King’s Speech

Lord Bew Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to say, as so many from the Cross Benches have said, how much we grieve the loss of a very distinguished convenor. It has overshadowed somewhat the debate for many of us, particularly on these Benches.

I will address the topic of devolution, particularly the crisis of devolution in Northern Ireland, and the fact that at this point we are not sure that it will return. I am particularly keen to deal with an idea that I picked up in the streets of Belfast—that it is desirable to wait for a Labour Government, and at that point possibly, if there are any movements on devolution, act. I draw attention to Tony Blair’s speech, which set the framework for devolution throughout the United Kingdom, in Balmoral in Belfast in the autumn of 1997. There, he declared firmly that he was not neutral on the union, as in effect Keir Starmer has done in some recent pronouncements. But this is not a blank cheque. What Mr Blair said there is that his support for the union was based on power-sharing devolution plus an Irish dimension. That is how he talked about the new devolution in Scotland and Wales; that is how Northern Ireland would fit into the United Kingdom.

That is the classic Labour position. There is no more unionist position within the Labour Party. There are many less unionist positions in the Labour Party—many who insist that the Good Friday agreement means that a parity of esteem means that this talk of Blair saying that, in this context, he supported the union is not right. But that is the classic position and almost certainly the Starmer position. It does not seem to me therefore that this is a case for waiting for a Labour Government. The time to act on devolution and getting institutions up and running again is now.

This is the first King’s Speech since my friend David Trimble’s death. David deeply believed in the Act of Union. Every time he sat in this Chamber, Lord Trimble would look down at the Throne and see the crown, and would see the symbol of Ireland, the harp. He strongly believed that it was there because of the Act of Union and that the Act of Union was terrifically important. The thing he admired about the Act of Union was the obvious attempt to enhance the growing commercial success of Belfast’s exporting classes in 1800. The protection of the export potential of those classes is a subject we will probably have to return to before this matter is sorted out.

He was also strongly aware of the strategic significance of Ireland, which is very important if one is talking about the Act of Union. At this point, the strategic significance, often forgotten in this country, is alive again. The war in Ukraine is actually not particularly divisive. Northern Ireland, because it is part of NATO, has played a greater role in some of its industries in supplying Ukraine, but it has to be said that the Republic of Ireland has done a marvellous job in receiving Ukrainian refugees. But the war now in the Middle East is terribly divisive—indisputably so. There is a division between the two countries on that, and it is making it harder between the two communities on that point to see the return of devolution. The unionist community broadly supports the position of the main parties in this House, in the British Government and the American Government. The nationalist community does not. There is a campaign against Hillary Clinton as chancellor of Queen’s because she is seen to be a supporter of Israel. The Irish Government in China just yesterday issued a joint statement with the Chinese calling for a ceasefire, and so on. There is a major difference there. Again, we are going to have to talk about this before we get devolution sorted. It is very unfortunate; it was not as if we needed any other sources of difference.

I would like to make one final point about my friend the late Lord Trimble, who quite rightly won a Nobel Prize for trying to follow the path Tony Blair set out. The last thing he published before he died—we do not know what he would have thought of the Windsor Framework as he did not live to see it—was an introduction to a paper by Dr Graham Gudgin that was an attack on the idea that the protocol itself was determining that Northern Ireland was going to be observed at an economic level in the Irish Republic. Dr Gudgin says that no, Northern Ireland is so heavily tied into the United Kingdom that that is simply not happening. That was the last thing David Trimble published before he died. His name is now used all the time in the struggle against returning to devolution. It would amaze him. He saw the great achievement of his life as the Good Friday agreement and the structures that flow through it.

I want to conclude by talking just a little bit about how we need to look at things in the round. This is not the first time that Northern Ireland has felt, with good reason, that it was not treated equally in an international treaty with a foreign power. In 1938, exactly the same thing happened when the Anglo-Irish trade deal was struck. Northern Ireland had suffered most in the previous trade war and got the least out of that deal. In the other place in 1938, its MPs all declared, “We’ve been treated with a lack of equality” and that other British suppliers et cetera had been given more in the deal. They were right to say so. By the way, because they assumed the Government of Ireland Act was the key legislation, they did not say “Because of the Act of union we have a case”, they just said, “We have a case” when they debated this in the House.

The matter was resolved essentially by the UK Government striking a deal with the Stormont Government that basically paid Northern Ireland’s dole bill in 1938 when so many people were unemployed because of the collapse of the shipyards and heavy shipbuilding. Essentially, it was resolved by saying that in future Northern Ireland would not have to pay for itself, as statute—the Union with Ireland Act and the Government of Ireland Act 1920—required, but that in future the UK would lift the burden and deliver equality of social services. I simply say that that suggests that we should look at these questions of equality or inequality in trade agreements in the round. A wider picture should also be taken into account in the current debate in Belfast.