Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, we often talk about the way in which liberal democracy is in retreat in the part of the world that we have just been hearing about, particularly in Russia. I wonder whether we have not put that question back to front. The Russian state was founded in 882. If we look at the period between its foundation and the present, we see that it has been an autocracy for 1,120 years. There was a little moment of constitutional monarchy in 1905; there was the period between February and October 1917; and then, if we very generously count the early Putin as well as the Yeltsin years, we can come up with 23 years in which Russia has adhered to something that we would recognise as the rule of law and representative government. That is not a whole lot of democratic muscle memory to fall back on.
The point I want to make is that this is very normal. One way of explaining the rise of Putin is to look at what happened in all the other ex-Soviet states—what happened when the USSR suddenly broke apart and, in almost every case outside the Baltics, went into some kind of autocracy. What was it that all those strongmen had in common—the Karimovs and Aliyevs and so on? Was it charisma? Was it some demotic connection with their people? Was it intelligence? No. They just happened to be the Soviet officials who were in charge of the Uzbek SSR—or whatever it was—at the time when the break-up came. They suddenly found themselves in charge of sovereign states and they very quickly set about ensuring that their grip on power would be unchallenged and there would be a kind of one-party state.
That is the norm. That is the sobering thought. We in anglophone western democracies are the exception. It is not the Putins and the Karimovs who are extraordinary but the Washingtons—the people who do not try to set up hereditary dictatorial power. That should make us aware of the fragility of our model and of the constant need to defend it, by being ready not only to deploy arms proportionately in defence of freedom but to defend it intellectually and culturally at home. This is where the challenge of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation comes from. It is a fundamentally illiberal alternative model, and it is growing; it is popular. All these new countries are adhering to it because that autocratic way of government appeals to something very deep in the human psyche. It is how we administered ourselves for the 10,000 years between the discovery of agriculture and a couple of hundred years ago, at most—an eyeblink in evolutionary terms.
That is why this matters. It is not because of the strategic importance of the region—every region thinks it is strategically important, including central Asia. When I was a new MEP, my noble friend Lord Callanan and I were put on the central Asia delegation. As an MEP, if you were a goody-goody federalist they gave you the Caribbean or South Africa. We were critics of the single currency, so they gave us central Asia, and I am very glad they did. I got to know the region pretty well, and I loved it. I visit it still; I have friends there. But with the best will in the world, it is not of great strategic importance to us—not as a maritime country. Sir Halford Mackinder used to say that it was the inventor of geostrategy, the key region, the heartland:
“he who controls the heartland controls the world”.
Barely had he said that than the First World War came along and disproved him, as did the Second World War. It may have had some tangential strategic relevance to us at the height of the great game, when Stoddart and Conolly were murdered in Bukhara in 1842, but it is a stretch to say that it matters to us now, as an archipelago at the western tip of the Eurasian land mass.
This matters not for reasons of direct geostrategic interest but because there is this cultural challenge—this alternative way of running our affairs—which appeals to people, including in the west. The reason that India, Pakistan, Iran and all these places are adhering to organisations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation —the clue as to who runs it is in the name, by the way—is that they think that our system is in decline. One reason they think that is because we keep telling them. We have become so ready to dismiss and distance ourselves from our own past. We have this extraordinary lack of self-confidence. If our children get any history at all, we tend to present it as a hateful chronicle of racism and exploitation.
I would be prepared to defend the proposition —I cannot prove it—that almost any child in a primary school in this country would be much more familiar with the names of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King than those of Lilburne, Locke, Wycliffe, Wilkes, Milton or Millar; and that is just the Johns. We are not teaching them our own history of freedom and personal responsibility, of the elevation of the individual above the collective and of the importance of the rule of law. That, it seems to me, is our challenge as legislators. We need to emphasise that we are inheritors of this sublime tradition, that it is better than the alternative and that it raised the human race to a pinnacle of wealth and freedom. Keeping that heritage going means teaching the next generation about why it is special, why they are lucky to be the guardians of this sublime patrimony, why they will hold it—as we do—on a repairing lease and why they, too, will have a commensurate obligation to pass it on intact to those who come after.
