Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Section 75 —Designation of Public Authority) Order 2020

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened with great respect to what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has just said, and I agree with him about the importance of a United Kingdom. Like him, I intend to warmly welcome this order. It is vital that we give our neighbours and friends from Europe exactly the same protections in Northern Ireland that are enjoyed, with respect to equality of opportunity, across the United Kingdom, with all the substantial contributions that they make to the economic, social and cultural life of our country. I welcome the designation of the IMA under Section 75 of the relevant Act, as has been so clearly explained by my noble and learned friend Lord Keen, to make it a public authority with the duty to promote equality of opportunity. I think we would all say “Hear, hear”—that is a very good thing to happen.

But, much as I welcome this measure and what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said about it, I only wish that we could welcome into the Chamber today noble Lords of all parties from Northern Ireland in greater numbers. In saying that, I am not being romantic about this Chamber, and neither is it just because it would be good to see them; it is because I strongly believe that, in legislating, there is no substitute for the real thing—for human presence in your Lordships’ Chamber. The intermingling, in Westminster, of people from Northern Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom helps to cement and bring together our country. The longer, for understandable reasons, that we are apart, the weaker the links may become—to our peril, inexorably leading to people in Northern Ireland, and maybe in Scotland and Wales, detaching themselves from feeling a true part of our historical central governance of public affairs, and maybe, indeed, to separating slowly into four nations rather than one country.

I have made those journeys myself to Belfast and back. Coming to Westminster from Northern Ireland has always been more demanding for noble Lords who live so far away, with all those long journeys with their inevitable travel delays, compared to some people who can just walk to the Chamber here this afternoon in the Palace of Westminster. I pay genuine tribute to Members from Northern Ireland of all parties, independents and Cross-Benchers, for what they do, because they are needed here as part of our national constitutional glue, knitting together the fabric of the United Kingdom, just by their very presence in this Chamber. The quicker we can change our highly cocooned and protected arrangements here—look at the Chamber this afternoon—which are not enjoyed in shops, pubs, places of work and public transport, on which I have travelled, the better.

We are often accused—very often unfairly and wrongly—with being detached and remote from the real world, but the people will begin more and more to question why we do not face the same realities here in our arrangements that they have to face out there. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has just said in the other place at the end of his Statement, we do need a return to normality with safety, and we need it in this Chamber as well—as quickly as possible.