Debate on the Address

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). He and I worked closely together in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I enjoyed our time together there, and I thank him for the contribution that he and others have made to the debate.

This year marks the centenary of Northern Ireland—an opportunity for all of us who cherish our homeland to look back, to reflect, to celebrate what is good but also to look to the future. Many did not believe that Northern Ireland would achieve a centenary, and yet it has, and I believe it is testimony to the strength and resilience of the people of Northern Ireland that we have made it to our centenary. No doubt, as we look back over the past 100 years, there have been times of success and times of celebration but, sadly, also times of considerable sorrow, tragedy and division.

On this, our 100th year, our vision and our firm commitment must be to work together to ensure a prosperous and peaceful future for everyone in Northern Ireland. In that task, we must face the immediate challenges, in particular recovery from the pandemic that we have been passing through. We are committed to working with Her Majesty’s Government to address the terrible impact that the pandemic has had on our economy and on our people and their way of life. But while we have been enduring the pandemic, we in Northern Ireland have also faced a further challenge which is perhaps unique to our part of the United Kingdom, and that is, of course, the Northern Ireland protocol and its impact on our economy and on our place within the United Kingdom.

This House needs to understand fully how strongly we in Northern Ireland feel about the impact of that protocol, because it cuts across our entire society. It impacts on consumers and businesses in a way that we believe is entirely unacceptable. We want to see the Government address that, and it is a matter of regret that in the Gracious Speech today we did not hear about measures that will be introduced to address the impact of the protocol on the Northern Ireland economy and on our place within the United Kingdom. I urge the Prime Minister and the Government to bring forward measures to do so. Even the protocol itself allows for that. Under both article 13 and article 16, it provides for the UK Government to introduce measures to address the impact of the protocol on our economy and on our society and to tackle any diversion of trade that results from it.

I hear regularly from businesses in my constituency, in places such as Lisburn, Dromore, Moira and Hillsborough, that the protocol is impacting on their ability to trade with the rest of the United Kingdom. They are encountering great difficulty with their supply chains from Great Britain, just as ordinary citizens are encountering difficulties in acquiring goods and products that previously were freely available to them from suppliers in Great Britain but now are not. For my colleagues and I, that is simply unacceptable. We do not accept that the protocol should continue in its current form, or indeed in any way that interferes with our ability to trade within the United Kingdom. The protocol should be replaced with measures that fully respect Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market. That is what the Government promised us, but have not yet delivered. It will continue to be an absolute priority for us in Northern Ireland to address the protocol’s impact and to remove it and its harmful effect on Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon]

Just this week, I had the example of a farmer who is selling his cattle in the Carlisle markets. He has been told that if he does not sell his four pedigree cattle, he will have to house them in veterinary premises in Carlisle in the UK for six weeks at a cost of £50 per piece because of the Northern Ireland protocol. Is that not ludicrous?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I know that the Prime Minister places a high premium on strengthening the Union, and we welcome the measures in the Gracious Speech that are designed to strengthen the Union. We embrace the levelling-up agenda—we want to see Northern Ireland benefit from it, and we want investment in our infrastructure—but my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. If our farmers, our businesses and our citizens find that doing business with the rest of the United Kingdom is becoming increasingly difficult, that is a levelling down for Northern Ireland, not a levelling up. Great Britain is our biggest market, and the supply chains between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are vital to the economy.

The European Union has stated that its desire is to protect the Belfast agreement and the peace process in Northern Ireland—yet, as I have warned in this House, harming the economy of Northern Ireland and undermining our ability to deliver prosperity for the people of Northern Ireland undermines the peace process, because peace and prosperity go hand in hand. It pains me to see young people out once again on the streets of Northern Ireland, engaging in violence against the police. It pains me to see the instability that is arising because of concerns around the protocol. To be clear, violence is not the way to address this, but politics has to be seen to be working.

The Government must listen to those of us who have a political voice, heed what we are saying on behalf of the people who represent us, and understand the depth of concern that exists in Northern Ireland about the protocol, its impact on Northern Ireland and our economy, and its impact in undermining our place within the United Kingdom. Article 1 of the Belfast agreement is clear: there shall be no

“change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent…of its people”.

There is no consent for the Northern Ireland protocol; indeed, the consent mechanism within the Northern Ireland Assembly has been changed by the protocol in a way that diminishes the safeguards that were built into the agreement in the first place. That is intolerable, and the Government need to address it in their current and proposed legislative programme.

