Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that I will not embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Howard, by saying that I agree with virtually everything that he said.

First, however, I pay a brief tribute to May Blood, a stalwart warrior for peace who crunched fearlessly through all the political posturing, was dynamic, warm, passionate, blunt at times, and incredibly courageous on the front line of peace. I also apologise that, when the date was switched, I was unable to be present for Second Reading as I had intended. I speak in support of the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Chapman of Darlington, which I trust that she will re-table before Report and call a vote on if necessary.

Crown Courts: Outstanding Cases

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat the figure that I gave earlier: over a quarter of £1 billion has been spent on a range of measures to increase Crown Court capacity. With respect to the additional measures that the noble and learned Lord outlined, I regret that I do not have to hand details of consultation and discussions, but I undertake to write to him on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wolfson in the Ministry of Justice.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that this mountainous backlog impacts most upon victims, witnesses to crime and members of the public waiting for years to see justice done? Does he also accept that this backlog began well before Covid and is directly because of this Government’s savage funding cuts in courts and tribunals and even more punitive cuts in legal aid? Is it not high time that the Conservatives started investing in increased court capacity, qualified staff and victim support instead of cuts, cuts and still more cuts, benefiting only criminals?

[Lord Stewart of Dirleton (Con)]

My Lords, I do not accept the adjectival premises on which the noble Lord’s questions were based. I refer to my earlier answers about the spending that has been identified in relation to these matters.

Bribery Act 2010: Post-legislative Scrutiny (Select Committee Report)

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville of Newdigate, for his instructive introduction and welcome the report of the committee.

The international scope of both the UK Bribery Act —introduced by Labour when I was a Cabinet Minister —and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is important, with anti-corruption campaigners reporting a continuing rise in global bribery and corruption. For instance, Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $2.9 billion, or £2.2 billion, to settle a US-led investigation and its Malaysia division also agreed to plead guilty to violating foreign bribery laws linked to the alleged looting of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB. Airbus had to set aside $3.6 billion last year to cover settlements with authorities in the US, France and Britain after admitting it had paid huge bribes on an endemic basis to secure contracts in 20 countries. Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has opened up opportunities for bribery and contracts for cronies worldwide, including in Britain where an uncommon number of ministerial mates seem to have benefited.

Nevertheless, as the committee reported, the Bribery Act does not seem to have prejudiced UK business. Perhaps, as the noble Lord, Lord Gold, suggested in a recent article, the Act has resulted in companies improving their governance and compliance by not using third-party agents and therefore, as he wrote, has,

“frightened many companies into honesty”.

However, perhaps the strikingly low rate of prosecutions under the Bribery Act, as the committee pointed out, is because of the slow pace of bribery investigations, with a number of witnesses criticising the time it had taken for bribery charges to be brought and cases to reach trial. The committee rightly recommended that the director of the Serious Fraud Office and the Director of Public Prosecutions publish plans outlining how they will speed up investigations into bribery and improve communication with those placed under investigation for bribery offences.

However, is not the real problem that there are simply not enough resources being invested by the Government into enforcing the Bribery Act and money laundering legislation? Enforcement and investigative agencies, such as the Serious Fraud Office, the National Crime Agency and the Financial Conduct Authority, require proper resourcing to utilise the legislation to conduct investigations—some very complex—and bring prosecutions. Yet across the world that has not been the case. In the UK, these agencies have not had anything resembling the resources required to combat financial crime in recent years, leading to a request in 2019 from the head of the National Crime Agency for an additional £2.7 billion in funding for that agency alone. That is just one of the agencies involved in combating bribery requesting an additional £2.7 billion to enable it to do its job properly. No wonder London is regarded by many as the money laundering centre of the world, where the legislation is stringent but the enforcement and policing is certainly not.

As I demonstrated in debates in 2017-18 in your Lordships’ House on the Sanctions and Money Laundering Act, London-based global corporates such as HSBC, Standard Chartered and Baroda Bank facilitated massive looting and money laundering from South African taxpayers under former President Zuma and his cronies the Gupta brothers. London-based corporates McKinsey, KPMG, and Bain & Co admitted to raking off multi-million fees from President Zuma’s regime, its state agencies and state-owned enterprises. So guilty of complicity in corruption were these corporates that, when it was exposed, they sacked their top South African-based executives and made promises to pay back millions of fees they had received.

Why, however, were they not prosecuted in London under the Bribery Act? Is it because, like another London-based corporate guilty of whitewashing corruption and securing a lucrative fee, Hogan Lovells, the international law firm, told the Solicitors Regulation Authority that their South African arm enjoyed the same name only for “branding purposes”, and that London bosses were therefore not culpable in any way? You could have fooled me looking at their website and their activities internationally: they are a global corporate like the others that I have named. Surely corporates operating from London should be bound by the Bribery Act. Otherwise, people will ask: is it worthless? I hope the Minister will reassure me on these questions and I will be interested in any observations by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Saville of Newdigate.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I, too, remind colleagues that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as is my noble friend Lord Dubs. I will be brief in supporting my noble friend’s excellent contribution on Amendments 11 and 59 concerning the requirement for prior judicial approval of criminal conduct authorisations, also mentioned by my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich.

The amendments are based on the JCHR’s examination of the Bill and refer to chapter 7 of its report. Paragraph 94 refers to lack of prior independent scrutiny or approval of CCAs, and paragraph 95 gives examples where the Bill is in contrast to other investigative procedures, highlighted by my noble friend.

Retention of data is also an issue. Privacy is a vital right protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but the authorisation of criminal conduct risks more damaging human rights violations, including physical violence. Paragraph 97 of the report states that

“the Bill as it stands imposes no requirement that the belief of the individual making the CCA that it is necessary must be a reasonable belief”.

