Relationships and Sexuality Education (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way and I agree with what he is saying and with what the noble Baroness said earlier. He says that there is no elected Member from Northern Ireland in the government party. Is it not even worse, in that we could end up in a year’s time with a Labour Government who do not even allow their party members in Northern Ireland to stand for election, yet profess strongly to be interested in Northern Ireland?

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

The noble Baroness makes her point very clearly. It is beyond challenge. The Labour Party does not permit its members to stand in Northern Ireland, so it could not have an elected representative in the other Chamber, yet it wants to impose its will on the people of Northern Ireland.

The insertion of Section 9 was deeply controversial. I believe that a majority of the people of Northern Ireland find it an offensive amendment, for which there was no prior consultation or proper scrutiny. It was added to a Bill that was supposed to be subject- narrow to the formation of an Executive, yet that legislation was brought through. In fact, not only did the Government bring it through but they did so having presented it on that narrow basis, and it was then deemed appropriate to be granted accelerated passage.

As my noble friend Lord Morrow said, the situation with these regulations is even more anti-democratic and intolerable. As other noble Lords have pointed out, the Secretary of State decided that these regulations, on education provision regarding abortion and reducing teen pregnancy, were not even worthy of consultation. What kind of democratic society are we living in where even the people are not worthy of consultation? These regulations are being imposed over the heads of parents without being preceded by any primary legislative debate at all, in terms of the regulation-making powers as they applied to education. Indeed, the Secretary of State has not bothered to consult or even give himself the semblance of democratic cover before forcing this legislation through. That is arrogance.

As I said, the democratic deficit in relation to these regulations is even worse than that relating to abortion. That is in spite of the fact that, when the abortion regulations were taken to court, the point was made that the Secretary of State had consulted on them and the court stated that,

“in the event that Regulations or Directions are made in the future to deal with those issues”

of education and sexual and reproductive health and so on,

“there will be an opportunity for the Secretary of State to carry out a consultation”.

Whenever the NIO was asked about consultation and whether it was necessary, the response was, “No, it’s not. Why would you talk to those people?” It said that it was not necessary because each school must have a written policy on how it will deliver regulations and sexuality education, and that this policy should be subject to consultation with parents. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee pointed out that,

“school policies will only be able to operate within the already-established government guidance, meaning that such consultation is too late to affect the framework of RSE delivery”.

However, the committee also noted that,

“when comparable regulations were introduced in England”,

a full consultation was carried out. I wonder whether that was because the elected Members in the other place would have to answer to their electorate. Maybe that was the reason: the electorate had the power to change them or remove them—but not in Northern Ireland. Our Secretary of State feels that parents in Northern Ireland are too far down the pecking order to be worthy of being heard or consulted. That is contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, which states:

“In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall”—


not might—

“respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”.

Notice the word “shall”. But it has not been done.

We are witnessing a deliberate abuse of parliamentary procedure in the development of these regulations. As the Minister listens to the debate today, in the light of what he is hearing, I ask him what he will do to stop any Secretary of State abusing the powers that they feel they have over the people of Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Secretary of State and CEDAW have demonstrated a total lack of respect for faith, which is very important to many in Northern Ireland. Paragraph 43 of the CEDAW report states:

“The designated members observed that young people in Northern Ireland were denied the education necessary to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Most children in Northern Ireland attend denominational schools, either Catholic or Protestant”,


but that is not true. It is not true. Of course, does truth really matter? It seemingly does not, because that statement is totally false.

It goes on:

“Church representatives play active roles in school management boards, and the result is that relationship and sexuality education, although a recommended part of the primary and post-primary statutory curriculum of the Department of Education, is underdeveloped or non-existent since it is at the school’s discretion to implement the contents of the curriculum according to its values and ethos”.


On the one hand, it is saying that schools are either Catholic or Protestant. It goes on to tell us that the contents of the curriculum are at the school’s discretion and accord with its values and ethos. It goes on:

“Where relationship and sexuality education is delivered, it is frequently provided by third parties and based on anti-abortion and abstinence ethos”.


This attack on Northern Ireland’s Churches, at the heart of the educational problem, lacks any sense of human rights balance or cognisance that religious freedom is also a human right, let alone any appreciation of the important and constructive role that Churches have played in education, including RSE.

