The Government's Plan for Brexit

Debate between Michael Gove and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As a result of the Good Friday agreement and the consent principle, the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the United Kingdom and to give foreign policy and treaty-making powers to the UK Government. There is no inconsistency between a UK Government choosing to trigger article 50 and the hon. Gentleman’s constituents having objections to that. There is no breach of a consensus.

[Mark Durkan]

I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman does not know the difference—people in Northern Ireland are very clear about this—between the principle of consent and actually giving consent. He has made a mistake that is consistently made, and it is a mistake that will strain some people’s belief in the Good Friday agreement.

People such as the right hon. Gentleman do not recognise the damage that they are doing. Carefully compacted layers of understanding created the bedrock of the Good Friday agreement, and fissures are being driven into those key foundations. Remember that, as a result of that agreement, the principle of consent is housed in the Irish constitution as well, because the referendum—north and south—changed the constitution. It removed the territorial claim, and two additional clauses were inserted.

If the key constitutional precept of the Good Friday agreement is not housed in any new UK-EU treaty that might result from these negotiations, we shall be in a very serious situation. The promise and the understanding that the people of Ireland, north and south, were given when they endorsed the Good Friday agreement in overwhelming numbers will have been betrayed and damaged. I do not accept, and no Irish nationalist, north or south, who supported the Good Friday agreement has ever said, that the principle of consent that is housed in the Irish constitution can be removed, replaced or surpassed by a vote in England on Brexit or on anything else.

The Good Friday agreement states very clearly that the question of Irish unity will be a matter for the people of Ireland, north and south, without external impediment. That key principle must be reflected in any new UK-EU treaty, making clear that if in the future Northern Ireland votes to become part of a united Ireland, it will do so as an automatic part of the EU, without any change in Ireland’s terms of membership and without the need for any new negotiations on the part of Northern Ireland. We cannot afford, in the Northern Ireland context, the sort of trickery that was used in the Scottish context to raise question marks over whether EU membership would apply. This is a key principle and tenet for those of us in the House who support the Good Friday agreement.

There are other risks to the agreement as well. There are risks to the weight of the rights in strand 1. There is also significant damage afoot in relation to strand 2, which involved a delicate balance of institutional and constitutional arrangements. That strand will be left in complete deficit after Brexit unless someone takes care of it.

Schools White Paper

Debate between Michael Gove and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. We are going to say to all higher education institutions that are currently involved in the provision of initial teacher training that we want them to open lab schools, in the same way that such schools have been developed in Finland and the United States. Those schools are run by education departments and they act as showcases for the best in teacher training, and I believe that education departments here can grasp this opportunity. We are working with the Training and Development Agency to ensure that they have the resources to do so.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Minister said in his statement that he wanted to bring back an emphasis on punctuation. However, his 10-page statement contains no more than 16 full stops. In the middle of the statement, we have to read nearly 300 words before we find a full stop, and at the end, there are more than 300 words before we find a full stop. How would the statement be marked under his system?

[Michael Gove]

I almost wish that the hon. Gentleman had not put a question mark at the end of that. All I can say is that my approach as a Minister has been to eat, shoot and leave when it comes to making a statement such as this.