Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]

Karen Bradley Excerpts

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

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

May I say, Madam Deputy Speaker, what a privilege it is to have you in the Chair for this debate? I know that you have such humanity and that you will be touched by this debate and all that you have heard. I know, too, that you will be pleased that you were chairing this particular debate.

I also thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his incredibly moving and powerful speech. I congratulate him on our being here today. I also join you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and everyone in this House in saying that the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) made one of his finest speeches. It is his last speech, which is a great shame to so many of us who know just how he has worked for his constituents, for the people of Northern Ireland as a shadow Minister, and also for this House, because he is a true parliamentarian and will be desperately missed.

We stand here today just before we go into an election. We are going into an election because politics is broken, yet here we can prove that it is not broken. Here, we can prove that we can come together and do something. We can deliver something that is right for people who have been through the most agonising, dreadful experiences— experiences that no person, and particularly no child, should ever suffer. We have a chance to make that right today. I trust and know that we will come together, that we will pass this Bill and that, by this evening, this Bill will have Royal Assent, and then we can get on with delivering redress for those victims. They need it, they deserve it, and it needs to happen as soon as possible.

One of the privileges of the job that I used to do, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State does now, and that my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) and others have done, is to realise that, very often, we are in the presence of people who have suffered the most incredible, dreadful experiences. Northern Ireland is like no other part of the United Kingdom for having put people through experiences that no one should ever have to go through. I, as Secretary of State, spent time listening to people who had been through horrendous experiences in the troubles and who had been treated in a way that nobody should be treated, and listening to people who were victims of historical institutional abuse. As Secretary of State, or any Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, one cannot fail to be touched by that and to be determined to do everything possible to help those victims. I was absolutely determined that we should do that, and I am so proud that we have got here today, but it had to be done in a way that was sustainable and robust. Neither I nor my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could just wave a magic wand and make it all right. We have to go through the proper processes, because we must make sure that this redress scheme and the measures that are put in place will be robust, will not be challenged and will be delivered—and delivered as quickly as possible for the victims.

That is why it was a matter of the most enormous regret that the Hart report was delivered at the point that the Executive collapsed. Had the Executive not collapsed, we would have had ministerial direction to know what Ministers thought of the recommendations. We would have had something to work with. In fact, had the Executive been there, they could have delivered interim payments without the need for primary legislation. They could have delivered so many of these things so much sooner, but they were unable to do so, which is why we had to go through a long consultation process that victims felt was delaying matters and making them worse. It was not doing so; it was there to give a robust legal framework so that we could deliver this scheme.

I want to pay tribute, as my right hon. Friend did, to the six parties. Earlier this year, when we were starting on a talks process, we got all the parties from Northern Ireland in one room and used that opportunity to get them to talk about this matter, so that we could have a united position from them. Although we may still not have an Executive, it will be those politicians and those parties that will have to administer this scheme as Ministers. Therefore, it was absolutely right that it was they who helped to draft this legislation. If that had not been done, and we had used the normal primary legislation route in this place, it would have taken far, far longer, which would have meant that victims had to wait longer.

I have to say to the parties in Northern Ireland that this really needs to be a wake-up call. Yes, we are putting this Bill through here today—I know the hurdles that my right hon. Friend has had to go over and how he has had to jump over obstacles and everything else to get this Bill here today. I know full well what he has come up against, trying to get matters such as this through the collective responsibility of Government, but he should not have had to do that, because there are politicians in Northern Ireland who are elected to do this work. This needs to be the wake-up call. They should put their differences aside. I know that they want to go back into Government and do the right thing by the people of Northern Ireland. This is their opportunity. Please, I say to them, do the right thing for those people.

