Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Elliott]

I have not seen the option of veto exercised to a great degree with other appointments, so I would have concerns about whether that would work in this case.

By and large, there was a degree of support for the historical investigations unit director possibly being appointed by the Policing Board, but if that appointment was to be made by another independent body, we would be quite happy to consider that. In fact, the Ulster Unionist party initially proposed that the decision should be made by an independent body, not the Policing Board. The proposal to use the Policing Board came from another political party and we said as a compromise that that could be an option, which seemed to engender support.

That is our view. I should have thought that it would have received broad support, but perhaps that is wrong. In general, I think it is important that we try to move away from that political appointment process into a more independent one, because clearly we are dealing with very sensitive issues and material, so it is important that we have people of the right ability and calibre. The Policing Board has a track record, I know, and although I take the point made by the hon. Member for South Antrim about members of Sinn Féin being on the Policing Board, it has appointed the past three Chief Constables, the past three Deputy Chief Constables and a significant number of Assistant Chief Constables. Clearly, the board has done a lot of work on the appointment process for significant police officers and high-profile police officers, so I would argue that as they are well-versed in making such appointments the process might have been better and more independent if they made the decision rather than just the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

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

We are unable to support the proposition behind amendment 1. We are not against the concept of moving towards greater independence for such appointments, but in the context of getting a political agreement that was not possible, as the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) rightly acknowledged. The Stormont agreement therefore gives the responsibility for making the appointment to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said and would echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson)—East Antrim, not South. We have not yet redrawn the boundaries in Northern Ireland, although we are going to.

We have two difficulties with the proposal to use the Policing Board. May I say that having served on the Policing Board, I fully support it as an institution. It does a good job on the whole question of accountability in policing. Our objection is not on the basis that the Policing Board is somehow deficient, but the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone revealed his true objective and motivation when he talked about the suitability of the Deputy First Minister to be involved in this appointment because of his alleged past in the IRA.

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but the difficulty I have is twofold. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim rightly pointed out, we have three Sinn Féin members on the Northern Ireland Policing Board: Gerry Kelly, Pat Sheehan and Caitríona Ruane. At least two of those members have past convictions for IRA terrorism, so passing responsibility to the Policing Board does not resolve the difficulty the hon. Gentleman refers to, in terms of victims and survivors of the conflict in Northern Ireland having a problem with anyone from Sinn Féin being involved in the appointments process—a concern I have much sympathy with.

I depart from the hon. Gentleman on the second point made by my hon. Friend, on the question of the veto. The current arrangement that gives us a veto in the office of the First Minister over who is appointed is surely a far stronger safeguard to ensure that the people who are appointed to this very sensitive role are people that the victims and survivors community can have confidence in. If we go to the Policing Board, there is no such veto. Indeed, the political influence on the Policing Board is outweighed by the independent influence. I emphasise that I have nothing against the current structure of the Policing Board; I am merely making the point that if you want to exercise a degree of accountability on this issue and ensure that the people who are appointed to this very sensitive role are appropriate for that role, having a veto gives you the leverage to ensure that that happens, whereas if you pass it to the Policing Board you lose that veto.

For those reasons, we will not be able to support the amendment.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I rise to speak in support of amendment 7.

On Second Reading, I said that we must cast our minds back to the reasons for the independent reporting commission. This all emerged in the violence and terrorism of last year when two people lost their lives: Gerard Davison at the beginning of May, in the Lower Ormeau and Markets area of south Belfast; and Kevin McGuigan, somewhere in that same location. As a result of those deaths and the breakdown of relationships around the Executive table, we had negotiations on the Stormont House agreement. During those negotiations, the SDLP circulated papers to the three Governments and all parties on a whole enforcement approach, and a whole community approach. We believe that the answers and the solution must come not only from Government and from political parties but from the wider community. There must be a buy-in to a solution, to the eradication of terrorism, violence and antisocial behaviour and to an upholding of democratic principles. We also believe that, although “Fresh Start” was designed and managed to be a two-party deal, there should have been all-party work on the membership of the independent reporting commission. How can the work of that commission and its mandate, which includes the Irish Government and Dublin representatives, be reconciled with that approach by Sinn Fein?

