could see the beginnings of some really serious problems emerging with dissident Republicanism again. What I am trying to build here is what manifested itself when Ian Paisley stepped down, when, if you remember, the Executive did not meet for months in 2008. Many of the seeds for the problems that were happening in 2008, and indeed the murders of the police officers in 2009, we could see in 2007.

Lady Hermon

I hope you could not foresee the murder of a police officer in 2009. I am sure that was not really what you meant to say. I am just going back to the Downey judgment here. You have now painted a picture, as you saw it, of the political landscape in Northern Ireland in 2007 that does differ from mine, but you were Secretary of State and I was just a simple active Member of Parliament with a constituency. In the Downey judgment, we have, in evidence from the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, a letter—a confidential letter, of course—that he wrote to the President of Sinn Fein just three days after Christmas in 2006[14], in which he says, in terms, that he intends to expedite the administrative scheme for on-the-runs to make sure that the issue is dealt with before he leaves office. Tony Blair, of course, stepped down six months later, at the end of June 2007. I put it to you that the driving force for Operation Rapid and the driving force for dealing with this was not saving the peace process, which did not need to be saved in 2007—it was in very safe hands, and I pay tribute to the two gentlemen who were First Minister and Deputy First Minister when suspension was lifted. That was the driving force behind expediting the OTRs and the administrative scheme, not saving the peace process.

Mr Woodward

But there was nothing new in that letter of 2006.

Lady Hermon

Apart from the fact that it was going to be “expedited”. Since you were saying that there was nothing new about it and all of this was to save the peace process, and since you were, as you have told us, the most experienced, longest‑serving Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during the Labour administration, what on earth do you think the consequences for the peace process now in 2014 and for the people of Northern Ireland are when we discover this secret little scheme—a one-sided scheme to give preferential treatment to the friends and colleagues of Gerry Adams? How damaging is that, do you reckon?

Mr Woodward

First of all, as a Member of Parliament representing Northern Ireland, which you and a number of colleagues on this Committee do, it is not for me to tell you what you should feel, so your anger and your concern is totally genuine.

Lady Hermon

Yes, it is.

Mr Woodward

And do I think you are unique? Clearly not. However, this is not about people—although in the case of Mr Downey we have a very unusual set of circumstances, which is again why I say I believe you are right to look at the legal status of these letters. I do not in any shape or form think that the issuing of this letter to any of them, including at the time Mr Downey—although we now know a mistake was made in his case—was about giving anybody the special treatment of an immunity or an amnesty. Were it the case that these letters gave people an amnesty, were it the case that these letters gave people immunity from prosecution, then it would be absolutely right to extrapolate now everything you feel as a real concern about where this would go. What I do not believe is that these letters were, in any shape or form, immunities from prosecution or amnesties. They were statements of fact about whether or not, as of 2007, in relation to the particular police operation that took place and afterwards, there would likely be a successful prosecution of these individuals. In other words, a view was taken. But the letter was clear that even if you had one of these letters, should any evidence come to light or should an extradition be sought—should anything emerge—then the normal law should take its course. These people were not, as far as I was concerned, being told, “That is it. You are free. You need never worry again.” It was simply, “As it is right now, this is where we believe it is”, based on the police’s review—not my review; the police’s review and the prosecution’s review.

Lady Hermon

If the administrative letters were so basic and so simple, why do you think it was an invisible process? Why was it secret?

Mr Woodward

It was sensitive, not secret. That was the distinction that I made earlier on. If it was secret, it would not have had any public life at all. It would not be in Jonathan Powell’s book. It would not have been referred to by John Reid. It would not have been answered in questions in 2008 or 2009 by the late Paul Goggins. The question of on-the-runs was out there. It was discussed in the media. The issue of how it was being dealt with as an administrative process was being discussed out there. As Peter Sheridan said last week, he gave informal briefings to the Chair and to the Vice Chair of the Policing Board. The idea that this was secret and not being discussed with anybody is not the case. Was it treated sensitively? Yes, it was.

Lady Hermon

Sorry, could I just contradict you?

Mr Woodward

Of course you can. Please do.

Lady Hermon

I do regret having to say this, because you know I hold you in very high esteem indeed, but I just have to bring to your attention, because it is already in the public domain, the fact that your immediate predecessor, the Right Honourable Member for Neath, who gave written evidence to the Downey trial[15]—so it is published in the judgment—said, “As Secretary of State, I was conversant not just with the implications but with the running of the scheme.” “The procedure was in a number of ways wholly unprecedented.” “There were a number of exceptional features to the scheme. The first, of course, involved Sinn Fein being formally put on notice […] The second was that the scheme progressed in a non‑public manner. Confidentiality was maintained for the individuals who submitted their names”—and it goes on. This was an unprecedented scheme—“wholly unprecedented”. That is the evidence that was given to the court by your immediate predecessor. Are you saying that you understood it to have some other characteristics?

Mr Woodward

The Chief Constable encapsulated it brilliantly. It may have been unusual, but it was not unlawful. That it was confidential and that it was treated sensitively does not make it top-secret and something that was wrong.

Lady Hermon

Why do you think the Right Honourable Member for Neath replied in two consecutive months to written questions from the Honourable Lady for North Down asking what the Government was intending to do to deal with the anomaly of on-the-runs? Unfortunately, the Right Honourable Member replied that in fact there were none—that this was an anomaly that was going to be dealt in the future.

Mr Woodward

I am sure you will have a further opportunity to ask the Right Honourable Member for Neath that question directly. I did not answer that question.

Lady Hermon

No, you did not.

Mr Woodward

What I would say to you is that I do not believe—because if you look at this as an evolutionary process—that the issue that the Offences Bill was trying to deal with in 2005, which would have meant, for example, that people who on the administrative process were found to be wanted for prosecution—under the 2005 legislation, they could have gone through that tribunal and come through it and walked out of the tribunal on the other side of it. The administrative process was not saying to those people, “Now you can walk out”. The administrative process was saying, “If you come back in the jurisdiction, you will be wanted”. I do see quite a big difference. However, I see the genesis for both of these groups being back in 1998. Therefore, with the failure of the on-the-runs process of 2005 and therefore the falling of the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill, the mechanism that would have been established and used, whether it was for those who were wanted for prosecution, having gone through the process, or, indeed, for, let us say, those serving in Northern Ireland who might be wanted in relation to Bloody Sunday; everybody could have gone through that process. That it fell apart is a discussion for another day, but what it left was: “Okay, so tell us who is wanted and who is not wanted”. That was what was left. What was clearly not left was the idea that somehow we had a solution for those who would be wanted. I cannot speak for him, but my interpretation of what you are seeking is that what Peter Hain was discussing was that for those who would be wanted and be prosecuted, there was no solution. The Government would seek to find one, but that is not the same as the administrative process that inside the PSNI was known as Operation Rapid and was being dealt with inside the Northern Ireland Office with the issue of the letter.