The report concludes that:

“Bringing CCAs within the review function of the IPC provides some reassurance of independent scrutiny of their use after the event. However, this is insufficient protection for human rights”,


and the Bill must be amended accordingly.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 15, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for having added their names. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Blunkett, a former Home Secretary, who would also have added his name had not the list been full.

This amendment is very straightforward. It ensures that:

“The granting of criminal conduct authorisations under subsection (1) may not take place until a warrant has been issued by the Secretary of State.”


My noble friend Lord Blunkett and I both signed hundreds of warrants for surveillance operations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000—RIPA—which was updated by the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2005-07, I regularly signed warrants to place under surveillance dissident IRA splinter groups planning to kill, bomb and fundraise through drug and other crimes, and I signed warrants for surveillance on loyalist paramilitaries and hardcore criminals. If the Home Secretary was not available, I also signed warrants that he would normally have signed, sometimes with very short notice, in real time—on one occasion, to prevent Islamist terrorists in a south London house unleashing a bomb in London.

The point that I wish to underline is that these were absolutely essential security and policing operations, yet they required ministerial authorisation at a high level. Why was that so? Because ultimately that brings ministerial responsibility and therefore direct accountability. The operational decision was for the police or intelligence services, but the accountability was ultimately governmental and political. The time has come to bring that principle into the sphere of undercover policing, because it has involved far too many abuses for decades and, if there is not the same kind of accountability as for surveillance, there will inevitably be even more abuse.

I met undercover officers doing brave work trying to prevent dissident IRA splinter groups and loyalist groups killing and bombing. I was also briefed about vital undercover work around Islamist terrorist cells to prevent terrorist bombing and killing. In other words, I have direct experience of how undercover officers can perform vital functions to save lives and prevent crimes or terrorist attacks. But I am also due to give evidence early next year in what is described as a non-police, non-state core participant role to the official inquiry on undercover officers established by Prime Minister Theresa May and chaired by Sir John Mitting, a former High Court judge. It was established because undercover policing has got out of control and needs to be made accountable. That is important.

From 1969-70, undercover officers spied on me at anti-apartheid and anti-racist meetings, including when I was an MP in the early 1990s. As confirmed by evidence given to the Mitting inquiry, a British police or security service officer was in almost every political meeting that I attended, private or public, innocuous and routine, or serious and strategic, like stopping all white apartheid sports tours and combating pro-Nazi activity. Why were they not targeting the criminal actions of the apartheid state responsible for, among other things, fire-bombing the London office of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in March 1982 and, in 1970, murdering South African journalist Keith Wallace, who had threatened to expose apartheid security service operations in the UK? Why did they show no interest whatever in discovering who in South Africa’s Bureau of State Security sent me a letter bomb in June 1972? It was so powerful that it could have blown up me, my family and our south-west London home were it not for a technical fault in the trigger mechanism. Scotland Yard’s bomb squad, then chasing down the IRA, took it away and made it safe, but I heard nothing more.

Another victim was ecological activist Kate Wilson, whom I mentioned at Second Reading. Agree or disagree with her views and actions, she is not a criminal. Kate was at primary school with my two sons in the 1980s, and our families remain friends. Undercover officer Mark Kennedy formed an intimate and what she described afterwards as an abusive relationship with her for over seven years, even reporting back to his superiors on contacts with my family when I was a Cabinet Minister. I would like to think that a Home Secretary presented with a warrant to assign Kennedy to target Kate Wilson would at least have asked, “Why are our police wasting their time targeting her, an environmental activist, instead of drug barons, human traffickers, criminals and terrorists?” A warrant procedure would force police chiefs to stop and ask that question too, instead of morphing policing from the overtly criminal into the covertly political sphere.

Another widely reported example was referred to by my noble friend Lord Dubs. Doreen Lawrence, now my noble friend Lady Lawrence, is a law-abiding citizen, yet her family’s campaign to discover the truth about her son Stephen’s brutal racist murder was infiltrated by undercover officers. Why were they not targeting the racist criminals responsible for Stephen’s murder? A warrant procedure would have forced police chiefs to stop and ask that question, too, instead of morphing policing from the overtly criminal into the covertly political sphere.

Why did an undercover officer going under the name of Sandra infiltrate the north London branch of the Women’s Liberation Front between 1971 and 1973? She conceded to the Mitting inquiry that she failed to discover any useful intelligence whatever. Some of the meetings were attended by just two activists, she reported. She told the inquiry on Wednesday 18 November, last week:

“I could have been doing much more worthwhile things with my time.”


She worked for the Met’s special demonstration squad. She went on:

“Women’s liberation was viewed as a worrying trend … There was a very different view towards the women’s movement then as compared to today.”


Sandra told the inquiry that she did not think that her work

“really yielded any good intelligence”.

That is nice to know now, over 40 years later, but why was there no proper accountability for her deployment? I like to think that a Secretary of State might have asked a few questions if a request came to authorise her infiltration of a women’s rights group. Knowing that the Home Secretary would take a look, maybe police chiefs would never have deployed Sandra on this scandalous and wasteful mission.

In each of these cases, the police were on the wrong side of justice, the law and history: harassing anti-apartheid activists campaigning for Nelson Mandela’s freedom, instead of pursuing crimes by the apartheid state in our country; infiltrating the family of a climate change activist, instead of combating climate change; covering up for a racist murder, instead of catching the murderers; and targeting women’s rights campaigners, instead of promoting gender equality, including within the police of that time. Why were undercover police officers trying to disrupt all of us, diverting precious police resources away from catching real criminals, such as drug traffickers, human traffickers, terrorists and criminal gangs?

