Meetings of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee are rarely so popular that they have to book an overspill room, but today’s hearing with Tony Blair was a sell-out occasion, with both the Wilson Room and the Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House packed with people wanting to watch the former Prime Minister give evidence on the On the Runs scheme. He was in a pretty defiant mood during the two hour-long session, but then so were the MPs, particularly Ian Paisley Jr, whose aggressive questioning ensured Blair was never truly at ease.
Blair insisted repeatedly that the controversial ‘comfort letters’ were only issued to those who were not going to prosecuted, and some who were not even known to the authorities in Northern Ireland. He drew parallels between his approach to the Northern Ireland peace process and Benjamin Netanyahu releasing Palestinian militants as part of prisoner exchanges, and argued that the On the Runs scheme was a necessary part of securing that peace process. He said:
‘It’s the nature of political decision-making. To make peace sometimes, you draw a line under the past even though individually for the victims they will never feel that it is justified.’
Blair did apologise for the collapse of the trial of former IRA paramilitary John Downey, saying he took ‘full responsibility’ and ‘I am sorry for those people and I apologise to those people who have suffered as a result of that.’
But then he added that the letters were necessary:
‘But I am not going to apologise for sending those letters to those who should have received those letters, because without having done that, we would not have a Northern Ireland peace process.’
Needless to say, those representing the victims of IRA attacks were unimpressed by Blair’s evidence. Stephen Gault, chairman of Justice for Innocent Victims of Terrorism, told Coffee House afterwards that Blair had resembled a ‘rabbit in headlights’ and that he had offered few answers:
‘[Blair] struggled from the very start when Paisley was questioning him. My father was brutally killed with eleven other innocent civilians and Tony Blair is trying to protect the people that carried out that murder.’
Gault disagreed with Blair’s argument that Sinn Fein would have abandoned peace talks if the OTR issue was not resolved. He said:
‘That doesn’t wash with me, they would never have walked, they would have had too much to gain from being involved. We now have peace to a certain extent in Northern Ireland, but it’s a peace built on a foundation of lies. Everyone should be entitled to justice.’
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