Northern Ireland

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Jeffrey M Donaldson

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is why we need a solution that enables the United Kingdom Government and this Parliament to regulate the entirety of the United Kingdom internal market. That is the solution. I am not saying that where Northern Ireland businesses trade with the European Union, EU standards and rules should not apply; I am saying that we can allow for that. What I do not accept is a situation where every business in my constituency must comply with EU rules even if they do not sell a single widget to the European Union. That is wrong, because it harms our place in the internal market of the United Kingdom.

The Stormont brake seeks to address the democratic deficit that I have mentioned, and to an extent, it provides a role for Stormont to pull that brake where changes to EU law occur, but I note that it does not give us any ability to deal with existing EU laws that impact on all manufacturing in Northern Ireland—laws that have been applied without our consent. To that extent, the brake cannot apply. It applies to amendments to EU law or changes new EU laws that are introduced.

I also note that in the proposed arrangements, it is available to the EU to take retaliatory action in the event that the UK Government apply a veto to a new EU law. That is a matter of concern to us in Northern Ireland, because retaliatory action could come in a number of forms. It could include the suspension of arrangements in the green lane, which would impact our ability to bring goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. We need to be clear that it is wrong for the EU to be able to intervene at that level in the free flow of goods from one part of the United Kingdom to the other. I highlight that issue as a real matter of concern to us.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I will.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before you take this intervention, Sir Jeffrey, I remind you that you have now been speaking for nine minutes. Once you have resumed your seat, I will introduce a three-minute time limit to get as many Members in as possible. Please be cognisant of that.

[Gavin Robinson]

My right hon. Friend will know about the exchange that the Secretary of State and I had yesterday in the European Scrutiny Committee, where he was invited to indicate that the “exceptional circumstances” in paragraph 18 in the schedule to the Stormont brake regulations would preclude a material consideration being the EU retaliatory action to which my right hon. Friend has referred. The Secretary of State was quick to agree with that interpretation. May I ask, through my right hon. Friend, whether the Secretary of State will consider reaffirming the commitment that he gave yesterday? It features in paragraph 14; it does not feature in paragraph 16. Just to be clear: the Secretary of State would not be allowed to consider the threat of retaliatory action as “exceptional circumstances” when exercising a veto.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I welcome what the Secretary of State said yesterday: that we must not allow the threat of EU retaliatory action to influence Ministers in exercising their powers under the Stormont brake. I also welcome the clear commitment the Prime Minister gave to me recently: that the application of the Stormont brake is entirely a matter for the United Kingdom. It is a strand 1 issue under the terms of the Belfast agreement and does not involve a role for the Irish Government in relation to these matters. That is a very important principle for us.

The Prime Minister has indicated to me that in this process the wishes of Stormont will be respected, but I have made it clear that in exercising the Stormont brake we are simply applying in our terms the potential of a veto by the United Kingdom Government on one aspect of EU law. This does not deal with all of the problem, and that is the difficulty we have. The continued application of EU law in Northern Ireland is what creates the problem in our ability to trade within the internal market of the United Kingdom.

It is important that the Government of the United Kingdom take stock of where we are now. I understand that the Foreign Secretary is to attend the UK-EU Joint Committee on Friday to sign off the Windsor framework, and that today’s indicative vote in this House will be used as the justification for doing so. Surely though, our shared objective, as espoused earlier by the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), is to see the political institutions in Northern Ireland restored; we need therefore to continue to engage with the Government to get this right.

My party is committed to doing that. We are committed to continuing to work with the Secretary of State and with the Prime Minister, but that has to be about delivering on the commitment given to protect Northern Ireland’s place within the internal market of the United Kingdom, and to ensure that where EU law is applied to facilitate cross-border trade, it does not impede our ability to trade with the rest of our own country in the internal market of our own country. That is the bottom line for us, and until that is resolved, I cannot give the Government a commitment to restore the political institutions. It is what I want to do, but we need to get this right. I want Stormont to be restored on a sustainable and stable basis, where there is cross-community consent and consensus, but that does not exist at the moment. We need that consensus to be restored.