When I give evidence next year to the undercover inquiry, I will also show that there was a systematic pattern of malevolence, deceit and exaggeration by undercover officers. One, named as Mike Ferguson, claimed to be my right-hand man when I chaired the campaign to stop sports apartheid tours by all-white rugby and cricket teams. It was a straight lie; I had no right-hand man. If he is the person I vaguely recollect, he was on the periphery of the central core around me. Mike Ferguson claimed our campaign intended to attack the police at Twickenham when England played the Springboks—a lie. We did not. He also claimed that we planned to sprinkle tin tacks on the pitch—another lie. We did not, and indeed were at pains to avoid personal injury to players, as we ran on to pitches in acts of nonviolent direct action, sometimes being beaten up by rugby stewards or the police. Mike Ferguson reported that we planned to put oil on Lord’s cricket pitch and dig it up—again a lie. We never did. Giving evidence only the other week, another undercover officer who had infiltrated our campaign admitted that this allegation about oil and digging up pitches was false. Undercover officers also played agent provocateur on occasion, daring militant but non-violent protesters into criminal activity.

A warrant procedure would have forced police chiefs to stop and ask serious questions about all this before seeking authorisation from the Home Secretary over Mike Ferguson’s role, instead of morphing policing from the overtly criminal into the covertly political sphere.

This is not ancient history; it has happened over recent decades and could well be happening still. There needs to be a structure of proper accountability to ensure that undercover policing or covert surveillance through embedded agents is performing a legitimate function, not an illegitimate one, as in the examples I have mentioned, including those involving me. Otherwise, how do we stop legitimate undercover police or intelligence work sliding over into the illegitimate and the blatantly political? Even in our era of modern legislatively accountable policing and intelligence work, things are still going badly wrong, such as when counterterrorism police recently put non-violent Extinction Rebellion on their list of terrorist groups, doubtless for undercover operations, which are presumably continuing now, as well.

This covert human intelligence sources Bill does not address any of the key questions that I have asked, which is why I believe that the amendment, which would ensure that a warrant was signed by a Secretary of State before undercover policing was authorised, is vital and why I hope that it will be put to a vote on Report.

Fatal Accidents Act 1976 (Remedial) Order 2020

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her succinct explanation. I wish to make three brief points about this order, which I trust she might respond to. First, the order makes no provision for couples who may have been together—what their friends call “an item”—although not actually living together under one roof for completely understandable and legitimate reasons. For instance, they may have clashing work commitments or obligations as carers for relatives which rule out sharing a home in the conventional sense.

Secondly, the order excludes cohabitees who have lived together for less than two years. It treats such people like employees who qualify for protection against unfair dismissal only after two years’ service. The claim in paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum that two years together

“objectively evidences a relationship of permanence and commitment”

beggars belief. Where, I wonder, is this evidence, and what world are Ministers living in? Setting such a two-year test for a bereavement award is arbitrary. Let us not add insult to injury by pretending otherwise.

Finally, there is the question of the value of a lost life. The order applies to England and Wales and provides for the award of bereavement damages now of £15,120 for cases relating to deaths on or after 1 May 2020. In Scotland there is no statutory limit and figures of up to £140,000 have been awarded. We are back in the postcode-lottery game, but the Government rejected the recommendation of the House of Commons Human Rights Committee in May 2020 for a review of the bereavement damages scheme. I would be grateful if the Minister addressed these three specific issues.

Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Section 75 —Designation of Public Authority) Order 2020

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in thanking the Minister for his clear explanation, I note that one of the functions of the Independent Monitoring Authority that is the subject of this Motion is to

“ensure that persons are not prevented from exercising their rights”

under the citizens’ rights agreement post Brexit. I have no difficulty in supporting this Motion in relation to Section 75 designation; protecting citizens’ rights must be a priority for any Government. Regrettably, however, we have been witnessing a savage denial of rights enshrined in legislation initiated in your Lordships’ House and passed in the other place without a Division, which should be providing modest payments to those terribly injured through no fault of their own during the Northern Ireland Troubles. It is now 40 days since the victims’ payments scheme should have been opened for applications but, because of a disgraceful display of political intransigence in the Executive Office in Stormont, some of the most vulnerable men and women in Northern Ireland and beyond have been denied access to it.

When I last spoke about this at the beginning of June, I said that a severely injured victim, maimed for life in a terrorist atrocity decades ago, had been forced to put the devolved Administration on notice of judicial action to force it to honour its moral and legal obligations. Jennifer McNern was only 21 years old when her legs were blown off in a no-warning IRA bombing in 1972. I have met Jennifer and I can tell your Lordships that she is a courageous and determined woman. She had no option but to go to the High Court to seek legal redress from the Executive Office, which has so blatantly defied the law.

How did the UK Government respond to Jennifer’s attempt to have the very same law that was passed in the Government’s name upheld and implemented? They instructed a Queen’s Counsel to argue before a High Court judge that Jennifer’s judicial review against the Executive Office be set aside to allow another, arguably weaker, judicial review to proceed in its place. That was and is disgusting behaviour by the Secretary of State. As a former holder of that office, my natural stance is to support my successors. However, I say to Brandon Lewis and his Northern Ireland Office officials: you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves, the lot of you. Jennifer’s case will proceed, although it cannot be heard until August, a full six months since the structures to administer the scheme should have been put in place.

In this Parliament we do not have the power to hold the Stormont Executive Office to account for its shocking—and illegal—refusal to implement the law. However, we can and must demand that the UK Government explain what they will do to address this gratuitous insult to victims and survivors, who have suffered so much already through no fault of their own.

It is simply not good enough for Ministers to intone that this is a devolved matter and say how awfully sorry they are that things have turned out this way. The Secretary of State cannot be allowed to wring his hands and sit on them at the same time. I will continue to hound this Government until this is resolved and people like Jennifer get the acknowledgement, recognition and payments for which they have had to struggle for far too long.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL]

Lord Hain Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 17th June 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hain]

11: Schedule 6, page 68, line 44, at end insert—
“( ) Before laying a draft of an instrument before each House of Parliament under sub-paragraph (2), the Secretary of State must consult—(a) Scottish Ministers,(b) Welsh Ministers, and(c) the Northern Ireland department.”

