Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Claire Hanna and Gavin Robinson

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson]

Absolutely. I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Let me make this point: we are not going to get unanimity of opinion on that issue from people in Northern Ireland. The Democratic Unionist party did not support the Belfast agreement. One of the strong reasons was the corruption of justice and the denial of rights to victims who saw the perpetrators walk the streets.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

rose—

[Gavin Robinson]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, because she will take a different view, and I want to be respectful of that different view. Then I need to move onto the amendments tabled for this Committee stage.

[Claire Hanna]

It is fair to say that, over the past couple of years, there have been a lot of new converts to the Good Friday agreement. Will the hon. Member concede that although the issue of prisoner releases was a very difficult pill to take for every single person in Northern Ireland, it was done with democratic legitimacy —in a referendum that more than 70% of the population voted for—and those people were in jail after due legal process?

[Gavin Robinson]

People were in jail after due legal process. Not only did we have that corruption of justice then, but we have had subsequent corruptions of justice on the provision of on-the-run letters, on letters of comfort, and on attempts to make sure that people get an amnesty or immunity from prosecution. Here we have a further iteration.

Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Claire Hanna and Gavin Robinson

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Claire Hanna]

While we welcome minor amendments to the petition of concern to make it a little more difficult to table one, that does not improve how the POC works or restore it to its intended purposes. Amendments 11 and 12 seek to do that by restoring some of the Belfast agreement’s factory settings, as it were, and reinserting the special procedure described in paragraphs 11 to 13 of strand one, whereby a special committee should examine the rationale and viability of a petition of concern so that it is used as a mechanism to protect minority rights and not, as has been practised during the previous mandate, to thwart them. Amendment 11 would restore that original intent, which has not been adequately used. Amendment 12 enables that by specifying how such a committee could be established at the request of either the Assembly Executive Committee, a Minister or a relevant Committee.

[Gavin Robinson]

I am not doing very well on my commitment at the start. I want to push back politely on the notion of factory reset, and that we are getting back to the original intent of the provision. That is not agreed. Going through last week’s evidence, it is fair to say that there are those who were involved in the process in 1998 who are now trying to retrofit and read into the 1998 agreement what they hoped to attain or achieve at that stage, and did not.

Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Claire Hanna and Gavin Robinson

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Claire Hanna]

Q I want to pick up on an issue that has been discussed today by a number of witnesses: the processes that were envisaged originally regarding the use of the petition of concern, but that have not been regularly used, such as this Ad Hoc Committee on Conformity with Equality Requirements. I remember, from my time in the Assembly, a previous committee being in place for the POCs on welfare reform. What has been the thinking around those? There was a difference in opinion on whether they were required or discretionary. What is your analysis?

Again, I suppose this is relatively moot in your term, Alex, because the POC has not been deployed while you have been in post, but what is your understanding of the requirement for those Committees to be established under the current framework?

Alex Maskey: You know that as part of the Good Friday agreement, that framework was agreed, but it was never, if you like, replicated in the Assembly. Speaking as someone involved in the Good Friday agreement, that was one of key areas people were focusing on to make sure we built the new instructions on a proper framework. However, it is a statement of fact that they are not there, not used and not in place at the moment. I spend every other week in the Chamber, busily telling people, “I have no role over that,” in terms of the code of conduct, for example.

On what you are requesting, Claire, I would have liked the provisions in the Good Friday agreement to have been faithfully implemented across the board, and that would have applied to these provisions as well. The fact they are not means that I have to deal with what is in place within the framework, the Northern Ireland Act, and our own Standing Orders, and I will faithfully deliver on those.

[Gavin Robinson]

Q Good afternoon to all three of you. Alex, you mentioned that you did not want to engage in suggesting solutions, or do not see that as your role. You highlighted the issue of the 14-day consideration period for a petition of concern. Those are really issues that may arise in extreme circumstances where there is a legislative deadline, or there is some urgency to matters proceeding. From what you say, the frailty in the legislation is that there is no indication that the petition can be rescinded if a resolution is found, say, two, three, four, five or 13 days into that 14-day period. Would that option to withdraw the petition satisfy the concerns that have been raised either through your officials or the Office of the Legislative Counsel?

Alex Maskey: On one level, it could possibly help, because it would remove the issue. If you were to remove it, then you do not need to deal with any consequences. Gareth said earlier that we have identified a number of issues that could be impacted, such as the LCMs, but there are others we may not have detected yet. I suppose it could go some way towards solving it.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Claire Hanna and Gavin Robinson

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna]

It is funny, but we do not hear so much about the alternative arrangements, and this from a party that has us all queuing around the estate because it could not put in place any alternative arrangements for voting. We heard a lot about them for a lot of years, but the magic sovereignty dust that was supposed to solve all of our problems has not yet been produced.

However, it is true that the choices, and they are very difficult choices, are being forced by that Government. We wish that the Government had picked the first of those options. We wish they had picked a higher degree of alignment with the EU, but they did not, and they cannot keep reopening the wound every time they try to deal with the contradictory promises they made. Whatever Bill the Government bring in, the choice will be the same. You cannot opt out of the biggest free trade bloc in the world and then feign shock when the trade is not completely clear, and you cannot refuse to do the first of the two things and then pretend that they are going to happen.

