Northern Ireland: Haass Talks

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

This is an extraordinarily timely debate, for which we are all most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Following the restoration of devolution in the Province, there is always a danger that the affairs of this part of our country will slip too far down Westminster’s agenda. A debate such as this helps to ensure that that does not happen. With the whole constitutional order in flux after the Scottish referendum, it is especially important that full attention is given to Northern Ireland’s place in the significant changes that are under consideration to recreate constitutional stability throughout our land.

The need for an agreement on dealing with the past, with which this Motion is concerned, will clearly be at the centre of the cross-party talks that my right honourable friend the Secretary State for Northern Ireland initiated last week. As she stressed, continuing disputes over the truth of what happened during the Troubles, and the deep, still raw grief in both communities, about which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, once again spoke so movingly and eloquently, contribute significantly to the difficulty of sustaining the progress that has been made in Northern Ireland, as do disputes over flags and parades. They consume ever-increasing amounts of time and resources, which so badly need to be redirected to securing our fellow countrymen’s and women’s shared future together with the rest of us.

In the last 30 years of the 20th century, all the irreconcilables of Irish history came to dwell in the north. They do not yield readily to the healing processes in which so many fine people, both here and in Northern Ireland, have been engaged and must continue to be engaged until the vital goal of a shared future firmly within the framework of the United Kingdom has been attained.

We are all surely united in wishing the Secretary of State every success in her endeavours. The challenge for her and all the participants in the discussions that are about to take place is to extract from the Haass talks last year the elements that can be incorporated in a firm agreement, along with proposals to settle the increasingly bitter disagreements within the Northern Ireland Assembly over budgetary matters and welfare reform that are tearing it apart. That is a tall order, but the very obduracy of the problems underlines the need to seek every means of reducing them.

As regards the past, we surely need irrefutable concrete evidence on which to base action, and that cannot come solely from official records. There can be no special treatment for one side of the conflict. Everything must be open and nothing concealed. There must be no repetition of the appalling secret scheme that benefited some 200 terrorist suspects under the previous Government and this one. Dealing with the past must not be at the expense of handling current issues, as the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland has rightly warned.

These are some of the principles that might usefully help to guide the discussions that are to unfold. As the draft prepared at the end of the Haass talks states:

“It is clear that the vast majority of citizens and communities wish to live free of the division and enmity that has too often defined this society”.

They are our fellow citizens, our fellow communities. As someone once said: “We are all in this together”.