Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry]

To start with the specific amendments before us, the Government’s approach, right to this eleventh hour—five minutes to midnight in terms of the Bill—reinforces the premise behind the Bill. Immunity is the central foundation stone on which this flawed Bill has been designed and taken forward, and the immunity clause goes to the heart of why there is no confidence in the legislation and why it has been rejected by so many stakeholders, most notably victims groups. That opposition spans the entire political spectrum in Northern Ireland.

Reference has been made to the history around this issue. I do not want to dwell on that overly, but there is a notion that the Stormont House agreement was not agreed to and was in some way flawed, and that we needed an alternative. Stormont House was agreed by virtually every political party and there were efforts made to implement it, but beyond the political parties it had the confidence of victims groups and the approval of independent human rights experts, so it was the basis of moving forward.

As has been said, as recently as “New Decade, New Approach”, Stormont House has explicitly been the policy of this Government. Within three months from the launch of “New Decade, New Approach”, we had, in effect, a handbrake turn, with a written ministerial statement by one of the Secretary of State’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Brandon Lewis). It was very clear that the immunity concept, alongside the Conservative party manifesto, was driving that, so the whole premise of the Bill is driven by the politics of the Conversative party, not the needs of Northern Ireland. That is the fundamental reason why the Bill will never be seen as legitimate in any sense in Northern Ireland. Further, I do not understand the logic of a Secretary of State saying that Stormont House does not have full support, so we cannot proceed on that basis, and then, by extension, introducing a Bill that has no support from any political party or victims group in Northern Ireland. That seems utterly nonsensical to me.

I will not reiterate the point I made about human rights compliance, but I acknowledge that the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) echoed and reinforced the point that we will see legal challenges to the legislation.

Finally, I welcome what the shadow Secretary of State said about the repeal of the legislation. If we see a change of Government after the next election, I hope that will be a priority for the incoming Government.

[Colum Eastwood]

There are a lot of things that get me angry in this job, but this has got me more angry than anything I have ever had to deal with. The people sitting on the Benches occupied by Members representing Northern Ireland’s constituencies have had to deal with, get to know and work with the victims of our terrible past for decades. Frankly, I am embarrassed today, as I do not know what I am going to say to them when I speak to them after the debate, because as a whole—as a body politic—we have failed them.

We have a peace process, we have peace and lots of us have been able to move on, but we have left a very significant cohort of people behind, and we are rubber stamping that today. Some people will walk through the Lobby coldly, without having the names of the victims ringing in their heads. I have their names going around my head right now—I have put many of them on record in this Chamber during the passage of the Bill. I am deeply ashamed that we are doing this today.

There is a pretence in the proposal for the Bill that somehow the British Government were not an actor at all in the conflict in Northern Ireland. That is patently untrue. They say that local political parties in Northern Ireland are just squabbling, cannot come up with any answers or deal with the problem. That is patently untrue. We came up with the answer, which was Stormont House. The reason it was not delivered is that the British Government dragged their feet and changed their policy after “New Decade, New Approach”. That is a fact.

I really hope that the Irish Government listen to the calls by some of us to take this UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, because the Bill is an affront to human rights and article 2. Every single expert I have spoken to agrees with me on that, and every single victim agrees with me on that as well.

The Secretary of State used the phrase “effective information recovery process” a lot of times. “Effective information recovery process”? I can take him to families today whose children—14 and 15 years old— were shot in the troubles and their cases have been closed by this Government until 2064 and 2065. Those people tell us they want an “effective information recovery process”, but the Government are denying victims “effective information recovery”, so that tells me that the Bill is based on a lie. It is an attempt by this Government and dark forces within the security apparatus of this Government to close down access to truth and justice.

We all understand that justice will be hard to get for many families, but most of those families have not even had any truth. The process of investigation gets them truths. I can take Members to loads of families today who never once even met a police officer, even though a loved one was murdered. Does anybody here believe that the IRA are going to come forward and tell us who bombed a particular pub or who shot a particular person? It is utter nonsense.

This is an attempt to close down access to the truth and it is an affront to democracy. Immunity? It is impunity, giving people a licence to murder people on the streets of Derry, Belfast, Newry and across Northern Ireland, and also on the streets of London. I do not understand how any politician can stand and look at the faces of crying victims and tell them that this is the right thing to do. I am ashamed that this is happening today.

Let me say one thing to end: I know these people. They have had to struggle for decade after decade. This will not be the end for them and we will be with them in support, right to the end.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry

2nd reading
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his intervention because it gives me the opportunity to reiterate that my party has consistently advocated reform of the Assembly structures. It has been in our party manifestos going back to 1999. In particular, in the period between 2017 and 2020, my party made numerous comments publicly on the need for reform. I will gladly forward copies of speeches made by my party leader to party conferences to the right hon. Member so that he can read them with a great deal of interest.

[Colum Eastwood]

Far be it from me to get involved in this conversation between the Alliance party and the DUP, but would the hon. Member like to tell us his understanding of what the DUP’s position actually is on mandatory coalition, because as far as I am concerned, it seems to be a new convert to the principle?

[Stephen Farry]

We can look at this in two different ways—what happened before 1972, and what happened in the 1970s and 1980s through to what happened during the talks. I would stress that, if we read the DUP manifestos up to the point of its current walk-out, we can see that it was actually a fan of reform of the institutions and moving away from mandatory coalition. It was a principle for the DUP then, but that is no longer the case. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) famously went on “Question Time” during the last impasse and lambasted the situation in which a party with about 25% of the vote was able to frustrate the institutions. I think I will leave it there.

Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry]

I disagree; I think that the Bill is a good, honest attempt at getting these proposals over the line. Frankly, we need to move on, get this done and get it into law.