I value the Union, like the rest of my colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party, and I want to see Northern Ireland prosper within the Union. The world’s fifth largest economy is the United Kingdom, and our United Kingdom provides us with the support and resilience that we need through difficult times, and with incomparable opportunities when times are good. I believe that the case for the Union is strong. It is a case that I want to make and that my colleagues want to make, but the protocol undermines that case in a way that is harmful to Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.

The Gracious Speech also touches on the matter of legacy—the legacy of our troubled past in Northern Ireland. We recognise it as an issue that needs to be tackled. For too long, the innocent victims of the dreadful violence that we endured in Northern Ireland have not been given the priority that they deserve within the context of the peace process. Today, we have had a verdict delivered in the coroner’s court in Belfast on the inquests in the cases of what have been described as the Ballymurphy families. They have waited many years for this moment, and the coroner has issued his verdict today. We recognise that there is a desire across all innocent victims in Northern Ireland, whatever their background, to get to a moment where they can have a better understanding of what happened to their loved ones and to pursue justice.

We believe it would be wrong to deny people the opportunity of pursuing justice. That is why we will oppose any measure that seeks to introduce an amnesty in Northern Ireland for crimes such as murder. Sadly, our troubled past is marked at times with injustice that has occurred in Northern Ireland. The act of terrorism itself is a great injustice, and the hurt, the pain and the tragedy that it has inflicted on people in Northern Ireland and on many families is an injustice, but we must not compound injustice with further injustice.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my very good friend for allowing me to intercede. I take it that the right hon. Member will fully support the cessation of vexatious claims against veteran soldiers, veteran policemen and veteran security personnel in Northern Ireland. What he was referring to is terrorism, which is entirely different.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and he anticipated the point I was about to make. Where there is evidence that someone has committed murder or potentially committed murder, we are very clear that no one is above the law, but I am concerned, for example, about the case we saw last week in Belfast. Yet again, veterans of our armed forces were dragged before the courts, with no new evidence, having previously been subjected to article 2-compliant investigations, and were put through the agony and the distress, in their latter days, of having to go to court and defend themselves. That is what the hon. Member was referring to when he talked about vexatious prosecutions, and we opposed that.

We are clear that the veterans of our armed forces and our police officers who courageously served on the frontline and who defended our entire community against the ravages of terrorism should not be subjected to such vexatious prosecutions. There has been far too much focus—far too much focus—on our veterans and our retired police officers. We need a process that brings the spotlight on to those who caused by far the greater amount of hurt and suffering in Northern Ireland, who are those who stepped outside the law and were part of paramilitary terrorist organisations.

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I thank the right hon. Member very much for giving way. Can I just ask him one question: how many members of the security forces have been prosecuted to date?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Well, very few have been prosecuted to date for this reason: the forces of law and order, whether they be our armed forces or police, were acting to protect the community. I am very clear that if a member of the armed forces steps outside the law, of course they are amenable to the law—I am clear about that—but what I am not prepared to accept are our veterans being targeted in the way that they have been in being singled out and pursued through the courts when there is no new evidence and when they have previously been subjected to article 2-compliant investigations. That is unfair, it is wrong, and it must stop. The Government must bring forward legislation to protect veterans and retired police officers from those kinds of vexatious prosecutions. We need a proper process to deal with legacy that enables the innocent victims of terrorism, in particular, to have access to justice so as to have their cases examined. That is why we would not be in favour of measures that would close off the prospect of innocent victims having access to justice.

Northern Ireland has come a long way in the past 100 years, through very difficult and challenging times, but in good times as well. I end by paying tribute to the many hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland who continue to carry the scars of our troubled past. I want to see a Northern Ireland and a future for our people that enables us all to move forward. We cannot forget the past. We cannot pretend it did not happen. But we can take the steps that are required to ensure that it never happens again and that in the next century the mark of Northern Ireland—our place in the world—will be to be known for what we can achieve in realising the full potential of all our people in building a shared future for everyone in Northern Ireland. That is what we want. That is what we desire for our people. We learn from the past and we understand our history, but we look to the future. I have outlined measures that the Government can take to help us build that shared future to create a Northern Ireland where there is peace and prosperity for all. Let us remove the barriers to achieving those objectives.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We now go to the first of our video links—Sir John Redwood.