[The Deputy Speaker]

I remind noble Lords that Members, other than the mover and the Minister, may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 11, I shall also speak to Amendment 12. I am, of course, aware that the position on consultation is different for Northern Ireland and Scotland, which have separate and therefore fully developed legal systems, where Wales does not; therefore, private international law and the implementation of these agreements is devolved in their cases.

At Second Reading, I asked for copper-bottomed assurances from the Minister with regard to devolution—namely that, should the Government identify issues within devolved competence, which would be impacted by existing or future private international law agreements, they would consult the Welsh Government—I emphasise the word “consult”. I was arguing not that the Welsh Government or Senedd should be able to veto or prevent the UK Government concluding such international agreements but simply that, in doing so, they should first make sure they understood the perspective of the devolved institutions, which, in many cases, are obliged to implement such agreements, and preferably secure their consent.

Frankly, I was astonished by the cavalier—some might say high-handed or arrogant—dismissal by the Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, of my request. We may be getting used to the way that this Government are determined to sideline and ignore Parliament, but I had not expected this response, because I was advised that the Welsh Government had been given specific verbal assurances on this point. Welsh Ministers were so concerned at his dismissive reply that their Counsel General, a Minister, wrote to the Lord Chancellor protesting about it.

This is not just a debating point. As I made clear at Second Reading, the UK Government have already signed international agreements which directly impact on the rights of the Senedd to determine the franchise—a pretty fundamental point, you may well agree—and a competence that was devolved only in 2017. The truth is that the Government did not consult any of the devolved Governments properly over a series of European Union withdrawal and Brexit-related Bills. Instead, UK Ministers tried to indulge in a series of power grabs, as previously devolved functions were returned from Brussels back to the UK. There were a series of stand-offs with the First Ministers of Wales and Scotland. There were also refusals to grant legislative consent Motions in Wales and Scotland until satisfactory outcomes were belatedly conceded by Her Majesty’s Government. I am sure that something similar would have arisen in Northern Ireland had Stormont not been so damagingly self-suspended for three years during this Brexit-dominated period.

I therefore repeat my request for the Minister to give an assurance at the Dispatch Box now on the necessity for full and early consultation, for my amendments are designed to ensure that the devolved institutions are not blindsided by finding out after the event that the UK Government have signed up to obligations on their behalf, without any forewarning.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain. I am a signatory to Amendment 11, which quite clearly emphasises—as does Amendment 12—the need for direct consultation with the devolved institutions. I am a former Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly; I was also a Minister in the Executive and had direct responsibility for benefits and for the protection of children through child support. One facet of this Bill deals with those issues to do with absent parents and the protection of children when the absent parent has gone to live in another jurisdiction. I fully understand and appreciate the matter.

My point, in supporting the amendment, is to ensure that the devolved institutions are not blindsided. I carried out some, shall we say, investigation and research on this: we know that the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Committee for Justice was contacted by the Minister for Justice on 28 April and that the committee gave approval on 30 April. Then the legislative consent Motion, which gives effect to the UK Government legislation, was approved on 19 May.

However, on further examining that debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly on 19 May, I noticed that some Members, albeit accepting the premise and purposes of the Bill, were concerned that after its approval they would not be consulted as an Assembly. The Minister would simply be advised that certain instruments were to be laid and that this particular legislation would apply, but they as Members of the Assembly would not be able to debate it, change it or give an opinion. In my view, that is undemocratic, hence my support for both amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Hain.

[Lord Hain [V]]

I thank my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick for the telling point that she made about Northern Ireland and the confused picture of consultation there. I also thank my noble friend Lord McConnell for the interesting points that he made, including on the long-overdue formal structure for mandates for treaties. It was an interesting point that the Government might want to consider. Whether it is over Europe or international treaties, I have always found the process for forming the mandate for the negotiations in respect of the devolved Administrations, as my noble friend Lord McConnell put it—as a former First Minister of Scotland, he is an authority on these matters—to be a sort of retrospective rather than prior consultation. I thank, too, the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for his important point about getting agreement, if possible, with the devolved Administrations on all the Bills that are descending on us in a great shower as we move to leave the European Union.

The noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, made important points about family law and proper consultation over the complexities of children’s rights. My noble and learned friend Lord Falconer made what I thought was the very telling observation that the way that these amendments have been handled and, indeed, the response to my points at Second Reading are all of a piece, to use his phrase, with the way in which the Bill has been conducted.

I thank the Minister for his response. However, I am afraid that I do not accept his interpretation of the way that I approached this matter at Second Reading, and I think that revisiting Hansard will confirm that. My points concerned Wales. I asked for a copper-bottomed guarantee on consultation over Wales. I did not get it then and I have only sort of got it, grudgingly, now. I simply say to him that I always found in my role as a Minister that it was better to own up and admit to mistakes if and when you made them. If I may say so as a former Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland, I think that it is also better to be open and embracing about devolution and the statutory requirements for consultation and agreement on these matters, rather than to be a bit grudging and chippy about them.

I have no idea what the Welsh Government will make of the Minister’s reply. He seems to have given a commitment to consult and reach agreement, but we will need to see. Maybe this matter will have to be revisited on Report, especially if the Welsh Government react with a letter to the Lord Chancellor in the way that they did after his response to me last week. Perhaps that will not be necessary—I certainly hope not. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [HL]

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, Amendment 19 is a very important amendment to probe the Government on what they anticipate the application of Clause 2 will be. I very much enjoyed some of the other contributions today, particular that of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, which was particularly scathing and deserves to be in a newspaper somewhere. I loathe the Government trying to make these power grabs. The idea that they can just extend the concept of a crime is inherently damaging to democracy.