During the Second Reading debate, I asked the Secretary of State to say precisely what new moneys would be made available to the National Crime Agency and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when those moneys would be released and what the split between the two would be. That set some of the background for our amendment. Like the Ulster Unionist party, we feel that the credibility of the independent reporting commission would be enhanced if it involved the Executive more widely rather than just the First and Deputy First Ministers. We believe that it is not a Policing Board matter, which is why we have specified that the two members will be appointed by the Justice Minister in consultation with the First and Deputy First Ministers, subject to Executive approval, hence providing the transparency and accountability that are required in this particularly vexatious issue. All of us on these Benches are agreed on one point. We want to see an end to violence, paramilitarism and terrorism. Above all, we want to see the upholding of democratic principles of government and in the wider civic community.

I support our amendment 7 in this group.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) in speaking to our amendment, I want to deal with a few of the points that have been made about this group of clauses on the independent reporting commission.

At the original Stormont House talks in late 2014, the SDLP proposed that the agenda should include paramilitarism and organised crime. It did not take the murders that subsequently happened to tell us that that was still a serious issue that should not be ignored in any serious negotiations. Unfortunately, we were not supported by other parties, who seemed to believe that that would somehow not be a problem. So we are now addressing an issue that other parties chose to ignore. Whenever the murders happened last year, a political crisis was created over issues that parties chose to ignore and then dramatically tried to advertise.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive us if we take his comments as tongue in cheek, given that we were told after the Good Friday agreement in 1998 that these problems were all being dealt with, and the agreement was a comprehensive approach to resolving the issues relating to our conflict in Northern Ireland. We are still dealing with them 18 years later so he should not point the finger at those of us who warned in 1998 that the agreement was deficient in that regard.

[Mark Durkan]

Without getting drawn too far away from the subject of the Bill, none of us pretended that the 1998 agreement would absolutely solve the problems or dissolve any of the paramilitary organisations. We committed to a framework for decommissioning and a number of other changes. We consistently supported the existence of the Independent Monitoring Commission to deal with the questions of ongoing paramilitary activity. In this House, whenever the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), announced that the IMC was being wound up, some of us said, “You are taking away the monitoring commission because Sinn Fein has made a political issue of it, but the issue of paramilitarism has not gone away, and it will come back.” We pointed out that something like the IMC would end up being needed. That is exactly what happened last year.

Some of us have been consistent about recognising where there are problems and that they need to continue to be addressed. We were right about the questions arising when the IMC was wound up with no procedure to deal with ongoing concerns. We were right to say that the issue needed to be addressed in the Stormont House agreement. We were right in the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for South Down has described when we said that we needed an enforcement approach and a whole community approach to secure an end to paramilitarism, as well as all the other changes that were needed to achieve a wholesome society. We were the only parties that advocated such proposals. To an extent, some of the sentiment of that is reflected in the agreement, but in a highly edited, partial and incomplete way, and that is why we have tabled our amendments.

We used to have an Independent Monitoring Commission that reported. Now we have an independent reporting commission. The legislation does not seem able to say “monitor”. The “Fresh Start” agreement refers to the term “monitoring”, but for some reason “monitoring” is not in the Bill. It is as though the legislation has carefully avoided saying anything that the commission will actually do. So we have to look at the “Fresh Start” agreement to see what the commission might actually do. For some reason, it is avoided in the lengthy clauses of the Bill.

The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) said that under the “Fresh Start” agreement the appointments, as well as the one appointment by the British Government and the one by the Irish Government, were to be made by the First and Deputy First Ministers. They were not. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) is correct. The “Fresh Start” agreement said that the Executive shall nominate two members. Therefore, our amendment is consistent with what is in the “Fresh Start” agreement. It says that the appointment should be made, rather than by the First and Deputy First Minister, by the Justice Minister after consultation with the First and Deputy First Minister and in agreement with the Executive. So our amendment is more consistent with the “Fresh Start” agreement than the clause or the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment.

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[Ms Ritchie]

A number of Members, including the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), who raises this issue again through her amendment, have asked questions about the content and policing of the pledge and undertaking. That was done on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), as well as by the hon. Lady, who has enunciated her views on the principle again today.

I shall speak to my party’s amendments. Amendment 10 refers to paragraph (e) in schedule 4 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and clarifies that Ministers are already subject to a requirement to act in accordance with all decisions made by the Executive and the Assembly. Amendment 16 deals with clause 8, inserting the words “others, including” in the reference to MLAs. The provision might seem small, but it is central to the whole-community approach that will be needed to tackle paramilitary activity. It would compel Members of the Assembly to work with civic society in Northern Ireland, reflecting our approach during the Stormont House agreement of having that community approach to ridding Northern Ireland of paramilitarism.

