Northern Ireland Executive Formation

Lord Godson Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Caine (Con)]

Those will of course all be matters for the new Executive to take forward, not for His Majesty’s Government to impose. However, I am sure that they will take note of the comments of the noble Baroness.

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend the Minister in welcoming this Command Paper, Safeguarding the Union, which by common consent constitutes the most extensive set of commitments in decades, by any Government, to strengthening the union, and thus fulfils many of the consent principles enshrined in the 1998 Belfast agreement. Of course, this needs to be set in the broader context of this Government’s pro-union commitments, not least of which—I seek my noble friend’s thoughts on this—was the recent legacy legislation whereby the Government also pushed back at Dublin’s intemperate response to the very necessary legislation in this House, which he took forward here, to protect our service men and women and others besides. Does he therefore agree that the time has surely come for unionists of all hues to recognise this Government’s commitment to the union and to strengthening our United Kingdom, and for them to row behind that?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend for the work he has done on the Northern Ireland protocol sub-committee over the past few years and for the work of his think tank, Policy Exchange, which has helped frame the debate around a number of issues connected with the Northern Ireland protocol. I agree entirely with his comments about the Government. Anybody reading the Command Paper can be in no doubt that this is a unionist Government committed, within the terms of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, to the maintenance and strengthening of Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom. As somebody who is an unashamed and unapologetic unionist, I strongly welcome that.