Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Nigel Evans

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Colum Eastwood]

Do you know what? I won’t.

The Bill is attempting to close down the police ombudsman’s opportunity to investigate issues of the past. I wonder why. It is also closing down access to the civil route for families. What happened last Tuesday? The Secretary of State announced that there would be no new civil cases after that day. Families who had been told that they were supposed to be at the centre of this were running around with their lawyers trying to get access to the courts before they closed that day. That is some way to treat the people who have suffered the most!

It is all right for the rest of us, who are still here and doing quite well out of the peace process. The people who have been left behind have been treated shoddily by this Government as recently as last week. People who have waited decades for an inquest and are now in the queue for one are being told that they will not have any opportunity to get the proper truth. If this is about truth, why are we afraid of inquests? I just do not understand it.

This legislation is riddled with Government overdrive and there is nothing independent about how the organisation will be constituted. There is no meaningful article 2 compliant investigation. Frankly, it is a recipe for impunity.

I have heard reference to Kenova. This Bill is not Kenova. It is nothing like Kenova. Kenova allowed proper judicial processes and proper investigation processes so that families and the rest of us could get access to the truth. South Africa, equally, it is not, and that argument has been well debunked.

The Government are telling us they want to see access to truth. Let me tell the House about two cases I know well. Paul Whitters was 15 years old in 1981. He was shot in the head by a police officer with a plastic bullet. Despite promises from this Government given to me, his file has been closed for a further number of years. Mr Deputy Speaker, do you know when that file will apparently be opened? In 2084. He was 15 years old. In the same year, 1981, the British Army fired a plastic bullet that killed Julie Livingstone, 14 years old, in Lenadoon, west Belfast. Her file will not be opened until 2062.

The Government are telling us that they want truth and access to reconciliation for victims, but every single thing they have done—whether this Bill, the Ballymurphy inquest or the Bloody Sunday inquiry—has been to protect the state, to deny access to truth and to deny access to justice for those people who do not have the same ability to protect themselves. I heard we have a new shiny headquarters in Belfast for the Northern Ireland Office. Victims were standing outside it today, protesting these proposals. They were also in Derry and at Downing Street, because they believe—to a man and woman, in my experience—that these proposals are absolutely wrong. Raymond McCord is in the Public Gallery. He has had to fight against the state and loyalist paramilitaries to try and find truth and justice for his son, Raymond.

The question is, do this Government really care about Raymond and all of those victims, or do they simply care about fulfilling a manifesto commitment, protecting the state and protecting paramilitary killers, because that is exactly what this piece of legislation will do if it is passed?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you very much for keeping within the unofficial, but fairly official time limit.

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

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Nigel Evans

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It seems there is an election in the air. It is wonderful to hear all the new converts to the Good Friday agreement and civil rights. I wonder where they were when the Good Friday agreement was being signed, or when people were marching for their civil rights on the streets of my constituency and others. [Interruption.] Well, you weren’t there anyway.

I remember that, in the negotiations that led to the New Decade, New Approach agreement, the people arguing for this piece of legislation were the Democratic Unionist party. Rightly, they made the argument that Sinn Féin might bring the Assembly down. Of course, we had good evidence to say they might because they brought it down and it was down for three years. At that point I thought, “Good, everybody’s learned their lesson. Bringing the Assembly down gets us nowhere. All it does is have longer waiting lists. Our school estates are crumbling, our economy is not being dealt with. Maybe finally we are at the point now where people have learned their lesson that when you get elected to be in a position you have to go there. You have to take the power in your hands and try to change people’s lives.” But then this very week, coincidentally, four days ago, just within the seven-day gap that the new amendment will allow people to avail themselves of, the DUP walked out of the Executive and now we do not have an Executive at all.

I hear a lot in this House about the precious Union and how this is all about the Union. Where is the Prime Minister or even his Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when a key part of that supposedly precious Union, the Executive of the devolved Administration of Northern Ireland, has collapsed? Nowhere to be seen is the Prime Minister of this precious United Kingdom. If I was a Unionist in Northern Ireland today—I can assure the House I am not—I would be looking very closely at how this Government treat them.

To be honest, I find it quite shocking we are in this position today. One of the things that has led us to this position is that the Prime Minister, the former Brexit Secretary and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have been promising to trigger article 16 for months. Of course, the protocol was part of the withdrawal agreement that this Prime Minister negotiated, signed and told everybody was fantastic. But what is worse about all this is that the DUP actually believed him. I have a four-year-old who would not have believed him. It is astonishing that, after all of this, the DUP, which championed Brexit—it’s all one United Kingdom referendum, we all have to leave together, we were told—[Interruption.] Then there was an opportunity—[Interruption.] Members really want to listen, Mr Deputy Speaker. Then there was an opportunity to stop a border in the Irish sea by voting for the whole of the United Kingdom to stay in the customs union and single market. The DUP rejected it. [Interruption.] I hear, “That wasn’t Brexit.” Well, maybe it is about time that the DUP chose between the purest version of Brexit and the Union they profess to love. Now we have a protocol that had to be put in place because the DUP and others forced the hand of a previous Prime Minister into ensuring there would be a border in the Irish sea. It was not as if this was a surprise. Many of us, people of a nationalist persuasion and people of no persuasion at all, were shouting it loudly on TV and on the radio to tell them: this is what is going to happen if you don’t do something sensible about Brexit. We also have an opportunity. Let us get rid of most of the checks. Let us do it tomorrow. Let us have an SPS agreement with the European Union. The DUP reject that as well. How did they think this was going to end?

Now we have the DUP, who for months have held a gun to their own head, telling the British Government and the European Union, “If you don’t get me what I want, I’ll shoot.” And now they have shot and what have they got? This will never precipitate the result they want because it is impossible to do what the DUP wants. That is the reality. This is not about the protocol; this is about an election that will come in the next few months. All this is about is shoring up the Unionist support. That is what every election in Northern Ireland is about. Let’s get the people worried! Let’s get them scared! Who is going to be First Minister? Who is going to be Deputy First Minister? The Union is at risk! Why not actually work to make the institutions work and persuade the people out there who are interested in this big constitutional debate that they actually should vote for the Union at some point? But everything that the DUP does makes my job easier and easier. I do not have to do anything to persuade people to vote for constitutional change. I just have to let the DUP speak, because everything it has done over the past five or six years has led to more support for the Union.

The real losers in all this are the ordinary people of Northern Ireland who are going through a health crisis—our waiting lists would embarrass a third-world country—and who are seeing rising gas prices. They want to see the climate change legislation, they want to see the welfare mitigations going through and they want to see the domestic violence and stalking legislation, but what the DUP wants to do is walk away from its responsibilities. I hear from Sinn Féin that it wants an election as soon as possible, never mind about getting all the legislation through. Surely we have to learn the lesson that politicians are elected to go to work, to be at their desk to deal with the problems, and to sit down and work together to solve the problems on behalf of the people. All we got from the DUP this week, and from Sinn Féin five years ago, is that they walk away if they do not get what they want. Well, look how it is going to end up. The waiting lists will be longer, the schools will continue to crumble and our young people will continue to emigrate. That is the legacy of those two parties running Northern Ireland over the last 15 years, and it is about time people looked for something different.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We will begin the wind-up speeches at 8.34.