Letters for fugitive republicans vital to peace, says Blair

Former British prime minister Tony Blair has said the peace process in the North would probably have collapsed without the “on the runs” (OTR) scheme for fugitive IRA members.

His Labour administration sent about 200 letters to republicans assuring them they were not being pursued by the UK authorities following requests from Sinn Féin.

A probe was launched by British MPs when the prosecution of a man for the murder of four soldiers in a bombing in Hyde Park in 1982 was halted after he received one of the letters in error.

The OTR letters scheme began while Mr Blair was prime minister. The chairman of the Westminster Northern Ireland affairs committee says he is one of the most important witnesses to the inquiry.

Mr Blair told MPs investigating the scheme: “The issue of OTRs was absolutely critical to the peace process and at certain points became fundamental to it.

“If I had been saying we are not dealing with this in any way at all, you can never be certain of these things but it is likely that the process would have collapsed.”

He said Sinn Féin would have walked away, adding that the scheme was central to getting the party on board with overhauled policing arrangements.

“The purpose on everything we have done was to create peace in Northern Ireland so that there were not more victims of terrorism and more families distressed and losing loved ones as a result of that terrorism.”

Mr Blair began the peace process scheme in 2000 which saw 95 of the so-called letters of comfort issued by the government to suspects linked by intelligence to almost 300 murders.

They told people they were not wanted at that time but did not rule out prosecutions in future if new evidence became available.

The scheme was drawn up following pressure from Sinn Féin to allow the fugitives — who, had they been in prison before 1998, would have been set free under the Good Fri-day Agreement — to return to Northern Ireland.

Mr Blair said he would not apologise to those who should have received the letters. “Without having done that, we would not have a Northern Ireland peace process.”

Mr Blair said the scheme evolved over time from a small number of cases. He said he wanted to establish a proper scheme which dealt with the issue in its entirety but his government was unable to do so.

He said the authorities were able to review those cases of people who may or may not be charged and inform them “It was not an amnesty, it was not secret, but it nevertheless dealt with one part of the problem we had to deal with.”

He added: “Right from the outset our desire and the focus for OTRs was to bring into place a scheme that would apply to everybody, the equivalent of the Good Friday Agreement for prisoners, but we were not able to find a way of doing that so we dealt with this by way of an administrative process.”

The committee, sitting in Westminster, launched its investigation after John Downey was released last year when a judge halted his prosecution for the Hyde Park bombing.

Household cavalry lieutenant Anthony “Denis” Daly, 23, died in the explosion alongside trooper Simon Tipper, 19, lance corporal Jeffrey Young, 19, and a 36-year-old corporal, Roy Bright.