Finally, I just want to talk about the victims, many of whom I can see today. I know that we should not refer to those in the Gallery, but I will, because those victims are there. I had the honour and privilege of meeting them. I sat through meetings in which they told me about their experiences. There is nothing more humbling than listening to people telling you what they have been through—especially when it is something that they should never have had to go through. This is a Bill for them. This is something that we are delivering in this broken Parliament for people for whom we should be standing up. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on this Bill and I will wholeheartedly support it here today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Little Pengelly]

I absolutely agree with all that my hon. Friend has said.

I am so glad that this legislation for the victims and survivors of abuse is one of the last things that this House will have achieved in this Parliament. This is a Parliament that has been dominated by a small number of big issues, and we know very well what those are; I am not even going to say the word. Yet I know that Members from every single party right across this House and the elected representatives in Northern Ireland get into politics because they want to make change on these types of issues. They want to make changes on education, health and public services, and to address great wrongs and injustices. It is such a good thing that we are ending this Parliament on such an issue, and that the many hundreds and thousands of people who suffered appalling abuse, as the Secretary of State outlined, will finally get the last piece of this process: redress. But redress will not be closure. It will never undo the dreadful wrongs that happened to all those children in those settings.

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Lady was instrumental in setting up the inquiry from the beginning. Let me make a point to her that always struck me when I was in the Home Office dealing with these matters for England and Wales, which is that to call this historical abuse is absolutely wrong. It is not historical; it is current and present. It is with the victims every single day.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Absolutely. I was involved in this process right from the start, seven years ago. I pay tribute to the right hon. Peter Robinson and the late Martin McGuinness, because I was present at the meeting when the victims and survivors came in and told us of the terrible, terrible experiences they went through, and both those men were genuinely moved. Who could not be moved by hearing those personal experiences and the terrible wrongs? But both of those men were very moved, and they worked together, and tasked me and some others to go away and try to drive this work forward. Throughout those seven years, civil servants at all levels, the late Judge Hart and all those who gave support and help were really motivated to get through the process and to do so swiftly, because they had heard the terrible things that had happened and had seen the injustice that they wanted to address.

I have to say that I am angry that it has taken this long to get to this point of redress. The inquiry was unusual in that the timeframe was put down in legislation. The late Judge Hart made it absolutely clear that, yes, he would request the extension that he was allowed by the legislation, but he would also meet the timeframes set out, so we always knew when the inquiry was going to report, because he made that clear. I and others made representations to those who pulled down the Assembly, asking them not to do so in order to allow the report to come forward, and I am genuinely angry that it happened. I am angry that we have had to wait for those years for the victims and survivors to get the redress they deserve and that we knew was coming.

But today is not a day about recriminations. In fact, this has been a good example of how the political parties can work together and the difference that they can make—not, perhaps, on the bigger issues that will always be challenging, but on these types of significant issues that are so meaningful to people’s lives.

I pay tribute to all the victims and survivors, who have been on this journey right from the start, including Margaret, Kate, Gerry and Jon McCourt, all of whom have been mentioned in this debate. They have done incredible work because they have represented not just themselves, but the many thousands of victims across Northern Ireland—in fact, across the world—who perhaps could not step forward. They were brave enough to do so no matter how difficult it was, and it must have been incredibly difficult for them to tell their own stories again and again and again to try to get the inquiry and the justice they deserved.

I have been involved in this process for seven years, so it is really good to see it come to an end today, but the victims and survivors have been involved for decades and decades before that. As I have said in the House many times, many of these children came from very challenging and difficult circumstances, and what they needed was love, protection and support. But when we read the report and listen to their experiences, we know that what they got was cruelty, depravity and harshness. That is appalling. Right from that very first meeting with Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson, those who were in the room were absolutely struck that the right thing to do was to try to get justice for the victims. There is very broad consensus on that in every political party and right across this House.

I pay tribute to all the victims and survivors. This is not the end of their journey. They will continue with all the pain and suffering—the legacy of what happened to them. I hope that this redress and financial support—and what it symbolises—will be of some comfort, as well as a recognition of their hard and incredible work to stand up and address the terrible, terrible wrong that was done to them and many thousands of other children.