Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]

Julian Smith Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Julian Smith)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It has been seven years since the Northern Ireland Executive established an independent inquiry into historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland. Today’s legislation is based on an inquiry and report, undertaken by Sir Anthony Hart, that occupied 223 days of hearings. The Hart report investigated 22 institutions, but it identified a further 65 institutions that came within its terms of reference. The draft legislation was subject to a 16-week consultation process in Northern Ireland.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

Right across this House, and right across Northern Ireland, there will be a very warm welcome for the Government bringing forward this legislation to get it on the statute book before Dissolution. I thank everybody involved in this House, the Secretary of State and, most importantly, the campaigners for the day we have now reached.

[Julian Smith]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for all that he and his party have done to help to deliver this Bill.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The House is clearly united on seeing justice and doing right by those who have been abused and who have waiting too long for recognition and a form of restitution. I thank the Government for prioritising this Bill and for getting it through before Dissolution.

I particularly want to mention some of those with whom I have worked closely: Gerry McCann and others from the Rosetta Trust; Margaret McGuckin, who is in the Gallery and who has been working on this since 2008; and Anne Hunter, who is also in the Gallery and whose sister, Sadie, died at Nazareth House in 1974. Although we celebrate the Bill, it is bittersweet for those who were abused, physically and otherwise, and who cannot be here today to see the conclusion of something for which we have worked very hard.

[Julian Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will return to some of those examples, but the fact that so many survivors and victims have died is one of the tragedies of this period.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am enormously grateful for the priority the Secretary of State has given to this issue. He has shown real compassion for the victims of historical institutional abuse. In his opening remarks, he rightly mentioned the long inquiry held by Judge Hart, who did an enormous amount to give a voice to the victims of historical institutional abuse.

May I encourage the Secretary of State, after this Bill receives Royal Assent later today, to ensure that a copy of the Act and a copy of today’s Hansard are sent to Judge Hart’s widow? It is a great sadness to us all, and particularly to his family and to the victims who met him, that he did not live long enough to see this day. It would be a fitting tribute to have the Act and a copy of Hansard sent to his widow.

[Julian Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a very positive and sensible suggestion, and I am happy to do that. We spoke to Lady Hart last night, and Sir Anthony was, I think, perplexed by the slowness of us all to get this done. I will follow up as the hon. Lady suggests.

The draft legislation was subject to a 16-week consultation process in Northern Ireland, and the Bill was drafted by the Northern Ireland civil service at the request of, and based on a consensus reached by, all six of the main Northern Ireland political parties.

The inquiry’s report was published in January 2017, the same month as the collapse of the Executive, so the Executive never considered the report and it was not laid before the Northern Ireland Assembly. That is why, in July, the Government committed to introducing legislation by the end of the year, if the Executive were not restored, and it is why this was one of the first Bills in the Queen’s Speech.

This is the first Bill of its kind in the United Kingdom, with the results of inquiries in England and Wales and in Scotland yet to be completed. I hope this Bill will give some comfort and hope to victims of child abuse across our country.

Following the election announcement a week ago, there has been significant worry and concern from victims about how the Bill might progress. I thank the Prime Minister and Government business managers for facilitating the Bill today, and I thank Opposition business managers and Opposition spokesmen and women for coming to agreement and for working with us to ensure this Bill passes through both Houses before the election.

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

It is the true mark of the House that, when it comes to dealing with the most vulnerable in our society—those who suffered for a long time and who have waited a long time for justice—this House rises to the occasion. That sets an example we might send back home to Northern Ireland in calling for all the political parties to come together, to get back to Stormont and to get back to working on behalf of all the people of Northern Ireland.

[Julian Smith]

I could not agree more.

I thank my colleague Lord Duncan of Springbank, Lord Hain and other noble lords and baronesses for their work in the other place last week. Many Members in the Chamber today have played a role in making today’s debate happen, particularly DUP Members, the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), the Chairman and members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and many, many more.

