Blair tried to wriggle out of MPs’probe into IRA ‘comfort letters’
TONY Blair phoned the Commons Speaker and begged him to overturn an order to appear before Parliament to explain ‘comfort letters’ sent to IRA fugitives, the Mail has been told.
The former prime minister contacted John Bercow in an apparent attempt to wriggle out of gi v i ng evidence to MPs investigating a secret deal to offer Republican terror suspects an amnesty, it is claimed.
He failed, but managed to limit his appearance to an hour, which families of IRA victims believe is a snub.
Through the controversial scheme set up under Mr Blair’s government in 1999, more than 200 paramilitary fighters were assured that they were not wanted by the police.
Mr Blair, now the UN’s Middle East peace envoy, had faced anger for his reluctance for more than nine months to appear before the Northern Ireland select committee over the ‘on-the-runs’ programme.
He wrote to MPs insisting he had ‘nothing new to say’ before the committee instructed him to appear this month.
But in a phone call to the Speaker on Monday, the exLabour leader is understood to have asked whether he had to answer questions in person.
Mr Blair had insisted it was unnecessary because he gave evidence in private to a review of the scheme by Lady Justice Hallett. The judge concluded last July that the letters, sent out after talks with Sinn Fein, were not unlawful but there were ‘significant failures’ in how the scheme operated.
A Whitehall i nsider said: ‘ Blair rang the Speaker to explain that he could not come on Wednesday 14th and tried to get the Speaker to say there was no need for him to come along at all. He said he’d said it all before to the Hallett review. But Bercow was pretty robust. He said it would be very, very bad form if he did not come.’
The Speaker is said to have ‘ripped into’ Mr Blair and ‘told him in no uncertain terms he had to appear’.
A Westminster source said: ‘Why did he need to go to the Speaker if he just wanted to discuss altering the date and time he appeared? It seems very odd. It would have been easier to contact the committee chairman or clerk.’
Mr Blair will now answer questions for an hour on Tuesday, which some MPs believe is disrespectful to IRA victims.
The inquiry was triggered by the case of John Downey, the man accused of the Hyde Park bombing in 1982. The letters came to light when his trial collapsed last February after it emerged that the 62-year- old had been told he would not face prosecution for the blast, which killed four soldiers.
A source close to the families said: ‘ They are furious with Blair. They believe there are many questions to be asked about the issuing of letters to the IRA men.’
Northern I r el and select committee chairman Laurence Robertson said: ‘ Mr Blair’s appearance will fill in some gaps. There are a l ot of unsolved murders in Northern Ireland and a lot of people still feel very hurt, and we hope getting to the truth of this matter can help bring some closure.’
Sources close to Mr Blair said the allegations were ‘absolutely not true’.
‘It would be very, very bad form’