UK Constitution: Oversight and Responsibility (Report from the Constitution Committee)
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the fresh and humane takes of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port.
The public see a collective political failure: that was the phrase used by the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander of Cleveden, in her excellent—indeed, outstanding—contribution. As she correctly says, that anger of the public, that sense of disillusionment, are exaggerated by the uniquely centralised nature of our polity. We have weaker local government here than in any European country except Malta, which in some ways is governed as a kind of continuous conurbation. When we have failures at the centre here, they are felt far more strongly elsewhere.
Here is the extraordinary thing: that sense of anger and alienation, that rage against a failing political system, have happened before we have got to a recession. I say “before” because I can read the numbers of Labour’s spending just like anyone else can. Let me put that more neutrally and say “without a recession”; we have been flatlining for a bit. It is not a response to bread lines and mass unemployment; it is simply a sense that things are not working. It is a very understandable sense. Taxes keep going up and public services are not improving. The state seems unable to discharge its most basic core functions, such as policing its borders.
What I think people do not understand until they have been close to politics, until they have seen the system in operation, is the extent to which this is not a failure of will on the part of the elected Ministers so much as a systemic failure, because the Minister newly arrived finds himself encased in an inert machine—a broken state machine. He is tugging at levers that have worked loose; he is pressing at buttons that are disconnected; he is giving instructions, and nothing seems to work.
Let us take as an example, because it was going on for a long time, the case of the Afghan hijackers who arrived at Stansted after diverting their flight at gunpoint in 2000. Six successive Home Secretaries, five Labour and one Conservative, including the noble Lords, Lord Reid and Lord Blunkett, tried to remove them. They had public opinion on their side, they had parliamentary support, and they were unable to do it. They were unable to do it because they were jabbing at that disconnected button. It is the same whether it is planning or energy policy. Ministers come in with all sorts of ideas, having sincerely made promises, and find that the machine does not let them deliver those promises.
Until we sort that problem out, the anger and disillusion of the public will increase to the point where, I fear, they may feel, in an irrational rage—like the man who takes a cudgel to his computer because it is malfunctioning—that they need to get something out of their system even though the net result will be worse.
We underestimate the extent to which this has happened in our lifetimes, specifically since 1997. There was a new juridical system created, both by international treaty and by national law, which has massively tilted the balance against the elected representative and in favour of the standing functionary. Any incoming Government who want to restore honour, purpose and meaning to the act of casting a ballot will need to begin by repealing a great many things, and not just the international treaties that prevent us delivering manifesto promises but a lot of the national legislation—the Equality Act, the Human Rights Act, the Climate Change Act and all the things that constrain Governments’ freedom to act—and a lot of the internal mechanisms of the Civil Service.
In a way, I find it shocking that we were not more shocked by what my noble friend Lady Coffey said about finding letters in her name on Twitter for the first time, because they were being written by officials on her behalf, without her knowledge. That we are so unshocked by that, that we take it so for granted, tells us a great deal about the feebleness of a Minister within this system.
The people who politically approve of all the things that were put in place are much more relaxed about the lack of democracy in the system than those who disapprove. I understand that; it is why the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is giving me a funny look. Of course, she does not like the idea of repealing the Human Rights Act and all the rest of it. I get that, but is that not an argument we ought to be having democratically, in allowing people to make a decision? Win the case on its merits; do not try to constrain future Governments through judicial activism and judicial review.
When we were talking the day before yesterday about not allowing people to come here unless they have been approved by HOLAC, I made the point that this was enshrining the system of getting an ideological committee—if you like—to vet who is a proper person to be in government. This is a symbol for what has been happening since 1997, which is that certain points of view are disallowed regardless of their popularity in the country at large. In responding, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said that “That is the difference between popular democracy, which is what Hannan wants, and liberal democracy”. I want to interrogate that distinction a little.