The desire and push from Northern Ireland has been significant. On Sunday night, a number of members of the Government received a letter from a Catholic priest who represents the diocese of Down and Connor, which was the location of two of the children’s homes at the centre of the inquiry. He said that it is

“a matter of deep personal shame for me and for the Diocese that both homes were found by the Inquiry to have fundamentally failed the children in their care, enabling regimes of horrific and systemic emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children, as well as neglect. In the period before the Inquiry, I came to know some of the former residents of these homes and publicly supported them in their calls for justice and an Inquiry. Over the years of the Inquiry and since, I have watched as those who led this campaign and the hundreds of former children in care who took part in the Inquiry relived the horrors of their time in these institutions and the abuse they suffered there. As children, they arrived at these homes frightened, disorientated and with the simple hope of every child that the adults in their lives would respond to them with affection, understanding, tenderness and care. Instead, they were met so often with hard-hearted coldness, harsh regimes of sterile adult routine and lovelessness, as well as indescribable sexual and physical abuse. It is difficult to overstate the suffering that the former residents of these homes have endured and continue to endure as a result of their experience.”

On the final day of one of the most divided Parliaments in British political history, we can say, hand on heart, that we have all come together, worked together and pulled together to deliver this Bill.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

It would be wrong if we did not pay tribute to the Secretary of State and his efforts to deliver this Bill. This has not been easy to achieve, and I know all the work done behind the scenes by my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds), my party’s leader in Westminster, and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), our Chief Whip, and others to cajole and get this over the line. It is a fitting tribute to the Secretary of State, on this last day of Parliament, that the Bill will come into law. On behalf of the victims, their groups and people like Marty, Margaret and Gerry who contact us regularly, I thank the Secretary of State.

[Julian Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks. He was at his most tenacious over the weekend in trying to make this happen.

There are many more people to thank. Unfortunately, Sir Anthony Hart, who led the inquiry, passed away earlier this year, but through his widow, Lady Mary Hart, I thank him and his team for their tireless work. I thank the other inquiry members, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland civil service, Northern Ireland Office civil servants, the Executive Office, the leaders of the Northern Ireland political parties and my predecessors, my right hon. Friends the Members for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) and for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). They have all played an important part in getting to today.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that sometimes in this House there is a feeling that Northern Ireland gets neglected or is a sideshow, but this measure today shows that the Government and Opposition knew that this was a hugely crucial issue to the people of Northern Ireland and that getting it to the House today and through this procedure is a mark of this House’s responsibility and care for Northern Ireland?

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Smith]

The hon. Lady is right on that. I hope that if we can get this through this afternoon, we will be able to toast success for not only the Bill and the victims, but Northern Ireland itself.

This legislation will provide the necessary legal framework to deliver two of the key recommendations from the historical institutional abuse report. The first is a historical institutional abuse redress board, to administer a publicly funded compensation scheme for victims in Northern Ireland. This will be a multidisciplinary panel of one judicial member and two health and social care professionals. There are estimated to be more than 5,000 people who could apply for redress. No matter what country they live in, I urge all victims and survivors to apply: whether you are part of a victims group or whether you have lived with their abuse silently for years, please make use of this redress scheme in this Bill.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State is right to indicate just how important that progress is today. In outlining the steps that victims will take—those from my constituency in Kincora boys’ home, and others from right across Northern Ireland and beyond—and in asking them to apply without delay, will he give us some sense of the timescales associated with the process? When we get Royal Assent for this legislation, how quickly will the panel be established and be in place not only to receive but to consider those applications for redress?

[Julian Smith]

I will come on shortly to deal with that question. The second part of this Bill creates a statutory commissioner for survivors of institutional childhood abuse for Northern Ireland, who will act as an advocate for victims and survivors and support them in applying to the redress board. Whether in fighting for support services or in ensuring that payments are made as quickly and as fully as possible, the commissioner will play a key role in delivering for victims.

[Jim Shannon]

It is important not only that we have the commissioner in place, but that the moneys available for compensation will range from £10,000 to £80,000. I wish to make the point about the De La Salle Brothers and what happened in my constituency at Rubane House, outside Kircubbin, where institutional abuse, both physical and sexual, against some young boys took place over a period. Those young people are adults now but they are traumatised. How will the trauma, and the physical and emotional effect it has upon them, be taken into consideration whenever they apply to the commissioner for help?

[Julian Smith]

I hope that one of the commissioner’s focuses will to be look at the services to support those who come forward. That will require money and organisation, but it will be a key part of the role for whoever takes on the position of commissioner.

I have just been asked about this, so let me say that one of the key concerns of parliamentarians and victims’ groups alike is the swift payment for victims and survivors after the passing of this legislation. Victims have already waited too long for redress, and as we have heard, many have died doing so. Our thoughts are with their families. Clause 14 contains provisions that allow the redress board to pay an initial acknowledgement payment of £10,000 to eligible victims before the full determination of the total compensation is payable. Clause 7 allows the redress board to take a flexible case-management approach to claims to ensure that those who are elderly or in severe ill health are considered as a priority. Those in greatest need of redress will get their payment more quickly. Clause 6 allows claims to be made on behalf of a deceased person by their spouse or children.