For our part, we will continue to work intensively to solve these issues, doing so in the knowledge that what has already been achieved was achieved because we were not prepared to accept the undermining of Northern Ireland’s place within the Union of the United Kingdom—the economic Union of the United Kingdom. That is what we stand for. That is what we will fight for. We want to get it right, and we will work with the Government to achieve that.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Jeffrey M Donaldson

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I have great respect for the right hon. and learned Member, and I know of his affection for Northern Ireland. I think back to those very difficult and challenging days when this House was dealing with the pre-departure discussions about the laws that would have to be put in place around the treaty to leave the European Union. I thank him for the time that he took to understand the situation in regard to Northern Ireland.

I would say two things in response to the point that the right hon. and learned Member has, understandably, made. First, the Command Paper published by the UK Government one year ago last July set out the basis on which they believed that the conditions had been met for article 16 to be triggered. We have been very patient. We have waited and waited, and we allowed time for the negotiations with the European Union to go forward in the hope that the EU would show more flexibility. I do not doubt the integrity of Maroš Šefčovič as the lead negotiator, but the difficulty is that his negotiating remit is so constrained that his ability to deliver the change that is required to meet the need—to resolve the difficulties created by the protocol—is so limited that in the absence of a change of his remit, I do not think those negotiations will get anywhere.

Article 16 and the triggering thereof is a temporary measure; it is not a permanent solution. What I need, what Northern Ireland needs and, especially, what business in Northern Ireland needs is certainty. That is why we believe that the Government are right to bring forward proposals for a longer-term solution, and not just to go for the temporary fix—the sticking plaster—of article 16. That will create more uncertainty rather than giving us certainty, and it is certainty that we are looking for. That is why I think that what the Government have done is right in the circumstances.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I think my right hon. Friend responded fairly to the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), who has been a good friend to Northern Ireland over many years and knows our opposition not only to this protocol from the start, but to preceding arrangements that were proposed. Yet here we stand, with exactly the problems that we foresaw—the problems experienced by businesses, communities and consumers throughout Northern Ireland and the impact to our political arrangements—and still we hear every objection and reason why Government should not move.

Many people who now ask whether article 16 should be triggered were aghast at the notion it should be triggered a year ago. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is shaking his head, and I do not include him in that number. But at every stage, when Government have accepted, heard and acknowledged the crisis and the difficulty we have had with political and economic instability within our Province, there has been a good reason not to act, and still we remain without a solution. Does my right hon. Friend agree that now is the time to get on and provide the solution, not for us, but for everyone in Northern Ireland?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, and that brings me to the heart of the issue for us—the threat to the Belfast agreement posed by the current situation.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Jeffrey M Donaldson

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). He and I have parsed the course on this issue and the myriad alternatives within legacy over many years. I served on the Defence Committee with him during the 2016-17 inquiry, and the later inquiry whose findings were published in about 2018. We do not agree, and I am not sure that his synopsis of the views of those four academics was entirely fair; but I will return to that later in my speech.

Before I proceed, let me say that I thought the contribution from the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) was the most powerful that we are likely to hear this afternoon. I think that it was motivated not by prejudice or political aspiration of one hue or another, but solely by the right hon. Gentleman’s emotionally charged and personal experience in Northern Ireland. It was rooted in principle, and I thank him very much for it.

I have been thinking back to a debate that we had in Westminster Hall about proposals for legacy, and I was reading some of the speeches in Hansard this morning. I recalled a radio interview that I had heard on the morning of that debate. Alan McBride, a victims’ campaigner from Northern Ireland and a victim himself, was talking about a day of reflection for victims in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland. He said, “When we were thinking about a day of reflection in Belfast, we tried to find one day—one date—when nobody died.” They could not find one. They could not find a single day in the calendar when somebody had not been killed in Northern Ireland. They chose 21 June, the summer solstice, because that day heralds a new dawn, that day heralds a new season, that day heralds warmth and aspiration.

When it comes to our party’s approach to the issue of legacy—and, in fairness, the approach of the majority of parties in Northern Ireland—we cannot detach ourselves easily from victims, or their experiences, or their hurt, or the lingering fears and doubts that pervade our society. I know that it is easy for others in the Chamber to take a more “singular” view—a singular constituency-based view, or a single veteran’s view—but we cannot do that. A principle that we have applied throughout the myriad decades of consideration about legacy has been one that keeps open the hope of justice, no matter how easily those who have spoken today have tried to detach us from it. It keeps open the pursuit of justice, of recognition by the state that what happened to people’s loved ones was wrong. It is the principle that natural justice and the rule of law in this country still matter, still count, and should still run through our system. That is something that we have attached to every proposal that has been brought before us.

