Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Jim Shannon Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He is right that this is not a matter of politics. I know it is the family’s wish that the Bill is operational by the spring and that is what we will be able to achieve.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for introducing this Bill, and I thank Dáithí’s family, who are in the Gallery. The Bill will make organ donation an opt-out law in Northern Ireland, just as it is on the UK mainland. That is what we want: equal laws across the whole United Kingdom. As a result of the good work and commitment of the Secretary of State and the Government, we will now have an equal law. We all support an opt out on organ transplants.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is right, of course, that we are not having an election. The Secretary of State is correct to more comprehensively push that back, because it would be pointless to miss a series of little deadlines. Ultimately, an election without either a change in the context or a change in the rules would not put power in the hands of the people and would therefore be pointless.

This is a delicate time, a sensitive time, in relation to the negotiations. Hopefully, it is also a time of possibility—a possibility that we can find a deal and an outcome with which most reasonable people can live. We have all said many words in this Chamber and outside of it about the parameters of that, so I will not dwell on it this afternoon.

Clearly, the hope and the goal is to get back into Stormont as soon as possible to get on with the things that people desperately need us to progress on—in care, climate, housing and jobs. Without doubt, health is the most acute and burning issue, in terms of the need that is out there and the corrosive impact of stop-start government and what that has done to our health service over the past number of years. This has not been an overnight problem and there will not be an overnight solution. In the absence of an Assembly, we do not have health transformation; we are having ad hoc bits and pieces of collapse, which are not cost effective and not what clinicians would wish them to be, and they are not building confidence in communities about what is ahead for public health provision.

We can look at any number of examples of services in different geographical areas, but no more so than in the South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen, where services are falling over and having to be closed without any sense of the compensatory provision that people would wish to see. People are seeing loss of services without any gain and without the improvements in health provision and outcomes that are possible if we do this properly with a locally accountable Minister and an engaged Health Committee.

I do not want to labour this point, but it is very clear that the stalemate is eroding public services. It is eroding belief in politics and it is giving comfort to some of the anti-democratic forces still skulking in the background who have not really come to terms with the agreement and with the will of most people in our society to move forward and to get on with solving our problems and creating our shared future.

This Bill, like a few that we have seen recently, is a bit of a sticking plaster on failure, but some real good is coming out of it today—thank goodness—in the progress of Dáithí’s law. I want to speak to Dáithí:

“Tá tú i do chodladh anois. Maith thú. Cinnte, tá sibh tuirseach i ndiaidh an taisteal. Duit féin, do do mhamaí, do dhaidí agus, anois, do dheirfiúr bheag, ba chomhair daoibh a bheith an-bróidiúil as an bhfeachtas a throid sibh, as an misneach a léirigh sibh, agus as an mbua mór a bhain sibh amach le chéile. Agus a Dhaithí, ár laoch, iarraim ar Dhia go mbeidh dea-scéal agus croí nua agat go luath.”

To Dáithí, to your family, to your mum and dad, and now to your wee brother: You should be so proud of all that you have achieved together—the huge progress that you have made. You have been a hero to so many people and we all just hope that you get good news and a new heart soon, and we are all with you.

It is important that we say well done to that lovely family for all that they have achieved, and to so many people who have progressed the issue over the years. I pay tribute to Jo-Anne Dobson, an Ulster Unionist MLA, who advanced the issue substantially in a previous Assembly, bringing the issue to public attention and making it a political reality. She loosened the lid.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady rightly refers to Jo-Anne Dobson, who has been through this situation—she had a young son, Mark, who had a transplant, without which he would not be here today. The hon. Lady looks to history, and the history is right, and she has expressed it in a very kind fashion.

[Claire Hanna]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to others, including Fearghal McKinney, who is here from the British Heart Foundation and has worked on this issue for many years and with his colleagues has helped to get all the ducks in a row to allow the family to have the reach they need and the regulations in place. I also pay tribute to Joe Brolly and Shane Finnegan from my own parish of St Brigid’s. Joe Brolly’s act of decency and humanity a few years ago in giving his kidney to a relative stranger opened many people’s eyes; it stopped us in our tracks and underlined how meaningful and how important for life organ donation is.

I hope all those people, particularly Dáithí and his family, who brought the issue to this point, take some pride in and encouragement from their achievement, and I hope it will encourage and remind all of us in elected life that we can do good things when we work together. There are many things we need to do, and hopefully these couple of weeks can see progress and allow us collectively to get on with making many other necessary and positive changes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is always a pleasure to make a contribution on anything that refers to Northern Ireland, but particularly today on the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill. I wish to make some comments that I hope will be constructive and helpful.

Here we go again. We have heard this so much, and I am sure most of my hon. Friends in this House and those outside will be able to join in over the course of my contribution. While I may seek to change the style of address and even the words used, the substance is the same, and that is because it must be the same, because the facts have not changed. The DUP cannot and will not nominate to the Assembly until the seven conditions of the pledge that our leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) has made are met. With that being the case, this Bill is a necessity.