Other key aspects of the Bill that are important to victims and survivors include provisions that allow the redress board to convene oral hearings, but in a way that should not create an unnecessary delay for those cases in which oral evidence is not required; the ability of the redress board to determine the rate of compensation based on a number of factors, including the duration of stay in an institution; and the ability of the commissioner for survivors of institutional child abuse for Northern Ireland to make representations to any person, including to the redress board. I also wish to confirm to the House that my Department is working closely with the Northern Ireland civil service and David Sterling to ensure that there is adequate resource and capacity for this redress scheme, so that it can get going as urgently as possible.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I am pleased to hear about the possibility of streamlining this process. Is there any indication that any of these payments will be made within this current financial year, irrespective of the bureaucracy of the hearings that have to take place? I am talking about the interim payment of the £10,000.

[Julian Smith]

We have begun a project management team between the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland civil service. I know that David Sterling and the Executive Office have spent time this week looking at how things can be accelerated, but I wish both to acknowledge the need to move quickly and to recognise the fact that this will take a bit of time. We need to get this legislation through, and then we need to get on with how we can press forward with this.

I want to pay tribute to the victims groups that I have engaged with over these past few months and that have engaged with my predecessors and other political leaders: Survivors North West, Survivors Together, the Rosetta Trust, and SAVIA—Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse. They have campaigned on behalf of the people they represent with strength and dignity. Many victims are old and ill. They have not only had their childhood and lives blighted, but they have had to wait, year after year, for the child abuse and what happened to them to be recognised.

At each meeting with the victims groups at Stormont House, I noticed that Jon McCourt from Survivors North West had a small battered copy of the Hart report laid on the table in front of him. There was huge hope and trust in that copy of the report that there might finally be acknowledgement of what he and his friends had had done to them as children. Jon has held that copy of the report close, gripping it tightly for three long years, meeting politician after politician, civil servant after civil servant—anyone who could make a difference in getting redress. The battered cover of Jon’s report, once blue, has now faded. That report contains the grimmest details of the twisted blows laid on the hope and innocence of the children taken into care in Northern Ireland at different times over much of the 20th century. It details how the Kincora hostel in Belfast was completely captured by three child abusers for the same number of decades, leaving them free to anally rape and masturbate at will those boys they were meant to protect.

The report details the impact of the child migrant scheme to Australia. Witness HIA 324 describes his experiences in his statement, as follows:

“My life in institutions has had a profound impact on me. I have always wondered what it would be like to have had a family—a mother and father and brothers and sisters. I never got the chance to find out because I was sent to Australia. We were exported to Australia like little baby convicts. It is hard to understand why they did it… I still cannot get over the fact that I was taken away from a family I never got the chance to know. I was treated like an object, taken from one place to another… I have a nightmare every night of my life. I relive my past and am happy when daylight comes.”

HIA 324 was born in 1938 and was 75 when he spoke those words to the inquiries team in Perth in 2013, but he died before he could sign his statement.

The Hart report highlights how the congregations that supported the four Sisters of Nazareth homes were well aware of the physical and emotional abuse happening in those homes, but did nothing to stop it. The report details how the Sisters of Nazareth would regularly conceal or ignore the presence of the sisters or brothers of those children in their care, hiding them from them. The report details the assault of girls in Nazareth House, with one case in which a girl had her head banged against white tiles for not washing properly. She recalled that there was blood all over the white tiles, and she suffered hearing problems afterwards.

The report details how the Norbertine Order, and then diocese after diocese, failed to stop Father Smyth, a known abuser, from travelling the length and breadth of Northern Ireland and Ireland, abusing hundreds of children. The report confirmed that at Rubane House, boys were sexually abused throughout the four decades that the home operated. It was not just sexual abuse; page after page of the report details the bullying, the use of Jeyes fluid and the confidence attacks on menstruating girls and on young children who wet their beds. The report outlines failure after failure by statutory authorities and the Government to ask the right questions, to show basic levels of care, or to follow up on the condition of those children sent thousands of miles away to Australia.

The Bill, which we hope to pass today, cannot undo the acts perpetrated on the victims, and it does not extend to the other areas of the UK that are currently being addressed by the child abuse inquiry here in London and a similar inquiry in Scotland, but it will show to Northern Ireland victims that action has been taken, and I hope that in a short time similar action can be taken, through legislation, for the rest of the UK.