Just because CEDAW is supposed to be a human rights body, it does not excuse its lack of concern for religious liberty. Religious liberty and freedom were hard fought for and obtained—and cost many a life. On the right to religious freedom, this stunning failure to attempt to understand the faith ethos beggars belief.

It seems that the NIO and CEDAW are unaware of Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR, which states:

“No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”.


There has certainly been no attempt to respect these rights, when one considers the lack of consultation with parents.

The attitude of the department in the Explanatory Memorandum exposes its ignorance to its human rights obligation under Article 2 of Protocol 1. It says:

“Timing for the Department to make regulations about the circumstances in which a pupil may be excused from receiving education on the updated curriculum is a matter for the Department. There is no guarantee this will be in place by January 2024, the point at which the Department is under a duty to issue guidance to schools on the content and delivery of the updated curriculum. This may attract criticism from faith-based schools, and some teachers and parents”.


It seems to say, “So let it be. Who are they?”

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown

Report stage
Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Dodds and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in supporting Amendments 114A and 114B in the names of my noble friends Lord Dodds, Lord Weir and Lord Morrow.

Recently, the absentee MP for North Belfast, John Finucane, was the main speaker at what was billed a “South Armagh Volunteers commemoration and fun day”. Let me remind noble Lords of just one action of these South Armagh IRA terrorists—there is certainly no reason to celebrate it, or even commemorate it. I want noble Lords to imagine a young husband leaving home and going to work as usual. His family hear later on that their loved one has gone missing; his young wife is pregnant and has three young children already. Think of the agony this family circle is going through as it becomes clear that the IRA have abducted this young man. Think of the absolute terror he is feeling as he is hooded and taken captive by IRA terrorists.

Then there comes that—in many ways inevitable—phone call that tells the family that that young man has been found dead. However, that call also tells them that his body cannot be recovered, even though it is seen lying in a field in south Armagh, because it is surrounded by Claymore mines. Yes, that body is booby-trapped to explode if moved. A huge, 500-pound bomb is attached to him in milk churns, with command wires leading across the border. Any attempt to move him will blow his corpse to pieces, along with anyone attempting to retrieve him. The authorities have to let him lie there, dead, covered in blood and mud, naked except for his pants and on display for all to see, until the explosives are defused by the bomb squad. Can anyone with a heart have any idea what that dear wife, her three young children and the family circle have to go through as they wait and wait?

In another place, a Member of Parliament at that time said:

“One of his relatives said that they were horrified at the look of torture and agony … on the face. The fingers of both hands were blackened to the knuckles and holes were punched in the finger tips. Handfuls of grass and earth were clutched in the hands. One side of the face was smashed … to the extent that the nose was broken and displaced to one side. Both arms seemed limp and the genitals had been kicked until swollen out of all proportion. The teeth were smashed, he was shot through the wrists, the mouth, the neck, the throat and several times in the chest”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/72; col. 1788.].


What was his crime? His crime was that he was a part-time UDR corporal. Of course, Sinn Féin said that he was therefore a legitimate target; he was a part of the British war machine, simply because he wore the uniform and tried to keep people safe from those who so cowardly and viciously ended his life. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill has claimed that there was no alternative to such IRA activity and yet, amazingly, she is lauded and applauded by Presidents and Secretaries of State, and John Finucane thinks such deserve to be commemorated—actually, their names written on a marble scroll as if they were heroes and then celebrated with a family fun day.

I ask you: what sort of persons could be so evil as to commit such torture on another human being? What sort of mentality justifies this in any shape or form? Nobody has ever been charged or convicted of this murder, this torture, and those who directed it are equally guilty. The so-called IRA Army Council has not been brought before the International Court of Justice. Rather, some of its leaders are lauded and applauded too. The Sinn Féin leaders and John Finucane talk much about and demand inquiries, they pontificate about human rights, equality and justice, but they do not want justice for them. They do not want inquiries into their leadership role in some of the most vile atrocities ever carried out against mankind. All they want is to blame the police, the Army and the part-time soldiers—indeed, everyone who stood against their 30-year campaign of slaughter and murder in their quest for their dream of a united Ireland. Sadly, on many occasions, successive Governments rolled over to Sinn Féin demands and granted it concession after concession. Even just over a week ago, we found that the chief constable apologised to those who were called the hooded men. I ask the Minister: does this legislation stop the memorialisation and glorification of those terrorists across our community?

