British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Hon. Members will not be surprised to learn that I have a different view of history from the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), so I will quickly record that without long rehearsing it.

Many hon. Members, including the current chairman, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), have rightly paid tribute to those who first established BIPA—in fact, it was a tier first, then it was a body and now it is an assembly. It should be remembered that all of them have made a huge contribution to changing the nature of relationships and attitudes between and within these islands, and they reinforced a dynamic that did spur the peace process in many positive ways. It should also be remembered that when John Hume first argued that there were three sets of relationships at the heart of our problem—those within Northern Ireland, within Ireland and between Ireland and Britain—which he said all needed to be accommodated and reflected in the solution, that was contested. It is now accepted by everybody, and those three sets of relationships are the three strands at the heart of the Good Friday agreement.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I apologise for the fact that I was not here earlier. May I say to the hon. Gentleman that when we met for the first time in February 1990, when the troubles were continuing, and crimes and atrocities were being committed by the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries, we were not certain whether it would be the only meeting we would hold, as both sides were so apprehensive? I am so pleased—obviously, given that I later become a co-chairman—that we were highly successful in continuing the dialogue for the first time between parliamentarians from both countries.

[Mark Durkan]

I fully take the point that the hon. Gentleman has made. The point that I was about to make was that by creating a framework of British-Irish relationships, through the Anglo-Irish agreement, the inter-parliamentary tier and the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, space was opened up for dealing with the problems that were then vexing the narrow ground of Northern Ireland politics. By changing the relationship between Britain and Northern Ireland, we, in many ways, opened up possibilities for politics in Northern Ireland and indeed between north and south. That is why I want to pay tribute to all those who made a huge contribution to British-Irish relations in this context.

The right hon. Member for Belfast North mentioned the fact that, peculiarly, no Northern Ireland Members of this House are members of the assembly; we seem to be banned persons. Four Members of the House of Lords who live in Northern Ireland are members of the assembly, and a further one is an associate member. Apparently, if someone from Northern Ireland has a mandate, they are somehow subversive and are not accepted for the purposes of that assembly—I regret that. As the one party that was always on the body and that first advocated such a thing, we perhaps feel a wee bit peculiarly disadvantaged in this regard.

As has been pointed out, great work has been done in many of the reports. I also wish to endorse what the hon. Member for Tewkesbury and the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) have said: we need to get the assembly better connected with the work of the British-Irish Council. I am talking about not just taking reports from BIC and tracking its work, but acting as more of a policy outrider at times for BIC, exploring some of the issues, and perhaps scoping some of the problems and making suggestions about how things might be looked at or advanced.

The marine environment is one of the areas we should look at, as that is one thing that all eight Administrations in these islands and their territories actually share. The different jurisdictions have made moves towards various marine legislation and have made different moves on marine management organisations. Surely we need to ensure that we have a coherent framework for marine management, where the regimes are at least compatible and comparable.

The issue of communications is another that should have been addressed more heavily at a British-Irish level. We are left with the situation in Ireland where we have two, rival digital platforms. I have a border constituency, where people have to buy one device if they want to get their Saorview digital TV and another if they want to get Freeview. That is nonsense and it has been a failure. The issue could have been addressed only at the British-Irish level, not at the north-south level.

The digital economy presents challenges and opportunities, some of which also extend to things such as minority languages. We need to think about how our digital platform is catering for the different minority languages and the Celtic regions within these islands. So there is more that we should be thinking about in these areas, and the assembly again provides an area where we can do that. In that context, I wish to share the concerns expressed by others about the RTÉ presence in London.

Human trafficking is a huge issue in the eyes of many people in this Parliament, and it has been discussed in different devolved Assemblies and in the Oireachtas. That issue needs to be examined at the British-Irish level, because we need to deal not only with the international trafficking into our common travel area, but with the internal trafficking both within the different jurisdictions in these islands and between them. We need to address those issues.

Organ donation may also be an issue that we need to examine, as the various legislatures in these islands are perhaps examining it differently. We need to examine not only whether we should have opt-out legislation, but whether we have the right infrastructure to ensure that where we do have donors, we are maximising the number of organs that become available. Is there the right sharing and transfer of the organs that are available throughout these islands? Many people suggest to me that there is not. That could be looked at, too.

There is also the issue of adoption apology to address. In the previous Parliament, the then Prime Minister told us that he wanted to make an apology in relation to what had happened to people who were forced into orphanages and then transported. There are serious issues between Ireland and Britain in that regard. The whole issue of adoption apology should not be an issue for just one Government; it is a common issue throughout these islands. It is a crying shame in our historical social relationship and it is one that should be addressed.