I agree with the hon. Lady that paramilitarism has been a scourge and a cancer in our society, right across the community, and we want rid of it, but we also believe that there must be adherence the best democratic principles within our elected institutions. Our reference in amendment 15 to the Nolan principles would ensure that this progress and political action on paramilitarism extends to MPs, councillors and all in public office. Having the First Ministers make their pledge orally at a sitting of the Assembly would publicise a cross-executive commitment to a society free from the blight of paramilitarism. In our papers for the Stormont House talks, we advocated a community approach, stating:

“Political parties ought to be showing coherent and consistent shared standards which recognise and repudiate nefarious paramilitary interests and involvements. This should reflect a shared approach which is about rooting out paramilitarism and its trace activities, not just singling out particular groups or given parties.”

Our amendments would clarify the terms of the pledge and undertaking and avoid further misinterpretation or a tension between different parts of the pledge and undertaking. As I have said previously, the duty in the Bill to

“support those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism”

is vague and could be misinterpreted as supporting someone or a group that is determined to someday move away from paramilitarism. The SDLP is in favour of support for transition away from paramilitarism, but wants to ensure that that cannot be used to cover tolerance for paramilitary activity, for which there should be no tolerance. Combining what are currently two distinct precepts of the pledge and undertaking into one would reduce that risk.

I have direct experience of this issue. As a former Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive, on Tuesday 16 October 2007—I remember the date exactly—I cut off funding to the conflict transformation initiative following advice from the then Chief Constable, deputy Chief Constable and others that the Ulster Defence Association was engaging in criminality. Maintaining that funding would have been construed as supporting paramilitarism, not transition, however determined the UDA was to do that someday.

Like the hon. Member for North Down, we have concerns about the policing of the pledge and undertaking. Any progress on tackling paramilitary activity is undermined by any suggestion that there are no consequences for non-compliance. I note that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) was making soundings in our direction. I hope he will see fit to support our amendments on sanctions in relation to the pledge and undertaking.

We envisage that the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Complaints and the Northern Ireland Assembly Commissioner for Standards would receive any complaints relating to breaches of the pledge and undertaking. Both could avail themselves of the services of a pledge adjudicator on a case-by-case basis, if that was felt to be appropriate. The whole purpose of our amendments is to ensure best compliance and conformity with good democratic principles, and that we have a total move away from the scourge of paramilitarism that has been in Northern Ireland society for far too long.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

We support amendment 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). There is much merit in what she says. When we ask Members of a legislature to give an undertaking that they will behave in a certain way and abide by certain principles, surely there should be some sanction when they breach those principles and their undertaking. We are not asking hon. Members—neither is the hon. Lady—to prescribe what the sanctions should be. We merely want to ensure, as is our duty as the sovereign Parliament, that the Standing Orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly reflect the need for such sanctions. It is our duty to legislate for this element of the Stormont agreement, and we believe that what the hon. Lady has proposed is sensible and prudent. This is a question of not just the politics of all this, but public confidence in the Northern Ireland Assembly, its operation and those who are elected to it.

We talk about a fresh start. We have Assembly elections on 5 May. The Members who will be elected to the Assembly for the first time after that election will be required to make this undertaking. I think that that is the appropriate moment when the Assembly should be saying that we can have no more of a situation in which some people may have been ambivalent in their attitude towards paramilitarism in the past. Everyone has to be very clear about where they stand and it is important to have the undertaking. It is also important, for public confidence and for the accountability of our public representatives, to have a sanction. It is for the Assembly to prescribe that sanction, but it is for this House to ensure that the requirement for that is in Standing Orders. We will support the hon. Lady’s amendment.

[Mark Durkan]

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) said, the SDLP has tabled several amendments on this issue. I take on board what the Minister said in an attempt to give a “prebuttal” of our amendments, and I will come on to amendment 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), when I speak to clause 8.

We have tabled amendments 8 to 12 to clause 7. The Minister tried to say there would be no tension in interpretation between different parts of the proposed pledge of office. Proposed new sub-paragraphs (cf) and (cg) of schedule 4 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998—

“to work collectively with the other members of the Executive Committee to achieve a society free of paramilitarism”

and

“to challenge all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”—

could well find themselves in tension with another Minister’s understanding of proposed new sub-paragraph (cj), which is to

“support those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism.”