Of course, we do not have absolute majoritarianism. Nobody is in favour of a system where, with a majority of 50% plus one, you could expropriate people or incarcerate them without trial. There are some basic defences of human rights that this country has recognised since the Bill of Rights and before. But I do not see how liberal democracy in that sense—a bunch of good chaps in HOLAC determining who is fit to be here—is any different from saying that democracy by Liberal Democrats or people acceptable to Liberal Democrats, or a certain kind of perspective, whatever its popular reach, is just not proper in these Chambers.
That has a great deal to do with what looks like the looming collapse of the two-party system we have had for the better part of a century, a commensurate feeling that the entire system has failed, and the sense one detects now in focus groups: this rather scary thing of people saying that we may need some kind of autocratic government to sort it out, just to get things to work, to make things happen, to get the public services and to make sure our borders are secure. That is the smashing-up of the malfunctioning computer and, unless we anticipate it, unless we restore power to elected representatives nationally and locally, I fear that the cudgel will descend.
Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Supreme Court Judgment
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Caine (Con)
As I just pointed out in response to his noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, this is an issue we are seeking to resolve in the negotiations. I cannot really go into any detail at the Dispatch Box.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, the Acts of Union were our country’s foundational charter. If the United Kingdom had a national day analogous to the independence days of other countries, it would commemorate 1 January 1801, when the Acts of Union took effect. How can any British Government, least of all a Conservative and Unionist British Government, tolerate legislation that is now held in the courts to be at odds with that foundational document?
Lord Caine (Con)
I can assure my noble friend that, as a staunch unionist, I would have no issue whatever in commemorating or marking 1 January 1801 every year. I have already answered his question: issues around governance and the democratic deficit have to be resolved in our ongoing and intensive dialogue and negotiations with the EU.
Flags (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2022
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I had not planned to participate, but I give my full-throated support to what the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, suggested. Not only is the Somme important in the iconography and history of the 36th (Ulster) Division, but it is often forgotten that more southern Irish Catholics died in British uniform during the Somme offensive than participated in the Easter Rising. That fact was for a long time brushed under the carpet. One of the more welcome signs of the approximation of the Governments in these islands is that those volunteers—they were all volunteers in Ireland—were eventually brought in and recognised, albeit long after the event.
It is a grisly memorial and a rather awful thing that we remember—the whole history of the world cannot contain a more horrible word, as one German veteran said. Yet it is something we all have in common in these islands, including me. I have a great-uncle whose name is carved on the rather skeletal memorial at Thiepval. Here is a suggestion with cross-community support and broad support in this House and in another place. It is something that I hope my noble friend the Minister will consider taking forward.
Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to noble Lords who have participated in this short debate on the instrument before us. I shall respond to one or two of the points raised.
I am very grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, managed to abandon his toasted teacake and get here in time to participate. I hope he can return to it, or a warmed-up version, at some point later this afternoon. He mentioned that the issue of flags is very sensitive, as did the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. Of course, we all know why that is the case. I commend the initiative of the Labour Government back in 2000 in grappling with this issue, which was seen as rather too difficult for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly to resolve. As a consequence of their actions and those taken subsequently by this Government, we are in a much better place when it comes to the flying of flags from government buildings and there is a wide degree of consensus.
The noble Lord is right to remind the Committee of the difficulties that can arise, and I am well aware of what happened in Belfast from late 2012 well into 2013 with the decision on the flying of the union flag. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, asked whether we had worked with councils. We have, of course, but, as she is aware, flag flying from council buildings is not covered by the regulations but is a matter for district councils themselves. I will reflect on her suggestion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, referred to the possibility of making 1 July, the anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, a designated day, and I have a great deal of sympathy with what she said. My noble friend Lord Hannan was very supportive. I have visited the Somme battlefield probably 11 or 12 times in the course of the past 12 years. I was there for the centenary in 2016, at the Lutyens memorial to the missing and the Ulster tower, and later in September that year. As my noble friend reminded us—it should never be forgotten—the contribution of the 36th (Ulster) Division on 1 July was heroic, as was the contribution of the 16th (Irish) Division in September 1916 at Guillemont and Ginchy. For those who have never visited, it is always a very moving occasion.