In particular, the key question that I need the Minister to address is in what circumstances he foresees a private international law agreement creating or amending criminal offences. As I understand it, the Bill and the agreements that it seeks to implement are entirely focused on the resolution of disputes between individual people or companies. Can he tell us what situations would give rise to any criminal liability, as opposed to civil liability? Does he anticipate that we will attach criminal fines and imprisonment to civil disputes? If there are not any good examples, why is this provision contained in the Bill and should your Lordships’ House not amend the Bill exactly in the way proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton?

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 20 to Schedule 6 in the name of my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer on the matter of proper consultation, which it would require. As a former Secretary of State for Wales and still living here, I am aware that no legislative consent Motion is required for this Brexit-consequential Bill and that the Welsh Government appear to seem at least content with it. But, as my noble friend Lady Kennedy highlighted, there are real concerns about the delegated powers to join future private international law agreements.

I understand that the UK Government have provided assurances to the devolved Administrations that, first, there are not any agreements in view at the moment that touch on matters within devolved competences and that, secondly, if any such agreement emerges the UK Government will guarantee to consult the Welsh Government, and presumably the Northern Ireland Executive and the Scottish Government. I would be grateful if the Minister specifically confirms this when he replies. I ask because, for nearly four years, Conservative Governments have had a sorry record of failing properly to enable devolved Governments to participate in framing a series of European Union withdrawal and Brexit-related Bills. Consequently, UK Ministers were regularly accused, as noble Lords might recall, of a power grab—of using the transfer of functions from Brussels back to the UK to recover to Whitehall previously devolved powers.

The First Ministers of Wales and Scotland both repeatedly complained about a failure of Whitehall Ministers to consult. Indeed, I have argued exactly that in your Lordships’ House on several occasions. There were also refusals to grant legislative consent Motions in Wales and Scotland until a satisfactory series of outcomes were belatedly conceded by the UK Government. This is not a good advertisement for the unity of the UK when it is under greater threat than ever.

I will put on record some specific examples of a failure to build consent, as Amendment 20 implies must be the case, because these must not be repeated. The 2017 EU withdrawal Bill, as originally drafted, represented a major assault on devolved competence. It was only as a result of very strong cross-party support in your Lordships’ House that the Government were forced to agree to a default position that all powers vested in the EU on matters of devolved competence would revert to the devolved institutions when we left the EU. This has led to a more consensual approach to the work of developing common frameworks where all four Governments agree that there needs to be a shared understanding and approach across the UK.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 17th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hain]

17: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Victims’ payments
(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations establish a scheme under the law of Northern Ireland which provides for one or more payments to be made to, or in respect of, a person who has sustained an injury as a result of a Troubles-related incident.(2) The first regulations under subsection (1) must be made before the end of January 2020 and come into force before the end of May 2020.(3) Regulations under subsection (1) must make provision as to the eligibility criteria for payments under the scheme which may, in particular, relate to—(a) the nature or extent of a person’s injury;(b) how, when or where the injury was sustained;(c) residence or nationality;(d) whether or not a person has been convicted of an offence.(4) Regulations under subsection (1) may make provision for the reimbursement of costs incurred by a person in connection with an application under the scheme (whether or not the application is successful).(5) Regulations under subsection (1) may, in particular, make provision—(a) for determining the amount of any payment;(b) for payments to be made in respect of past periods (including periods before this Act was passed);(c) for payments to be reduced or repaid (in whole or in part) in specified circumstances;(d) about the treatment under other legislation (for example social security legislation) of payments under the scheme.(6) Regulations under subsection (1) must make provision of the kind mentioned in subsection (5)(b) so as to ensure that where—(a) a person is eligible under the scheme as the result of an injury sustained by that person before the scheme comes into force, and(b) the person makes an application within a period specified in the regulations (which must not be less than the period of two years beginning with the day on which the scheme comes into force), the person is entitled to a payment to reflect the amount that the person would have received had the scheme been in force since the making of the Stormont House Agreement.(7) Regulations under subsection (1) may, in particular, make provision about—(a) the administration of the scheme (including provision establishing a body or conferring functions on an existing body);(b) the funding of the scheme by money from the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland (whether by virtue of grant funding from a Northern Ireland department, the appropriation of money by an Act of the Northern Ireland Assembly or otherwise);(c) the sharing of information between public authorities for the purposes of the scheme;(d) evidential matters;(e) the procedure for the making and deciding of applications (including provision imposing time limits);(f) appeals and reviews;(g) information, advice or assistance in relation to the scheme or payments under it.(8) Regulations under subsection (1) may make provision conferring a discretion on a person.(9) Regulations under subsection (1)—(a) may include provision amending, repealing or revoking any provision made by an Act of Parliament or Northern Ireland legislation, and(b) in so far as made in reliance on section (Regulations: procedure and supplementary 2)(4), may also include provision amending or repealing provision made by an Act or Measure of the National Assembly for Wales or an Act of the Scottish Parliament.(10) In making the first regulations under this section the Secretary of State must have regard to any advice given by the Commission for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland.(11) In this section—“injury” means any illness or injury (whether physical or mental);“the Stormont House Agreement” means the agreement made between parties represented in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland on 23 December 2014;“Troubles-related incident” means an incident involving an act of violence or force carried out in Ireland, the United Kingdom or anywhere in Europe for a reason related to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland or to political or sectarian hostility between people there.”

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I think the Minister has demonstrated the patience of Job with the House this evening and I commend him for that; we are enormously indebted to him.

In moving Amendment 17, I will speak to associated Amendments 18 and 23 in my name and those of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Bruce, to whom I am most grateful. I thank the Minister and his officials for working with us to enable these amendments to be accepted by the Government and to establish, for the very first time, a system of payments for a pension which severely injured victims of Northern Ireland terrorism should have had a very long time ago.