Lady Hermon

I will just put it on the record that there was no ambiguity about my questions; they were about on-the-runs. I will leave it there for the moment. Thank you.

Chair

On that basis, anybody receiving a letter was not suspected of any crimes at all.

Mr Woodward

I cannot tell you whether they were not suspected, because I am not the police and I am not the prosecuting authorities. What I can tell you is that the Northern Ireland Office was informed by the Attorney General that, having gone through a review, the evidential test that would have required an individual either to be prosecuted or summoned for questioning had led to a position that the Attorney General advised the Secretary of State, who in this case was me, that this individual, on the basis—and always those crucial words—of current information, would not be sought should they return to the jurisdiction.

Chair

The police would always work on current information.

Mr Woodward

Absolutely. Which is why—may I add, Mr Chair—I remain astonished at the outcome of the Downey judgment. I remain absolutely astonished that these letters can have been used to take the force that they did and have taken the interpretation that they have. Again, it would be inappropriate for me to go into the particular case, but I simply find it extraordinary. It is not only the former administration, but the administration that took over in 2010 and would have had in some cases the same advisers but different advisers as well; as the current Secretary of State has said, if she or her predecessor, Owen Paterson, had been advised that they were anything other than statements of fact, they would have brought the process to an end there and then.

Lady Hermon

So were you astonished that the judge gave such weight to evidence from Jonathan Powell and from your predecessor, the Right Honourable Gentleman for Neath?

Mr Woodward

All I can comment on is the letter that falls into my responsibility. Despite the fact the letter falls under my jurisdiction as Secretary of State, amazingly, in that trial, nobody got in touch with me.

Lady Hermon

So when did you first know about the Downey case?

Mr Woodward

When I was informed on Privy Council terms immediately before the announcement of the judge’s verdict by the Secretary of State.

Chair

We will perhaps come back to Downey in a minute. We have gone off the line of questioning I had to discuss a very important point, but I was really trying to get to why people would want these letters. There must be some reason why some people required letters. There are very many people in Northern Ireland who would not have needed their position clarifying. Why did some people need their position clarifying?

Mr Woodward

To some extent you would have to ask the individuals. I can speculate, and I am speculating that if somebody thinks they might be wanted by the police for an inquiry, they might want to know whether that is still the case. That does not seem to me to be too extraordinary, and it does not seem to me to be particularly too extraordinary in the context of the original discussions back in 1998 and 1999. In other words, people who in 1998 and 1999 were asking those questions were still asking them in 2001, 2005 and 2006.

Chair

Most people—probably more than 99%—in Northern Ireland did not need their position clarifying. Some must have suspected they were wanted for certain offences. They must have done.

Mr Woodward

Again, that is for them to decide why they felt that they were in that position. Some, for example, if they had been arrested and if they had jumped bail and fled the country, had a view as to, “Would I still be wanted?” If, for example, the witnesses had died, or if, for example—as, regrettably, we know happened in some cases—some of the evidence that was used by some people against some particular cases turned out to be bogus, then again, you might want to know what your position was. I cannot speculate on everybody, nor am I remotely trying to suggest to you that those all were whiter-than-white individuals. Again, I do not think we will benefit by creating a caricature of what we were trying to deal with. This is a situation that arose in the late 1990s in the core of the peace process: a set of requests by Sinn Fein to know what the status was of these people. Again, I repeat to you, Chair, then, during my time and now, this has never been an attempt to seek an amnesty or immunity from prosecution.

Naomi Long

You have said that you could not say whether people were wanted or not—I think that was the phrase you used—because you were not the PSNI or the Attorney General, so you could not make any judgment on that. Are you surprised, then, at the evidence we got last week that said it was the NIO who sought clarification about the content of the letters, including John Downey’s letter, directly from the PSNI? Obviously someone within the NIO had concerns about the information that had been fed to them by the process—either the DPP or the Attorney General—and sought to clarify that. First of all, are you surprised that anyone in the NIO would have had the knowledge to be able to question that information? Secondly, are you surprised that they sought to do so directly with the PSNI and not via whatever chain the information had been received from—for example, through the DPP or the Attorney General?

Mr Woodward

I am surprised by a number of things that Mr Baxter said last week.

Naomi Long

It was not only Mr Baxter, just to be clear; it was also Peter Sheridan.

Mr Woodward

Yes, but what Mr Sheridan said was quite different from what Mr Baxter said. To be fair, my recollection—and perhaps you can point me to something that I may have overlooked in my examination of the evidence last week—is that Mr Sheridan was at pains to say that the Northern Ireland Office at no point tried to make any of the interference that was being described. Mr Baxter, unfortunately, took the view that it was not constitutional for the Northern Ireland Office to be receiving material from the Attorney General.

Naomi Long

I suspect we are on two different pages.

Mr Woodward

Okay. What page—

Naomi Long

No, metaphorically. I am not referring to the claim that Mr Baxter made with regard to phone calls being made about individuals being released from custody. I am very specifically referring to the evidence that we have received that 12 people’s names were passed to the NIO via the administrative process, and there was a call made from the NIO to the PSNI querying whether the PNC had been checked in all of those cases. That is where Norman Baxter said that they responded that, yes, it had, and that was the only information that was then sent, and not the additional information that it had and that they were aware that there was some kind of issue with the Met. The question I am asking is: how would anyone in the NIO have known to query the information? If you are saying you simply take it sight unseen and rely on the investigative authorities—the police and, indeed, the law officers—to give you the right information and then you communicated that information, why would anyone in the NIO have challenged or queried the quality of that information on this particular case, and why would they have chosen to do so directly with the PSNI but not through the Attorney General’s Office or, indeed, the Director of Public Prosecution’s Office, which was the normal chain of discussion in these matters?

Mr Woodward

It has already emerged today from the Chief Constable that people did not do things entirely correctly inside the PSNI. Your allegation is, I think, that somebody did not do something correctly inside the Northern Ireland Office. Is that correct?

Naomi Long

No. It is a simple question. It is in our briefing that Mark Sweeney emailed the staff officer to ACC Sheridan querying the information that had been provided[16]. What I am asking is a very simple question. The question is: why would anyone in the NIO have had cause to query that information if you were simply a conduit for investigative information that was passed through law officers? Why would you have queried it? The second issue is: why would anyone have queried it directly with the PSNI as opposed to querying it with the law officers from whom it was received?

Mr Woodward

Since Mr Sweeney is not here, I cannot answer the question.

Naomi Long

You were happy to take responsibility for the person who signed the letter because you were in charge at that time, so the question is still relevant.

Mr Woodward

Let us be clear about this, Naomi. When did this phone call take place?

