Why Gerry Adams must never profit again from public funds

Few questions strike more deeply at the heart of justice than whether a convicted terrorist should ever be rewarded with public funds. That is the uncomfortable issue before us in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in R v Adams.

In May 2020, the Supreme Court quashed Gerry Adams’s convictions for attempting to escape lawful custody in the 1970s. At the time, he had been detained under an Interim Custody Order (ICO) made during internment in Northern Ireland. The Court held the order unlawful because it had not been personally signed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Instead, it had been authorised by the minister for state acting on the Secretary of State’s behalf.

The government argued that this was perfectly valid under the long-standing Carltona doctrine, which has operated since the 1940s to allow ministers to act on behalf of the Secretary of State. But the Court took a narrower view. It ruled that because internment involved such a serious deprivation of liberty, only the Secretary of State could lawfully authorise it. As a result, Adams’s detention was deemed invalid, his escape convictions overturned, and the door was opened for him to pursue compensation.

The effect is profound. Not only does it cast doubt on decisions taken in good faith during the gravest days of Northern Ireland’s violence, it risks placing yet more public money in Adams’s hands. For those of us who lived through the daily brutality of IRA terrorism, the thought of Gerry Adams profiting from the state he sought to destroy is intolerable.

Let us be clear: Adams has always denied membership of the IRA, though many of his closest comrades acknowledged otherwise. To reward him financially now, on the back of a legal technicality, would mock the memory of every innocent victim.

This is not simply about history. It is also about the proper functioning of government. The Carltona doctrine exists for good reason. The Secretary of State cannot possibly sign every detention order, warrant or administrative approval themselves. To demand so is to paralyse government. That is why courts for decades accepted that ministers could lawfully act in the Secretary of State’s name. The Supreme Court’s narrowing of this principle has created unnecessary uncertainty across the board.

Parliament must act. It can legislate to restore Carltona in its full force, make the position retrospective, and close the route to compensation for Adams or anyone else in similar circumstances. That is not to undermine the rule of law but to protect it, by ensuring the intent of Parliament and the responsibilities of government are not undone by an over-technical reading of administrative practice.

The stakes are both legal and moral. Legally, the United Kingdom cannot allow its governance to be paralysed by the suggestion that ministers of state cannot sign executive decisions. Morally, the victims of terrorism cannot be confronted with the grotesque spectacle of Adams, who defended a campaign of murder, drawing money from the public purse.

Victims’ families remember the nights when the knock at the door brought news of a killing. They remember the funerals, the empty chairs, the silence that followed. Those people were never compensated for their grief. And yet Gerry Adams now seeks redress for the inconvenience of his detention in the very period when the IRA filled graves across Northern Ireland.

It falls to Parliament to finish what the courts could not. To legislate, to restore the Carltona principle, and to ensure that Gerry Adams never profits from the state he tried to break apart. That is not vindictive. It is justice.

The innocent victims deserve nothing less.

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