The UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled in R v Adams [2020] UKSC 19 that an interim custody order (ICO) made in respect of Mr Adams in 1973 was invalid because it had not been considered by a Secretary of State.

It led to further litigation over Mr Adams’ eligibility for compensation as a victim of a miscarriage of justice, and opened the door to similar claims being made by others detained on the same basis in the 1970s.

However, the law on ICOs was retrospectively changed through sections 46 and 47 of the the controversial Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which also stated that “no compensation for a miscarriage of justice is to be paid” in such cases.

Just under a year ago, those provisions of the Act were among those found by Northern Ireland’s High Court to be incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998.

The UK government, which previously promised to “repeal and replace” the Act, is not appealing that part of the judgment and has moved to repeal the provisions in question.

More than a dozen peers, including senior lawyers and former government ministers, have now backed a paper from right-wing think tank Policy Exchange which urges the government to reverse course.

They say the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in 2020 “was a mistake and it was within Parliament’s authority, and indeed was its responsibility, to intervene to set the law right, to restore the law actually enacted in 1972”.

“Even if one accepted that the Supreme Court’s judgment in R v Adams was correct, which we do not, the judgment at most exposed a technicality, which should not require payment of substantial damages,” they continue.

“In other words, it would have been simply unjust to force the government to pay compensation from the public purse for what was not an injustice but at most a procedural glitch.”

They go on to say they also “strongly support Policy Exchange’s critique of the High Court’s judgment and the government’s response to it and call on the government now to reconsider its draft remedial order and to undertake not to repeal sections 46 and 47 by ministerial order”.