My hon. Friend the Member for South Down described the situation in which she found herself. She tried, as stated in proposed sub-paragraph (cf), to

“work collectively with other members of the Executive…to achieve a society free of paramilitarism”,

and she was told at that time, “No, it’s in your Department. You do your own thing. You make that decision.” She then acted on the basis of, as in proposed sub-paragraph (cg), challenging

“all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”

only to find herself undermined by other members of the Executive, who said that they were actually discharging the requirement of proposed sub-paragraph (cj) as supporting

“those who are determined to make the transition away from paramilitarism”.

That issue ended up in the courts, so there is already proven experience of exactly the contradictions and tensions that can exist between these things when they are different bullet points that can be quoted separately. This is a recipe for confusion, nonsense and obfuscation.

We also need to recognise that people will interpret various parts of the pledge differently. Will the Minister tell us whether denying something as paramilitary activity breaches the line in the pledge to

“challenge all paramilitary activity and associated criminality”?

When someone turns around and says, “Oh no, so and so is not engaged in paramilitary activity or associated criminality; they are a good republican,” does that mean they are in breach of proposed sub-paragraph (cg)? Is that a failure to challenge? Is denial a failure to challenge, or can denial exist alongside the commitment to challenge all paramilitary activity, because someone can say that as paramilitary activity and associated criminality is not defined by anybody else, it is what anybody wants to define it to be? This touches on a point made earlier by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) on the earlier group.

Clause 7 is wide open for misinterpretation and misapplication, which will lead to people being scandalised. It will not avoid us being in exactly the sort of crisis situation we had last year. In the aftermath of a horrible crime and comments that the Chief Constable could not avoid making, we then had political difficulties. The terms of the pledge of office and the undertaking are meant to avoid our being back in that situation, but they will clearly fail to do so. That is why we have tabled our amendments.

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[Mr Wallace]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is totally wrong to equate the two. I believe that the remedy for that is in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is where the power to amend the definition of victims lies. I urge the Assembly always to keep at the forefront of its mind the fact that the two are not the same, because that will go further than us, as a Government, imposing that change.

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I beg to differ with the Minister about this. Many victims and survivors who were affected by the troubles in Northern Ireland neither reside in nor came from Northern Ireland; in fact, they may even be the Minister’s constituents. Given that hundreds of soldiers who were injured or killed in Northern Ireland came from Great Britain, that police officers came from Great Britain and that civilians were injured in Great Britain in acts of terrorism committed in connection with the troubles, to suggest that the definition of victim and survivor is a matter to be dealt with by the Northern Ireland Assembly misses the point. Victims and survivors came from all over the United Kingdom, so it is for this Parliament to determine who is a victim and survivor.

[Mr Wallace]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I do not disagree with a large part of it, but the Bill deals with the “Fresh Start” agreement—the Stormont House agreement—in so far as it applies in Northern Ireland. I am sure that there will be further opportunities to redefine “victims” as that term would apply in the United Kingdom. Under the previous Government, the Ministry of Justice did a lot of work to ensure that the criminal injuries compensation scheme did not extend to burglars, robbers and everyone else who had managed to claim against it when they had perpetrated a crime. Precedents in United Kingdom law, or certainly in English and Welsh law, make that difference clear. I hear loud and clear what the right hon. Gentleman says, and I hope that there will be opportunities to address that in future legislation, but today we are considering this Bill, which is a consequence of the “Fresh Start” agreement.

New clause 4 would establish the implementation and reconciliation group, which is one of four new bodies to be established as part of the Stormont House agreement. The others are, as we had hoped, the historical investigations unit, the independent commission on information retrieval and the oral history archive. Members will be aware that the Government continue to support the establishment of all those bodies and the other measures in the Stormont House agreement. However, for reasons that I will set out, we do not agree that it would be a positive step to move ahead with the IRG in the absence of the other bodies and measures. The IRG and the other measures to deal with Northern Ireland’s past require cross-community support in Northern Ireland and must be dealt with as part of the package of bodies and measures proposed in the Stormont House agreement.

