Northern Ireland: Murder of Lyra McKee

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee. I know that he, as a former Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, is very familiar with the situation in Londonderry and the security threat the PSNI and security forces face every day. It is quite something to think that when actions like this happen in Londonderry it is almost normal—it is just what happens. The PSNI face petrol bombs and shots being fired at them. They sit in Land Rovers and take the fire and the onslaught. Clearly, we will need to wait to see, in the days to come, what effect the camera crew being on the ground had, but this also shows that a crowd had gathered. People came out to watch what was seen as being a spectacle. That just goes to show that these spectacles can have the most deadly outcomes.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement, and I echo the comments that she and the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) made. On behalf of the Scottish National party, I fully condemn this careless, cruel and cowardly murder. We send our deepest condolences to Lyra’s partner, friends and family.

Lyra McKee was simply doing her job at the time she was murdered, and it was a job she carried out with great skill. The New IRA has admitted its responsibility, saying that it was simply an “accident” and apologising to her friends and family. But sorry is nowhere near good enough. Sorry does not bring Lyra back. Sorry does not ease the suffering of her partner Sara and of her friends and family. Sorry does not alleviate the concerns of communities across Northern Ireland about a step backwards to a past they had hoped to forget. Reading the statement, we would be forgiven for thinking that the past two post-Good-Friday-agreement decades simply had not happened.

This tragedy underlines what people in Northern Ireland have been saying for years now, and there is no possible alternative conclusion: the current stalemate has been going on for too long. So I am grateful for what the Secretary of State said in her statement about talks with the parties this week. Can she confirm what form they will take? Does she have a realistic goal as to when she thinks the Executive can be back up and running by?

I want to finish with Lyra’s own words, powerful words that highlight just what her murder has robbed us of. She wrote a letter to her younger self about growing up gay in Northern Ireland, in which she said:

“You will do ‘normal’ things. You will spend time with your mum. You will go to work and pay your bills. You will go to the cinema with your best friend every week because that’s your ritual—dinner then an action movie where things explode. You will fall in love again. You will smile every day, knowing that someone loves you as much as you love them. Keep hanging on, kid. It’s worth it. I love you.”

Poignantly, she also said:

“We were the Good Friday Agreement generation, destined to never witness the horrors of war but to reap the spoils of peace. The spoils just never seemed to reach us.”

Let us ensure that she is the last to suffer.

[Karen Bradley]

Lyra’s words need no comment from me; they are powerful enough in their own right. The hon. Gentleman asked questions about devolution. I would be very happy to talk to him and others about next steps, but I feel that today is a day when we should think about that family who are going to bury a much-loved partner, daughter, friend. They are the ones we should be thinking about today, and perhaps we can talk about the other things after that.