Omagh inquiry seeks secret 15-year-old transcript from Commons archive

Parliament’s rules watchdog has three-and-a-half months to decide whether to release a secret transcript, amid efforts to establish whether a 1998 bombing could have been prevented.

Omagh Bombing Inquiry solicitor Tim Suter has asked for information about an allegation “that police investigators into previous attacks in Moira, Portadown, Banbridge and Lisburn did not have access to intelligence materials which may have reasonably enabled them to disrupt the activities of dissident republican terrorists” in the Co Tyrone town.

The allegation is thought to have been made during a private session of the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee almost 16 years ago, on November 11 2009.

Conservative MP Simon Hoare warned there was “no wriggle room” in Parliament’s rules to hand over the information to the inquiry without MPs’ say-so, because it previously went “unreported”.

Commons committees can refrain from reporting evidence in certain circumstances, for example, if it contains information which is prejudicial to the public interest.

MPs tasked the Commons Privileges Committee with looking at the 2009 transcript.

This seven-member group has until October 30 to decide whether to report and publish the evidence, which was originally given to the House by former senior police officer Norman Baxter.

“It is very hard for the House to decide whether or not to release evidence it has not seen and cannot see before the decision is made,” Mr Hoare warned.

“It is particularly difficult in this case, as that evidence may contain sensitive information.”

The North Dorset MP added that the Privileges Committee “might simply decide to publish it”.

But the agreed motion will give the committee power to make an alternative recommendation “on the desirability or otherwise of the release of the evidence to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry”.

Privileges Committee chairman Alberto Costa, the Conservative MP for South Leicestershire, told MPs that his organisation “stands ready to deal with this matter”.

The independent inquiry chaired by Lord Turnbull will consider whether the Omagh bombing “could reasonably have been prevented by UK state authorities”.

The dissident republican bomb exploded in the Co Tyrone town on August 15 1998, killing 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.

Mr Hoare agreed with DUP MP for Strangford Jim Shannon, who was born in Omagh, after he told the Commons that “justice” should be at the “forefront of all right honourable and honourable members’ minds during this process”.