My understanding is that the crucial words,

“through no fault of their own”,

that were in my original amendment in Committee on Monday cannot appear on the face of the Bill, on the advice of parliamentary counsel, because they are not sufficiently legally precise. For the avoidance of any doubt, I ask the Minister to confirm for the record that the intent and purpose of,

“through no fault of their own”,

remains in the Bill as amended, especially in Section 3(d), covering whether or not an applicant has a conviction for an offence. Will he also confirm that it is his intention that the regulations and the eligibility assessment procedure to come will abide by the “no fault of their own” principle, which I think was supported right across the House? Can he also further confirm that “offence” means a terrorism-related or serious criminal offence, not some unrelated minor or summary offence that could have happened, for example, long ago in youth?

Those of us who have had the privilege to meet the remarkable men and women who, despite the most horrendous injuries imaginable, have reconstructed their lives, will know just how important this breakthrough is. I thank your Lordships’ House for the steadfast way in which the principle has been supported over the last 18 months or so. I understand that the mechanisms to deliver the pension will take some time to set up, but the date for it to be operational—May 2020—has to be the very last date. Will the Minister confirm that heaven and earth will be moved to make payments as quickly as possible? These individuals are no longer young, and some could possibly even pass before 2020.

This modest but essential measure is long overdue, and it is right that the Government have recognised that by agreeing payments to be backdated to December 2014, and through the Stormont House agreement on these matters, meaning that many recipients could be due many thousands of pounds; at least they have that to look forward to. I was heartened that the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, spoke positively about the proposal in the debate on Monday. I trust that his colleagues in the other place will follow his lead. Indeed, if working devolution is to be restored before 21 October, I hope there will be no attempt by anyone or any party, on whatever pretext, to try to overturn what we have done here in this Parliament. That would be unthinkable when Parliament—and before that, Stormont—have together, completely and shamefully, failed these people for so many years. At long last, we are today bringing some relief and justice to people who have suffered for so long.

In concluding, when I spoke to my amendments on Monday, I said that we are a civilised society and we do not turn people away from services that they need provided; for example, by the NHS and the Victims & Survivors Service in Northern Ireland. However, this pension is not a service; it is a recognition of the horrific harm done to men and women through no fault of their own. They have endured, and continue to endure, almost unimaginable pain and suffering through no fault of their own. They do not ask for sympathy, let alone pity; they ask for our recognition for what they have gone through, and help to live independent lives with dignity. I am glad that we can play our part in making that a reality by agreeing this amendment this evening.

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[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords, I am very happy to speak on this and I will get right to the point. I am very happy to confirm for the record that the intent and purpose of,

“through no fault of their own”,

is the principal criterion by which we will ensure that victims secure their pension. We will also ensure that all eligibility criteria procedures abide by the “no fault of their own” principle. I hope that these words will stand alongside any interpretation of the Bill as it passes from our House to the other place. I recognise the “blameless” comment as well: we need to recognise that concept that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, put into the discussion. This is to ensure that those who have suffered through no fault of their own, not by their own hand, and who are survivors of a difficult and troubled time, are able to secure a pension now. That pension will be backdated to December 2014, so I hope that for some there will be a serious lump sum. I hope that that money can do some good.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for bringing this before us, for pushing it and for keeping us on track all the way through. I think noble Lords who have been part of those discussions will agree that it is through his leadership that we are where we are today. I would not normally do this, but it is also important that I praise one of my officials, Chris Atkinson. He has been instrumental in helping move this matter forward: without him, we would not be where we are today, and I put on record, from all of us who have been involved, how critical he was to securing success. On that basis, I am very happy to accept the amendment.

[Lord Hain]

In thanking the Minister, I also thank his official, Chris Atkinson. I also place on record what is, I am sure, the view of the whole House that the WAVE Trauma Centre, which has campaigned for this for 10 years, deserves to be acknowledged for what has been magnificent persistence: I think we should pay tribute to it.

Amendment 17 agreed.

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Moved by

[Lord Hain]

18: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Regulations: procedure and supplementary 2
(1) Regulations under section (Victims’ payments) are to be made by statutory instrument.(2) A statutory instrument containing regulations under section (Victims’ payments) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.(3) A power to make regulations under section (Victims’ payments) may be used to make different provision for different purposes.(4) Regulations under section (Victims’ payments) may make incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional or saving provision.”

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Moved by

[Lord Hain]

23: Clause 10, page 6, line 33, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“(2) Except as mentioned in subsection (2A), this Act comes into force on the day on which it is passed.(2A) Sections (Victims’ payments) and (Regulations: procedure and supplementary 2) come into force on 22 October 2019, unless an Executive in Northern Ireland is formed on or before 21 October 2019 (in which case they do not come into force at all).(2B) For the purposes of this section an Executive is formed once the offices of the First Minister, deputy First Minister and the Northern Ireland Ministers are all filled.”

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the Committee will see that I have a number of issues in Amendments 12 to 16. I have to say—I have said this to the Minister before—that I believe that this Bill, which was set out to be a relatively simple exercise, has now transformed itself into something totally different. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, described it as a Christmas tree, so I take the view that if people at the other end are entitled to put baubles on the Christmas tree, I can put tinsel on it. Let us be under no illusion. Once the dam is breached, people will flow through with their own ideas and are perfectly entitled to do it. I have chosen a number of things because I believe they are very important to the people of Northern Ireland. Most of them are not being addressed, yet people are in significant difficulty as a result.

