Who Is A Victim 2?
The current stand off over the Victims Bill is focussed on the question of whether there should be a Chief Victims Commissioner and if the new Commission should decide contentious issues by majority voting. Speaking on this morning's Nolan Show the Commissioner Designate supported the idea of a rotating Chair.
In the background, however, there is still lurking the more ideological debate about the definition of victims. As reported here at the start of this month Who Is A Victim?, the Ulster Unionists ought to reopen this debate. However their amendment to the bill was ruled out of order as it represented too major a change to a measure which was meant to tidy up the workings of the Commission. Despite that a sense of the strength of unionist feeling on this score was that DUP MLAs tabled a very similar amendment, which was also ruled out of order
The First and Deputy First Minister's agreed compromise has been to leave it the proposed new Victims Forum to discuss the definition of a victim, although it's hard to see the Forum budging from the existing all inclusive definition, especially if a new one would disqualify some of those appointed to the Forum.
The Ulster Unionists have now come up with some amendments which have been accepted, whilst hinting at the same territory. These potential changes to the bill refer only to those who can be appointed to or employed by the new Victims Commission. But they would exclude "anyone convicted of a criminal offence arising out of a conflict-related incident". Do they have the potential to stir similar controversy to those amendments which were previously disallowed ?
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