To suggest that any of this is about protecting the Good Friday agreement or the people of Northern Ireland is beyond a parody. We have worked intensively with businesses and other parties to try to address some of the barriers that we accept will exist, but we have to remind the House and others that it is this Government’s choice and the failure of the DUP for the last three years to do anything about those choices that has brought us to this point, and people must own those decisions. The Joint Committee is the place to address those difficulties and those operational issues, and there are the dispute mechanisms.

We see and we very much acknowledge the anxiety that east-west barriers to trade create, but even with the politics and the identity issues stripped out, it is a regrettable fact that the sea border is more practical and more manageable than a border across the island of Ireland, given that there are three such points of entry into Northern Ireland and 108 border crossings between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. I do not say that to be hurtful; I say it because it is true.

I bit my tongue several times during the speech from the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), whose opinion is always considered. I bit it for a number of reasons. Not only because of course your party opposed giving a consent mechanism to the Northern Ireland Assembly on article 50 and opposed giving consent on the sequencing, but because you speak about the sequencing. We have seen what has happened with the gamification of the sequencing and the gamification and using of Northern Ireland as a pawn by the UK Government in order to achieve outcomes and to justify no deal. The last thing I had to bite my tongue about was your saying that the petition of concern is not used as a veto. Members can look it up, but your party has used it 86 times. It used it numerous times to veto, for example, equal marriage for absolutely no reasons of offence to the United Kingdom.

[Gavin Robinson]

I think the second-last point—the penultimate point—was right, and I agree with the hon. Member. However, on the petition of concern and the cross-community voting mechanisms, she knows the reason they are there. She does not like it when people use them for reasons that she does not agree with, but she knows the reasons they are there. We were not the only ones to use it. We do not have the power to use it by ourselves. But the aspiration for us all must be building consensus.

[Claire Hanna]

It certainly should. I am not going to rehearse the figures, but I believe that the Democratic Unionist party used the petition of concern approximately two thirds of the time. You do not have the power to use it now because the electorate took that power off you, because it was wielded inappropriately so many times. I am acknowledging very clearly the barriers and impediments that this will create and the intentions of many to try to address those, but whatever the value of trade east-west—I see and acknowledge that value, but it is often cited by people who seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing—the reality is that there are more people and more units that move up and down the island than move between the two islands. In fact, after 1 January next year, there will be more external crossings into the EU on the island of Ireland than there will be in the rest of the continent’s borders.

Those who support the Bill and the last few years of poor decision making have to acknowledge the intellectual and moral failure in a position that says that a border down the Irish sea is absolutely impossible technically and impossible to bear politically, but that somehow forcing one on the island of Ireland is dead-on, that we can deal with that with a bit of administration and that people are being overly sensitive. Imperfect though I acknowledge the protocol is, it is the baseline protection against the border, so repudiation of the protocol therefore makes a border a lot more likely, and inevitable.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)—we believe that the clauses we are dealing with today are irredeemable—and I appreciate her interventions very much. Over the few years that she served as Prime Minister, while I frequently did not agree with what she said, I could always acknowledge that she was trying to respect the sensitivities. I respect those who are trying to manoeuvre their party to the right place. I know that that is a very difficult thing to do, particularly when 21 decent MPs were sacked for refusing to vote for the previous Bill, and now they will be sacked if they do vote for the withdrawal agreement—I think that is the sequencing of things.

The amendments that we have tabled seek to protect the protocol and put the commitment to the Good Friday agreement into the Bill. While I appreciate the Minister’s words, my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) has made it clear that the words do not mean anything if you refuse the opportunity to give it legislative effect. Amendment 47 tries to put in place an understanding and an assurance that all of the Bill’s operation will be compatible with all the legislation that underpins the Good Friday agreement. While the UK’s intention is clear—I accept what it is trying to do, but I think it is doing it inappropriately and I do not think it will work—it is about rejecting EU jurisdiction, and the fact is that because of the international treaty that is the Good Friday agreement, international law has jurisdiction in Northern Ireland. That is welcome, and the rights and safeguards in the equality of opportunity section of the Good Friday agreement confirmed the incorporation of the convention on human rights into Northern Ireland law, with direct access to the courts and remedies for breach of the convention, including power for the courts to overrule Assembly legislation on grounds of consistency. That point is echoed again in strand 1 of the agreement, and it must be very clear that my party, certainly, could not and would not have signed up to the Good Friday agreement without those commitments, but this Bill casts them into the wind.

It is clear that we are not talking about narrow and specific breaches. These are going to be open-ended and unchecked powers, and there will not be any qualifications or consultations to test their basis. I sought assurances on Wednesday night from the Minister that there would be limits to the powers, and I did not receive that assurance.

Members may think that this is all a big game of chicken, or a negotiating strategy or whatever with the EU. I urge them to remember the words of the late John Hume, a former Member of this House, who said very clearly, “Victories are not solutions”. The agreement that he designed talked about the obligations of the British and Irish Governments to promote the harmonious and mutually beneficial relationships between the peoples of these islands. I dearly hope that that can somehow still be our future. We are all in the business of trying to deliver solutions for our constituents. I appreciate that some of you are trying to deliver a Brexit and your Brexit deal, however ill-advised I think that is. I am trying to deliver stability and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, but I believe your Bill prevents both of us from proceeding.