Naomi Long

18 July 2007.

Mr Woodward

What I suggest we do is we use the offices of the Secretary of State, and I am very happy to do the letter that asks that question for you. It would be somewhat unrealistic to imagine that I can account for every single employee of the Northern Ireland Office for every single minute that I was Secretary of State.

Naomi Long

I accept that.

Mr Woodward

It would be very sensible for you to ask me the question and for me to offer to do my very best to get you the answer to the question. It would be extremely foolish of me to try to second-guess what the answer to that question might be. That is not the same as me saying I am in any shape or form not taking responsibility for officials who worked for me. They worked for me, and I take responsibility for them.

Naomi Long

Yes. And it would be your understanding that it would simply have been the official who was asking the question as opposed to being—

Mr Woodward

Forgive me; you are asking me to second-guess, and I do not know the answer to the question. I learned the hard way in Northern Ireland that sometimes, when you do not know the answer to a question, it is better not to bluff and to say, “I do not know, but I will find out for you”.

Naomi Long

I am glad that we all learned something.

Ian Paisley

Shaun, thank you for coming and giving your evidence, and thank you also for bringing the first piece of hard evidence—the actual letter—which I will maybe turn to in a moment. Could I just address very briefly the issue of context? Context is subjective. You have portrayed the period whenever you stepped into office—I was a Government Minister during that period of time—as “falling apart”. However, from 2007 until 2014 we have probably had seven of the most stable years in Northern Ireland’s political history, and indeed social history, than we had certainly for the previous seven, and probably the previous 37. It has been a very stable period. The naysayers who were banging on your door from other parties in the autumn of 2007 were spectacularly wrong. I am not saying your job at any time was easy, but comparatively speaking, given previous Secretaries of State, you had an easier period of time to govern as Northern Ireland Secretary. I was the Cabinet Minister responsible for getting the Executive to function and putting the agenda together for the Executive, and I know during that short period I was there we did 151 specific policy actions, which was four times more than the three previous administrations. It was a very successful foundation block for a stable Northern Ireland that we are in today. In the two years prior, we had Colombia, we had the Florida gun-running, we had the Northern Bank robbery, we had the four collapses of the Assembly, and we had the complete misery all round. The period that you came in was, when we look back to it, the halcyon days of a new regime. That context is as valid, if not more valid, than the context that you outlined to us earlier. I am sorry for such a long preamble to my question. In terms of the evidence that you have put before us, we have asked for the Downey letter; we have not yet received it. Are you able to share that particular copy with this Committee? Are you willing to do that?

Mr Woodward

I have nothing but praise for the officials of the Northern Ireland Office, because they are outstanding in so many ways, so this is not a criticism of them. Yesterday, when I was able to get my hands on a folder of information relating to my time as Secretary of State, I said to the very nice young man who brought the material to me—because it was a rather thick file—“I am going to need to take this home and read it”, and the answer was I could not take it home and read it, even though these were all documents written to me when I was Secretary of State. I was only able to look at the folder in his presence. The very nice guy offered to stay all night if it was necessary for me to do it, and I thought it might be more sensible to get a night’s sleep.

Ian Paisley

So did you pinch that letter?

Mr Woodward

I hasten to say I am not getting anyone into trouble. I did not make a copy of this letter from the folder yesterday; it is a letter I had from the time of the debate in the House of Commons. All of this being said, I will ask whether I can let you have a copy of this letter and if I can, I will. If you can do anything to encourage the Northern Ireland Office to allow me to read the folders not under protection, that would be wonderful as well. I cannot see why any of the material that I am talking about here should not be accessible to this Committee.

Ian Paisley

We intend to get it, Shaun, one way or the other. Anyone in the NIO who is listening to this should be aware of that.

Mr Woodward

I do not think there is anything to hide. That is my real feeling about this.

Ian Paisley

No, but they are, let us just say, foot‑dragging. Mr Sheridan last week in his evidence to us said that he did not know about the letters coming out of the machine at the end of the day. He was putting information in to the law officer and the first time he knew something had come out was during the trial. I will come back to that point in a moment. He said that what came out of the machine—in other words, that letter that you have in front of you—was substantively different from what he put in in one regard, and that is the two sentences that refer to what was or was not on the Police National Computer. He said that was technically wrong. So, someone in the Northern Ireland Office, I can assume, took the material that was given to them by the law officer—the Attorney General or the DPP—and massaged and changed that. Was that a mistake by the Northern Ireland Office? That is what ultimately lies at the heart of the Sweeney judgment.

Mr Woodward

A preamble to this: I think your father was one of the most extraordinary figures in our contemporary political lifetime.

Ian Paisley

So do I, but that is neither here nor there.

Mr Woodward

The comment I made about 2007 is not in any way a commentary on him; it is a commentary on the problems that we could see beginning to build, not least with dissident Republicanism. In relation to the specifics of this and why the words that Peter Sheridan issued were not the same as the words in the letter, I cannot answer that, because I did not write the letter, I did not sign the letter, and I did not see what went into it. It seems to me to be entirely legitimate for this Committee, and certainly also for Lady Justice Hallett’s review, to wish to examine in micro detail what happened from that period in 2006 into 2007, which was under my predecessor, and the way that officials were dealing with this, into what happened inside the Attorney General’s Office, and to know what came from the Attorney General’s Office into the Northern Ireland Office. As I say, I suspect—I do not know—that what will emerge is not conspiracy but just mistakes. The problem is the mistakes now look like conspiracy. That conspiracy is what allows people to think that everything was so secret and that everything was being contrived and people were being issued with pardons who should not be given immunities and so on. None of that is true. However, I can see that when you get something like this, that is how it is possible to look at it, which is why I welcome what you are doing and what Lady Justice Hallett is doing, and why, as far as I am concerned, there is no single piece of paper that I was sent under any strapline that, so long as within the bounds of national security—and there can always be ways round that—you cannot see. I would be happy for you to see anything I was ever sent.

Ian Paisley

With regard to the police knowledge of the letter and Mr Sheridan’s characterisation that he did not see what was coming out the other side, do you believe the police when they say that they did not know there was anything coming out the other side from the Northern Ireland Office or from Government officials until the trial emerged in 2013?

Mr Woodward

I do believe the police, and I believe in the Police Service in Northern Ireland almost primus inter pares. I happen to believe that this Committee this afternoon had in front of it a Chief Constable whose integrity is second to none. I happen to have the highest possible view of Peter Sheridan. Anything they have told you is the absolute truth, and they would not be dishonest for one second. If the question is do I believe what you heard from Peter Sheridan and from Hugh Orde, absolutely.

Ian Paisley

Okay. You characterised the process as “sensitive, not secret”. Would you agree with me that it was, however, designed to conceal; it was not a transparent process?

