Northern Ireland

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

For my part, that is absolutely the work that we are doing with the parties, civic society and business leaders in Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister and I have been involved in that all the way through. He has had a consistent focus on ensuring that we are delivering for the people of Northern Ireland over the entire period, and not just the past few days, although obviously he has been involved in the past few days and had conversations with the Taoiseach, rather like my conversations with the Irish Foreign Minister.

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the Good Friday agreement. We always need to remind ourselves that the Good Friday agreement has three strands, and we must resist the temptation that some people have to see the Good Friday agreement through simply one strand of north-south. The east-west and Northern Ireland strands are hugely important. One of the things we have to do is make sure we are delivering on the east-west part of the Good Friday agreement, so that the agreement is applied and working in all its strands.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con) [V]]

May I add my condolences to those expressed earlier and send them to Cheryl Gillan’s family, following her sad death last week? She was seen on our Benches as the mother of our side of the Chamber. She was a generous lady. She was kind, and we will really miss her.

People will be listening to these exchanges today concerned that this unacceptable violence and disorder could mean yet more delay to the implementation of the laws that we agreed in this place over a year ago on access to abortion and abortion aftercare in Northern Ireland—healthcare that is routinely available in the rest of the UK. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that he will not be distracted from the steps he set out a few weeks ago, and that there will be no more delay in giving women and girls in Northern Ireland the same rights as women and girls throughout the rest of the UK when it comes to access to abortion and abortion aftercare?

[Brandon Lewis]

Yes, I can give that assurance. I would go a little bit further: even in the conversations I was having in Belfast yesterday with community groups and political leaders, everybody was very determined to continue to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland in the widest sense through the “New Decade, New Approach” agreement. We will not be distracted from delivering on our promises and the actions we took on abortion, as we outlined just a few weeks ago. It comes back to remembering that, with what we saw last week for those few days—hopefully we do not see a recurrence of it—we all have a part to play in encouraging a calm approach to disagreements, but we must not be deterred from the wider work to deliver for Northern Ireland by the actions of criminals, thugs and hooligans.