Arlene Foster – journalist

           

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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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I will be among the last to put forward my opinion in the House of Lords when we conclude the Second Reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday 19 September.

This is a moment for sober reflection: not a rehearsal of slogans, but a clear-eyed weighing of what this law would say about the kind of society we are. The Bill would permit terminally ill adults, with full mental capacity and a prognosis of six months or less to request assistance to end their life. It has already passed the Commons and is now under intense scrutiny in your House of Lords.

Supporters of the Bill speak of autonomy and compassion. But there is a story we must not ignore — the story of care, and of the small, corrosive pressures that can make “choice” anything but free. Across the country, unpaid carers give up earnings, health and nights of sleep to support those they love. They are quite simply the best among us. Yet too often those who are cared for feel a terrible internal guilt: a sense that they are a burden on family, friends and those who provide care.

That is not a theoretical worry. Evidence from jurisdictions with assisted-dying regimes shows this concern is real and rising. Oregon’s long-running Death with Dignity programme reports that – over the years captured in its datasets to 2024 – around 46.6% of people who chose assisted death cited being a “burden on family, friends/caregivers” as a reason. That figure must give us pause about the psychological context in which such a life-ending choice is made.

Our own Government’s Impact Assessment is candid about the implications for carers. It notes, chillingly, that a reported benefit of voluntary assisted dying services to unpaid carers is the reduction in time they spend providing care, and it links high-intensity unpaid caring to negative physical and mental health and employment outcomes for the carers. The assessment also quantifies the financial strain many families face for residential or home care, factors that compound the emotional pressure on the dying and their loved ones.  will not pretend caring is easy. It is exhausting and often ruinously expensive. But the moral test for the Lords is whether we will legislate in a way that intensifies those silent pressures or whether we will instead confront them. No safeguard in any Bill can fully guard against the internalised belief that one’s life is “too costly” or “too demanding.” Legalising assisted dying risks normalising that fear and offering death as an answer to problems of funding, staffing and support.

My own mother died in June this year. She received excellent palliative care in her home and in hospital. That care relieved her pain and gave her dignity.

That is the response I want us to provide for everyone — not a default to death because we failed to invest in life. I fervently wish my fellow peers will appreciate that the real challenge before Parliament is not how to help people die sooner, but how to help them live better: expanding palliative services, easing financial strain on families and properly supporting carers. If we fail to do that, we will have legislated a remedy for a problem of our own making — and that is a legacy the House of Lords should reject.

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