Mr Woodward

It was not designed to conceal. It was designed to expedite, but it recognised the sensitivities involved in this and, to some extent, the confidentiality. If I was your Member of Parliament and you came forward and asked me, “Could you find out for me whether I am wanted for any inquiries by the police?” I would be happy to write that letter to the police for you. I do not think I should make it a matter of public record that I am doing it on your behalf.

Ian Paisley

But it was designed to camouflage sensitive matters from the rest of the public.

Mr Woodward

It was not designed to camouflage. The operation of it was not designed to be something that was on a daily basis shared with the British public.

Ian Paisley

Okay, then; let us go back a bit. We all, as a Minister, get a folder with our first‑day brief. When you became Secretary of State, was OTRs on your first-day briefing paper?

Mr Woodward

Almost certainly there would have been a reference to it, but almost certainly most of the briefing on the issues that are related around that would have been a verbal briefing, not least because on your first day there are a number of issues with which to deal.

Ian Paisley

If it was, would you have kept those papers from your first-day brief?

Mr Woodward

No.

Ian Paisley

Could you get a copy of them?

Mr Woodward

They would be returned to the Northern Ireland Office.

Ian Paisley

When did you, then, first become aware, and who in the Northern Ireland Office first briefed you specifically, about an on-the-run scheme?

Mr Woodward

When you come into this job—particularly in 2007; it is different now—you see your officials and the second you are in the job, all the political leaders want to come through your door, so you see them all. As I say, there were issues that were building. I do not believe that my Permanent Secretary, in his first briefing with me, found it the right moment to raise the issue of on-the-runs, by which I simply mean it was not a pressing issue. Do I think in preparation for my first meeting with Gerry Adams, say, that the words “on‑the‑runs” would have been used? Inevitably, because when Gerry Adams would come to see you, it was an issue that would be something that he would raise. To which the answer, by the way, was always very clear, which was, “You had your moment in 2005 when we had the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill to find a process to deal with the anomaly. I do not see how we can deal now with the anomaly where the anomaly relates to those who have been through the process and been found wanting for prosecution, because we cannot give immunity from prosecution, we do not give pardons and there is no amnesty. Yes, we recognise it needs to be dealt with as one of the legacy issues, but I do not see what the issue is. If you have names of people who you want to find out about whether, separate from that, they may be wanted, fine.” But crucially, of those who were wanted and had been through that process and had been reviewed, that was the answer: “There is not an alternative on offer”.

Ian Paisley

The Permanent Secretary at the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland has given evidence to the Northern Ireland Assembly Committee for Justice on some of these matters. Have you seen that gentleman’s evidence?

Mr Woodward

Are we talking about Nick Perry’s evidence?

Ian Paisley

We are.

Mr Woodward

I have not seen Nick Perry’s evidence, no.

Ian Paisley

Right. Would you have received any briefings from Nick Perry when he was in a different role at the Northern Ireland Office?

Mr Woodward

Nick Perry worked for me when I was Secretary of State, so yes, I would have received briefings on all kinds of issues in relation to policing. He was an exceptional civil servant of the highest integrity. On the one hand we think our Civil Service system is brilliant because it works to keep a door between one administration and another, but, in this case—from what I know anecdotally—is it so smart that somebody as brilliant as that goes from a job with extraordinary expertise into the devolved administration and yet, because of the rules of the Civil Service, is prohibited from talking about what happened in a former life?

Ian Paisley

In that life, did he specifically brief you, or do you recall any briefing about OTR issues from Mr Perry?

Mr Woodward

Most of my briefing in relation to OTRs was the really rather boring rehearsal of a set of lines, which was, “It is not an amnesty, it is not immunity from prosecution, and we have no proposals to do anything along those lines”.

Ian Paisley

Was it Nick putting you over those lines?

Mr Woodward

No, there would have been a whole series of officials who came through to do that.

Ian Paisley

Who was the point of contact in the Northern Ireland Office between the NIO and the PSNI on this issue?

Mr Woodward

Let us be sensible about this, Ian. A number of issues were dealt with in certain departments. I could give you a name of a civil servant right now, who might find themselves on the end of somebody who had nothing to do with the issue we are looking at today, but who might suddenly think, “Oh, that was the person who might have been dealing with that. I might want to go and see them.”

Ian Paisley

It is just to find the person who is responsible if you are not.

Mr Woodward

What I am trying to say to you is: I am not trying to prevent you from having the information. I am happy to make the information I know available, but I am conscious of the fact that we are dealing with some people who could be intimidated and I do not want to put a name into the public arena. I am very happy, Chair, to give you the name and for you to follow that up.

Ian Paisley

I am happy with that. I am just saying that the weight of what we were shown last week by the police was that, to a degree, they did not want to send certain information up to the NIO because they found them untrustworthy in the handling of sensitive pieces of information.

Mr Woodward

I was not aware that Peter Sheridan was suggesting that he found the NIO untrustworthy.

Ian Paisley

The weight of the evidence was that.

Mr Woodward

The other witness that you had said a number of things about the NIO and about my predecessor that are entirely misleading. They are his opinions and he is entitled to them.

Ian Paisley

That is why it is important that we get to the people who were running the NIO: so as we can disprove a lot of this.

Mr Woodward

I am happy to make the names available, but I am not happy to put them into the public arena for them to be read, with huge respect, by the Belfast Telegraph and anybody else who might pick it up tomorrow.

Ian Paisley

Thank you.

Dr McDonnell

Shaun, I was very taken by your play on context. I am coming at this from a point of view of someone who was prepared to do difficult things and prepared to take tough decisions, and I personally was a Member of the Parliament here and I thought I had probably some standing in the SDLP and I would have supported much of what you were doing, yet I find myself totally disconnected from all that was going on. Maybe I am stupid, or maybe I was intending to be stupid, but I do not see this, and could not see this, as part of the peace process. This did not involve the various parties to the peace process. This was a deal, from my perspective, between your good self, as Secretary of State, and Sinn Fein, and I do not think, therefore, it can be set in the context of the overall peace process. Whatever the complications of it, whatever the context of it, the court case around Downey very much transferred, and some of the evidence that was given by your predecessor and by others transferred, what was, at your suggestion, a relatively straightforward administrative process into one of significant legal standing. How are we going to bridge the gap here? There is another gap and the play between confidential and secret and sensitive. I do not know where sensitive ends and confidential begins, or where confidential ends and secret begins. All I think this Committee is looking for is to get the facts out on the table and to realise what was going on. I do not know whether you have any comment on that, but I feel very much on another planet in the context of the context that you have put forward there. I would like to think that if there was any leakage, even within a confidential context, somehow or other, as a Member of Parliament for South Belfast and as Deputy Leader of the SDLP at that time—I attended Leeds Castle; I was at St Andrews; I was at the discussions in Hillsborough; and I was involved in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement and all the rest. There is a big gap between your context and my context, to be quite honest with you. If that is there, that gap shifts this very significantly beyond sensitive and beyond confidential into something that was secret. Yes, we knew that there were murmurings and mutterings and possibilities floating about, and that Gerry Adams had an issue with some of these people getting clearance, but there was never any sharing of information; there was never any involvement. Quite frankly, I am not saying I would have objected to some aspects of clearing the thing at a very simple level, but when the thing came into a very heavy legal context, with letters, undertakings and all the rest involved, it moved it into a process where the rest of us should have had some say and some involvement.

