Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Claire Hanna Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is right, of course, that we are not having an election. The Secretary of State is correct to more comprehensively push that back, because it would be pointless to miss a series of little deadlines. Ultimately, an election without either a change in the context or a change in the rules would not put power in the hands of the people and would therefore be pointless.

This is a delicate time, a sensitive time, in relation to the negotiations. Hopefully, it is also a time of possibility—a possibility that we can find a deal and an outcome with which most reasonable people can live. We have all said many words in this Chamber and outside of it about the parameters of that, so I will not dwell on it this afternoon.

Clearly, the hope and the goal is to get back into Stormont as soon as possible to get on with the things that people desperately need us to progress on—in care, climate, housing and jobs. Without doubt, health is the most acute and burning issue, in terms of the need that is out there and the corrosive impact of stop-start government and what that has done to our health service over the past number of years. This has not been an overnight problem and there will not be an overnight solution. In the absence of an Assembly, we do not have health transformation; we are having ad hoc bits and pieces of collapse, which are not cost effective and not what clinicians would wish them to be, and they are not building confidence in communities about what is ahead for public health provision.

We can look at any number of examples of services in different geographical areas, but no more so than in the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen, where services are falling over and having to be closed without any sense of the compensatory provision that people would wish to see. People are seeing loss of services without any gain and without the improvements in health provision and outcomes that are possible if we do this properly with a locally accountable Minister and an engaged Health Committee.

I do not want to labour this point, but it is very clear that the stalemate is eroding public services. It is eroding belief in politics and it is giving comfort to some of the anti-democratic forces still skulking in the background who have not really come to terms with the agreement and with the will of most people in our society to move forward and to get on with solving our problems and creating our shared future.

This Bill, like a few that we have seen recently, is a bit of a sticking plaster on failure, but some real good is coming out of it today—thank goodness—in the progress of Dáithí’s law. I want to speak to Dáithí:

“Tá tú i do chodladh anois. Maith thú. Cinnte, tá sibh tuirseach i ndiaidh an taisteal. Duit féin, do do mhamaí, do dhaidí agus, anois, do dheirfiúr bheag, ba chomhair daoibh a bheith an-bróidiúil as an bhfeachtas a throid sibh, as an misneach a léirigh sibh, agus as an mbua mór a bhain sibh amach le chéile. Agus a Dhaithí, ár laoch, iarraim ar Dhia go mbeidh dea-scéal agus croí nua agat go luath.”

To Dáithí, to your family, to your mum and dad, and now to your wee brother: You should be so proud of all that you have achieved together—the huge progress that you have made. You have been a hero to so many people and we all just hope that you get good news and a new heart soon, and we are all with you.

It is important that we say well done to that lovely family for all that they have achieved, and to so many people who have progressed the issue over the years. I pay tribute to Jo-Anne Dobson, an Ulster Unionist MLA, who advanced the issue substantially in a previous Assembly, bringing the issue to public attention and making it a political reality. She loosened the lid.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady rightly refers to Jo-Anne Dobson, who has been through this situation—she had a young son, Mark, who had a transplant, without which he would not be here today. The hon. Lady looks to history, and the history is right, and she has expressed it in a very kind fashion.

[Claire Hanna]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to others, including Fearghal McKinney, who is here from the British Heart Foundation and has worked on this issue for many years and with his colleagues has helped to get all the ducks in a row to allow the family to have the reach they need and the regulations in place. I also pay tribute to Joe Brolly and Shane Finnegan from my own parish of St Brigid’s. Joe Brolly’s act of decency and humanity a few years ago in giving his kidney to a relative stranger opened many people’s eyes; it stopped us in our tracks and underlined how meaningful and how important for life organ donation is.

I hope all those people, particularly Dáithí and his family, who brought the issue to this point, take some pride in and encouragement from their achievement, and I hope it will encourage and remind all of us in elected life that we can do good things when we work together. There are many things we need to do, and hopefully these couple of weeks can see progress and allow us collectively to get on with making many other necessary and positive changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson]

There are lots of different examples of that happening.

[Claire Hanna]

Would the right hon. Gentleman mind saying what he thinks the specific impact will be on the dairy industry, and the many producers that sell about a third of their milk to the Republic of Ireland? What would be the environmental impact of having to dispose of a third of the milk produced in Northern Ireland? Where would that be sold if we did not have our privileged access to the single market?

[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Member should think about the issue the other way around. What would be the impact on the food industry in the Irish Republic if the EU and the Irish were so bold and so stupid as to cut off a third of the milk that they need to make cheese, butter and everything else in the factories there? There are always ways of working around these issues. There is an idea that, somehow or other, if we do not conform to EU law, we cannot trade with the EU. America does not conform to EU law; it does not have EU laws imposed on it. China does not have EU laws imposed on it, but it can trade freely, and its trade with the EU is worth billions. Of course there are ways of addressing the issue.