European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Claire Hanna Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion & Ways and Means resolution
Friday 20th December 2019 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I anticipated having a wee bit more time to craft my maiden speech and to reflect our outlook. But, put simply, Brexit is an emergency and I was elected to do all I can to mitigate the impact of Brexit for the people I represent. Also, as a Northern Irish politician and a mum of three, the opportunity to speak for five minutes uninterrupted was too exciting.

I am aided in making this speech by some of the convention around Members’ first opportunity to address the House. I send my very best wishes to my predecessor, Emma Little Pengelly. It is fair to say that we operate at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but I know that she operated with hard work and diligence during her time in this House.

It is my great pleasure to be able to speak about my home, South Belfast, which is in many respects an exemplar for what Northern Ireland—and, indeed, any community—can be. It is diverse, well integrated and forward looking, and is doing reasonably well economically. It is a place where difference is genuinely respected. We do not all have the same views or the same vision for the future in South Belfast, but we do work the common ground. I am deeply grateful to all those in South Belfast who in enormous numbers elected me to serve them last week. I will do my best to do that every day, as well as to encourage all that is good in our constituency and shine a light on all that needs to change.

South Belfast, like Northern Ireland as a whole, is a place that overwhelmingly voted against Brexit. The pro-European majority of Members in Northern Ireland, I must tell the House, is a more diverse and united political movement than I believe we have ever seen in our troubled history. For Northern Ireland in particular, Brexit has sharpened all the lines that the Good Friday agreement was designed to soften—around identity, borders and sovereignty. We should have been spending the last few years talking about reconciliation, regeneration, social justice and equality; that is what all political action should really be about. Instead, we have spent morning, noon and night talking about Brexit—a problem that did not need to exist and which, particularly in Northern Ireland, reopens old wounds and limits our horizons.

Brexit sundered the body politic and the social consensus across these islands in unimaginable ways. It fed off people who felt lost and disenfranchised in the political system, and I fear that it will leave them feeling much worse. It is one of the reasons that Northern Ireland has now been without a Government for over 1,000 days, leaving Members such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) with no other forum through which to hold Government to account. The Government relied on the fatigue that people had about Brexit—weary to get Brexit done, without a meaningful debate about the decisions that are going to be required, or the impact on our two islands and their intertwined futures. I believe and fear that the political bluster of slogans is eventually going to have to meet reality.

I am glad that, due to the solidarity of the EU 27 —and, indeed, Members from across the House—this withdrawal agreement means that there will not be a border on the island of Ireland, but I deeply regret that it creates an economic border in the Irish sea.

From the day and hour that Brexit was conceived, it was very clear to many of us that, wherever it landed, Brexit would create the borders of the past. As those of us on the island of Ireland know, Brexit and borders have both a practical and symbolic significance. Make no mistake about it: there is no good way to do Brexit. But this version is markedly worse than its previous iterations. It creates barriers to trade and introduces new levels of bureaucratic complexity. It is silent on workers’ rights, and on social justice and the rebalancing of the global economy. It will damage Britain’s economy. It will cause significant collateral damage to Ireland—north and south. It will further erode the resources available to public services, which are already reeling from a decade of austerity that has—certainly where I live, and I suspect here too—decimated the health service, gripped working families and emboldened inequality.

Beyond the economy, Brexit up-ends the delicate balance that in Northern Ireland has allowed us to imagine our shared and equal future together. We in Northern Ireland know the value of the EU. As my political hero and predecessor in this House, John Hume, so often said, the EU is the greatest peacebuilding and conflict resolution project anywhere in the world, and those of us particularly affected by conflict have a duty to reflect its principles. I am afraid that our concerns have been dismissed by those of you who will never have to live with the consequences of these actions.

The cross-community and cross-party coalition of support in Northern Ireland that exists to maximise our access to the EU includes business, trade unions, agriculture, retail and most of civil society. In fact, in that way it mirrors the coalition of support for the Good Friday agreement, which was actually inspired by and modelled on the EU’s founding principles. It was about being able to compromise without losing your identity, without sacrificing your principles and without sacrificing your aspiration.

Neither the EU nor the Good Friday agreement is about nations, and neither is about territory. They are about relationships and working together for the common good. They are about seeing challenges and finding solutions. But we know that the challenges of the present and the challenges of the next century are global: the climate emergency, tax justice, war and humanitarian relief. Those challenges need international co-operation, solidarity and partnership, not isolation and retreat. The world is getting smaller and our responses need to get bigger. Brexit prevents young people from creating a world with a big horizon; that is a generational injustice that we are overseeing.

We will vote against the narrow and restrictive view of the future articulated in this Bill. We will work with fair-minded people of all parties to limit, by amendment, the damage as best we can. We will seek to minimise the damage to the Good Friday agreement, which, for those of us in Northern Ireland, is the only viable pathway to a better future, under whichever constitutional arrangement people desire that future. That agreement is at its core about relationships, in three strands: within Northern Ireland; between the north and south of Ireland; and between our Ireland and yours. I deeply regret that Brexit in any form will damage the relationships in each of those strands, and I implore Members of this House to work with us to limit that damage.