The UK Government has published amendments to a Bill that aim to prevent former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams seeking compensation as a result of a court ruling in his favour.
It comes after a minister claimed that up to 400 other compensation claims could be taken as a result of the ruling, and as peers called for a block on seeking damages based on a technicality on the use of internment at the height of the Troubles.
Mr Adams won a Supreme Court appeal in 2020 over historical convictions for two attempted prison breaks in Northern Ireland in the 1970s.
He was interned without trial in 1973 at Long Kesh internment camp, also known as the Maze prison.
The Supreme Court ruled Mr Adams’ detention was unlawful because the interim custody order used to initially detain him had not been “considered personally” by the then-secretary of state for Northern Ireland Willie Whitelaw.
This was despite a long-standing convention, known as the Carltona principle, where officials and ministers routinely act in the name of the secretary of state, who is ultimately responsible.
Mr Adams was subsequently denied a payout for the wrongful convictions when he applied for compensation from Stormont’s Department of Justice.
But that decision was ruled unlawful by a High Court judge in Belfast, paving the way for Mr Adams’ application to be reconsidered.
Northern Ireland Office minister Lord Caine told peers on Monday that a Government-backed amendment to the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill is aimed at addressing the loophole.
The amendments published this weekend seek to clarify that legislation underpinning internment can be read as having allowed junior ministers to make interim custody orders.
A separate amendment also sets out that compensation and civil action may not be sought or continued if it involves an interim custody order that is deemed unlawful because it was authorised by a junior minister.
Lord Caine told the House of Lords on Monday that the UK Government was “aware of around 300 to 400 civil claims being brought on a similar basis to the Adams case”, with 40 writs filed before the first reading of the Bill.
The minister had added: “There were some of us at the time that the judgment appeared that, if I can put it mildly, were somewhat baffled by its content.”
The amendments are to be moved during the third reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, due to take place on Tuesday July 4.