Chair

Okay. Let us have an answer.

Mr Woodward

That is an opinion, and I regret that we have a difference of view on that. As I say, my view remains, Alasdair, that this was administrative, not anything that was unlawful or seeking to be unlawful, by means obvious or not obvious. In the context of the many things that had to be dealt with and some of those that were agreed to, as Peter Sheridan cited last week—for example, that decommissioned weapons could not be forensically examined—we were not changing the law for anyone; we were simply having a system of expediting whether somebody was wanted in relation to crimes that were committed before 1998 and whether they were now likely, in terms of the prosecution authorities, to pass that test. We had nothing to do with it; we did not interfere. It was a process being done through the Attorney General with the police. A number of times the whole issue of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and pardons has got drawn into this. There may have been, way before me, discussions around this issue, but what I can tell you is that even where pardons way before me were done, these were in no shape or form pre-conviction pardons. This was, if you remember, a process that was last used, in terms of pre-conviction pardons, in the 19th century and, as far as I know, it ain’t been used since. What I am trying to get at here is that I do not believe that we did anything post-2005 when the Offences Bill fell in relation to what was known as on-the-runs but was no longer the group of on-the-runs pre-2005 that was unlawful. Unusual—the Chief Constable’s word? Yes, it was. Sensitive? No question about it. We can see how sensitive it is now. But again, I come back to: we would not be in this position were it the case that material that was in the hands of the PSNI, with or without the issue of on-the-runs, had been handed on, and had it have been handed on I think we would have had a different judgment, but, again, I cannot comment on that particular case.

Chair

Just on that earlier point, when you quoted Mr Sheridan quoting the handing over of weapons, there was legislation—a lot of it was SI—that went through this House. Is that not the crucial difference?

Mr Woodward

There was legislation attempted to go through this House that failed to go through this House that would have dealt with people who were wanted for prosecution. However, the legislation having failed, we had no way of dealing with it. The administrative process that remained post that was not the process to deal with that group of people that would have been dealt with in the Offences Bill. They remain an anomaly and they remain out there. Again, I remind the Committee that three of the people who went through that process were arrested and were charged.

Kate Hoey

But did you never think that it would be helpful to report that to Parliament, given that Parliament was so angry and annoyed about the whole way the on-the-runs legislation was going through and then was stopped and we had a statement? Did you not think that Parliament might not want to know this was happening?

Mr Woodward

We could have told Parliament a number of things along the way. We did not make a statement on that. If I was asked a question, did I answer a question on it? Would I be prepared to? Yes, I was. When, for example, the commission on the past was doing its work, we made a pretty detailed briefing to them on the issue, and that was available to everybody on that committee. But we were not doing something that would have required legislation; we were not doing something by the back door that was unlawful. Yes, of course we could have made a statement to Parliament, and it would have been possible to think of a number of issues on which one might have made statements to Parliament. I have to also say to you that since we were not doing anything that was unlawful, we were not doing anything that required an SI, and we had recognised that there was a group of people, the so-called “on‑the‑runs”, that could not possibly be dealt with because they were wanted for prosecution and they were the anomaly and nothing that we were doing was going to help them one bit—and, indeed, of those who did come back, they got arrested if they were wanted for prosecution and nobody sought to help them out; they faced their charges and went to prison—I am not sure what the statement would have been. That “we are finding out whether anyone who comes to us who may want to know whether or not they are wanted for questioning may be wanted for questioning”? I am not trying to trivialise it, because I have seen the damage that this particular case has done. I am not remotely trivialising it, but I am not sure that without this particular case we would be in the place that we now are. What this case has thrown up, going back to Lady Hermon’s crucial observation, is whether what, in whatever good faith, everybody—officials, myself, predecessors and successors involved—thought was a statement of fact is more than that. The absolute urgency of this inquiry and Lady Hallett’s inquiry has got to be to establish this. It is essential that the Secretary of State and the Attorney General face that fully square, because it would be for me utterly unacceptable to think that a process that was an administrative process was now going to become one that could be used as an immunity from prosecution. That was never the intention and it is still not the intention. I cannot speak for the current Secretary of State, but I am pretty certain that she would agree with me.

Dr McDonnell

Do you accept that the police did not know letters had been sent?

Mr Woodward

The Chief Constable said that this afternoon, and I accept every word the Chief Constable says.

Dr McDonnell

Do you accept every word Peter Sheridan says?

Mr Woodward

Yes.

Dr McDonnell

Good; okay. When some information became available that Downey was not quite in the clear, what were they supposed to do to reverse the clearance that they had given?

Mr Woodward

They make it very clear to the DPP that there is a problem, at which point the DPP makes it extremely clear to the Attorney General that there is a major problem.

Dr McDonnell

But they gave a clearance at the point in time where they saw it in the best benefit. Their comment, or recommendation, only became significant in the context of the letters. Once the letters were sent, that lifted their assessment to a whole new level, and they were not aware of the letters.

Mr Woodward

Bearing in mind that the Attorney General did know of the letters and bearing in mind that the Attorney General has many people working for him or her of a quite considerable calibre, who are far more and better trained than I am in relation to the value of a letter and what it may or may not mean, I just find it inconceivable that if I was being reassured that the letters were statements of fact and nothing more than that, that was not also the opinion in the Attorney General’s Office. I am, in that sense, as surprised as you and everybody on this Committee is, and everybody else. I do genuinely think people are being honest here. What is extraordinary is that it would seem that a judgment was made that does not treat this as a statement of fact. But I do put, again, Chair, into the context of this that Justice Sweeney says it is part of a process, not the letter in itself. Again, you will probably be better read than me on this judgment, but my recollection of what Justice Sweeney says, particularly in the concluding parts, is that in finding to strike out the case it was the handling by the police, not only in the initial information that led to this letter but the subsequent discovery of a mistake having been made that was not then communicated to anybody else, that led the judge to talk about the abuse of process. Again, I just very much hope that Justice Hallett, as much as this inquiry, will wish to look at that. We can focus, and rightly this Committee is focusing, on the letter, but it is also necessary to look at the entire process. As I say, my view is that we will find at the end of the day this was a mistake, not a conspiracy.