My noble friend talked about the number of southern Irishmen who gave their lives. When I was there last July, I managed to locate the inscription of a former Member of the other place, Tom Kettle, the MP for East Tyrone, whose name is one of the 72,000 on the Lutyens memorial. I think something like four out of the nine Victoria Crosses awarded at the Somme went to members of the 36th (Ulster) Division, so I am aware of its importance and resonance across Northern Ireland and the wider island of Ireland. In response to that specific request, I am very happy to take it up with DCMS, which I know regularly consults on the designated days. My personal view is that it is a very worthwhile suggestion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, asked about executive formation and so on. Of course, I am not yet in a position to second-guess what steps the new Prime Minister might take from tomorrow, and we are in a slight state of flux over the next 24 hours, but I am confident that the new Prime Minister and whoever might be the Secretary of State, whether it continues to be the current holder or it is a new appointment, will remain very committed to working as a matter of urgency to deal with problems around the protocol but also the impasse preventing the re-establishment and reformation of a Northern Ireland Executive.
None of us wishes to be in this situation. We all want to see the institutions established by the Belfast/Good Friday agreement fully functioning and up and running. On these occasions I always look to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, who played such a key role in the negotiations, particularly on strand 1 of that agreement, back in 1998. It is my personal commitment and the Government’s that we wish to see devolved power-sharing government and the institutions that flow from that. We should never forget that strands 2 and 3 of the agreement do not function properly without strand 1. To get all the strands of that interlocking agreement back up and running will remain an absolute priority for Her Majesty’s Government.
The noble Baroness talked about parity of esteem in flag flying. These regulations deal only with the flying of flags from government buildings and, as I said in my opening remarks, they reflect the clear constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. The agreement contains provisions on parity of esteem, but it is always sensible to remember that it never created a hybrid state; Northern Ireland is either part of the United Kingdom or part of a united Ireland, and I am very happy to say that it continues to be part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There is always the need for sensitivity when it comes to such issues, and I hope that I reflected that in my opening comments.
This is a technical change that reflects the updated list published earlier this year by DCMS after consultation with the palace. It keeps Northern Ireland fully aligned with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Flags (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his clear outline of the purpose of the legislation and his explanation of the provisions in it. It deals with some necessary amendments demanded to meet life’s realities. I once again pay tribute to His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who not only gave sterling service to the nation but had a particularly important role in promoting relationships within Northern Ireland, especially through participation in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.
These amendments remove Prince Philip’s birthday and Her Majesty the Queen’s wedding day from the list of designated days to fly the union flag. I regret this is necessary, but I accept its reality. It is also vital that we prepare for the death of our monarch, and in my heart I say, as I have often sung, “Long may she reign”. We are so privileged to have as our monarch the most remarkable woman in the world, whose integrity and strength of character have shone brightly in even the most difficult of circumstances. Her example is one that we all should seek to emulate.
I will make a few other remarks in the light of what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I want to make it clear that there are not two flags for Northern Ireland; there is one—the flag of the United Kingdom. I respect the flag of the Irish Republic for what it is: the flag of the Irish Republic. I live in an area in which every day I face travelling down the road with a flag of a foreign country being flaunted in my face. That is in a neighbourhood where many people were murdered by the IRA. I believe, from the remarks that have already been made, that all noble Lords acknowledge that flags and emblems are a sensitive issue in Northern Ireland. In reality, flags are important to the lives of the people of Northern Ireland, especially bearing in mind that many innocent people’s lives were taken to preserve our position within the United Kingdom. They were murdered because they believed in that reality.
