Northern Ireland Protocol

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Cormack

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords—

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Cormack

Committee stage
Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to have added my name to Amendment 112, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hain. But there was a contradiction running through even the very eloquent and powerful speech that we have just heard from my friend—I deliberately call him that—the noble Lord, Lord Hain. He worked with extreme sensitivity when he had the honour to be Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and I saw at first hand how he agonised over things and cared about people. At the beginning of his speech, he said—in as many words—that this Bill was beyond improvement: that whatever we did to it, we could not really make it into a decent Bill. Then he went on to urge us all to support the amendments. I understand the contradiction—of course I do, because we have the Bill before us. But every word I have heard uttered in these debates—and I have heard most of them—and on Second Reading, underlines the fact that, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, in a different context, this is not fit for purpose. It really is not.

Much as I admire—and I do admire—the noble Lord, Lord Caine, as I have said before during the passage of this Bill, with all the good will in the world, and I know he has a great measure of that, he cannot really make this better. It is as if you are confronted with a cake made with poisonous fruit. Any amount of cream, any amount of icing and any amount of titivation will not make it anything other than a poisonous cake. I am afraid that the Government have, with a combination of insensitivity and ignorance—and this emphatically does not apply to my noble friend on the Front Bench—created a monster of a Bill that has alienated every community in Northern Ireland. There is only one answer, and I have said this before, and that is to go back to the drawing board and try to produce something that really does meet many of the points that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and others during the course of our debates.

While I am here because I believe that the subject is important—I care deeply about Northern Ireland, although I have never had the good fortune to live there, and have been there many times and heard many stories—I feel we are not serving the people of Northern Ireland as we should if we try to make the proverbial silk purse out of the sow’s ear that the Bill is.

For those who are not from Northern Ireland, I would say this: a fortnight ago, I had a message that somebody from Northern Ireland wished to see me. Of course, I saw him. He was a man who had appeared as a witness when the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee—under my chairmanship—conducted an inquiry into organised crime. We had to take a unique departure for a Select Committee—I do not think it has happened since—which was that every evidence session was taken in camera, because people were not prepared to give evidence in public as their lives were at stake. This was a man who had suffered from extortion by—I hate the term—loyalist terrorists. How you can be a loyalist and a terrorist is completely beyond me, but the term is used. He wanted to come and tell me what had happened since that day in 2006 when he gave evidence to my committee. I was moved and impressed by his courage, his resilience and his determination. He had suffered quite considerably, and suffered physically as well. How would a man like that ever buy this Bill? It is from individual examples such as that that one can try to gain an understanding of what it is like, and has been like, in Northern Ireland, and realise that we really have a duty to produce something that can be acceptable to those who have suffered so much.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I do not disagree with anything the noble Lord has said. The problem is that the House’s role is not normally—if ever—to reject a Bill, especially one that, at least in part, has a manifesto commitment in it. So we just have to do our best to make it less unacceptable. That is what my amendments have been designed to do and I am very grateful that he has supported them.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Cormack

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her interruption. She makes a telling correction, or at least clarification, to the point I make. I agree with her, and take her point entirely, especially having worked with her and respected her for her work when I was Secretary of State.

However, there is regular contact with the families and regular updates; that should be the model adopted going forward. Not only is Kenova a model of effective police work and a model for how to work with the families concerned but it has the most robust governance and oversight structures in place. Two of our distinguished colleagues in this House, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, serve on one such body, along with those who have extensive international policing experience. That is the model that should be adopted for any investigative process coming out of this legislation.

In bringing my remarks on this amendment to a close, I confess that I am still not absolutely sure where the Government stand on Operation Kenova. For a time, the mantra was trotted out at official and ministerial level that Kenova could not be said to be successful because no prosecutions had resulted. This was disingenuous at best. The Secretary of State who peddled this line knew full well that over 30 files sat with the seriously overstretched and underresourced Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland and have now done for three years or so. I will refer more to this in the debate on Amendment 136. If cases do not come before the courts for whatever reason, one cannot blame the investigation. Now it is conceded by Ministers and officials that Kenova does good work, but we are told it could not be upscaled, because it would be too expensive and investigations would take far too long. Jon Boutcher has made it clear that in his view the essential elements of Operation Kenova could be upscaled and investigations completed within a manageable timescale and not at an eye-watering cost.

I said at the outset that this is bad legislation. Our amendments could turn it into acceptable legislation and surely the Government are therefore duty bound to accept them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I was very glad to add my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and will speak briefly in its support. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, for the way in which she introduced this mammoth group of amendments.

As I listened to the noble Baroness, and to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, I kept thinking of those immortal words from the Irish story: “I wouldn’t have started from here.” What we have is a terrible ragbag of a Bill. Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hain, that if our amendment were accepted, the Bill would be very significantly improved. However, we really need to go back to the drawing board here. The Bill is far too complicated and complex. It tries to treat a whole range of people with what I would call an artificial equality and, in the process, upsets everybody. We have heard that quoted time and again, at Second Reading and in the debates today. You cannot please everybody; you have to try to be fair and just. In particular, you must have regard for those who have been slaughtered or maimed in terrible incidents of which they were not the perpetrators and where they were seeking to defend what was right.