Chair

It is an important point, that. By the time the mistake, or whatever you want to call it, was realised—it goes back to Alasdair’s question—they could hardly alert Mr Downey to the fact that the letter carried no weight, because that would then have prevented him from coming back into the jurisdiction where he is wanted.

Mr Woodward

I refer the Committee to paragraphs 133 and 137. 137: “Again, nothing was done to alert the DPP (NI), or anyone else, in relation to the defendant being wanted”.

Chair

Yes, that should have happened, but what were they supposed to do with regards to Mr Downey, other than alert him, “If you come back, yes, you will be arrested”? Once we had got to that point, it was hard to get out of it.

Mr Woodward

The questions around the Northern Ireland Office are entirely right and I am glad that you ask them, and anything I can do I will help with, but it does seem to me, both with the particular officer and his superior and between the PSNI and the DPP, that no contact happened there either. All that is also outside the remit of the NIO. That conversation could have taken place. Why it did not I do not know, but, as I say, my feeling is that it was a mistake. The problem is the mistake for the victims involved in this is appalling and indescribable.

Chair

We have been going for well over an hour, so if we can try and avoid any repetition, that would be greatly appreciated.

Dr McDonnell

Chair, I will leave it at that. I was going to ask a question about whether the SDLP qualified as one of the smaller political parties.

Chair

Okay, well we will not get into that.

Mr Woodward

Chair, it is a very large political party.

Dr McDonnell

Could I ask: were the letters all given to Gerry Kelly? Why were they given to Gerry Kelly rather than to the individuals?

Mr Woodward

I do not know if all the letters were given to Gerry Kelly because I did not sign them and I did not pass them on. The process that I am aware of—because very often it did not involve me at all—was simply that a list of names would be given, as began with Tony Blair back in whenever it was after the Good Friday Agreement. That was the process that happened. As I say, one of the things, Chair, that is a hallmark of this is an evolutionary process. As so often happens with evolutionary processes, they look fine when they start—there is a debate around that, of course—but there then comes another moment when circumstances change and then they have the capacity to look completely different. With hindsight—always a wonderful thing—could we have done it differently? Very possibly these letters should not have been coming from the NIO. But they still would have had to have come from someone. Therefore, I think I am saying slightly the mistake could still have been made, because if information is not passed between people, whoever the letter may come from, however it is written and whoever has signed it, if a mistake in the original information is made and there is no apparatus to check it, and when it is discovered that a mistake has been made it is not referred to the DPP, the discussion of the letter is a secondary issue. It is: why was the mistake made, and why, when it was discovered, was the DPP not involved?

Nigel Mills

We are at risk of going round this circle a few more times here, but I suppose it comes back down to the question I keep asking myself, which is how this could be critical for the peace process and yet be largely meaningless, and how you get those two to square.

Mr Woodward

I did not say it was meaningless.

Nigel Mills

Okay, I will rephrase my question. What seems to me a salient question is: what did these letters mean by “if we discover new evidence, or some new offence comes to light, then action can still be taken”? The question was asked last week: does new evidence mean evidence that we find in a file that we did not know was there or we had forgotten was there or we had not put two and two together but it was quite material to this, or does it have to be solely a witness coming forward that had never come forward before or a new forensic technique we did not have before? Those are really quite different scenarios.

Mr Woodward

What matters for one person is not the same as what matters for somebody else. I would never describe these letters in the sense of their value to the person who received them as meaningless, not because I am suggesting they carry the value of being an immunity but because for the individual concerned who got one, being told you were free to return, not because you had a pardon, not because you had an amnesty, but for whatever reason—maybe the witnesses had died; again, I remind you that none of that information was ever contained in the letter—it meant a lot. But crucially, it contained a statement that, “By the way, if the facts change, you could be interviewed by the police, and, if you are interviewed by the police and there is evidence there, you could go to prison”. So, you could argue, as you have just done, “What did these letters mean?” The answer is: to the people who had them, they meant what they meant; to you, they have a different view. To where things were for Sinn Fein in the late 1990s, they were probably very important for reassuring people that they were prepared to do things to find out whether people were wanted for questioning or whether or not there would be prosecutions, and those were issues that mattered to them. But I have to tell you that there were other political parties who had issues that would fall under the umbrella of, “Why on earth did that matter so much to them?” The answer is: because it did.

Nigel Mills

When you were Secretary of State and you were presented with this process, did you every worry or enquire about how the Historical Enquiries Team process would interact with this process? If the Historical Enquiries Team, doing a file review, found some new evidence or thought there was a case that could be put together that had not been previously put together, did it ever worry you that that would get stalled because that was not “new” under a natural use of that word?

Mr Woodward

I had a number of worries about the Historical Enquiries Team. The HET is brilliant. It was under-resourced when we were in Government, and it is in an even more difficult place now. The weight of the work that it has to deal with is enormous, but the value of its work is incredible. The problem is that they were approaching the work chronologically. We have given undertakings in the course of building a peace process that we would deal with the anomaly of OTRs. Again, you come back to needing to see this in an ongoing context. Whilst the collapse of the 2005 legislation meant that nothing could be done about those who were wanted, on the other hand, for those who needed to know whether they would be wanted, there was no reason why we could not deal with an expediting of finding that out. That being said, at no time was it interference, and at all times it was very clear to me that this was a police operation and a prosecution operation that was going to be reported through the Attorney General’s office to me, which is a different structure from the HET. Remember, what the police were doing in relation to Operation Rapid, as Peter Sheridan set out last week, was a review. What the HET were doing, in some cases, was going further than that.

Nigel Mills

Were you intrigued last week to hear Mr Sheridan’s evidence that he had an exchange of correspondence in 2006 with the lawyer representing the on-the-runs about what a process could look like for dealing with them, which would involve them voluntarily submitting for questioning, and that that process was effectively rejected by Mr McGrory at that point, and then we appear to have moved on to a process that did not require such questioning to determine if the file should be closed? It seems that the police moved their process quite dramatically forward from a normal-looking police investigation to a paper chase. Do you think this could have been perhaps better if they had stuck with the first idea?

Mr Woodward

The first idea being?

Nigel Mills

Being, “Yes, of course we can look at the file, and if you come in for questioning, we can decide whether we want to proceed or not”. That looks a more robust process, does it not?

Mr Woodward

To be frank, that is a matter for the police to decide. It was not for me to tell them how to do their operation. We needed to know, if we got a list of people who said, “Are these people wanted for questioning?” what the answer to that was. It was absolutely not for us to say how to do it, what not to look at or what to look at. That had to be an operational issue for the police and the prosecuting authorities.

Nigel Mills

It just makes it look, does it not, the assurances having been given to Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein that a solution would be found, like this was the solution?

