WESTMINSTER:PEOPLE LOOKING for evidence that the British state conspired in or planned the death of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson will not find it in the 505-page report into her killing, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson has said.
Describing her 1999 killing as “despicable and cowardly”, Mr Patterson said he hoped the report, which cost £46.5 million and took six years to complete, would offer “a measure of resolution” for Nelson’s family.
The investigation, led by Michael Morland, found failures by senior Royal Ulster Constabulary officers and the Northern Ireland Office amounted to a failure to take “reasonable and proportionate steps to safeguard” Mrs Nelson’s life.
But he repeatedly emphasised it had not found the British authorities had colluded in her killing, noting the report’s conclusions that “there is nothing that any organisation can do that will infallibly prevent” a murder.
“It is clear that just as Lord Saville found no evidence of a conspiracy by the British state, just as Lord Maclean found no evidence of state collusion in the murder of Billy Wright, so this panel finds no evidence of any act by the state which directly facilitated Rosemary Nelson’s murder,” he told MPs.
In the House of Commons, Mr Paterson said: “I am profoundly sorry that omissions by the state rendered Rosemary Nelson more at risk and more vulnerable. It is also deeply regrettable that despite a very thorough police investigation, no one has been charged for this terrible crime.”
The investigation into her killing, he said, was described by the Nelson inquiry as “exhaustive, energetic and enterprising”, while it found “no evidence of any deliberate attempt” by British state agencies to obstruct the inquiry’s work.
It did find, he said, that the Northern Ireland Office had not pressed “the RUC hard enough for full replies to their questions concerning Rosemary Nelson’s personal security”, while the RUC had not warned her of the dangers to her life.
He noted the Nelson inquiry’s decision not to make recommendations for change, as would be normal in such reports, justifying its decision on the basis of “the fundamental changes” that have taken place in Northern Ireland since 1999.
However, he was clearly irritated by former Labour Northern Ireland secretary of state Shaun Woodward, who said Mr Paterson had been “too hasty” in taking such a positive view of the report.
“I’m afraid I am unable to draw the same level of comfort about the findings and implications as he has done. The inquiry raises very serious issues about the police and about the Northern Ireland Office,” Mr Woodward said.
Saying it would make “uncomfortable reading” for the PSNI and Northern Ireland Office, he said the “risk could have been reduced and it was not reduced, there were failings. Given what was known, why wasn’t Rosemary Nelson protected?”
Replying, Mr Paterson said he had apologised on behalf of the British state for events that occurred during Labour’s time in office, adding that Mr Woodward had made his criticism after having had only a short time to read the document.
“It is quite clear that there were omissions, which if they had not happened, the risk to Mrs Nelson would have been reduced. But the report is quite clear that there is nothing that any organisation can do that will infallibly prevent a murder.
“What can be reasonably looked for is a reduction in the risk. It was the fact that we did not reduce the risk – and it was his government that was in government at the time that I have apologised for on behalf of the British state,” he said.
Noting the Morland report had said it could not “exclude the possibility of a rogue member or members of the RUC or the army” had assisted Mrs Nelson’s loyalist killers, Mr Paterson said it had not provided “specific evidence” that this may have happened.
Saying the RUC had “at times stood quite literally between the rule of law and the descent into anarchy”, he said its officers are owed “an immense debt of gratitude and that is something that this government will never forget . . . it would be wrong for the criticisms in the report to be used in any way to denigrate the overall record, courage and sacrifice of the RUC.”
