King’s Speech

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I too congratulate our new Ministers. I suspect they will not have a bed of roses, but nevertheless I wish them well. I know they will make an honest attempt to do what is right, should the stars fall.

In my opinion, the British justice system, once viewed as the finest in the world and the envy of many nations, has been brought into disrepute by the political contortions of consecutive Governments, particularly in Northern Ireland, since the early 1990s. Indeed, on one occasion in this very House I heard a noble Member call for inquests into the fatal shooting in June 1991 of three terrorists in the small rural village of Coagh, which is in my home county of Tyrone. These terrorists were intercepted by the army while they were engaged in a murderous attack in 1989 on unarmed men, two of whom were pensioners having a conversation in a garage, but there was no call for a public inquiry into their deaths. I thought that quite ironic, and I suspect that many in this House think that too.

It seems that justice, in Northern Ireland in particular, is now defined as justice for the perpetrator. Victims are relegated to the second division or treated like second-class citizens. It is time that the Government promote true justice for victims and not demean our justice system by seeking new ways to distort the justice system; I am speaking about the whole of the United Kingdom. It is a system that seems to placate the enemies and those who carry out these dreadful deeds. I hope that the new Government will bear this in mind—I am hopeful that they will—when they consider new legislation in repealing the legacy Act. We have had enough amnesties in Northern Ireland to do us for three lifetimes.

Unless the law is changed between now and November, this is the last King’s Speech before a profound and disturbing home affairs development which the new Government inherit from their predecessors. In March 1972, the Westminster Parliament intervened to collapse Stormont. I can just about remember it. The Stormont Parliament was dismissed at the fell stroke of a pen. Since that point, there has been an absolute principle of Stormont that, on matters of controversy where a proposition is regarded by either community as constituting an existential threat, no decisions can be made at Stormont on a majoritarian basis. We do not do majority government at Stormont.

However, this important protection of devolved government was not convenient to the European Union and so it is to be swept away. At some point between 1 November and the end of December this year, Northern Ireland is to be propelled back over 50 years, and the first majoritarian decision at Stormont is to take place since 1971-72. I was informed just today that the actual date has been set.

To really understand the enormity of what is proposed, we must understand two things. First, we are looking not only at the first majoritarian vote in 50 years on a matter of controversy but at the most controversial vote to ever come before Stormont in its 103-year history. The effect of supporting the Motion that the Government are currently required by law to send to Stormont in November will be for MLAs to effectively renounce their rights and the rights of their constituents to be represented in the legislature making the laws to which they are to be subject in some 300 areas. I am not talking about 300 laws; I am talking about 300 areas —and they will extend, I think, to well over 1,000 laws, when calculated.

If this is not enough, those laws will be made by a legislature that, while not involving any part of the United Kingdom, involves the Republic of Ireland. The most immediate effect of the legislation is the creation of an all-Ireland economic nationality. Simply put, that means the joining up of two economies—a de facto united Ireland by another name.