There is a second principle. I do not attach this to other parties, but we have never wanted to see an equivalence between people who lived innocent, peaceful and wholesome lives and were cut down in their prime as a result of terrorists—or those brave women and men who stepped forward and stepped up to protect all of us and give us the freedom to stand in this Chamber and political chambers throughout Northern Ireland, and to stand up for what is right and what is true—and those who went out to destroy and wreak havoc in our society.

I am afraid that on those two principles, this Bill fails. I take no joy in saying this. I know that there are Members in this Chamber wo are thinking, “For goodness’ sake, Northern Ireland legacy again, can they not just agree?” We do all agree in Northern Ireland that this Bill is wrong, that this Bill will not command support, that this Bill drives a coach and horses through the pursuit of justice, although I take no pride in that.

We have been through the discussions about a statute of limitations. I chided the right hon. Member for New Forest East earlier about his revisionism—perhaps his fair rehearsal—of the approach of the four academics, but I said it fondly, because I have huge admiration for him. He is right to say, and the academics were right to say, that should anything be brought forward, principled and detailed, as a statute of limitations, it would have to apply equally; but the landscape in Northern Ireland is not equal.

We always advanced the argument that no one who broke the law could escape the law and no one who deserved justice should evade justice. When those who served our state and put on the uniform of our brave armed forces—whether it was the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Ulster Defence Regiment or other organisations—were involved in incidents that led to a killing, there will have been an investigation. We know that, post-1973, those investigations were article 2 compliant. We have always advanced the argument that where our state can demonstrate that it has discharged its duty, we should be able to move on: no reinvestigations, no trauma and no fear of that knocked door, because the state has done what is required of it under the European convention on human rights. For whatever reason, however, there were too few within the system of government that wanted to embrace that argument. I say that the landscape was uneven in Northern Ireland because when the state was involved, an investigation duly followed, but I am afraid that when the state was not involved, there were far too many deaths for which there was no investigation. That is how that principle could have been applied.

There has been mention of two years: the Good Friday agreement, the early release of prisoners and a maximum sentence of two years. Explanations have been bandied about today, including, “That’s just the way it is”, “That was proposed by the Labour Government”, “It was passed by referendum in Northern Ireland” and “It was ultimately put through this Chamber”. I will not be shy in saying that I found it obtuse and offensive then, and I find it offensive to this day. Two years—that is all. If you have served it, out you go. That is not justice. There were no cheerleaders for that proposal in Northern Ireland. Some accepted it as a compromise as part of the Good Friday agreement, and others did not.

How many times have we heard in the debate this afternoon that two years is not what we are talking about here? Read schedule 11 of this Bill; it will not tell you that the Bill removes those provisions. It will not be two years in jail; it will be nothing—no jail time whatsoever, whether someone engages in the process, seeks immunity from prosecution and tells the truth, or they do not. If someone sits outside the system, if they offer no answers for relatives of victims and their loved ones and if they decide that this process and this Bill are not for them, it does not matter because the British Government seek our support in this Parliament for legislation that reduces their time in jail to nothing. Who could be proud of that proposal? Schedule 11 does not even spell it out, but those are the ramifications of the Bill. Engage or do not engage—it does not matter; you will serve no time.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he agree that these provisions are not something remote in the sense that they apply only to incidents that occurred in Northern Ireland, but that in fact the provisions of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 apply to terrorist incidents that occurred in Great Britain and elsewhere? They include the murder of British citizens in this city, in Birmingham, in Manchester and, indeed, in many of the constituencies represented by Conservative Members. Those Members need to understand that this injustice does not just apply to the people we represent; it applies to every single family in this United Kingdom whose loved ones were cut down in cold blood by terrorists, and that that capacity remains in this country to this day.

[Gavin Robinson]

I agree, and I hope that the point is not lost.