As I have mentioned, the IRG is an integral part of the four bodies proposed in the Stormont House agreement. The Government have committed £150 million towards the establishment of those bodies as part of our commitment to help Northern Ireland to deal with its troubled past. The design and implementation of the bodies was considered as part of the intense negotiations during the “Fresh Start” legacy talks, but the establishment of the IRG and the other legacy mechanisms could not be agreed at the time. The Government continue to work on making progress on the legacy strand of those negotiations. As is set out in the Stormont House agreement, the Government support much of what was proposed. The IRG should receive and commission reports; it should promote reconciliation; it should be appointed by Northern Irish political parties, the UK Government and the Irish Government; and it should have a chair of international standing who is nominated jointly by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister.

As Members know, there have been a number of previous initiatives aimed at addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland’s troubled past, and they have all recognised that it cannot be reduced to a one-dimensional issue. No single approach or solution will work in isolation; a concerted and multifaceted approach is required. The Stormont House agreement makes it clear that the four legacy bodies are intended to constitute a package of measures to deal with the past, each addressing a different dimension of this difficult issue.

I suggest that establishing the IRG on its own would not ultimately promote reconciliation, although that is a key function of the body. I say that because the proposed new clause ignores many of the ingredients acknowledged by the political parties in Northern Ireland as integral to dealing with Northern Ireland’s past. Those ingredients must address the suffering of victims and survivors, facilitate the pursuit of justice and information recovery, and be balanced, proportionate, transparent, fair and equitable.

A significant criticism that victims have raised with us regarding the current approach is the piecemeal nature of how legacy matters are dealt with. I do not think that we wish to perpetuate that through a piecemeal implementation of the legacy institutions. The IRG, as an integral part of the Stormont House agreement, can realistically be implemented only in parallel with the other legacy bodies, and it is clear that progress on the whole package of legacy mechanisms must have cross-community support in Northern Ireland.

I recognise the views of UUP and SDLP Members about new clauses 2 and 3. Indeed, I sympathise with the sentiment behind the measures. On the face of it, reverting to the pre-St. Andrews agreement method of electing the First and Deputy First Ministers might be a welcome change, because that involved an overt demonstration of cross-community support. However, to accept the new clauses would be to turn back the clock to before the St Andrews agreement and the subsequent legislation, which is the basis on which devolved government was restored in 2007 and continues to this day. The reality is that such changes would need to be supported on a cross-community basis, but that has not happened. The purpose of the Bill is to implement the Government’s commitments under the “Fresh Start” agreement, and the proposals go beyond that agreement.

I am concerned that if we made changes to the institutions without cross- community support in Northern Ireland, we would risk destabilising the political process in Northern Ireland, damaging the substantial progress that we have made and diverting attention from the challenges and opportunities that Northern Ireland faces. Our priority in supporting devolved politics in Northern Ireland must be to implement the “Fresh Start” and Stormont House agreements, and we are taking another step towards that with this Bill. I recognise that this matter has been considered in the past. The same amendment was tabled in the other place during the passage of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill in early 2014, but the Government could not support it then. I am afraid that, for the same reason, we will not do so today.

I have outlined the reasons why the Government will not support new clauses 1 to 5 and amendment 2, and I urge hon. Members not to press them to a Division.

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[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

We welcome the passage of the Bill. We are a signatory, as it were, to the Stormont agreement. We want to see its implementation. Equally, we want to see the implementation of the Stormont House agreement. I echo the sentiments of the Secretary of State, particularly in relation to the bodies that will deal with the legacy issues—the historical investigations unit being prime among them.

Every day, I talk to constituents, victims and survivors in Northern Ireland. There is a deep sense of frustration on their part that the media are full of the whingeing of Sinn Féin about what the state did and what the Government did. The stark statistics speak for themselves: 90% of the killings carried out in what we call the “troubles” were carried by out terrorist organisations. Some 60% of those killings were carried out by republican terrorists. There are 3,000 unsolved murders linked to the troubles in Northern Ireland, yet we have the absurdity of scores of police officers reviewing the killings known as “Blood Sunday” in Londonderry and not a single police officer looking at the equally bloody Sunday in the constituency of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott), when the Provisional IRA exploded a bomb at the cenotaph and murdered many innocent people. Today, not a single police officer is being deployed to investigate those responsible for that murder.

Looking at that situation, we can understand why ordinary people in Northern Ireland are left deeply frustrated. Ninety per cent. of killings get little or no attention, yet the focus is constantly on what the state did, constantly on what our brave soldiers did and constantly on what our brave police officers did. In many instances, the killings carried out by the state were entirely lawful and legitimate, and carried out against terrorists engaged in acts of violence and terrorism. They were often in self-defence.

