St Patrick’s Day: Irish Diaspora in the UK

Debate between Andrew Rosindell and Karen Bradley

Thursday 14th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I think that this is probably the first time that I have served under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain; it is an absolute honour to do so. I pay tribute to my co-sponsor, the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for her excellent opening speech and for setting out so eloquently the contribution of the Irish community in her community and in the wider United Kingdom. She is such an advocate for the Irish community in the UK.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate on 14 March, the closest we could get to St Patrick’s day. When we applied to the Backbench Business Committee, we said that we were keen to have the debate as close to St Patrick’s day as possible. That has meant that we could not be in the Chamber, for obvious reasons—it is estimates day—but we have a full three-hour debate, and we have the chance to talk, as close to St Patrick’s day as possible, about our views and our love for the Irish diaspora and all things Irish in our communities.

I confess that I fail the family test, because I am a Mancunian Howarth. The Howarths do not seem to have a great deal of Irish heritage in us; we tend to just be from Manchester. I can pick out lots of bits of Manchester that I have heritage from, but I cannot pick out anywhere in Ireland. I can claim a marriage link, however, because the Bradleys, who I married into, were originally the Bradleys of County Tyrone. I am proud that my children have that Irish link, even though I do not, and that they can proudly say they have Irish heritage. Irish heritage matters: people value being able to identify with Ireland and the Irish community. My mother told me that when she was growing up in Manchester, the Irish community played an important role in Gorton, where she lived. Her father worked in construction, and he knew many Irish colleagues.

The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles mentioned the football clubs. I confess that I support the team that has had fewer Irish players in its history, City, but United has always had a significant number of Irish players and a very big Irish support contingent. Getting a plane from Dublin or Belfast to Manchester on the day of a United match is nigh-on impossible.

My links to Ireland were really cemented when I was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—SoSNI, as they say in the Northern Ireland Office. I will not pretend that it was not a shock. The late, great James Brokenshire had been doing the role, and he had done a really excellent job. I do not think it is possible to find anyone who would ever say that James Brokenshire ever did anything that was not utterly brilliant, and he was brilliant at that job, but he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, and for his health and his family’s sake he needed to step away from the role.

At that point, I was Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. I walked into the Department in the morning planning what we were going to do for the rest of the year. It was the first day back—it was actually James’s 50th birthday, so I had been wishing him a happy birthday, and then the news came through that he was resigning and we did not know why. It suddenly dawned on me that someone was going to have to go to Northern Ireland. It never occurred to me that I would be given that role, but the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), invited me into the Cabinet room and—because I had been a Whip and, more importantly, had served with her in the Home Office and understood the sensitivities around the security issues—asked me if I would take on the role. It was a shock to the system, but I have to say that it was the greatest honour.

Serving in the Northern Ireland Office, as the Minister knows, is truly one of the greatest honours that one can have in this place, because of the warmth of welcome and the depth of hope and expectation that are put on the politician. There are very few roles that have that as much as Secretary of State or Minister of State for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a place where politics genuinely changed lives. There are very few places where politics and politicians managed to do something as incredible as the Belfast/Good Friday agreement 26 years ago, which got the weapons laid down and ended the violence.

We all agree that there are still many problems, and some people who have never accepted the peaceful solution to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, but the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, Ireland and the United Kingdom accepted that that political settlement and the compromises involved in it were worth making because of the change that could happen. The two architects—the late Lord Trimble and John Hume—should be admired for their ability to put aside sectarian differences, come together and show true leadership to solve what had seemed an intractable problem. I wish there were more leaders like them around the world who could do the same thing and make that difference.

The other person I want to mention from my time in the Northern Ireland Office is Tony Lloyd, my shadow. He was a wonderful person to have shadowing me. We would occasionally have ding-dongs across the Dispatch Box; that is what politics is about, but I can assure everybody that when we got behind closed doors we got on like a house on fire. We supported different football teams—again, that Manchester difference—but we always had great conversations. If we were in Belfast at the same time and we could make it work, we would make a point of getting together with the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth)—I will call her my hon. Friend —who was part of his team too.

We had great conversations. We wanted the same thing: we wanted the restoration of devolved government, and we wanted to work together to achieve it. We had different ways in, and different people we could influence, but we were all trying to get to the same thing. I am so relieved that we currently have devolved government in Northern Ireland, because it is vital for the people of Northern Ireland that they are properly represented by the people they elect to do so.

My constituency does not have a large Irish diaspora, but it has two great Irish employers. Advanced Proteins owns a plant that does animal rendering—it is not a terribly attractive thing to do, but it does it very well. The Irish dairy company Ornua, which brings Irish cheese and butter across the Irish sea to Leek in Staffordshire, also has a plant; Kerrygold is packaged in Leek, and all the cheese from Ireland is processed, grated, put into blocks and sold to consumers across Great Britain. I have a great need for the Irish to be successful, because they employ so many of my constituents. It is incredibly important that Ornua and Advanced Proteins know that we welcome them in the United Kingdom and we want them to continue to invest.

I have the great honour of being co-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, following on from my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who did a fantastic job for so many years—he has been missed at our meetings. For those who do not know, the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly began with the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Back in the early 1990s, there was a recognition that we had inter-parliamentary groups and there were conversations at Government level, but conversations at parliamentarian level are incredibly important in allowing people to recognise that we all face the same problems and all want the same solutions.