[Colum Eastwood]

I thank the hon. Member for giving me a useful opportunity to make this point. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) talked about embracing diversity. That is wonderful language. In Derry, since we got rid of the old Derry Corporation, we got proper democracy into local government after the civil rights movement, and we have been embracing diversity in Derry. We have all the old Unionist and British symbols still up in the Guildhall. We have added new ones that represent other traditions, such as the one that I represent. We have also done power sharing since the beginning of that council’s inception. The Social Democratic and Labour party had the most seats, but we had a Unionist deputy mayor and we had Unionist mayors over many years. The council in the area that the hon. Member for North Antrim represents has not had a nationalist mayor or deputy mayor since its inception. Does the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) think that that is acceptable or that it embraces diversity?

[Stephen Farry]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. It did take the use of the d’Hondt method in councils to get diversity moving, although the council in question, which has been in the news somewhat—rather controversially—over the past number of months now has an Alliance mayor, so hopefully that is progress to an extent.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry]

We will talk about the dairy sector in much greater detail shortly. Indeed, it has given significant evidence to Committees in this Parliament. Whenever we talk about the dairy sector, it is important to bear in mind that this idea of the hon. Gentleman’s that we will end up with segregated production, north versus south, is not feasible. If that was to be introduced, the lead-in time would potentially be two to three years, and the costs would be between £200 million and £250 million, so the notion that this is an easy option is a major fallacy. Indeed, the notion that we want to spend extra money to reorientate an industry that works quite successfully at the moment is for the birds.

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. Does he agree with me and with Mike Johnston, the chief executive of the Dairy Council for Northern Ireland, that the Bill risks making rural areas poorer by cutting off £600 million of trade?

[Stephen Farry]

Indeed, and the dairy sector in Northern Ireland is absolutely clear. The provisions in this Bill are an existential threat to their business model, and we will come shortly to the consequences of that.

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

Debate between Colum Eastwood and Stephen Farry

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. It is good to see you, Jonathan. I spent many long hours over that three-year period in your company, and thankfully we got there in the end.

Do you think it is fair to say that the New Decade, New Approach agreement was largely imposed by the two Governments at a very opportune moment in the political process? The three largest parties had had a difficult election. We had a nurses’ strike and then the two Governments struck, and got Stormont back up and running again. That goes to the heart of your point that if we do not have political parties willing to work the system and work together, no clever constitutional construct can stop them collapsing it. Do you think there is more that we could have done as part of those discussions? I am particularly thinking about the way in which the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister are appointed.

Sir Jonathan Stephens: I would not use the word “imposed” because, at the end of the day, it was the decision of all the main parties in Northern Ireland to re-form the Executive. Yes, it was on the basis of the proposals put forward in New Decade, New Approach, but each party was free to take its own decision on that. From my point of view, when the document was published there was no certainty as to how parties would react and whether it would provide a basis for forming the Executive. We very much hoped so, but there was no certainty.

It reflected extensive discussions, of which a number of people on the Committee will have close memories, over many years, but most recently over the period of months from the calling together of the most recent session of talks, following the tragic murder of Lyra McKee. Again, there was very strong input from the parties. Although the proposals were the proposals from the Governments, they reflected very considerably the input of the parties. They were our best judgment as to where agreement lay.

On the First and Deputy First Ministers, I am conscious that parties have a number of different views on that. There are a number of parties that think that the original arrangement under the Good Friday agreement for the election of the First and Deputy First Ministers on the basis of cross-community consent should not have been changed after the St Andrews agreement. Other parties who were critical of the St Andrews agreement formed and participated in devolved government on the basis of that.

The Good Friday agreement was now more than 20 years ago. It was designed with one situation and set of scenarios in mind. As ever, the world moves on and change comes. It is coming in Northern Ireland, and there will come a time when it will be right to look at some of the fundamental arrangements within that agreement and consider whether they still best serve the people of Northern Ireland and adequately reflect the current situation in Northern Ireland. However, that would be quite a major task to undertake, with possible renegotiation of key aspects of the agreement. It is not a task that, personally, I think is quite right for now.

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. A very warm welcome to you, Sir Jonathan. I will largely pick up on your answer to the questions posed by Colum Eastwood. You are one of the very rare officials with long experience of Northern Ireland over several different stints in office, so you have that wider perspective. You indicated that there might be a need to revise the rules around the institutions at some stage. Do you feel there is a danger of the Northern Ireland Office almost operating on a reactive basis after a problem has actually arisen and then trying to patch it up, amend it and move on for a few more years before going back to the next crisis? Is there not an argument for trying to be a little bit more proactive and anticipate where pressure points are likely to emerge, to assess how society is changing and to act accordingly? In that regard, should we look at some of the rules around the election of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, particularly in the light of the democratic change that we are seeing in society?

Sir Jonathan Stephens: In a sense, I agree with you, Mr Farry. I was indicating earlier that there had been significant change in Northern Ireland. At the time of the Good Friday agreement, the assumption was that there was a Unionist majority community, a substantial nationalist minority community and a relatively small but steady component who did not identify with the others. Since then, the situation has changed. It is more like two substantial minorities with a much larger, more significant and growing number of people who choose not to identify with either.

Over time, I think that will mean that a number of the arrangements need to be looked at again and examined. I am just conscious, having participated in a number of those discussions over the years, that that is not an easy task. It takes up a huge amount of political energy. Yes, there is a lot to be said for anticipating, rather than reacting to, crises, but Governments across the world, not least in Northern Ireland, have a number of crises right now to respond to. I simply suggest that right now does not seem to me to be a good time to undertake that significant and mammoth task, but I would be surprised if at some point in the next 10 years it is not on the agenda.