Stormont House Agreement

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Chair is obviously keen to accommodate everybody, but can I please appeal to each colleague to put one pithy question, not a miscellany of inquiries for which, frankly, we do not have time?

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

On 15 December, the Secretary of State told this House:

“the north Belfast panel”—

on parades—

“will be constituted shortly.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2014; Vol. 589, c. 1136.]

The Secretary of State knows that we did not negotiate on the issue of parades in the talks and that, of course, the Ligoniel parade was outside the ambit of those talks, but can she tell the House why, eight days later on 23 December, she went back on her word, did not consult the Unionist parties, did not consult this House and has not made any further statement other than to retract and give to Sinn Fein the opportunity to announce that the panel was not going ahead? Why did she do that? Is that not an act of gross bad faith? Is it not something that will cause immeasurable trouble in the days, weeks and months ahead? The festering sort of the denial of human rights to the people of Twaddell is not going to go away. If she does not intervene and do something—it is her responsibility; it is not devolved—it will get worse and worse in the weeks and months ahead.

[Mrs Villiers]

I fully appreciate how strongly the right hon. Gentleman feels. I am absolutely determined to continue to work with him and with Northern Ireland’s party leaders to find a way forward to ensure that we find a way to resolve the parading impasse. As we have had the chance to discuss, the trouble with the panel was that it did not have enough support. It never had nationalist support. The Unionist coalition that had called for it to be set up in the first place could not produce a public statement in support and had actually broken up—some of the smaller parties had walked out. None of the smaller parties were making the case for the panel publicly, and there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm among the smaller parties. I regret the way the news came out. I have apologised to the right hon. Gentleman for that, but now we need to move forward and find something that will work to try to resolve the impasse in north Belfast.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Secretary of State will be glad that I will not rehearse the issues of welfare and finance that many of us concentrated on in the negotiations. She is right that we should not understate certain aspects of the agreement. However, it would also be wrong to oversell other aspects, where we have superficially strimmed the long grass, not least in respect of parades. Does she now regret her misadventure in proposing a panel on north Belfast, believing that that would somehow assist the talks, when we now know from the Unionist parties that their position was that, on the expected promise of the panel, they were not going to negotiate on parades in those discussions?

[Mr Dodds]

Rubbish.

[Mark Durkan]

We heard it from them today and we heard it from their leaders this week. That is why we had all the nugatory discussions in Stormont House about parades, and therefore ended up with no negotiations on parades, and those who wanted a panel have now ended up with no panel. That is the Secretary of State’s fault.