The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill: why the conditional immunity scheme should be retained
Louis Flood considers the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill and makes the case for retaining conditional immunity.
The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill: why the conditional immunity scheme should be retained
The legacy of the Troubles remains an unresolved issue of the Northern Ireland peace process. Almost thirty years after the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, there is still no lasting settlement that secures truth and accountability for victims and their families. The Northern Ireland Troubles Bill (Troubles Bill) is the latest attempt to provide one.
The Bill returns to the House of Commons for Committee Stage on 19 October. It would reform the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), which has only recently begun to deliver results. Rather than overhauling this body, Parliament should consider retaining it in its current form and bringing into force its power to grant immunity from prosecution.
The limits of prosecution
Prosecutions have played a central role in addressing the legacy of the Troubles. Many victims and their families see the criminal justice process as the route to truth and accountability. But prosecutions cannot resolve every legacy case.
More than two thirds of Troubles-related deaths occurred over 40 years ago. The passage of time has reduced the availability and reliability of evidence, making the criminal standard of proof increasingly hard to meet. Many cases end without a conviction, and some never reach trial at all. After decades of uncertainty, those outcomes add to the distress of families the process is meant to serve.
The Legacy Act 2023
The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 was introduced by the previous Conservative Government after extensive engagement with victims and veterans groups. It established a new framework centred on information recovery and reconciliation. The key provisions are set out below:
It ended new and ongoing criminal investigations into Troubles-related offences.
It established the ICRIR to review Troubles-related deaths and serious injuries, with the power to refer cases to prosecutors and to grant conditional immunity to those who cooperated.
It ended civil claims relating to the Troubles brought on or after 17 May 2022 and barred new ones.
It stopped Troubles-related inquests proceeding after 1 May 2024.
The Act was opposed by all the major political parties in Northern Ireland because it allowed both terrorists and former members of the security forces to apply for immunity from prosecution. But it did not provide a blanket amnesty. It created a system of conditional immunity. An individual could obtain immunity only by giving the Commission a full and truthful account of their conduct. If the Commission found that someone had withheld information or failed to cooperate, it could refuse immunity, and criminal proceedings could follow.
That created a strong incentive to cooperate. A person who refused to engage and was later convicted on evidence uncovered by the Commission would also not benefit from early release under the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. Instead, they would serve the sentence the court imposed. The aim was to strike a balance between securing information for victims and survivors and protecting veterans from repeated investigations.
Why is the Government changing the law?
The Government gives two reasons for reform. First, the Legacy Act did not command political support in Northern Ireland. Second, the courts found significant parts of it incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The first has some force. The Act was an uncomfortable compromise. Any route to immunity for former members of the security forces had to be open to former terrorists too; a scheme for one side alone was not politically viable. However, every approach to legacy involves painful trade-offs that some will find hard to accept. The goal should be a settlement that serves victims, veterans and society.
The second ground has weakened considerably. In Dillon, the High Court found that the conditional immunity provisions and the restrictions on civil claims were incompatible with the ECHR and with Article 2(1) of the Windsor Framework and disapplied the relevant provisions. The Government abandoned its appeal on the ECHR issue, but the question of disapplication went on to the Supreme Court.
In May 2026, the Supreme Court held that the conditional immunity provisions should not have been disapplied under Article 2(1) of the Windsor Framework. Because the Government had abandoned its appeal against the declarations of incompatibility, the ECHR issue was not before the Court. The Government had already sought to remove the immunity scheme and the bar on civil claims by remedial order, which the Commons approved in January 2026. Peers later questioned whether a remedial order was the right vehicle, so amendments to the Troubles Bill will now be proposed at Committee Stage to repeal the relevant provisions.
Repealing conditional immunity is a political choice rather than a legal necessity. The Irish Government brought an inter-State application against the Legacy Act before the European Court of Human Rights in January 2024 and there is no guarantee of a judgment in its favour. The approach of the UK Government is best explained by excessive caution over ECHR compliance and a desire to repair relations with Dublin after a strained period under previous Conservative Governments.
What the Troubles Bill does
Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto made a commitment to repeal the Legacy Act and replace it with new legislation. In 2025, the UK and Irish Governments agreed a Joint Framework based on the principles of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, which had been endorsed by all the main Northern Ireland parties except the Ulster Unionist Party. Those principles promote reconciliation, justice, information recovery and compliance with human rights obligations. Crucially, the Joint Framework contains no conditional immunity scheme.
The Bill would create two bodies:
The Legacy Commission would be the principal investigative body for Troubles-related deaths and serious injuries, referring cases to prosecutors where there is sufficient evidence of an offence. Where there is no realistic prospect of prosecution, it would be required to establish the facts as far as possible. Nine of the discontinued inquests would return to the coroners’ courts. The remaining 29 would transfer to the Commission’s inquisitorial process, which could consider sensitive information in closed proceedings.
The Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR) would receive and retain information about Troubles-related deaths and provide reports to families on request. It would have no investigative powers and would rely on voluntary cooperation. Information given to it would be protected from use in legal proceedings and by the Legacy Commission.
Alongside the Joint Framework, the Government announced six protections for veterans, intended to answer concerns that former members of the security forces would lose the safeguards they had under the Legacy Act.
