Report Pursuant to Sections 3(1), 3(6), 3(7), 3(8), 3(9) and 3(10) the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

I have noticed over the years that a debate about any topic in Northern Ireland becomes a debate about everything in Northern Ireland. That is just how things are. I very much welcome the maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Caine. I realise that he had been muted politically for a long time, so I welcome him to the world of political freedom. It is therefore gratifying that we have, for a debate about everything in Northern Ireland, the DUP in some reasonable force, and other good representatives from Northern Ireland who are independent of political party. I would like other political parties in Northern Ireland also to be represented here, as that would add strength to our debates—I refer to the Alliance and the SDLP in particular.

I spent last weekend at the British-Irish Association annual get-together in Cambridge. Few politicians were present, but we had Simon Coveney, Michael Gove and the Secretary of State speak to us, and it was a pretty good occasion. Noble Lords may be wondering about the badge I am wearing; it is the badge of the campaign for Ireland to have a place on the Security Council, which is looking for British support. I mention that in passing. Obviously, the Minister could not possibly comment on that—but he will probably not comment on many other things.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Dubs]

That goes with the job description.

With the lack of an Executive, we are in a dangerous situation. There is a vacuum, and vacuums get filled in an unfortunate manner. I can only add my plea that we have to make progress. I repeat the plea for an independent facilitator of talks, which is surely long overdue. It would be much better to have somebody who could put the parties together. It is difficult for the Government, simply because they are in coalition with one of the main parties in Northern Ireland. I would have thought that we could make progress.

May I anticipate something the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will say? I will thank him for it before he says it. That is, we should make use of the existing Members of the Legislative Assembly and use the committee structure. Surely the civil servants, who are having to make difficult decisions, need some political backing. Although it would not be official political backing, it would surely be helpful to them if we have some of the Assembly committees up and running and giving at least their views on the whole range of issues that we are discussing today. It cannot be difficult to achieve that. Members of the Legislative Assembly can do some constituency casework, but they are not able to function as proper politicians. That is awful, and the danger is that some of them will drift away with frustration, and then we will lose the core of what we want to re-establish when direct rule is there. It is not just a matter of saying that it would be a nice thing to do; it is urgent that we do it, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for all that he will say about that later today.

I will mention some specific issues. I always make a plea about child refugees. People in Northern Ireland would welcome child refugees—I was encouraged by the response I got when I mentioned this at the British-Irish Association get-together in Cambridge between Friday and Sunday—and they are frustrated that there is no way in which the willingness of local people in Northern Ireland to accommodate child refugees can be brought into effect. I know that the Minister is probably fed up with my mentioning it so often, but we have to do something about it. I hope that if we talk enough about it, word will get through to the civil servants and others to move forward.

I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, on trafficking. Trafficking is of course partly linked to refugees, although not entirely, but it is a serious issue and we cannot do enough to tackle it and support its victims.

I also make a plea that if we had a functioning Executive, maybe we could also get more impetus behind integrated education, which I believe is still an important feature of education in Northern Ireland, but too small a feature. I would like to see more of it happen.

I am chair of a committee of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, and we have been studying abortion, taking evidence in Liverpool, London, Belfast and Dublin. It is very detailed evidence from a range of opinions, on all sides of the argument. We would have published our report some time ago but the DUP member of the committee—a very effective member—said that he did not agree with its thrust, so we said that we would hold it and give the DUP time to give us a statement of its position. I hope we can then incorporate that into the report, which will go public at the next plenary. That will come too late for this debate, but it is right that we should give the DUP a full chance to state its views, even though the majority of committee members took a different view.

Noble Lords from the DUP have said that, under changes being made to abortion practice in Northern Ireland, there is no time limit. I am not aware of that and I would certainly be very unhappy if that was the case. We have a time limit in Britain and there is a time limit in Dublin. Surely, we cannot proceed without some form of sensible limit for any practice in Northern Ireland.

Finally, I welcome what my noble friend Lord Hain has been doing about the victims of crime and the stand he has taken on that very important issue. In my last few moments I shall repeat my plea to the Minister: can we make progress on bringing back something of the political system in Northern Ireland? If we had an independent facilitator, we could bring the parties together. Senator George Mitchell did that brilliantly. Without his skill and adroit handling of the political parties, we would not have got to where we are. It is still one of the great success stories of United Kingdom politics over the past half century or longer. We need to make progress, so let us use the elected Members of the Assembly in order that they can play a part and have their views put forward and listened to in order to influence other debates.