We have inquests. We have investigations. We have inquiries. We have hundreds of millions of pounds spent on investigating what the state did. The innocent victims are not only not getting the attention they deserve; they have to accept—they do not accept it; “endure” is perhaps the word—a definition of “victim” that in law equates them with the perpetrators. That is something this House ought to address. There is no consensus in Northern Ireland on the definition of “victim”, and I do not think the Northern Ireland Assembly is likely to agree one in the near future. There was debate on this in the Stormont House discussions and it has been discussed at length in the past. I presented a private Member’s Bill in this House to change the definitions of victim and survivor. I tabled amendments to the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. My party has tabled an amendment to this Bill, as has the Ulster Unionist party. We still do not have a change to the definition of victim and survivor.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is right to say that this matter goes beyond the people who live in Northern Ireland. It includes many who served in Northern Ireland, and the victims of the Birmingham, Manchester, Canary Wharf, Bishopsgate and Guildford bombings. There are many instances of terrorist atrocities carried out by republican terrorists here.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Does my right hon. Friend believe that the injustice was further compounded earlier this week, when the Legal Aid Agency refused to support the just quest of the families of the Hyde Park bombing for civil support in their pursuit against John Downey?

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[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The other day I was in the lift with Lord Tebbit and I asked after his wife. I think of the Brighton bomb—the Conservative party knows this all too well—which was a blow to the heart of British democracy if ever there was one. I think of Lord Tebbit’s wife. I think of others who died in that attempt by the Provisional IRA to blast British democracy.

As Lord Tebbit himself asked, why is the man who planted the bomb being equated with the victims of the Brighton bombing? With the greatest of respect to the Secretary of State and the Minister, I say that this is not a matter just for the Northern Ireland Assembly; it is a matter for every Member of this House of Commons. We all have constituents who served in Northern Ireland, and many of us have constituents who died or were injured there. They are all victims and survivors. The Minister himself would come under the category of “survivor”, yet he is equated with the very people whom he lawfully was seeking to bring to book and who were holding Northern Ireland to ransom.

My final point concerns an amendment of ours that unfortunately was not debated this afternoon. I disagree with the Minister. The military covenant is not being fully implemented in Northern Ireland. I will send him copies of responses I have had from Departments in Northern Ireland specifically stating that constituents of mine who have undertaken military service cannot benefit from the military covenant because of section 75. I will share that correspondence with him so that he can see our frustration at hearing Ministers deny there is a problem. We, as Members representing constituencies in Northern Ireland, have constituents who served in our armed forces who are not getting the full benefit of the military covenant because of section 75. I hope he will understand our frustration.

[Mr Wallace]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s frustration. That is why, when I was appointed, instead of waiting on areas like mental health, I went around the problem, approached Combat Stress and said, “What’s important to veterans and victims is outcomes and getting a service. I’m not too fussed who delivers it. I just want to get the service delivered to them.” I hope that is partly why we have got where we have with Combat Stress, but I am happy to listen to other areas of frustration and see what we can do to deliver the service.

[Mr Donaldson]

I entirely accept what the Minister has said. I have nothing but admiration for his efforts to ensure that veterans of our armed forces living in Northern Ireland receive the support they deserve. However, I have had constituents say to me, “I have returned to live in Northern Ireland, and the military covenant tells me that I should have access to medical care on the same basis as other residents of Northern Ireland, as if I had lived in Northern Ireland, but I don’t”. The covenant says not that there should be special advantages, but that veterans should not be disadvantaged by virtue of their service. In reality, veterans in Northern Ireland who return to Northern Ireland are being disadvantaged by their service. They go to the bottom of the waiting list, instead of being placed in the list where they would have been had they been ordinarily resident. That is what the military covenant should be doing for veterans, but it is not currently delivering. We will be happy to meet the Minister to discuss how we can overcome this difficulty and ensure that the military covenant delivers.

We welcome and support the Bill and the Secretary of State’s ongoing efforts to conclude the other elements of the Stormont House agreement. We stand with her on issues such as national security, and we hope that we will see this matter through to a successful conclusion. We all owe it to the people of Northern Ireland to do so.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It might help the House to know that, because of the time available for the following debate and because of the great importance of the business being discussed by right hon. and hon. Friends from Northern Ireland, I do not intend to move the following motion, in the hope that the Backbench Business Committee will allow me to bring it back before the House when we have more time to discuss it.