Why the Troubles Bill is the wrong approach
1. Protections for veterans
Under the Bill, former service personnel remain liable to investigation and prosecution decades after their service. Soldiers deployed in Northern Ireland were sent to protect the public from terrorist violence. The law should afford them protection, rather than treat them in the same way as the terrorists they were there to combat.
Veterans have faced a disproportionate share of investigations. In 2017, the Defence Select Committee found that although the Army accounted for around 10% of Troubles-related deaths, investigations into former soldiers made up around 30% of the cases handled by the PSNI’s Legacy Investigation Branch. Many veterans have faced repeated investigations. Soldier F stood trial in his eighties in connection with Bloody Sunday. Former SAS member Soldier B faced legal proceedings over the 1991 Coagh ambush until this year.
Prosecution is not the only source of strain. Inquests and civil actions also force veterans to revisit traumatic events. The Legacy Act stopped 38 inquests and 250 civil actions, though around 800 claims brought before the Bill’s First Reading in the Commons were allowed to continue. The Troubles Bill would revive inquests, through the coroners’ courts or the Legacy Commission, and lift the ban on new civil claims. Veterans again face the prospect of defending their service in later life.
None of this is a criticism of the coronial system. It is independent and trusted by the public, and coroners have handled many of the most difficult cases with great care. The question is not whether coroners’ courts do their job well. It is what kind of mechanism best serves a society recovering from decades of conflict. Here, an alternative is more appropriate.
The “six protections” do recognise veterans’ particular concerns. But they largely mirror measures already available to certain witnesses in criminal proceedings. Most concern how a veteran is treated during an investigation, not whether they should be investigated at all.
The Government has also proposed requiring the Attorney General’s consent for all serious Troubles-related prosecutions. There is precedent for this, including in national security cases. However, the Attorney General would apply the same test of evidential sufficiency and public interest that prosecutors already use, so it is unclear how many outcomes would change. Consent would be given or refused only at the point of prosecution, after a veteran may already have endured an intrusive criminal investigation.
2. The effectiveness of the Armed Forces
The Bill has implications for the Armed Forces as a whole. Nine retired four-star generals have argued that the prospect of retrospective legal proceedings discourages decisive action on operations, weakening the United Kingdom’s national security.
The logic is straightforward. Service personnel make rapid decisions under pressure with incomplete information. If they believe a lawful decision in the field may be re-examined in a courtroom decades later, the temptation to hesitate grows. At the wrong moment that could cost lives.
The point is not that the Armed Forces should be above the law. Those whose conduct raises serious questions should account for it. The concern is that the prospect of legal scrutiny decades later will be factored into decisions in ways no one intended. The Government should consider what message it sends to those it may deploy next.
3. Cost
Policy Exchange estimates that addressing the legacy of the Troubles will cost £2.2–2.7 billion in 2024 prices. That is the equivalent of two new hospitals or 70 secondary schools, and more than five years of Northern Ireland’s health capital spending.
Those sums might be defensible if they bought a durable resolution. But the system the Troubles Bill revives has already proved expensive and slow. Criminal investigations, inquests and civil claims run separately. The ICRIR was designed to break that cycle, with a single budget and a five-year window for applications. Whatever view one takes of the Legacy Act’s other provisions, that discipline was a genuine advantage.
4. Conditional immunity
Conditional immunity was intended as the cornerstone of the ICRIR. Opposition to the scheme in Northern Ireland was serious and sincerely held. However, the scheme was a pragmatic response to the limits of the criminal justice process. There have been few successful prosecutions since the end of the Troubles, and the passage of time makes each new case harder. By encouraging people to provide information they would otherwise have withheld, the scheme offered the best chance of giving families the answers they want most.
Repealing conditional immunity would mean remaining at an impasse. The ICIR would replicate some of the ICRIR’s information recovery functions without any power to compel cooperation or offer immunity. Some may come forward voluntarily, but the scheme it replaces was designed to offer more. It gave those with knowledge a real reason to speak and imposed consequences on those who chose not to. The Troubles Bill removes the incentive without providing an effective alternative.
Conclusion
The ICRIR is already showing what its approach can offer. Its first findings report, published last month, concerned the 1977 murder of Rory O’Kelly in Coalisland, County Tyrone. It explained how the Provisional IRA planned and carried out the attack, bringing his family answers they had waited almost fifty years for. Yet the Commission could not identify those responsible and called on others to come forward. That is precisely the gap conditional immunity was meant to close. With well over 300 families engaged and more than 140 live investigations, the ICRIR is only just beginning to deliver. Without conditional immunity, those involved in the Troubles have little reason to give an account of what happened.
Following the Supreme Court’s judgment in Dillon, the Government can be satisfied that conditional immunity does not breach the Windsor Framework. It can defend the scheme against ECHR challenges in the domestic courts and, if necessary, in Strasbourg. Abandoning conditional immunity is therefore a political choice, not a legal necessity. It is driven by a cautious approach to ECHR compliance and a desire to repair relations with Dublin.
Understandable as those aims may be, the Bill would pay a high price for them. It would leave families without answers, veterans in legal jeopardy and taxpayers with a substantial bill. Parliament should consider whether retaining conditional immunity would offer a more durable way of dealing with Northern Ireland’s past.
Louis Flood is a criminal pupil barrister in London. He was a special adviser to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 2022 and 2024
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