I started off by thanking the number of colleagues who have helped to get this Bill delivered today, those who have worked on the Hart report and those who have worked to support this legislation, but this is not our Bill; it is the Bill of the victims and survivors, and of their representatives, some of whom are present today. For anyone involved at whatever stage, it has been a humbling experience to work with Northern Ireland victims and survivors who suffered child abuse while in care. The resilience and humanity of the victims should drive us all in our daily responsibility to every child, whether through our families, our work, our responsibilities or our communities.

Victims were let down not just by the perpetrators and institutions, but by the Churches, councils and Governments who were meant to look after them—standing by, ignoring, not checking, turning a blind eye. People knew at the time. The De La Salle Order set down guidelines for the physical layout of its buildings to ensure that behaviour could be observed at all times—for example, on how windows should be placed in doors to ensure clear sight of what was going on in rooms:

“The Brother Director shall be careful that the parlour doors have glazed panels without curtains in such a manner that the interior may be easily seen.”

The ultimate legacy of the Northern Ireland victims and all child abuse victims, from the Hart report and from the Bill, must be for us all to ensure that we do everything within our power to protect children.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Child abuse victims never had their full childhood and were then held hostage by the experiences that they had throughout their lives. I hope that the Bill goes some way towards providing Northern Ireland victims with redress, and for other victims throughout our country, I hope that their time for redress will come very soon. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Smith]

With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I just want to come back on a few points that I was asked about. Before I do, may I thank my ministerial colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office? No Secretary of State could ask for better colleagues than the two on either side of me at the Dispatch Box today, who have also played an incredible part in trying to move this Bill forward.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) raised the issue of the financing of the scheme and the timetable. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, officials in the Executive Office are already working on the implementation programme. They aim to make shadow board appointments to work on policies, procedures and standards so that the board can start considering claims as soon as practicable after it is officially launched. Officials in the Executive Office are also working hard to ensure that the consideration of claims can begin as soon as practicable after the Bill becomes law, and exploring the possibility of opening up applications in advance of the establishment of the board. Obviously, we will all want to do whatever we can. In particular, the Government will do whatever we can to make sure that we play our part in moving things forward as quickly as possible.

The funding for the scheme comes from the block grant, but clearly we will be making sure that we do everything we can to support the Executive Office.

[Gavin Robinson]

On the points about process, the Secretary of State is injecting a bit of positivity and we hope that this will progress quickly. On 6 December, he is mandated to lay reports under the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018. Given that we are going to have to do that process anyhow, could a line on progress updates and the processes that follow be inserted in the Bill?

[Julian Smith]

I will do whatever I can, within the constraints of the purdah period, to update right hon. and hon. Members and the public.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) referred to the fact that this legislation is the most robust basis for the redress scheme and the commissioner. That is worth reiterating. It would not be on as sound a footing if we had not got what we hoped to get today, so she is absolutely right. She is also right to point to the fact that hopefully after the election we can get the Executive and the Assembly going, because that is the best place to do all NI legislation.

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) was very clear about how productive the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Executive had been around the time of the Hart report, and on other issues. That period gives us all hope that we will get back to a position where we will restore the Executive and the Assembly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) made an extremely valid point. It is something I was worrying about last night as I re-read parts of the report. There are many, many people of different ages—people who may not have been in care but may have been abused in other settings—who will no doubt be the subject of reports going forward.

I thank all colleagues for all their kind remarks, and again pay tribute to the victims groups who are sitting here today. They may have missed their current flights, but we have arranged for them to be able to go later. I hope we will all be able to celebrate with them shortly.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Motion made and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 63(2), That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—(Maggie Throup.)

Bill considered in Committee.

[Dame Rosie Winterton in the Chair]

Clauses 1 to 34 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedules 1 and 2 agreed to.

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Third Reading

[Julian Smith]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

That was, I think, one of the shortest Committee stages in this Parliament’s history. Having been Government Chief Whip, I only wish that another policy area of this Government could have been covered so quickly.

As has been said during the course of this debate, in powerful speeches from Members across the House, this is a day for victims—the victims from Northern Ireland who are in the Public Gallery today, the victims from Northern Ireland who are sitting at home, and all victims of child abuse who have yet to have redress and a full acknowledgment of what they went through. I am extremely grateful to the House for all the support and for all the civil service support, and I think this is a very fitting way to finish this Parliament.