However, before noble Lords today is a provision of reality. I therefore accept it. I regret only the limit to the designated days, because I would be delighted if our flag was flown across this United Kingdom every day and was looked on not as something divisive, but in acknowledgement of the great blessings and benefits it has brought to the people of all Northern Ireland.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, is not what the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, just said the civic ideal? Both flags could fly and it would not be an issue. I often think we are too prescriptive and ready to ban things. Surely the ideal of civil liberalism is not a world in which things are banned, but a world in which things are allowed and are not a problem. I used to think the same when we were having rows about the Orange walks and parades. The liberal ideal is not one in which they do not happen, but one in which they happen and no one is bothered by them. In the same way, would it not be a wonderful world if, for example when we were having the row about the flag over Belfast City Hall, one side said, “Do you know what? We didn’t know it meant that much to you. Go ahead”, and the other side said, “We didn’t want to upset you. Do you know what? We’ll be moderate and judicious”?
Of course, we are some way from that, but these regulations, bringing Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the country so that we have the same fundamental rules in the four home nations, are a step towards that civic ideal where we can all stand before flags—let me end, in a unifying spirit, with a quote from WB Yeats—
“Nor dazzled by the embroidery, nor lost
In … its night-dark folds”.
Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere ExcerptsWednesday 19th January 2022
(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 1 is in my name. I also support Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Empey. Amendment 1 would provide that the
“First Minister and deputy First Minister be referred to as Joint First Ministers reflecting their identical status, powers and responsibilities.”
At Second Reading, I indicated that the Good Friday agreement provided a level of hope and expectancy back in May 1998, and that we in Northern Ireland want
“to use the architecture of the Good Friday agreement to work together in partnership, reconciliation, parity of esteem and respect for difference. Those are the kernels we urgently need to build the political stability and resilience of government.”—[Official Report, 29/11/21; col. 1234.]
We need to revert to that position through the title of Joint First Minister for the good delivery of policies, for proper identification, for equality, for reconciliation and, in terms of that good delivery of policies and operational matters, for the people of Northern Ireland. Why do I say that? To recreate that hope and sense of fairness and equality that we all felt back in 1998.
Central to the Good Friday agreement were consensus and the principle of consent. As I said, the agreement contained the infrastructure and architecture that provided the framework for people to work together with respect, mutual understanding, trust and confidence in each other. Those basic principles were also discussed at St Andrews but there was a change of emphasis in terms of the appointment of the First and deputy First Ministers, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, will refer to when he introduces his amendment.
Now, we need to build on this Bill and return to that vision of 1998, which created the infrastructure and architecture to manage differences and realise a better shared future based on partnership and working together in Northern Ireland. It is important that we revert to the spirit of the 1998 agreement. I believe that this amendment in my name, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, has added her name, would ensure that the Joint First Ministers are classified as such to demonstrate that they have identical status, powers and responsibilities. I firmly believe that this would confer on the people of Northern Ireland the sense of responsibility that the Northern Ireland Executive have, and it would help them to see people physically and ethically working together because, to all intents and purposes, both posts are equal. This also needs to be reflected in the way they are elected, hence my support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Empey.
Both amendments would provide a solution to the Government in that they would de-sectarianise the Assembly election coming up on 5 May; diminish the focus of the election on, “Make me First Minister and do not let that other party and them ones get in”; and ensure that the election concentrates on health, post-pandemic recovery, jobs, education, the economy and improving the lives of people, which is what politics should be about and which we discuss in this House and the other place on a day-to-day basis.
I note that the Minister indicated in Committee that he was sympathetic to the intent and import of this amendment but felt that, at this stage, the Bill was not the “right vehicle” as it is about the legislative commitments in New Decade, New Approach. In the past week, we have seen other commitments that were definitely outwith that agreement that were going to be made but, as I understand it, will now not be made. What is the position of the Government now? Are they and the Minister acting on their behalf prepared to accept this amendment, which would help to stabilise the institutions, diminish the volatile situation and further prevent the instability that currently exists or could exist in a post-election sphere?