Before what was the British-Irish parliamentary group, there may have been a lack of trust and understanding and a lack of ability to empathise with parliamentarians on the other side of the Irish sea. The two Inter-Parliamentary Union groups—the British one, which I am honoured to chair in our Parliament, and the one from the Oireachtas—were therefore asked if they could form a grouping of parliamentarians to find a way to open up that dialogue. That was six years before the Belfast/Good Friday agreement; it was a very important part of the dialogue that created an atmosphere in which the agreement could happen.

I pay tribute to the late Lord Temple-Morris, who was one of the people who led the initiative from Westminster, and to Dick Spring from the Oireachtas. We were honoured that at a recent assembly Dick was able to address our dinner: it was lovely to hear from somebody who had not only been an architect of the agreement, but been there beforehand laying the groundwork for it.

I also pay tribute to the wonderful Amanda Healy, who has been the administrator of BIPA for 30 years. Without Amanda, the whole thing would collapse. She is utterly amazing. It would be wrong of me to say anything other than that she is absolutely fantastic—thank you, Amanda. I also thank the brilliant clerk, Martyn Atkins, who makes sure that I know what I am saying as co-chair, keeps me on track and ensures that I entirely deliver the message that needs to be delivered.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her kind remarks. I was proud to be the co-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly from 2016 to 2022. I commend her work, and the work of BIPA over so many years in promoting relations between not just Britain and Ireland, but the devolved legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. Sunday is an important day for me because it is my birthday on St Patrick’s Day. My great- grandparents were Dempseys and O’Learys.

If my right. hon Friend will indulge me for a moment, I would like to pay tribute to the schools and churches in my constituency—St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church and St Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Hornchurch, St Peter’s Catholic School and St Edward’s Roman Catholic Church in Romford, St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School in Collier Row and Corpus Christi. I also pay tribute to the Iona club, which is somewhere people of Irish ancestry can go to socialise and meet people in the local community. I am proud of my Irish links and the Irish connections within Romford. I look forward to continuing to work with my right hon. Friend and all Members of the House to ensure that we promote strong British-Irish relations going forward.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to pay tribute to all the schools and churches that help to promote the Irish identity in his constituency. I also thank him for his work on BIPA, which he was so devoted and dedicated to for so many years.

When the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body was in place, it was just the Oireachtas and Westminster, and then the ’98 agreement happened. The agreement itself envisaged a body to shadow the new British-Irish Council, perhaps along the lines of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body. The body took the hint, and by 2005 it had become the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly and, as my hon. Friend said, was not just the Oireachtas and Westminster. It was expanded to include all the legislatures in the British Isles—all the devolved Parliaments and the Parliaments in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man—exactly mirroring the British-Irish Council. I must say to the Minister that we would be delighted if BIPA could have more of a role in scrutinising the British-Irish Council, because we feel that we would be the perfect body, able to discuss what the BIC is debating and bring a parliamentary aspect to that work.

One thing that BIPA has been able to do, unlike any other body, is give a voice to the Members of the Legislative Assembly who have been members during the times we have not had a Government in Stormont. Because of the way it is constituted and the history, members of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly remain members even if their Parliament is not sitting. That has meant that MLAs have had a voice on BIPA throughout all the periods when the Stormont Assembly has been suspended. I pay tribute to Steve Aiken, who serves on the steering committee. He is now the Deputy Speaker in Stormont, but he has been able to attend every one of our assemblies and steering committees, despite the fact that Stormont was not sitting. He and other MLAs have been able to bring the voice of Northern Ireland to the debate, which is incredibly important.

I want to quickly touch on a plenary that we held in March 2023 to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 agreement. It was just before St Patrick’s day because, as everybody knows, if any event is going to happen around St Patrick’s day, we can forget anybody from Ireland being there because they will all be enjoying the celebrations in Washington, Dublin, London, Chicago, Boston or all the other places that put on the most magnificent St Patrick’s day events. We had a wonderful meeting, and with the kind permission of the then Speaker, Alex Maskey, we were able to use the Stormont Assembly Chamber. It was very special because it was using a building that had not been used for many months at that point.

We were grateful to be addressed by Bertie Ahern, who was the Taoiseach at the time of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, Sir John Holmes, who had been principal private secretary to John Major and Tony Blair, and Kate Fearon, Bronagh Hinds, Dr Avila Kilmurray and Jane Morrice, who were all members of the Women’s Coalition. That was an incredible session, because the voice of the women who had been instrumental in bringing about the agreement was so powerful and resonated with everyone who was there. Finally, Jonny Byrne from Ulster University reflected on the achievements of policing under the agreement, and the work still left to do.

In BIPA we discuss policy issues. We discuss those areas that are relevant to all of us, such as housing, tourism, sovereign matters, defence and energy provision. Reports are issued by our committees on a regular basis, which are in-depth and technical policy discussions. They are well worth reading because they touch on many aspects of our shared policy concerns, and make suggestions and recommendations for how things can be different.

I commend the work of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. It is a fantastic body. I have been honoured to co-chair it for the last 18 months or so. I am looking forward to our next plenary in Wicklow, which is coming up in a few weeks’ time, just after Easter. I finish by wishing everybody a happy St Patrick’s day. It is always a great opportunity to enjoy oneself; the Irish give us a real chance to have such fun with our friends.