Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Gavin Robinson

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that Members will look on amendment 98 favourably.

Finally, because I recognise that time is short—here we are, three hours in, before we get a Northern Ireland voice, but I appreciate the interest in the Bill—I turn to amendment 115. There has been considerable attention on amendment 115 during the Committee stage. My colleagues drafted our own amendment to exclude sexual offences from immunity. It was not as good or as strong as the Labour amendment, and, in truth, it was in the wrong place in the Bill, so we did not table it and signed amendment 115 and new schedule 1. We did that because we want to get to the end point. We are not interested in the politics, but we want to make sure that on such a wedge issue that engages issues of compassion and controversy, and affects communities right across the board in Northern Ireland, we have our name on that amendment, and we want to see progress on it this evening.

I have already highlighted the frailty of the argument that we could leave this issue until Report. I have heard that we could change the programme motion. Here we are with a programme motion that has already been extended once, at the end of Second Reading for this Committee stage, and I am the first Northern Ireland MP to speak when we have been debating the Bill since 20 minutes to 3.

[Colum Eastwood]

Can I take the hon. Gentleman back to what he was saying a little bit earlier? We obviously disagree on the Good Friday agreement and the need for prisoner release, but I think we both recognise that those prisoners were released on licence. A licence is capable of being revoked and has been on a number of occasions. If this Bill went through, would that get rid of that, so that those prisoners would then be totally immune from going back even on licence?

[Gavin Robinson]

I know that some from Northern Ireland did not take technical briefings on this Bill, but sadly I did and had to listen through them. Schedule 11, where we are talking about moving two sentences down to one, could lead to a circumstance where, were somebody prosecuted outside of this process, they would have a conviction on their record and would automatically be on licence for it. It is not that they would not be on licence—they would—but they would serve no time in jail whatever. We need to incentivise this process, and that is why I have talked about new clauses to be debated on Monday, which would ensure real terms and a real-life consequence for not offering truth to victims’ families.

I was talking about amendment 115 just before I was derailed. The Government have a huge opportunity to respond to what has been said this evening. This is a hugely important amendment. We talk about some amendments being inconsequential, and I accept that this one would affect a very narrow subset of legacy cases, but that does not make it any less of a touchstone. It genuinely is, and it has the support of our party. I am sad to say that there is no Northern Ireland Office representation in the Chamber at the moment. They are not here, and I genuinely believe that they had better be outside getting an agreement over this amendment so that it does not need to be pressed to a Division this evening.

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

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Gavin Robinson

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Gavin Robinson]

Q Perhaps just one final question from me, Sir David, if you have a rake of colleagues now hoping to jump in. Questions have been raised around the lack of detail on safeguards for Ministers who find themselves remaining in position where the Executive is not fully functioning. Do you have any concerns about the provisions as drafted in the Bill, or do you feel that the safeguards from the St Andrews agreement around significant, cross-cutting and controversial decisions are sufficient in the circumstances?

Emma Little-Pengelly: I think that Northern Ireland have found themselves in this position on previous occasions, and in fairness, on those occasions all Ministers have respected that an Executive is not in place, and largely abided by and operated under the decisions previously agreed by it. I agree completely with what Sir Jonathan Stephens said on the safeguard of the courts, but as we know, the court process is long; it requires somebody to take a challenge and often ends up in Ministers taking legal challenges against Ministers.

I would have thought, though, that there is an additional safeguard in that Ministers in Northern Ireland are required to operate lawfully—they cannot step outside of that. If a Minister wanted to take a decision that was significant or controversial or cross-cutting, it is very clear from both the jurisprudence and the legal cases on this, and in terms of what was said at the time of the passing of the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, that a Minister has no power—there is no vires for a Minister to take a decision that ought to have come to the Executive under the terms of the St Andrews Act amendments. Therefore, a Minister could not take a decision on a significant, controversial or cross-cutting matter, unless that had already been agreed by the Executive.

In the situation that you have outlined, Gavin, there would be no way to form an Executive. Without the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, you cannot have an Executive meeting and therefore those decisions cannot be decided on because an individual Minister does not have the power or the vires to do that. Therefore, he would be operating ultra vires. I presume that the permanent secretary or the accounting officer of that Department would advise the Minister of that, and that the Minister could not proceed because that would be unlawful under those circumstances.

[Colum Eastwood]

Q Thanks for your evidence, Emma. You are absolutely right that the Democratic Unionist party pushed very hard for a lot of the provisions around sustainability during the negotiations, and some of us had some concerns about it, but I absolutely agree with you that there have to be some mechanisms for keeping the show on the road. Nobody should be threatening to pull down institutions. Of course, it was Sinn Féin that walked out the last time. Does that go as well for the DUP when it comes to issues like the protocol?

Secondly, you and I will disagree about the purpose of the petition of concern and when it should be used and so on. You have said, now that Unionism is no longer a majority, there are moves to take away safeguards like the petition of concern. What did you think, then, when Arlene Foster suggested removing it as a mechanism altogether during the negotiations?