If the Government cannot accept this amendment today, can the Minister give other types of assurances to your Lordships’ House about how it can be, shall we say, discussed or legislated for in terms of negotiations in the future?
I have a word of warning. My belief and understanding is that things may not be all that settled in the post-election sphere and that, therefore, it may be better to do things at this juncture to bring about that necessary political stability. In that vein, I beg to move.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, just moved, and I say that as somebody who was not a fan of the Belfast agreement when it was signed. I opposed it, I hasten to add, not on orange or green grounds but on democratic grounds—being Ulster Catholic on one side and Scots Presbyterian on the other, I always felt I had a bit of a personal stake in power-sharing. However, I did not like the way that there was no proper opposition, the way it enshrined all the parties being in office, and the implication that things would become a scramble to reward supporters of those parties with public sector positions. I lost that argument—Northern Ireland went in a different direction and there is now a consensus behind it.
However, having gone down that road, it seems, as the noble Baroness says, that this is closing a loophole. We have decided to create these two positions as effectively coequal. The only difference between them is one of nomenclature, and if that is causing a sense of inequality or, if you like, forced competition in elections, as the noble Baroness said, it seems a quite small alteration that this amendment would address. Of course, I understand that the Bill is primarily about something else but I reiterate her call and hope that my noble friend the Minister will keep it under consideration.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I too speak in support of Amendment 1 in the name of my noble friend Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. In doing so, I will say a word or two about the fairly dangerous context that Northern Ireland politics is now in.
There is no greater or more enthusiastic supporter of devolution than I but where processes put in place for the best of motives are abused, there is an obligation on us all to rectify that. Regrettably, there have been examples in the recent past where the implementation of legislation passed at Westminster—because, for whatever reason, it could not be passed at Stormont—has been thwarted by either the DUP or Sinn Féin.
That was the case for payments for those severely injured through no fault of their own during the Troubles, which were disgracefully blocked by Sinn Féin despite being in statute as a legal obligation—as a result of an initiative taken in your Lordships’ House—until it was humiliatingly ordered to obey the law by High Court judges. It is perfectly legitimate for the DUP to oppose the protocol but it is not legitimate unilaterally to seek to block it. How can one party alone in a devolved Administration seek to block an international treaty agreed between the Government of the United Kingdom whom they support and the European Commission?
Amendment 1 seeks to improve the Bill and thus strengthen the institutions supporting devolution in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Bill will have the support of noble Lords across the House, and I particularly welcome the recent commitment in the letter from the Minister to early commencement, as well as his Amendments 8, 9 and 10, which I support but which I will not speak to now.
However, I am concerned that, while we are discussing how best the institutions underpinning devolution can be made to function more effectively, there is a threat from the DUP to bring down those very institutions. Threats, veiled or otherwise, to collapse the Good Friday agreement institutions, whether over the outworking of the hard Brexit policy the Government disastrously pursued—supported by the DUP—despite repeated warnings about the inevitable outcome for Northern Ireland, or because the democratic process may produce a result that some parties may dislike, do not serve the people of Northern Ireland and their democratic self-government at all well.
The Government have a responsibility to do all they can to ensure that the long-term stability of Northern Ireland is not jeopardised in the way I fear is currently the case. The whole House acknowledges the Northern Ireland expertise and long experience of the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, who is not to blame for successive Secretaries of State since 2010—Julian Smith honourably excepted—failing to play the genuinely honest broker role essential for sustaining and deepening the Good Friday peace and democratic process which this amendment is designed to support.
At Second Reading, I intervened on the Government’s proposals to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past and I do so briefly again today, because I fear that this too is heading in the wrong direction and could pull down the institutions if we are not careful. We have yet to see anything of substance on the legacy legislation since the publication of the Command Paper back in July 2021, but what we do know is deeply disturbing.
