Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Debate between Karin Smyth and Owen Smith

2nd reading: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks, because he speaks with real, lived experience of this. He knows exactly what happened at St Andrews, and he knows that it has been precisely the role of Prime Ministers in trying to push through change and to get people to find agreement that has led to a breakthrough.

It is entirely true that not all the instances when we have deployed Prime Ministers have been successful. It may be that Prime Ministers in the current era enjoy less power and influence. Indeed, the Taoiseach may enjoy less power and influence over some of the players in this, too. However, this is another tool in the Secretary of State’s armoury, so I cannot understand why he will not deploy it. It is utterly inexplicable that the Prime Minister has been to Northern Ireland only once—and then for a scant 20 minutes—during her entire period in office. It is beholden on her now to get involved. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is interjecting from a sedentary position. I do not think he has said anything that would lead me to believe that the Prime Minister has engaged personally in any of the talks process. She has made a few phone calls, but she has not, in any substantive fashion, sat down face to face in Belfast with any of the leaders of the parties, and she is not involved in a roundtable. There is a duty on the Secretary of State to lead—

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Surely the importance of the Prime Minister bothering to visit Northern Ireland is that it would give hope to the people of Northern Ireland that someone beyond the failed Executive—from the highest level in this Parliament—has their best interests at heart, and is prepared do something about the abhorrent situation that we are facing.

[Owen Smith]

I think that people in Northern Ireland will not understand why their Prime Minister—the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—seems so distant from this process. I cannot understand why she is not getting stuck in. I think she ought to, and I think the Secretary of State should urge her to.

If the Secretary of State fails, and if the other avenues that I propose do not work, he needs to start spelling out what he is going to do. DUP Members have stressed that they want him to spell out when he is going to introduce direct rule Ministers. If he does that, he will also need to spell out what he is going to do to try to keep the institutions alive, to allow such things as the north-south arrangements to persist and to be properly served, and to enable proper input from the Irish Government during direct rule. That needs to be considered so that the spirit as well as the letter of the Good Friday agreement is adhered to.

I point the Secretary of State to the experience of the previous Labour Government in the period before d’Hondt had been deployed and before we had Ministers and an Executive in Northern Ireland. In 1999, a budget was given to the Northern Ireland Assembly by the then Minister, of whom questions were asked beforehand. The Secretary of State could perhaps deliver the next iteration of this budget in April to a shadow Assembly so that he could be properly scrutinised, with people with a really detailed understanding of the minutiae asking him the correct questions. I think that that would be a step forward.

Let me make some suggestions about the priorities that the Secretary of State should have in the event of his failure to bring into being the new institutions. First, he should consider the victims of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland, some of whom are sitting in the Gallery tonight. This is a desperate state of affairs. Just two days after the Hart report came up with clear recommendations, the Assembly collapsed. The victims have sat for 10 months without any progress being made on those recommendations. I put it to the Secretary of State that there is widespread agreement across the parties about the way forward, particularly in respect of the notion of an interim payment for the victims. I cannot understand why he will not deploy all his best efforts to bring about quick action. As I have said, David Sterling has indicated in an email to the victims today that he wants to act quickly. I urge the Secretary of State to support him in doing so.

Secondly, may I ask the Secretary of State to consider the plight of another group of victims in Northern Ireland: the victims of the troubles? He will know that there has been a very live debate about the notion of a victims’ pension for the 500 or so people who are most mentally and physically scarred by the troubles. There is political disagreement about whether we can afford to allow that to capture a few people who were injured, as it were, by their own hand. That is controversial in Northern Ireland, but I think there is a moral imperative to look beyond the political difficulty. If the Secretary of State is in the position of being a direct ruler, I urge him to act on that moral imperative and provide a pension for all victims of the troubles in Northern Ireland.