I will start with Amendment 12. The RHI has proven to be one of the most significant developments in Northern Ireland in recent years. It was ostensibly the reason Sinn Féin collapsed the Executive in 2017. I have never believed that that was the only reason. Nevertheless, it is on paper as the reason. As we discovered when dealing with rates and the renewable heat incentive in March, many people are in great distress as a result.

After we had discussed things, the Minister promised that a unit would be established within the Department for the Economy to look at the individual circumstances of everybody who was at risk and at a loss as a result of the change in the premiums being paid for the use of the boilers. It appears to me that the department has taken an exceptionally narrow view of what that means and is confining itself to European Union rules stipulating that it could provide loans at commercial rates for up to six months and that would probably be as far as it could go. That is no use to the people.

In the debate earlier, before the dinner-break business, people referred to undertakings that the Government gave. In this particular case, the relevant Minister at the time appealed to the banks in writing for them to lend to people who were going to operate these boilers. The banks responded to the Minister, loaning money on the undertaking that the rights were being grandfathered and there was a 12% return. Some people got these boilers, calculated the income that they had received from them over the 20 years of the scheme, put that into business plans and perhaps went on to borrow money for other related projects, such as additional chicken houses and so on. They now find that the premiums they are in receipt of are a mere fraction of those they had put into their business plans and were promised by the Stormont Government at that time. They also find themselves in the bizarre situation that the Republic of Ireland is about to introduce a similar scheme for 15 years, while the scheme that exists here, which pre-dated the Northern Ireland version, will be continuing for its 20-year period. So the competitiveness for the person using one of those boilers in Northern Ireland compared with in the Republic or the rest of the United Kingdom is totally destroyed. I say to the Minister that this requires urgent action, and the action so far flagged up by the Department for the Economy is totally inadequate.

I come now to Amendment 13. We have all agreed that the welfare system was in urgent need of reform. It was unwieldy, far too complicated and, most important, it was not properly supporting people into work. Yet, instead of simplifying the overall benefits system, the reforms made it even more difficult, with new layers of complexity and added delay. In 2015, the local political parties in Northern Ireland agreed that a package of measures was required. This included support for people moving from DLA to PIP, or perhaps from DLA to nothing at all, as well as many other issues, such as additional support for the independent advice sector. One of the most important mitigations was in relation to the social sector size criteria. While we can all accept the principle behind families being allocated homes that most reflect their needs, the reality in Northern Ireland did not—and, shamefully, still does not—have the stock to reflect modern demand; in other words, there are insufficient homes for single people or small families.

If, as is so greatly feared, the current mitigations expire next March and nothing is there to replace them, many thousands of local families face the prospect of serious financial hardship. Let us take the bedroom tax alone: a massive 34,000 households would lose support valued at £22 million per annum. I repeat: this is not because people are refusing to downsize; it is because there are literally not the houses for people to downsize to. It is as simple as that. There have been talks between the parties of Northern Ireland in recent months on the issue of future mitigation. I am told that they have gone quite well so far, yet the Department for Communities in Belfast has repeatedly said that decisions on the provision of any future support from April next year can be a matter only for incoming Ministers. That is why I have tabled this amendment and put the realistic timeframe of December on it.

On Amendment 15, the Minister will be aware that we have a serious problem with suicide in Northern Ireland. It is at the highest level in the whole of the United Kingdom. Troubles-related issues may be part of it; indeed, I have no doubt that that is the case. But we are the only UK region without a current mental health strategy and our funding per capita for mental health services is far below the UK average. We have this very difficult situation, yet the Protect Life 2 strategy has been sitting on the shelf for over two years. We are talking about individual lives; primarily the victims are young men. I believe there is widespread support among the political parties in Belfast to see this strategy taken off the shelf. I think this was referred to last week by other colleagues here and that everybody is on the same hymn sheet. At the end of the day, however, the strategy is still sitting there, nothing is happening and, without it, the departments are not in a position to take decisions. The advice that the parties have been given by the Civil Service is correct: this requires a Minister to take a decision, and that is not happening.

Amendment 14 is about libel legislation in Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Black, has tabled a more specific amendment that will be dealt with later, so I shall not go into detail. Basically, we are on the same page, but I was looking to try to give some kind of kick-start to this. We have fallen far behind the rest of the country, and I support what the noble Lord will propose at a later stage.

On Amendment 16, I have described our situation with health time and time again. On Second Reading I referred to the latest report from the Nuffield Trust, backed up by Professor Deirdre Heenan of Ulster University, its co-author. The statistics are sobering. Upwards of 120,000 people out of a population of 1.8 million are waiting for more than a year for a consultant-led appointment. Every target is being missed: if the target is 95%, most of the percentages are in the low 60s. We are not close to other regions in the rest of the United Kingdom, and the capacity of the service to meet the demand from the public is simply not there.

We are flying in nurses from Great Britain. Their air fare is paid, their accommodation and meals are paid, and their hourly pay is grossly above that of the ordinary nurses on the wards. Although the agency nurses do a good job and we could not survive without them, this cannot be a sensible or economic way forward. When people are flying in and out, they are not in a position to open up a relationship with a patient or understand that patient. Moreover, different systems operate in different trusts. This is an inefficient and highly expensive way of providing a service.

In our earlier debates we talked about life. I did not get into the argument about abortion, although I have my own views on it—but we understand that the fundamental thing is a respect for life, and choices. Yet we know that the way in which the service is being delivered in part of our own country is at such a level that life is being affected. If a cancer patient waits weeks and months for an appointment, that directly affects their chances of survival. In diagnosis time is of the essence, as many noble Lords will know.

Our situation is out of control, and all the projections are that it is getting progressively worse. Every quarter the figures are worse than those for the quarter before. How many times do we have to learn that? The fact is that politics are being put before the welfare of hundreds of thousands of our citizens. None of us knows how often we shall have to depend on the health service. Not one of us in this Chamber knows how we shall be placed. Those figures represent mothers, fathers, sons and daughters; they are real people, and they are suffering because the service is not delivering.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I commend the noble Lord for consistently raising this subject, and for the passion with which he has done so. To support his case, does he agree that there is also a serious problem of lack of childcare, and the dreadful waiting times for children in the NHS in Northern Ireland?