Surely, the Government know that a proposal that creates an equivalence between military personnel and the people who murdered them is unacceptable? Surely, they also know that a partial amnesty covering only veterans is incompatible with both our international legal obligations and the imperatives of the Good Friday process? Surely, the Government also know that telling victims that those on all sides of the conflict who murdered their loved ones and carried out unspeakable atrocities will be able to sleep easy in their beds, while they have to live with the pain, grief and trauma of what those people did to them, is also completely unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will listen because I know he is sensitive to these matters.
This is a circle the Government should not be even trying to square. They must abandon their current amnesty plan and listen to those who are offering a truth-seeking alternative based on Operation Kenova, headed by former Chief Constable Jon Boutcher, which has been praised by victims and which, by the way, rightly includes the possibility of prosecutions if evidence unearthed leads that way, as has been the case under Kenova.
It is a notable political feat to manage to produce a legacy policy that every political party in Northern Ireland, along with every victims’ and survivors’ group, is opposed to. In the foreword to the Command Paper the Secretary of State promised a time-limited period of intensive engagement on the proposals contained in it. He has been promising “intensive engagement” on legacy since March 2020, when he unilaterally dumped the cross-party Stormont House agreement. His understanding of intensive engagement is not even close to that which those of us on both sides of the House who have worked to see progress in Northern Ireland over many years would expect—including, I suspect, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, although I would not expect him to publicly acknowledge it.
I realise that this speech has strayed a little from the amendment in question, but I think it essential to put this on record to try to encourage rethinking by the Government, in order to enable the Minister’s objectives to progress with this Bill and ensure stability where there is danger of instability.
Where there has been engagement it has been between special advisers and “sources” in government-supporting newspapers, which received far more detailed briefings than those who will be directly affected by these ill-conceived legacy proposals. The most recent engagement of that kind, in the Daily Telegraph before Christmas, revealed that even the Secretary of State for Defence found what was being proposed unacceptable. The reality is that there has been no meaningful engagement.
When the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, winds up this debate perhaps he will be able to tell the House precisely how many engagements with the WAVE Trauma Centre and/or other victims’ and survivors’ support groups in Northern Ireland were initiated by the Secretary of State from the publication of the Command Paper in July last year to today’s date. Is the answer none, as I suspect may be the case? I understand that he may not have the detail to hand, in which case I would be grateful if he would write to me with the information as soon as he has it.
Meanwhile, in concluding, I place on record my profound disquiet, along with other former Labour Secretaries of State—including my much-respected noble friend Lord Murphy, to whom I spoke only the other day and who cannot attend these proceedings, as he would have liked to do—about the dangerous drift of government policy on Northern Ireland, which has managed the singular feat of alienating each and every one of the local political parties, the Irish Government, the United States President and the European Union: all partners, some statutory, to the hard-won Good Friday agreement. I urge the Secretary of State to change course before it is too late. Meanwhile, I strongly support this amendment.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, in response to the very measured intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Bew, I have two points. The first is that the Bill is about implementing some of the remaining elements of New Decade, New Approach, so we do not believe that it is the right place to make the changes set out in the amendments by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. Secondly, as the noble Lord said so powerfully, given that discussions are ongoing between the Government and the European Commission, the amendments would be deeply unhelpful to making progress at this time. For those two reasons, we strongly oppose the amendments.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I have not heard anyone really deny the central point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I have heard some brilliant and enlightening speeches but even that gorgeous threnody of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, for past agreements, his great melody against it, did not defy the central point that cross-community consent was supposed to be the basis for every major decision. The pact that we made with the communities of Northern Ireland was that important constitutional issues of this kind would not be decided by simple majoritarianism but would require the consent of both communities. As the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, says, that was the basis on which the whole previous dispensation was overturned, so we cannot in conscience arbitrarily withhold that principle on this one issue. I will therefore support the noble Baroness’s amendment.