European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Iain Duncan Smith

2nd reading
Friday 6th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I will respond in, hopefully, the same tone and say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd). I suspect there is a big prize for him waiting in the Government Whips Office after this debate. He welcomed every intervention going. I do not besmirch his character at all, but since he suggested that there is interest in the concerns being raised by the Unionist community, I reflect that with almost two hours left of a five-hour debate, I am the third speaker. Scores of Members from Northern Ireland on both sides of the Chamber will probably not get the opportunity to make their point and represent their constituents, because of a quest to make sure that the Bill is talked out. I say, respectfully, that the hon. Member did exactly what he was asked to do, but when considering these issues, I am not sure just how constructive that will prove to be.

The hon. Gentleman said in his remarks that we will be able to deal with issues as time goes by. I have watched “As Time Goes By” on repeat on UKTV Gold, and I have watched people in this Chamber say that we will deal with these issues “as time go by”. Here is an opportunity to engage in the concerns that the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) raised, having received support from across the Unionist spectrum in Northern Ireland to raise them. Yet, as time goes by, though it is said that we shall not be dismissed or demeaned in the position that we are putting forward, that is exactly what is happening.

I stand not only as leader of my party and my colleagues, but as a co-sponsor of the hon. Member’s Bill. I commend him on the position that he has outlined to the Chamber today and on his success in the private Member’s Bill ballot. He is not a gambler—anyone who listens to him will know that he will put forward his principled position without fear or favour—but he took a chance and he has this opportunity. I commend him on doing so in a collective and cohesive way that has allowed for greater co-operation not just from those in Northern Ireland, but from across the country. He should be commended for that.

The hon. Member and I embarked on this journey in the same position as we approached the 2016 vote. Although over the intervening years there have been a few crossed paths, a few cross words and the odd crossed sword, I suspect that it is good, fitting and encouraging for people at home that today we are speaking with one voice about these issues.

I say to the Minister and to the hon. Member for Bootle that one of the best ways to deal with the issues raised by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim and me, and supported by colleagues in their own remarks, is to honour agreements that have been reached. When the hon. and learned Member said in his remarks that it seemed as if the people of Northern Ireland were being asked to “suck it up,” the Minister said from a sedentary position—I hope she will not fall out with me for sharing this—“No, we fight to maintain the Union.” [Interruption.] She is agreeing.

However, whenever agreement was reached earlier this year, the “Safeguarding the Union” paper outlined a number of stepping stones to a better place. The Minister and her colleagues present voted in favour of that agreement. They recognised the recurring issues in Northern Ireland, and the harm that those issues were causing the people of Northern Ireland and consumers, no matter the constitutional outlook. If constitutional principles are not shared, it harms ordinary people in Northern Ireland. They voted for solutions on an interim basis—a stepping-stone approach—to move these issues forward. Where are we on that today? What is the Government’s position on eradicating routine checks within the UK’s internal market system? They voted for it in this House back in February, and they did so because they recognised the constitutional implications that checks were having and the practical frustrations they were causing consumers in Northern Ireland.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman is addressing an important part of the Bill’s purpose—from all the rhetorical issues right down to hard tacks. The previous Government went into the negotiations on the Windsor framework because it had dawned on, and been agreed by, the European Union that the protocol was not working. It recognised that nothing is fixed; these things are about experience, and then tempering that experience and changing. Labour Members keep saying, “You’ve reached an agreement and you will breach it,” but the real principle behind that is to recognise that there are still fundamental flaws, and that we could agree a better way to harmonise everybody in that respect.

[Gavin Robinson]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful to him for co-sponsoring the Bill and being present today. He is right: the people who say in this or other debates that we cannot change what is written in tablets of stone are of the very party that was, from 1998, part of securing the Good Friday agreement, which was worked on in a political way, with parties in Northern Ireland, including my own, and changed time and again through processes at Leeds castle, the St Andrews agreement and the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006. The very arguments that they are deploying against change ignore the fact that they have a history of doing exactly the same thing—particularly on the Belfast agreement, which they often suggest is written in tablets of stone.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Iain Duncan Smith

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I rise to speak in this debate because I have had a long interest in Northern Ireland. I served in Northern Ireland in 1975. I remember the billboards at Christmas saying, “Seven years will have been too much”. To be honest with you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I hated every moment of it. I did not ask or volunteer to go there. I did not want to be doing something that I did not think I was ever trained to do, although we did carry out training. It struck me as a real problem.

I also want to say one other word about it, because often it is bandied around that political parties over here do not really get it. The Conservative party has lost a large number of people to terrorism—in the Brighton bombings alone and in other killings. We can see their coats of arms up on the wall in the Chamber. My predecessor, Norman Tebbit, has had a lifelong period of pain. His wife was disabled. She is now dead sadly, God rest her soul, and she put up with a lot as a result of her husband being in politics. The sadness is, as he leaves politics now, that he bore that all the way through. After the Good Friday agreement, he had to watch those who he knew had done it walk away. They walked away under the agreement that reduced everything to two years, and the pain he and his wife must have suffered was enormous—I know it was. I speak therefore with a certain amount of humility, as much as I speak about my own service.

