THE secretary of state has defended the national security veto on disclosure of information about Troubles' killings, saying the British government's has been "far more open" than any paramilitary group when it comes to the past.
Amid continued fall-out from the failure of the Fresh Start agreement to address legacy issues, Theresa Villiers has also claimed that David Cameron's administration has moved the vexed issue of dealing with the past further than any of its predecessors.
The absence of measures for dealing with the past in the latest Stormont deal has caused deep frustration among victims' groups who feel the issue is continually fudged.
The British government's draft legislation for dealing with the past includes a clause which gives it the power to withhold information on the basis of national security.
The veto is widely regarded as the main inpediment to securing agreed measures for addressing the legacy of the Troubles.
But writing in The Irish News on Thursday, the secretary of state defends the British government's national security clause and insists the state has a duty to "protect its citizens from harm".
Ms Villiers says she is disappointed by the shortcomings of a Fresh Start and that she has given a commitment to the Forum for Victims and Survivors to do everything she can to remedy the situation.
She insists the national security veto is not an open-ended concept that can be used as an excuse for non-disclosure
"As we have seen with events like Bloody Sunday and Claudy, we are prepared to accept when wrongdoing took place and to apologise for it," she says.
"In that we are far more open than any of the paramilitary groups that operated during the Troubles."
The secretary of state said the British government had disclosed hundreds of thousands of Troubles-related documents in what she describes as "one of the largest disclosure exercises in history".
In an interview with The Irish News last month, the Republic's minister for foreign affairs Charlie Flanagan criticised the British government for applying the "smothering blanket of national security" to justify the non disclosure of information relating to the Troubles.