Mr Woodward

No, the opposite. There are many records of me saying to Gerry Adams, “There is no solution to this”.

Nigel Mills

What was his reaction to that? Did he say, “Wait a minute. What are these letters, then?”

Mr Woodward

I also had in my mind the pending Bloody Sunday inquiry. However hateful for many people the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill would have been, one of the things that it would have provided is for any—for example—member of the British forces who found themselves being prosecuted to put themselves into that process. Once the whole process had failed and we had no tribunal mechanism, it was very simple to Mr Adams: “There is nothing I can do about this”.

Nigel Mills

When you see Mr Adams making press comments about the Downey case on the basis of, “He should never have been arrested. He should be released. This is a betrayal of a promise the British Government made that the on-the-runs would not be pursued”, that is different to the conversations you had with him, when you think he knew that this was an administrative process that did not confer an amnesty and was not intended to, and that investigations could be re-opened in suitable circumstances.

Mr Woodward

This is not a value judgment on the individual; it is a remark on his rhetorical capacity. He is very good at blowing the trumpet on behalf of those he represents.

Nigel Mills

But he knew that these letters were not intended to be a get-out-of-jail-free card; they were merely a, “Today we do not want you; tomorrow we might.”

Mr Woodward

They knew, for example, that if somebody who did not have one of these letters, because they were wanted, came back, they would be charged and arrested, because we charged and arrested people. I say “we” meaning the PSNI. He could not be in any doubt when he saw three people arrested and charged.

Nigel Mills

Were you ever involved in any discussions about how the public interest in prosecuting played into these decisions? It is one thing to say, “There is no evidence, therefore we cannot proceed”; it is quite different to say, “There is some, but we think in the public interest it is not advisable to continue with a prosecution”. Was that criterion ever used in deciding whether to issue these letters or not?

Mr Woodward

I am going to be absolutely honest with you and say yes, I had discussions with the Attorney General about the possibility of how, post the failure of the Offences Bill, we could find a solution to the anomaly, but those discussions were precisely because we had given an undertaking that we would, and they were always rather repetitive in nature, because there was not a solution but we said we would discuss it, so I would always honour the value of going through with my promise. I was always coming back saying, “But we do not have a solution to it, because this has to remain lawful, and we do not have a lawful mechanism for people being pardoned or giving immunity from prosecution”.

Nigel Mills

So you do not think it would have been lawful to say a prosecution of somebody in this situation would do such damage to the peace process that it was not in the public interest to proceed. That was not a criterion you used.

Mr Woodward

That was never my discussion with anybody. Do I think Attorneys‑General have to weigh sometimes the public interest on issues? I am not talking about Northern Ireland here, but wider issues. Yes, they do. There are relatively recent instances. Nonetheless, I, during my time as Secretary of State, did not have any conversation in any shape or form about individuals being given some immunity from prosecution.

Nigel Mills

Or some kind of general policy that—

Mr Woodward

To be really honest, there is not a general policy. There is either immunity from prosecution or there is not immunity from prosecution. There is not another place to go. If you are wanted for the murder of somebody, then you are wanted for their murder; there is not another place to be parked in.

Chair

Thank you. Can I just remind Members we have been going an hour and a half now? There will be a vote shortly. Some of us have to get to greet the President of Ireland as well.

Oliver Colvile

I will try to keep this to the point. First of all, can I thank you for putting the context for what else was happening at the time into context too? There are two things I want to ask you. First of all, do you know who was responsible for signing off the terms of reference for Operation Rapid?

Mr Woodward

As I understand it, Oliver, Operation Rapid was a policing operation and therefore it would have fallen under the ambit of the Chief Constable. It would not be something that he would discuss with me.

Oliver Colvile

No, that is fine. It is a question for him.

Mr Woodward

There is no political connection in any shape or form.

Oliver Colvile

The question, then, that I also have to ask is: where we are now, there are some people who have been killed in Hyde Park and there is now, it appears, no course for getting any kind of justice for the victims of those people who were killed. When you were considering the strategy that you were going through, did you ever think to yourself, “This, frankly, looks as if there is one group of people who are going to be seen to be getting preferential treatment. How can we look after those people who also may have ended up by committing crimes and being involved in terrorism, either from the Loyalist side or alternatively? Secondly, how are we going to end up by making sure that those members of the military who were doing their duty as far as the British Government was concerned are not going to find themselves under prosecution too?”

Mr Woodward

First of all, anybody who came to me in my capacity as Secretary of State—a Member of Parliament or whoever, from whatever political party—and said, “Look, we need to know about X and whether they are wanted” I would have done exactly the same for. Sinn Fein were the people who relentlessly did it for the numbers of cases that the current Secretary of State has put into the public arena. It is just what they did. Would it have only been done for them if we had been asked by anybody else? No. I would have done it for anybody else.

Oliver Colvile

Did anybody else ask you?

Mr Woodward

Nobody else came in to ask for it. If, for example, a political party had come in and said, “We have this group of people who have a history within Loyalism”, say, “and we want to know if they are free to return”, would I have done it? Of course I would have done it, because I was not doing anything that was unlawful.

Chair

Two final quick questions from Sylvia and Naomi. We will have to wrap it up then.

Lady Hermon

If, as you have repeatedly told us, the Government was not doing anything illegal and it was just dealing with an anomaly, why do you think the present Government did not tell Richard Haass anything about the administrative scheme before he embarked on hours and hours and hours of negotiations on dealing with the past? Why was that deceit continued for those other negotiators from other parties, apart from Sinn Fein, who knew about it all the time?

Mr Woodward

For me it is quite difficult to comment on the current Government, for this reason.

Lady Hermon

But I am asking you—

Mr Woodward

No, but it is very relevant. I spent a long time in Northern Ireland. A big problem leading up, as Ian knows, to the 2010 Hillsborough Agreement[17] was around parades and flags—a number of very important issues, particularly for Unionists but equally important for Nationalists. I was not even asked to give evidence to Richard Haass. This Government took a view in 2010 that everything any of us did in the 12 or 13 years from 1998 to 2010 was not something they wanted to involve us with. I cannot tell you why this Government have not invited or asked for us in relation to Richard Haass on this because they have not asked for it on any front whatsoever.

Lady Hermon

No. The picture that you have painted for us is: “We are just dealing with an anomaly. Gerry Adams comes in; he gives a long list of people and repeatedly asks about OTRs.” The question I am asking is: if it was just so ordinary—if it was such a normal process, it was not illegal and it was just dealing with an anomaly—why on earth would any Government not tell a chief negotiator who flies hundreds of miles, repeatedly giving up his time—

Mr Woodward

I cannot speak for this Government. For me it was not a secret. For example, I discussed the issue, when they asked me, with both the former Secretary of State in President Obama’s administration and her predecessor. I had no difficulty discussing it. If anybody from this Committee in its former life had come to talk to me about it, I would have had no difficulty discussing it. I cannot answer for this administration and why they have not talked about it with Richard Haass. I do not believe it is such a terrible secret.