I finish by saying that every year, in January, I gather with others at the side of a road outside Cookstown, the Teebane. The men there were returning from doing an honest day’s work, but they were murdered, slaughtered, on their way home. We stand at a roadside. Yes, there is a stone there with the names of those lads on it: not to glorify but to humbly remember that they were cruelly done to death along that road.

We cannot have the glorification of terrorist acts. They are to be condemned. While many tell us that everyone, every political party in Northern Ireland, is against this legislation, let me make it clear that the party which I belong to is not to be equated with Sinn Féin/IRA, because its objection to the legislation is that it does not want its comrades to be prosecuted, but it wants the security forces to be persecuted. I will not lend my hand to that.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I speak to support Amendments 117 and 118 in my name but agree with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, as well.

I want to look at the academic research clause, because it addresses a problem with the Government’s funding body, UK Research and Innovation and its councils. Many of us interested in legacy are genuinely concerned about what seems to be the one-sided nature of much of the academic research into our past and the way that the funding has been monopolised by what could be seen as a single legal view that is radical and investigates only faults with the UK state and its security responses during the Troubles.

I need to refer to the Queen’s University Belfast’s transitional justice department, which produced the model legacy Bill and many briefings that Opposition and Cross-Bench Peers will have been provided with. That department alone has received the huge amount of £4 million in funding for legacy research—nobody else has. The transitional justice department works in open conjunction with the Committee on the Administration of Justice, the CAJ, which is a largely anti-state nationalist body in Belfast that encourages legacy litigation. Indeed, it is leading efforts to get the Dublin Government to take an inter-state case against the United Kingdom at the European Court of Human Rights over this very Bill once it receives Royal Assent.

Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hoey and Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown

3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a few words to say on this Bill. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Caine, on getting his first Bill through Parliament, and for the very polite way in which he dealt with all the questions and so on. I thank, too, the shadow Front-Bench Members for their willingness to meet some of us who had concerns about aspects of the Bill.

I have to say that the Library did not even have a copy of New Decade, New Approach. It is a very detailed agreement, and of course the Bill deals only with a small part of it; it does not deal with the most crucial part facing Northern Ireland at the moment, where officially the Government were meant to legislate on Northern Ireland’s businesses to guarantee unfettered access. That is part of New Decade, New Approach, so let us not kid ourselves that it has been put through; these are the bits which seem to be able to get through very quickly. Yet even on 14 January, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, sent a letter saying that he was putting forward an amendment to allow the same situation so there would not be a cliff edge when a Member of the Assembly was elected to this Parliament, and they could stay to the end of their term. That suddenly got dropped.

This may all look like it is sweetness and light, but I have to warn noble Lords that Northern Ireland is in a very difficult situation. This is a sticking plaster of a Bill for the situation in Northern Ireland; we have a system of government that is totally different from any other part of the United Kingdom and would not be tolerated in any other part of the United Kingdom. That needs to be said.

This week we may well see real difficulty because now, legally, it has more or less been proved, and will be proved later in the week, that the Northern Ireland Executive should have taken a decision and formally agreed to have checks at the Irish Sea border that has been set up. This has not happened, therefore later on this week we will probably see the Northern Ireland Executive having to take a decision one way or another on that, which will be extremely interesting.

We have also had another meeting between the Foreign Secretary and Šefčovič, with a similar outcome. They just repeat the same statement every time: “Further talks today”, “Constructive atmosphere”, “Teams continue intensive discussions.” This cannot go on. This House needs to face up to reality: Northern Ireland is in a very difficult position and it needs to be helped by being part of the United Kingdom and by your Lordships. Having said that, I accept that the Bill is going through, and I welcome those parts of it that I agree with.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, on behalf of my colleagues, I express appreciation to the Minister for the courtesy and the engagement that we have had during the progress of the Bill. I agree with the noble Baroness on how the Bill is a small sticking plaster over a major wound that is still in Northern Ireland politics. That gaping wound is the Northern Ireland protocol, which is causing untold damage, both constitutionally and economically, to the Province. That is not acceptable; however, I accept that the Bill is passing in this House today.