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Bloody Sunday Inquiry House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Bloody Sunday Inquiry Oral and written evidence Wednesday 13 October 2010 The Rt Hon The Lord Saville of Newdigate Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed Wednesday 13 October 2010 HC 499-i Published on 6 October 2011 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £4.00 The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Northern Ireland Office (but excluding individual cases and advice given by the Crown Solicitor); and other matters within the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (but excluding the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Northern Ireland and the drafting of legislation by the Office of the Legislative Counsel). Current membership Mr Laurence Robertson MP (Conservative, Tewkesbury) (Chair) Mr Joe Benton MP (Labour, Bootle) Oliver Colvile MP (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) Mr Stephen Hepburn MP (Labour, Jarrow) Lady Hermon MP (Independent, North Down) Kate Hoey MP (Labour, Vauxhall) Ian Lavery MP (Labour, Wansbeck) Naomi Long MP (Alliance, Belfast East) Jack Lopresti MP (Conservative, Filton and Bradley Stoke) Dr Alasdair McDonnell MP (SDLP, Belfast South) Ian Paisley MP (DUP, North Antrim) David Simpson MP (DUP, Upper Bann) Mel Stride MP (Conservative, Central Devon) Gavin Williamson MP (Conservative, South Staffordshire) The following member was also a member of the committee during the parliament. Stephen Pound MP (Labour, Ealing North) Powers The committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at www.parliament.uk/niacom. Current Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Mike Clark (Clerk), Duma Langton (Inquiry Manager), James Bowman (Senior Committee Assistant), Becky Crew (Committee Assistant), Karen Watling (Committee Assistant), Ravi Abhayaratne (Committee Support Assistant) and Becky Jones (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 2173/1341; the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. cobber Pack: U PL: COE1 [SO] Processed: [05-10-2011 13:33] Job: 014365 Unit: PG01 Source: /MILES/PKU/INPUT/014365/014365_w001_kathy_BSI 01 (topped, tailed and proof read).xml Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Evidence Ev 1 Oral evidence Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday 13 October 2010 Members present: Mr Laurence Robertson (Chair) David Simpson Mr Joe Benton Mel Stride Oliver Colvile Naomi Long Dr Alasdair McDonnell Gavin Williamson Jack Lopresti ________________ Examination of Witness Witness: The Rt Hon The Lord Saville of Newdigate, Chair of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. Q1 Chair: Right, I will start. Good afternoon, and these things can leak and I was very pleased that our sorry for the delay. As you probably gathered, we had report did not.1 a vote in the Commons. I hope we will not be Chair: Excellent, well done. Can I perhaps turn to the interrupted again, but I cannot promise it. If we are witnesses and the evidence? I would like to ask David interrupted again, I will suspend the Committee for up Simpson to pose his questions. to 15 minutes. I am afraid that that is one of the hazards of this place. Q3 David Simpson: Thank you, Chairman. You are Could I welcome Lord Saville to the Committee? We very welcome, Lord Saville, to the Committee. In are very pleased that you have been able to join us. relation to the evidence side of things, how big of an We have a number of issues to go through with you, impediment was it when you were trying to gather but I do want to welcome you. Perhaps I could start evidence into the events that occurred 26 years ago or just by asking you a sort of general question about thereabouts? What sort of difficulties did you inquiries per se. Obviously, there is always a suspicion encounter in tracing individuals themselves to give with any inquiry as to its independence, not just evidence? related to Northern Ireland but generally. How did you Lord Saville: Well, there are a number of aspects to address that issue? How confident were you that you that. The first was the question of the collection of would be seen as an independent inquiry? evidence immediately after we were appointed. That Lord Saville: Well, when I became a judge, I took an took a long time, and it necessarily had to take a long oath to be impartial. When I agreed to do the inquiry, time, for a number of reasons. So far as soldiers were I made it quite clear—not that I really needed to—to concerned, the Ministry of Defence had lost touch the Lord Chancellor that I would be conducting an with many of the soldiers who had left the forces. inquiry wholly independent of Government or, indeed, They did what they could but, in the end, we had to any other faction that sought to push us in one employ private inquiry agents to trace the soldiers, direction or another, and I did not find any difficulty and we were able, over a period of time, to trace a in conducting an independent inquiry. I would like to very large number of them. Many of them had nothing put on the record that, throughout the time of the useful to add, but a substantially large number did inquiry, the Government at no stage indicated, in any and, of course, we then took statements from them. shape, manner or form, what conclusions we should Now, the same really happened with civilians. It is reach or how we should reach them. I was left with difficult to remember now, but if you cast your mind my two colleagues to look at the evidence and to reach back to 1998 when we started, when we were the conclusions, which you will now find in the report. appointed, we were met with a very substantial degree of mistrust and suspicion by the people of Derry, Q2 Chair: But given these days of leaks, it was because, of course, they had had the experience of remarkably leak-proof. How did you manage to the Widgery inquiry, and they regarded us as a “Brit” achieve that? Given that it went on over so many inquiry and, therefore, by definition, in their minds, years, we were all expecting there to be some leak untrustworthy. We had to win over their trust and, here or there, and it did not happen. How did you here, I would like to pay tribute to Peter Jones, senior achieve that, when so many other people do not? partner of Eversheds, the firm of solicitors. We had a Lord Saville: We had a considerable amount of beauty contest and selected that firm as the firm to security in the inquiry offices, and I think credit is due take statements for us over in Northern Ireland, and, in the space of three months, Peter Jones and his team to the secretary of the inquiry, Elizabeth Johnson, won over the people of Derry and the surrounding who, in fact, is here this afternoon, and the others in area, and persuaded them—correctly, as I hope—that my team, who did manage to keep it entirely secure- this inquiry was going to be an attempt to produce proof, and then, in turn, members of the Northern a completely independent and impartial look at what Ireland Office, when we handed it over for safekeeping before the election. So, I was pleased; 1 Ev 13 cobber Pack: U PL: COE1 [E] Processed: [05-10-2011 13:33] Job: 014365 Unit: PG01 Source: /MILES/PKU/INPUT/014365/014365_w001_kathy_BSI 01 (topped, tailed and proof read).xml Ev 2 Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: Evidence 13 October 2010 The Rt Hon Lord Saville of Newdigate happened on that day. A great deal of that winning- immediately afterwards, and so we were able to build over was done by Peter Jones, and I applaud him for on those. This is one of the things that took so long. it. We knew that a lady called Ms Keville, who was a civil rights worker, had come from New York to Q4 David Simpson: Further to that, in relation to the attend a civil rights march, and we knew that she had, whole aspect of the evidence, it seems from the immediately after the shootings, gone round the city report—from what I have read of it—that most of the with her tape recorder, saying to people, “Tell us what evidence in the inquiry focused in on the events of the you heard and saw.” It took us two years to find those day; what happened on that day. If we look at other tapes, but we found them in America. So, when inquiries, and we use the parallel of the Billy Wright witnesses came to the inquiry, we took them inquiry, where there was a sequence of events and downstairs to what was called our witness suite, and there was, in the report, details leading up to that day. there, if it was one of the people who had talked to Do you believe that your remit as regards the evidence Ms Keville, we said, “Put the headphones on.
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