The House does not need me to give a whole series of encapsulations of dreadful events such as Enniskillen. But we cannot have this Bill because it does not recognise—as the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, put it graphically earlier in our debate today—for instance, the proper desserts of the veterans of those forces who were seeking to defend, and who were not engaged in terrorist acts.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Cormack

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

He is a young man.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

He is a very young man.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am a child in your Lordships’ House.

We are looking at cases which go back very many years and where, as the noble Lord rightly says, the chance of prosecutions is rare. In response to his amendment requiring the Secretary of State to make payments where conduct has been referred, I do not think he will be remotely surprised to hear me repeat what I have said in the Chamber on a number of previous occasions in response to him and the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Loan and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, the latter of whom is not in her place, unfortunately: that funding for the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland is a devolved matter, and one for the Executive to consider.

I will say, almost in parenthesis, that I understand the comments about resource, but I have spoken to senior members of the legal profession in Belfast. While they would of course always welcome more resources, they are also adamant that the speed with which some of the cases proceed is not entirely down to resourcing; there are other issues involved. Having said that, I remind the Committee that the 2021 spending review set out historical levels of funding for the devolved Administrations, including the Northern Ireland Executive. Spending per head in Northern Ireland is already the highest of any region of the UK: Northern Ireland receives 21% more funding per head than the UK average. Also, a sizeable amount of money— £250 million, to be exact—will be made available by the Government to fund the institutions established by the Bill, including the investigative function of the commission.

I turn now to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and her amendments—

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Hain and Lord Cormack

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am delighted, and privileged, to be able to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. I had the great good fortune of chairing the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place between 2005 and 2010, working very closely with the noble Lord, Lord Hain, when he was Secretary of State, and with his successor. I saw at first hand the invaluable work that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, did, particularly on the commission which he jointly chaired with Mr Denis Bradley.

An enormous amount of work was put into making the Belfast agreement work. It is one of the significant achievements of post-war British politics, as my noble friend Lord Patten said in his magnificent speech. I will always remember private meetings that I had with the late Lord Bannside—better known as Ian Paisley—who, together with Martin McGuinness, breathed new life into the agreement. It would be a tragedy—I use the word deliberately—if we put the agreement at risk, because it would also have the effect of shattering the integrity of the United Kingdom itself.

The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, for whom I have great respect, talked about the co-operation between the two police forces. One saw that at first hand with my committee, travelling throughout Northern Ireland and in the Republic. Many things have been said recently about the fact that the border issue can be easily solved. However, talking as I did last night with a group of colleagues and with two Norwegians, one realises that it is not as simple as that. A proclamation that it is simple never makes anything simple. We really must be extremely cautious about dismissing on the basis of a slogan the one thing that can guarantee the continuance of the Belfast agreement and the integrity of the United Kingdom. That is some sort of customs union, be it the present one or another, because that alone can preserve a border that is soft and the opportunity for people to travel from one part of the island of Ireland to the other without impediment.

My noble friend Lord Patten did a great service to the Committee and to your Lordships’ House, not only in tabling his amendment but by what he said in moving it. I believe that nothing is at risk if we in effect, as he has suggested, write the principles of the Belfast agreement into the Bill. My noble friend the Minister will of course proclaim his firm allegiance to the Belfast agreement, and we will all be delighted when he does so because we know that, as he did last week, he will do that with total commitment and integrity. We know also that he will say he speaks for Her Majesty’s Government. So if that is the position of Her Majesty’s Government—and we all believe that it is—and there is no difference in this House between any party on this issue, why cannot it be put on the face of the Bill, as my noble friend Lord Patten so powerfully and movingly argued?

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames—who is definitely emeritus—said that this was the crux of the problem that we face; I fear that he is right. It is therefore crucial that there is flexibility in government to allow an arrangement that preserves the agreement by ensuring that the border remains as it is. In my view, that can only be in a guaranteeable form if we have a customs arrangement. I hope that when my noble friend Lord Duncan comes to reply, he will accept the logic of that argument and once again proclaim the Government’s commitment to the Belfast agreement. I hope he will also agree to commend to his colleagues, since we cannot expect him to do it on the Floor of the House this morning, that the Patten formula—there have been good Patten formulas in the past—that the agreement should be in the Bill is adopted by government.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I agree with everything the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, particularly about the customs union. However, would he reflect on the fact that the customs union deals with the visible border but the invisible border of services can only really be dealt with by a common single-market arrangement? That is of course the majority of both economies on the island of Ireland. If we are genuinely to have an open border, visible and invisible, to put it in that language, then the single market has to apply across that border as well.

[Lord Cormack]

Tempted as I am by the noble Lord’s seductive words, we must realise what is achievable and what is not achievable. With both major political parties proclaiming that the single market cannot remain, we have to concentrate on what can remain or can be replaced by something essentially similar—a customs union. As I said, I am tempted. I am not unsympathetic, but we have to be realistic.