The tone today of everyone in the Chamber has been constructive and helpful. I believe we are looking, hopefully with confidence and optimism, to the future as we try to bring things together. What a pleasure it is to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I am not giving him a big head, but he does make a significant contribution and brings wisdom to these debates, and I put that on record and thank him for that. As we move forward, his understanding of where we are is something I have taken note of in the short time I have been in the House. He has been in the House longer than me.

I refer first to the protocol and the democratic deficit. Others have mentioned that, and I want to speak to it as well. For us, the protocol violates the Belfast/Good Friday treaty commitment protection to uphold the rights of the people of Northern Ireland to pursue

“democratically national and political aspirations”,

as the state parties committed themselves to from 1998. At that time, I was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I supported that process, as did all my colleagues who were Members of the Assembly at that time. It was a stage of life where we may have been a bit hesitant in moving forward, but we realised that to have a working Northern Ireland Assembly, we had to have contributions from both sides of the Chamber—nationalists and Unionists—to move forward. The process put forward was one that certainly many of us bought into.

The people of Northern Ireland were able to pursue democratically national and political aspirations with respect to all the laws to which they were subject. The protocol strips the people of Northern Ireland of that right in relation not to 300 laws, but 300 areas of lawmaking to which they are subject. It constitutes an attack on other legal protections, such as article 25 of the international covenant on civil and political rights. There is huge interest in the Belfast/Good Friday agreement as one of the most famous treaties in the world ahead of the 25th anniversary celebrations, which afford special leverage.

I put on record my concerns in relation to the seven conditions. My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) is not here at the moment, but in meetings that he and I have had in the past, I have always underlined the importance of us in this House, not Brussels, having the final decision on anything referred to the European Court of Justice. That is one of the things I would have loved to have seen, and that is one of our seven conditions—our line in the sand—for where we are as a party.

The Belfast/Good Friday agreement protects rights and safeguards equality of opportunities and human rights in particular. It has commitments to mutual respect, civil rights and religious liberties for everyone in the community. I adhere to that in everything I do in this House, and Members will know that I speak highly and rightly in terms of human rights issues. I am my party’s human rights spokesperson. I speak on freedom of religion or belief on behalf of those across the world. Just last weekend I was in Pakistan, where we were upholding the rights of people to have religious liberty and be able to worship their God as they so wished to do. The Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee referred to prayer, which I believe in fervently. We must pray fervently, earnestly and unceasingly, because prayer does make a difference. With prayer we can move mountains, and I think we need prayer in this process. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement affirms:

“the right of free political thought; the right to freedom and expression of religion; the right to pursue democratically national and political aspirations; the right to seek constitutional change by peaceful and legitimate means”.

Those are the things I wish to see in the early stages.

We have been concerned in my constituency of Strangford. We did vote to leave in the referendum, by the way, and many businesses are impacted by the movement of goods and the extra tariffs. It has affected the contact between companies that have done business for 30, 40 or 50 years. We have the impact on nurseries, the purchase of steel, car dealers, farmers and pet travel. All these things are critical factors for people as a result of what the EU has done up until now. I know that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central referred to the fact that some changes have been made, but the changes need to be more significant. We welcome the move away from intransigence and obstacles, but unfortunately many of those remain in place.

These conditions are not frivolous. We are notbeing, to use a word that I use all the time, thran, as my mother would say. The spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), will know all about thran. The words I use are words that he can recognise and relate to. We do not seek to garner public support; we seek to represent the public who have felt this annexation by stealth. We seek to speak for the people who are taxed without democratic representation, and we seek to speak for the small businessman who has received HMRC correspondence asking him or her to pay duty on products being shipped from Scotland to Northern Ireland, when they have already paid duty on it and they are asked to pay it again. There are double costs for Northern Ireland businesses as against the rest of the United Kingdom.

The former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a saying that I have often kept in my mind, which is that Northern Ireland is as British as Finchley. Well, no, it is not, but it needs to be. I know that the Secretary of State will relate to that, and others in the House as will understand the point I am making. I want to be the same as everybody else, and my people—the constituents I have the pleasure and the privilege to represent—also want that.

We seek to outline the need for constitutional changes to be voted on and dealt with through an appropriate mechanism, not as a weapon to beat the British Government with. It is not about that. For us to do this, we need a Government who take us seriously, and that was not done. The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), referred to this in his contribution—and I took note of it, by the way. He is an honourable man, and I know that he seeks to find a way forward that we can all agree on. That has left us with no option but to abstain, which is a tactic well used by others before to little comment or media attention.

So I am delighted to hear that Europe is again prepared to negotiate. I will of course be more delighted when supplied with the actual detail and can go over it to ensure that it is a deal that not only works for Europe and the remainer section, but is workable for Unionists. I think Tony Blair said that Bertie Ahern had said that in any way forward there has to be buy-in from Unionists. To anybody who thinks there cannot be, I say, “Honestly, guys, you’ve got to wake up and realise it can’t happen.” In the discussions—the friendly discussions—that I have had with the shadow Secretary of State, we have very clearly said that there must be buy-in from Unionists, and that is something we must see in place.

