Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 7

Debate between Simon Hoare and Jeffrey M Donaldson

Monday 30th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

May I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the tone he adopted in his opening remarks? Like him, I will divide my remarks into two parts. First, I will make a few casual, general observations. I have seen the video clip that the Northern Ireland Office has put on Twitter today, marking nearly 1,000 days since there was last an Executive at Stormont. Clearly, that is a running sore and it just goes on. Although I usually travel in an optimistic frame of mind, Brexit is clearly the elephant in the Chamber and in Northern Ireland. It is hard, if not impossible, to see how Stormont could get up and running prior to 31 October, but I wish the Secretary of State and all parties well.

I say to Opposition Members and, indeed, to all political parties in Northern Ireland that from talking and listening to people and from reading what they say, my hunch is that we seem to have got incredibly hung up on process, whereas real people in the real world who are concerned about the delivery of vital local public services just want to see them delivered. Whether the issue is Brexit or the restoration of Stormont, the public have a limited reservoir of patience. When it is drained, that will be it—there will be no more reservoir on which to draw. That patience is running thin and people are not necessarily interested in the blame game politics of “He said, I said, they said, we would, they might, we didn’t”. The message is clear, just as it is on other things in this topsy-turvy political age: “Either make progress or get out of the way and let those who are interested in making progress have a go.” I think we are close to that point.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs for giving way. He makes a valid point. The question is: who do we give way to? As currently constituted, the institutions cannot have a power-sharing Government without their being cross-community and representing a majority of both nationalists and Unionists. That implies that direct rule is the only other option. May I connect Brexit with the absence of Stormont and suggest to the hon. Gentleman that if we leave the European Union on 31 October, so many decisions will need to be made as a consequence that we will have no alternative but to reintroduce direct rule?

[Simon Hoare]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for those observations. I made that point in a radio interview in Northern Ireland last week. He may have heard me take my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to task last week. As we get closer to 31 October, the civil servants in Northern Ireland are clearly doing their best. They are straining every sinew to try to keep the show on the road, but they can only do so, as the right hon. Gentleman well knows, within the confines of public and local policies that enjoy the imprimatur of previous Executives. I thought that the welter of pressing needs told against the early Prorogation. There was plenty that this House could have been getting on with, at least to provide some form of legislative safety net were Stormont not to be up and running by 31 October. There is no point in those on the Treasury Bench waking up on 29 October and saying, “Oh gosh—the 31st looks a bit close. What on earth are we going to do?”

Let us be frank: there could well be, with or without a deal post 31 October, issues that will need to be mitigated. If issues will need to be mitigated on the mainland, by golly they will also need to be mitigated in Northern Ireland, enjoying as it does—although “enjoying” is a pejorative term, I am sure—what will be the only land border with the European Union. We will need to be incredibly fleet of foot. I am not sure whether civil servants in Northern Ireland are currently sufficient in number to be able to deal with the scale of the issue, but they, coupled with local government, will need every tool at their disposal to ensure that normal life can continue for the taxpayers and residents of Northern Ireland. It is not for the lack of chivvying by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but there seems to be an incredible disconnect between the strategy of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office vis-à-vis Brexit GB and their strategy vis-à-vis Brexit Northern Ireland, which cannot be allowed to stand. Greater urgency is required.

I turn briefly to the subject of the motion and the report tabled by the Secretary State: historical institutional abuse. I concur with and underscore entirely the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), a fellow member of the Committee, and of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds). Had this scale and range of abuse, over such a period of time, happened in North Dorset or anywhere else in England, it would have been rectified and sorted out by now.

I share the concerns expressed specifically, although not exclusively, by the hon. Member for North Down. Opaque language may have been the order of the day in the Secretary of State’s recent job as Government Chief Whip, but a Bill dealing with this issue, this running sore, must be announced in the Queen’s Speech and enacted before Christmas—not introduced before the end of the year but done and dealt with by the end of the year, subject to Stormont not being back up and running.

I make this wager with my right hon Friend, and luckily it is for somebody else to take cognisance of this point: unless a Bill is announced in the Queen’s Speech, my hunch is that some of us would find great difficulty in voting for the Gracious Speech when the vote is called. We do not want to add to the catalogue of Government defeats—well, not all of us do—and I am heartened by what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) said. This is not a contentious piece of legislation.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) is right that the devil will be in the detail, and that getting the process and the rubric correct and beyond challenge is important, but people should listen, as the Committee has, to Mr Jon McCourt or Margaret McGuckin talk about these issues and the people they represent. I know my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has certainly met Margaret, and I believe she calls him Mr Darcy—I do not know whether that elates him or not, but it is the only light moment in this sad and sorry episode.

In great part, it was organs of the state that put these young children in those institutions where they were abused. Some had mothers who, for a whole variety of reasons—many of which we have heard and which do not need going over again today—put their children and young babies in what they thought was a place of safety that would provide a gateway to a better life. If they had known what we now know, they would not have taken that route.

Officialdom did not know but, beyond the tight kernel of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are Ministers in the Department, I am not certain whether that historical social and special responsibility has been taken into account. I hope that the business managers and others have heard the very strong sense of feeling and the drive for justice. Many of these people are elderly, and many of them are vulnerable. They feel as though they are being slightly brushed under the carpet and ignored, like an eccentric great aunt at a wedding: there but not really engaged, and hoping they will go home before the reception finishes.

These victims of abuse are going nowhere until justice is delivered in full, and neither are their champions in this place, because to do anything other would be a failure in our duty.