No intended time, and no consequence. With no consequence to not engaging in this process, there is no inducement to engage in it. I heard the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith)—who has been fair in his contributions on the legacy issue over many years—ask what it is that people want. Do they want time served in jail or do they want answers? There is no single answer to that question— there are many victims. It has been said today that people just want to know the truth. There are victims the length and breadth of Northern Ireland who know exactly who killed their loved one, and they see the perpetrator walking freely through their town on a daily or weekly basis. As they walk the lonely path to the graveside to see their loved one, the person they know to be responsible for their loved one’s death walks free through the streets with their family. That person still walks and there has been no effective investigation.

To bring the question into this House, how often do Members walk through the double doors into the Chamber and look at the plaques right above? There is commonality between each of those three plaques, because each gentle man stood for election to this House, each gentle man believed in democracy and the rule of law and each gentle man was murdered by terrorists related to the Northern Ireland troubles.

Rev. Robert Bradford was murdered by the IRA at his constituency surgery in Belfast South in 1981. Airey Neave was murdered in his car by the Irish National Liberation Army with an under-car booby-trap bomb in 1979. In 1981 Ian Gow was murdered by the IRA, again with an under-car booby-trap bomb. They were our colleagues and predecessors who stood up for democracy in this country, but they were cut down in their prime. What else connects them? Nobody has been made accountable for those crimes. The perpetrators have evaded justice.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Is he aware that the chief suspect for the murder of Airey Neave in the precincts of this House is currently operating a bar in Spain? He has eluded justice and, under the provisions of this Bill, will never have justice served upon him.

[Gavin Robinson]

That is exactly why I raise these issues. I want hon. Members to know that this is not just about cold cases that have never had a prospect of success in the courts. There are people out there today who are guilty of the most heinous crimes during the Northern Ireland troubles, against our state, our citizens and our neighbours across the communities in Northern Ireland and throughout Great Britain. They have evaded justice, they have fought extradition and they have squirrelled themselves away into the Irish Republic and, under the political offence exemption, have stayed there. Some of them live in the United States of America, and our Government have sought their extradition because they know they are responsible and they want to bring them to justice, yet they stay in their safe havens. And some freely walk the streets of Northern Ireland in exactly the same position.

Those perpetrators of violence, be they republican or loyalist, will be able to sleep soundly in their beds once this Bill is passed. They will know that they never have to spend a day in jail. They know that the focus will be on state cases for which there is information that will naturally run through the information recovery process. They will not engage in this, and there will be no consequence for their not doing so.

I say with as much respect as I can in the circumstances that the idea that our Government and this Parliament will pass legislation that allows perpetrators of violence who have evaded justice to retire in dignity is a disgrace, and retire they will. This Parliament has considered on-the-runs legislation in which our Government, at a request from the republicans, were going to pass measures saying that those who were on the run and evading justice could come home and get away scot-free. It was going to be passed by the Labour Government until Sinn Féin realised that it would apply to soldiers, too, and pulled its support.

After the on-the-runs legislation, we had the letters of comfort. I am glad the Secretary of State ruled out the application of letters of comfort today, but John Downey walked free from court as a result of letters of comfort. They were not issued by the Conservative Government; they just came to light after 2010. John Downey is responsible for the Hyde Park bombing that killed 11 service personnel and seven horses working alongside them. When he stood in the Old Bailey, he produced a letter that said, “You’re not currently or actively sought for investigation.” This Parliament has a history of bidding for the wrong people in my view. Our view will always be based on those who have suffered the most in Northern Ireland.

I am sure that the Government have got the impression that we will not be with them on Second Reading of the Bill, but the issues are far too important for us to say that we cannot have any part of it and therefore not engage. I want the Government to hear us loudly and clearly that we will be tabling amendments, and we will seek as much cross-party and cross-community support for those amendments as possible. I hope that if we do that in the spirit of good will and co-operation, the Government will engage in these thoughtful considerations about sentencing and time served, because getting a conviction, being out on licence and having all the freedoms that people enjoy while their victims do not is simply not sufficient. We need to rule out the ability of people who have actively evaded justice, and who the Government have sought through extradition proceedings, to come home and retire with dignity. I hope that we will get a willing ear, Mr Deputy Speaker.