Emma Little-Pengelly: First, to be fair to the Democratic Unionist party, I should make it clear that I am not here as a spokesperson for the DUP, so I cannot comment on the particular issues of the current situation. What I can say is that the DUP, along with many others, has, over the years since the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, pushed for a better form of government, as you will be aware, very much around trying to put better democracy in that and a better system that is not so slow or difficult to try to get agreement through.

There is a real issue around protections and safeguards. It is notable that the petition of concern is in the safeguard section. It does apply to all key decisions. That is the system that was set up—purposely difficult, I suppose, one might say—to ensure that there was maximum buy-in. What we are rapidly seeing is that people now have a particular policy proposal, they get the majority for it and they want to push that forward, against the will of significant sections of the other community.

People need to get back better to fundamental consensus policy making. Potentially we have lost that over the years. As I said, it is slow but there is a benefit to that. When you look back to the original point about intent, it is important to point out that equality and human rights are very well protected, cooked in right across the system.

If you look back to the narrative around the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, including the discussions and the debates in the House of Commons on those matters, you will see that the key safeguards lay with the establishment, under the agreement, of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and the Human Rights Act, which at any time can give advice or perhaps even take a legal challenge against a Department or the Northern Ireland Assembly—certainly give advice on that.

Importantly, the Northern Ireland Assembly is set up but it does not have competence to deal with matters that would be in contravention of the European convention on human rights or equality legislation. I understand that your evidence will go on next to the Speaker. The Speaker will have a legal team, so it is not even a case of a discretion. The Northern Ireland Assembly, certainly even set down in the agreement and the Northern Ireland Act, emphasised and safeguarded even further in the Human Rights Act 1998, has no power to legislate in a way that is in violation of that. A piece of legislation should never be introduced where there is a decision by the Speaker’s legal panel that is in contravention of that.

What we have seen subsequently is that people will have a range of views about whether something is a breach of human rights, which is very different from whether it is legally a breach of human rights. Of course, that is an evolving issue. There are safeguards there already, but I would also point out that the party of which Mr Eastwood is a member did not raise any concerns about the scope of the petition of concern at the time of the passing of the Northern Ireland Act, nor in the first decade of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s operation, and the operation of the petition of concern. This is an issue that has emerged over the past number of years, on the briefing from the likes of CAJ and others. There was no indication on the record—Hansard or elsewhere—that there was a concern about this.

To go back to the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, the obligations under strand 1 5(d) are completely separate from the obligations under strand 1 5(c). They are severable. Of course, they can be linked through the special process, which has already been outlined to you, but they are separate. It is very clear from both the spirit and the detail of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement that cross-community consensus was to apply to all key decisions.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Gavin Robinson

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Does the hon. Member recognise that there is already an international agreement—it is called the Stormont House agreement—to deal with issues of legacy in Northern Ireland? It seems now that the Government are determined to abandon that agreement and abandon the victims of the conflict too. Does he think that that is a sensible way to proceed—that the Government will again abandon an international agreement?

[Gavin Robinson]

The hon. Member’s contribution is timely. We know what commitments were given during the New Decade, New Approach agreement on legacy matters in Northern Ireland, and we wait to hear from the Government where they are. Both of us have engaged in conversations recently about where that may go. While we may wish it to go in different directions, I am not sure that either of us will be overly satisfied with what emerges.

I want to touch on a number of key aspects of the Bill. I saw that the Minister, with his normal enthusiasm, talked at the weekend about some of those seeking to amend the Bill being “deeply disingenuous”, “repeating campaign lines” and

“talking a good game…but fundamentally unwilling to lift a finger”

to protect service personnel. He made those comments. I am sharing them because I want to say categorically that they do not accord with me as a signatory of amendments 1 to 10, and nor do I believe that they appropriately accord with others who have signed the amendments.

I think it is right to say that people are being disingenuous if they think that war crimes or genocide are issues that are precluded under the Bill. They are not—they are clearly included in schedule 1—but the Government are wrong not to refocus and think again about torture. Torture should be exempted from the provisions of the Bill. I say that very clearly, drawing on the comments by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). He was right to reflect that clause 3(2)(b) draws on cases where there has been an investigation before, but what it does not do, and what it should do—I referred to this on Second Reading—is rule out the provisions of the Bill being used where there has not been an investigation at all.

Can it genuinely be the case that where issues are raised around torture where there has not been an investigation at all, we accept that the presumption against prosecution should be engaged? I do not think so. I have clearly argued, alongside the Minister as a member of the Defence Committee, that where the state has discharged its duty through a satisfactory investigation, then we can seek to protect our service personnel from prosecution, but not before.

We are asking the Attorney General to make the determination through the provisions of this Bill. That is the very same Attorney General who will be asked to agree that, because this Bill is being used, our service personnel have to go to the International Criminal Court. That cannot be right. Take these issues back to St Aquinas on what a just war is; he considers the morality of war. We as a country stand firmly against torture. When we engage in armed conflict, we operate on the basis that we share those values—that there is an international norm: our guys will not be tortured because we give a clear commitment that we will not torture theirs. That goes with this Bill.