Lady Hermon

Let me just interrupt. I do apologise for interrupting you in the middle of your flow. Did you know about Operation Rapid?

Mr Woodward

I did not know the name of Operation Rapid, because, as I said, the words never, ever went across my desk.

Lady Hermon

Yes. But you knew it was happening.

Mr Woodward

Did I know that the police were working to expedite? Yes, I did, because Gerry Kelly or Gerry Adams would bring names, and I was aware in the Northern Ireland Office of the list of names being brought in, that were then being passed on.

Lady Hermon

So the only thing that surprised you about the Downey judgment is the fact that the legal status appears to be that it was, in effect, an amnesty in Mr Downey’s case.

Mr Woodward

Again, a bit of caution there. The judge seems to be saying it was an abuse of process, of which the letter is part. To end up concluding, therefore, that the letter is an amnesty is highly dangerous. I just would caution this because if it is not, we ought to be careful that we are not building it into something that it is not. I do recognise every worry that you have given about how people feel about this. If it is the case that this letter is not an amnesty and that the lawyers look at this and say, “No, what went wrong was not the letter but the information not being passed”, I do not want to create more pain for people who have been through enough.

Chair

We have got a couple of minutes left; that is all. I will have to bring Naomi in, as she has been sat there waiting patiently.

Naomi Long

Thank you, Chairman. There are some very important questions that have not been asked, and I am conscious that a few minutes may not do justice to them. For example, the issue of devolution of police and justice has not been touched on at all. I am just putting that on the record, because we will need to return to that to get the evidence.

Chair

We will ask that of the relevant Secretary of State.

Naomi Long

Which is Shaun Woodward, who is in front of us now.

Chair

No, because he left office in May two thousand and—well, before that.

Naomi Long

Yes. But on the issue of the devolution of policing and justice, can I ask the question: in the run-up to that and in the negotiations, did you brief the parties on this scheme and its potential for devolution and how it would be devolved?

Mr Woodward

Sorry, did I brief the parties?

Naomi Long

Yes. Each of the parties who were involved in those discussions.

Mr Woodward

No.

Naomi Long

Did you at any time raise this with David Ford?

Mr Woodward

No. But can I just remind you that I was Secretary of State up until, as the Chair has pointed out, May of 2010, and he only became Minister after that process?

Naomi Long

Yes, but we were both heavily involved in those negotiations. Would it be fair to say that?

Mr Woodward

Yes, but we should be conscious of the timetable being so tight and all the issues that were pressing at the time. Let us also say that David Ford could only ask what he knew about, but, that being said, he had quite a lot of pressing issues that he did want to spend the time on and that, genuinely, I think he was right to spend the time on.

Naomi Long

I am simply trying to establish that during that process of negotiation, which I was party to as well, this was not an issue that you felt needed to be raised or discussed in the context of devolution of policing and justice.

Mr Woodward

Bear in mind that the police report to the Policing Board. I am just struck by whether or not you are looking at the right person for having that discussion.

Chair

We will have to return to these issues. There are a number of issues. Thank you very much for your help, Mr Woodward.

Mr Woodward

Not at all. If the Committee wants to write to me in order to expedite this, please do so.

Chair

Thank you very much. Oral evidence: Administrative scheme for ‘on-the-runs’, HC 1194 52 [1] The transcript of the oral evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee by Norman Baxter and Peter Sheridan on 2 April 2014 can be found here: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/northern-ireland-affairs-committee/administrative-scheme-for-ontheruns/oral/8333.html [2] “The Queen v John Anthony Downey, Judgment: Abuse of Process”, Justice Sweeney, 21 February 2014 can be found here: http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v-downey-abuse-judgment.pdf [3] The terms of reference of “Operation Rapid” can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Operation-Rapid-Terms-of-Reference.pdf [4] The transcript of the oral evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee by Sir Hugh Orde on 9 November 2005 can be found here: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmniaf/uc665/uc66502.htm [5] The report ‘A New Beginning: Policing in Northern Ireland’ (September 1999) can be found here: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/police/patten/patten99.pdf [6] Sir Hugh Orde was quoted in a number of newspapers, including the Irish Post on 25 February 2014: http://www.irishpost.co.uk/news/police-accept-full-responsibilty-for-john-downey-trial-collapse [7] The minutes of the OTR meeting on 9 June 2006 can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Minutes-of-the-OTR-meeting-on-6-June-2006-(flag%2017).pdf A link to the document ‘Cases yet to be established / resolved as discussed at meeting with AG, PSNI and PPS – 9 June 2006’ can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Notes-of-meeting-between-AG-PSNI-and-PPS-9-June-2006.pdf [8] A link to the “Report of the Consultative Group on the Past”, 23 January 2009 can be found here: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/docs/consultative_group/cgp_230109_report.pdf [9] A link to the European Convention on Human Rights can be found here: http://www.echr.coe.int/documents/convention_eng.pdf [10] The terms of reference of “Operation Rapid” can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Operation-Rapid-Terms-of-Reference.pdf [11] A link to the Hallett Review report, subsequently published, can be found here: http://www.hallettreview.org/report/ [12] A link to the letter from the Northern Ireland office to Mr John Downey of July 2007 is provided here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Cover-letter-from-NIO-to-Gerry-Kelly-and-John-Downey-OTR-Letter-July-2007.pdf [13] The minutes of the OTR meeting on 9 June 2006 can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Minutes-of-the-OTR-meeting-on-6-June-2006-(flag%2017).pdf A link to the document ‘Cases yet to be established / resolved as discussed at meeting with AG, PSNI and PPS – 9 June 2006’ can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Notes-of-meeting-between-AG-PSNI-and-PPS-9-June-2006.pdf [14] The letter from Tony Blair to Gerry Adams on 28 December 2006 is referred to on page 59 of the Hallett Review: http://www.hallettreview.org/filestore/uploads/2014/07/HallettReviewPrintReady.pdf [15] Mr Hain’s evidence to Mr Justice Sweeney (January 2014) can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Peter-Hain-statement-to-Mr-Justice-Sweeney-January-2014.pdf [16] The email exchange between Mark Sweeney (NIO) and the PSNI (18 July 2007 to 20 July 2007) can be found here: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/northern-ireland-affairs/Email-exchange-between-Mark-Sweeney-NIO-and-the-PSNI-18-July-2007-to-20-July-2007.pdf [17] The ‘Agreement at Hillsborough Castle’ (February 2010) can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/136435/agreement_at_hillsborough_castle_5_february_2010.pdf