The British government plans to further appeal a Belfast court ruling that legislation introduced by the previous government was incompatible with human-rights protections secured in a post-Brexit agreement for Northern Ireland.
Belfast’s High Court ruled in February that the offering by the UK of conditional amnesties to ex-soldiers and militants involved in Northern Ireland’s decades of violence was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
After Keir Starmer became prime minister in July, his new government said it would scrap the amnesty scheme that was opposed by all major parties in the region and reverse the policy of prohibiting victims and families from bringing civil claims.
However, it continued the previous government’s appeal against the High Court’s decision that parts of the immunity provisions were incompatible with the Windsor Framework agreement governing post-Brexit trade in Northern Ireland.
The agreement, struck by the UK and the European Union last year, guaranteed there would be no diminution of human rights protected under Northern Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday peace agreement following the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc.
Northern Ireland’s appeals court last month largely upheld the high court’s findings.