“But, being “Tonyish”, the Blair government did not leave it at that. It got around the will of Parliament. Without fanfare, the official comfort letters were sent – and continued to be sent after Mr Blair left office. Powell says that they were not part of any deal over OTRs. Yet it is notable that the letters were sent solely to IRA suspects (ie people under the wing of Sinn Fein) and not to any other OTRs – Republican or Loyalist.”
Yet whilst the original sin was New Labour’s, ‘comfort letters’ continued to be issued right up until the days of the Coalition.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, just 36 of the 187 recipients of such letters are connected to no fewer than 136 incidents, and “police have since revealed that OTRs who received letters were linked to hundreds of murders.”
Even today, it isn’t obvious exactly what the legal status or purpose of the OTR scheme was. As Moore notes, New Labour figures defending the scheme seem to have a hard time getting their stories straight. Ivan Lewis, the Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary in 2014, said Labour owed the Hyde Park victims an apology for the “catastrophic error” which denied them justice; Jonathan Powell demurred.
Regardless, it would be fitting for Parliament to annul by legislation what Blair set up because he could not persuade Parliament to legislate as he wished. It might yet also give some of those who lost friends and loved ones to IRA terrorism a last, long shot at justice – although the exact shape of Lewis’ new legacy proposals is not yet clear.