[Lord Empey]

The noble Lord is correct. All our services are suffering, not through any lack of attention, or any attempt on anybody’s part not to provide a good service, but because people are overwhelmed. Decisions that were taken in the Treasury some years ago affecting the position of consultants’ pensions and other things are now impacting seriously on waiting lists because a lot of those consultants are absenting themselves. There is a perverse situation that the more work there is, the more they are making a liability for themselves. These are the sorts of things that are happening.

Leaving aside the politics of it—I do not want to see direct rule; I spent years of my life trying to see Stormont get going, accompanied by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, and other Members who are in the House today, and we want to see it work—there is a humanitarian issue at the back of all this. People are hurting, and the longer the prevarication is allowed to persist, the greater the risk to individuals. The truth of the matter is that people will die on these waiting lists—we have to be honest about this—and collectively we are standing around watching this. I suspect that that is not a sustainable position for any of us to keep. It is in those circumstances that I beg to move.

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Moved by

[Lord Hain]

21: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Pension for victims and survivors of Troubles-related incidents
(1) The Secretary of State must make regulations to give effect to a pension for those severely injured through no fault of their own during the period known as the Northern Ireland Troubles, in line with advice requested by the Secretary of State and submitted in May 2019 from the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Victims and Survivors, and to provide that those who qualify for the pension should receive it back-dated to 23 December 2014, being the date of signing of the Stormont House Agreement.(2) Regulations under this section must be in force no later than 21 October 2019, subject to subsections (3) and (4).(3) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1)—(a) must be laid before both Houses of Parliament;(b) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.(4) If a Northern Ireland Executive is formed before the regulations under this section come into force, any regulations made under this section and any extant obligations arising under subsection (1) shall cease to have effect.”

[Lord Hain]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 21, which stands in my name and the names of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Bruce. I am grateful for their support.

I shall first speak briefly about the context which has dominated this debate. In 2007, when we negotiated the deal that brought Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness into power together, I said that I was the last direct-rule Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I now very much fear that that was wrong and that we are hurtling towards direct rule. I fear that greatly because the current situation has shown how difficult it is to get the Assembly up and running with a functioning Executive once it has been suspended. With direct rule, that becomes doubly difficult. I say to my friends in the DUP—and they are my friends, because I worked very closely with them as Secretary of State and have done so since—that I hope that they are taking note of what is happening in de facto parliamentary direct rule. A lot of things that are coming through are things they are not happy about. That is the consequence of the Assembly being suspended. It is not only one party—Sinn Féin—that is at fault. It is not only one party. Yes, it is at fault, and it is being uncompromising on some issues and details—but, I am afraid, so are my friends in the DUP. This is not just one party blocking the whole thing. I think there should be honesty about that. The consequences are here to be seen in issues that the DUP is deeply unhappy about.

In passing, I will say that, once again in the debates on this Bill, we are seeing the absence of a nationalist political voice in this House. Half the community does not have a political voice in your Lordships’ House. There is no modern Gerry Fitt, as it were. I know he was criticised by many of his followers for taking his seat here, but it was an important voice to hear. I know that will be agreed by unionist Members. I hope that, in considering future appointments to this House, the Government, perhaps in consultation with the independent Appointments Commission, will take note of that, because this cannot continue—especially if direct rule comes, as I very much fear it might.

I recognise that, as drafted, Amendment 21 is likely to require a money resolution in the House of Commons—or at least an amendment on Report to incorporate funding from the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund, which I hope the Government will agree to. I have spoken many times in your Lordships’ House on the urgent need to provide a pension for those who were severely injured through no fault of their own—I repeat, “through no fault of their own”, which is written into the text—as a result of Troubles-related incidents.

I, and I know those who have been campaigning, especially in the WAVE Trauma Centre, which I commend, for the pension for nearly a decade, have been greatly heartened and encouraged by the wide cross-party support in this House for this proposal: from the former Secretaries of State the noble Lord, Lord King, and my noble friends Lord Reid and Lord Murphy; from former Victims’ Ministers who served in Northern Ireland, my noble friends Lord Browne and Lady Smith of Basildon; from the distinguished former chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack; from the noble Baroness, Lady Altman; from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for the Liberal Democrats; and, from the Cross Benches, from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Bew. I am also grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, who, to use a colloquialism, gets it. I thank him for the detailed conversations we have had on this, as well as for his support of and direct engagement with the severely injured victims. It has been much appreciated.

Now is the time for action. I urge the Government not to divide the House but to accept this amendment with not only a firm and binding commitment to legislate but with the timeframe attached to other measures coming from the other place and set out in my amendment. The date for this will be 21 October 2019, unless an Executive has been formed in Northern Ireland by then.

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[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords, I believe I can give that positive response. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, has given a great deal of leadership. A number of Members of your Lordships’ House have worked very hard on this matter, as have members of my team in the Northern Ireland Office. The noble Lord and I discussed earlier some technical improvements that need to be made, which I believe we can make tomorrow. The noble Lord has also raised the question of a money resolution and a consolidated fund. I believe we can address that.

I was privileged to meet a number of the survivors from the WAVE Trauma group. I recognise what they have been through. I thank the noble Lords here who have given that commitment to ensure that their voices have not been lost or forgotten. Every day we lose from here on in is one day too many. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hain, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hain]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very positive response and all those who have contributed to the debate, including the noble Lord, Lord McCrea. I am happy to withdraw this amendment and table a revised version tomorrow, which I hope will be acceptable to the whole House, including the Government.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.