The truth is, I want to talk about one particular person. Captain Robert Nairac was a good friend. He was passionate about going to Northern Ireland as a Catholic. I am a Catholic myself, and he thought that he could do something over there to help and that he would understand it. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) served with him as well. The truth is that Robert was captured. He was taken, he was tortured, we understand, and we think he was eventually executed after attempting to escape, but we do not know the full circumstances.

The sadness of all of us who have watched is that we want to know what happened. We want to get some closure. We have never understood what happened. Where is he buried? His parents went to their graves never knowing where he was. They could never go to that grave and say some words over it. That is the reality of where we are today and the point is that many people already suffer because of it.

The truth is that I do not love this Bill. I think that it is, in many senses, imperfect—as it will be—and it has problems and difficulties, some of which were related earlier. The question that we need to face is what we are really after. If we want justice in terms of prosecution and, if necessary, eventual incarceration, we need to deal with the reality that we no longer have that, because two years for murder most foul is not justice. It cannot be justice.

So do we want the prosecution to raise information? The problem is that many prosecutions are taking place against people about whom there are huge numbers of records because they happened to be servicemen and women. That is why those cases can be taken up—because the Government have all those records. Those who committed terrorist acts, however, where there is little information and little willingness to do anything about giving evidence—they may have fled the country—will remain a mystery. I talked about Robert Nairac, but I have no idea who committed that murder or how many were involved in his final demise.

All I can say is that if the Bill is about knowledge, the system at the moment is imperfect. If it is about punishment and prosecution, the system at the moment is imperfect. So what are we going to do? I understand that the Bill is a process and I think it is a genuine attempt by the Government to try to find a way that allows the families of victims to at least know and understand what happened.

My point is that things will have to change if we are to see any of this happen. On that, I have a small comment for the Opposition. I understand their position, but I wish that they had said “Maybe” rather than “No”, because we now engage in a process. The question is whether we can get some of those things right during that process. That is the point. There was an exchange between my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) about exactly what we want to achieve at the end of this and whether it can be made to achieve it. That comes down to a couple of issues, which I will deal with now.

First, we have a problem in the reconciliation process. To allow someone to just come in and say, “As far as I can recall, this happened and that’s my lot,” and for them to be told, “Well, that’s okay. Now you can go away and you’ll never be prosecuted for it. It’s alright. Don’t worry.” does not work for me, and I do not think it will work in the process. It must be much more interrogative and individuals must be cross-examined about exactly how far their knowledge went.

Secondly, I would like the commission to decide whether we are going to go ahead with this regardless of whether it considers that, on balance, the individual has told the truth and deserves any kind of immunity from future prosecution. In other words, that needs to be tightened up a great deal. If families of victims are to have any faith in it, they will need to understand that there was due process.

[Gavin Robinson]

The right hon. Gentleman touches on a good point, because the commission would consider what the individual seeking immunity says and whether it is truthful, but under the Bill it is not allowed to consider any other information. Does it not strike him as odd that it has no ability to challenge the rigour or integrity of what it is told?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I understand that. As I said earlier, with all humility to my colleagues from Northern Ireland, I start from a position of trying to find a way through. That is one of the problems with the Bill. If it is about knowledge, we have to meet that requirement somehow in the Bill, because it is not happening out there. For all the talk about prosecutions and knowledge, few of those who carried out those heinous crimes have ever ended up in the courts or will ever end up in the courts, so how can we manage to make that happen?

Another part of the problem is those who do not co-operate. I worried about the two-year issue in 1998, because it seemed unfair and not really justice. If someone blows somebody else up; murders them; or takes away a family’s father, brother, sister or whoever or a member of the armed forces who was there to protect them, they should, after committing such a crime—murder most foul—face the fullest penalty.

I understand the compromise that was made at the time—I understand that. Many of us had to bite our lips, but we understood it. My point is that if we are going to open the door on the one hand to those who would entertain the possibility of coming to speak the truth, we must also say that those who do not will face the full penalty of the law for murder most foul: “You will not be given an exemption. You will not end up with only two years. You will face a full prosecution if you are not part of this process. In other words, either you co-operate, you face the interrogation and you actually come out as having told the truth, or else you go down the other road back into the justice system and you face full prosecution.” To some degree, that would at least give balance. It would at least give an idea that somehow the process not just sought the truth, but punished those who refused to participate in that process.

I end simply on the basis that the process will never satisfy everybody. I know that, and I know that families will feel very hurt by this process so far, but I think there is a way through. The one thing that has characterised, in many senses, this House over Northern Ireland has been somehow trying to find a way through the thicket of the different positions that people take. I for one think that the process of trailing veterans—where the information is there, they had given evidence previously and they have been fact-faced at interrogations—should not go on, because it is terrible and belittling, and at the same time creates real problems for them at home. We want to find a way to settle that, but I do not want to settle it on the backs of those who still await to find out what happened.

If we can find a way through on this Bill, imperfect as it is at the moment, that would be worthy of the effort. I would encourage the Opposition to engage as much as they possibly can, because this is too important an issue to divide on in a very political sense. I want to see closure: I want to find out what happened to my friend Robert Nairac, because it troubles me every single day and I never got to say goodbye to him.