We have all seen the co-ordination of the media pointing the finger at the DUP for standing in the way of decision making. I have been very clear in this House that the Government have taken several decisions in this House already, including a very costly Irish language and identity Bill along with the even more costly—in terms of life—abortion legislation. Both of these and others were done from this place over the head of the institutions. When I heard the Secretary of State say last night that he had tabled an amendment to bring in Dáithí’s law, I was pleased—I put that on record, and I thank the Secretary of State for that—to see that matters of life and death did actually concern the Government when it came to Northern Ireland and that saving life could be as important as the ability to indiscriminately take one in one of the most liberal abortion regimes in Europe.

I want to mention Dáithí’s law. Others have done so, but I want to put on record that I am greatly moved and impressed by that young six-year-old, and impressed by his parents and his family, as well as by the honourable gentleman in the Gallery, Fearghal McKinney. He has been a friend for a long time, and we appreciate his work and efforts behind the scenes.

I want to tell a quick story about my nephew, and this is why I really support the opt-out system. I have always supported it: I have supported it in this Chamber for many years and I supported it before I came to this Chamber. I have a nephew called Peter, who was born with a kidney the size of a peanut. Members may say, “My goodness, how can you survive?” Well, the fact is that he did survive, but he survived because he had treatment from the day he was born right through until he had a transplant at the age of 16. I can remember that, as he grew up, he was the colour of a bowl of custard—as yellow as can be—because his system was not working.

I remember when Peter played with my boys, and my boys are very boisterous. They are young men now, of course, but they were very boisterous—I think boys always are boisterous, and probably wee girls are as well, but I would not know because I never had a wee girl, so I cannot say in all honesty, but others have, and they will understand what I mean. However, Peter was never able to run and play as my boys did. So for me and for his family—his mum and dad, and his brother and sister—when he got the transplant, it was really important. That is why this opt-out organ donation law is so important.

Peter waited for years upon years to get that transplant, but he got it, and today he is as fit as a fiddle. I remember that at the beginning when he had his transplant he took his first job, which was delivering newspapers. It was something he never thought he could do. It is a small thing—Members may say, “Look, Jim, that’s not very much”—but it was a whole lot for him, because he was never able to do any of those things. So when it comes to Dáithí’s law, I can tell Members that my family are incredibly pleased to see this coming in, because we understand this from Dáithí himself and the family, as well as from those who have worked hard, with all the party political contributions, such as those from my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna), who referred to Jo-Anne Dobson as well. I remember her very well, and what she did for her son and how that gave him life. Those are the things that are incredibly important.

As colleagues have pointed out, the Secretary of State did not need to table new clause 2, because he could merely have accepted new clause 1, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley and supported by the hon. Members for Belfast South, for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and for North Down (Stephen Farry), as well as by me and other party colleagues. This circumvention of our amendment is notable in itself, and it begs the question of why it is necessary when the Northern Ireland MPs across the parties that take their seats here had already submitted an amendment. None the less, we are very pleased to see it coming forward. Little wonder that, yet again, my constituents in Strangford and people across all of Northern Ireland are highlighting to me the fact that absenteeism by certain nationalists seems to get better representation from the Government here than those who take their seat and carry out voting. It is strange that it does not seem to work with negotiation in Europe for Unionist concerns; we await to be advised otherwise.

I support this Bill and the new clause that the Secretary of State will bring forward, which is necessary. This is something I have supported since my own nephew was blessed enough to be an organ recipient, and he is a fit and healthy young man. Mark has his own house and his job, and he works away. I have often said that those who do not want to donate should have a simple ability to opt out, and that is included. I therefore have no qualms whatsoever in supporting this Bill.

Geoffrey Robinson, who used to be a Member of this House—he sat on that Opposition Bench, if I recall rightly—brought forward the organ donation opt-out, supported by the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), and I was one of the co-sponsors. I was very glad to play a small part on an organ donation Bill in this House to change the law in England and Wales, and ultimately we can see that coming our way in Northern Ireland.

I conclude with this. There is also a clear need to allow time before an election, and we in the DUP are ready for that election. We stand strong on representation for the Unionist people with a very strong mandate. It is a mandate on which we intend to stand firm—the rock we have taken from our people, our constituents and our supporters—which is to allow for the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to come through and take effect. That will allow for a real and proper negotiation to take place with Europe to allow the DUP—my party, my colleagues and our supporters across all of Northern Ireland, but especially in Strangford—to get back in to do what we want to do, which is to take Northern Ireland forward as an integrated part of this wonderful United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As I often say, we are always stronger together and we are always better together. As long as Europe is honestly prepared for and agreeable to find an agreement, I hope and pray that those things can come our way and we can have the peace, stability and the political institutions in Northern Ireland once again.