Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Julian Smith

2nd reading
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

I support this proposed legislation. We had the bandages in New Decade, New Approach of keeping Ministers in place after the Executive fell, and we are now on to the elastoplast. It is worth stressing the limited nature of this Bill. There are very difficult choices that civil servants in Northern Ireland are not able to take. There are big challenges in all sorts of areas, including health, with long waiting lists; education, with hundreds of millions of pounds going in the wrong direction on the budget; foreign direct investment, where Northern Ireland has a great reputation but not having Ministers has an impact; and community groups and other organisations, which are desperate for political direction.

It is worth stressing to the House that there is the current period of not having an Executive, but there have also been other periods. One party is getting a lot of heat this time, but there were other parties involved in the past, and the implication in Northern Ireland when this happens is severe: if we did not have Westminster and instead just had civil servants in Whitehall taking the decisions, people in England, Wales and Scotland would be up in arms. So I want to emphasise that the implications of not having political decision making in Northern Ireland are very significant.

We have heard a lot about restoring the Executive. I was lucky enough to work with Northern Ireland parties in 2019-20 to restore the Executive then, and I took huge inspiration from the quality of politicians in Northern Ireland and the constructiveness and good will there at that time despite strong crosswinds. There are attempts to think about ways to run a negotiation to restore the Executive separately from the issue of the protocol, but that ship has sailed, because for one group and community in Northern Ireland fixing the protocol is key to the Executive getting back up and running. I have had strong views on how we have got here, on how previous Prime Ministers have handled this and on other routes that could have been taken, but the polling shows there is strong support for the Democratic Unionist party position among a big chunk of citizens in Northern Ireland.

We have heard that the new Prime Minister went to Blackpool, and I think he has developed new trust and new connections, and restored connections with Ireland, France and other European countries. In my view, however, we are now at a point where we really need to appeal to the EU to think again about how it is viewing this negotiation. There is some frustration—well, huge frustration—particularly about how the Conservative party has conducted these negotiations over the past couple of years, and I suspect that many of those complaints are correct, but we now need this.

We now need the EU to look back at what it did in Northern Ireland. It set up a taskforce, with multiple reports and multiple streams of investment. It invested in the Peace bridge in Derry, and it invested in the Peace Plus initiative. It had the widest set of co-ordinated activity in the European Commission on this particular vulnerable part of the EU. It thought very carefully and worked very hard to bring stability to Northern Ireland, and we now have one community that needs change to happen to get back to the restored settlement that is such a key part of the GFA.

My appeal to the EU is to think again about how it is going about this. Northern Ireland deals, in my experience, are not great on lots of legal detail, lots of bold paragraphs and lots of black and white. Instead, they are really based on compromise, fudge and flexibility. Whether it is two lanes, two approaches or different approaches to EU goods and NI goods, whether it is providing options to businesses in Northern Ireland about regulatory rules, or whether it is taking the European Court of Justice away from the very front of this deal to some distance in the background, all these things are achievable.

Those are all things on which the EU has recognised the uniqueness of Northern Ireland, with the very limited impact its trade and the risk at the border have on the single market. In this 25th year of the GFA, one community needs these changes to take place. We have a Prime Minister who is really trying to reset this relationship, and we now need to go for it. We now need to really encourage the EU to think about this differently and to work intensively at a political level to resolve this, because it is only through the resetting of the protocol situation that my colleagues in the DUP will come forward and restore the Executive. We can debate all we want whether that is good, and whether they are right or wrong, but that is the situation.

In any negotiation, one has to identify the realities, and the reality is that we need significant reform of the protocol at every level, with the EU leaning in on why that is so important. At a time of all this conflict across the broader European continent, it would be a tragedy should the EU not be flexible on the best possible success story in Northern Ireland. I realise this is a debate about Executive formation, but Executive formation in Northern Ireland comes from protocol renegotiation, and protocol renegotiation comes from the EU having some amnesia about its views on the Conservative party position on Brexit and moving forward in the best interests of the citizens of Northern Ireland.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the leader of the DUP.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Smith]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will allow this intervention, but I think we have gone way beyond the Bill that is before us. There will be plenty of other opportunities to discuss the issues that you are raising today, Sir Jeffrey. I know that this is vitally important, but there will be many more such opportunities.

[Julian Smith]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the EU, on the issue of medicines, did show flexibility this year, and did start to move into the area that we were discussing earlier—the area of compromise and less hard facts? We need more of that in other areas. We should encourage the EU to use the principle that it applied to medicines in these other sectors, and to start to move in that direction.

Northern Ireland Executive Formation

Debate between Nigel Evans and Julian Smith

Thursday 16th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith]

I think the Prime Minister was very clear about his views on those issues yesterday. I have no further comments to make.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Mr Speaker said that this statement should only go on until 12 o’clock; we have now gone past that. A substantial number of people wish to speak in the debate this afternoon, so I am afraid that we are going to move on.

NHS Risk Register

Debate between Nigel Evans and Julian Smith

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith]

Last week, I met Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred earlier. To clarify, neither the chief executive nor the chairman raised any of the points that he has raised. Not only that, but the local GP commissioning consortia are perfectly happy and are asking me and other local MPs to push ahead with the Bill. Why is the right hon. Gentleman such a scaremongering buffoon?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that description.

[Julian Smith]

I withdraw it fully.

[Andy Burnham]

I do not know why the hon. Gentleman thinks that such an intervention is appropriate. Why did he not ask the chairman and chief executive about this matter? Why does it take me to go and research the risk register—[Interruption.] Listen to the answer. Why does it take me to research the risk register in his constituency and to tell him about the risks to the NHS in his constituency, which he clearly does not know about? I suggest that he goes away from this Chamber right now and searches online, where he will find that risk register. Perhaps he will learn something about his constituency.

We are told that the market will decide. Last week, the Government received a specific warning from more than 150 members of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that the market-based approach envisaged in the Bill will have

“an extremely damaging effect on the health care of children”.

They went on to say:

“Care will become more fragmented, and families and clinicians will struggle to organise services for these children. Children with chronic disease and disability will particularly suffer, since most have more than one condition and need a range of different clinicians.”

They stated that:

“The Bill is misrepresented by the UK Government as being necessary”

and that it will

“harm those who are most vulnerable.”

Those are not my words, but those of clinicians. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) wants to dismiss them, that is up to her, but she would do well to listen to them.

Warnings do not come any more serious than the one that I have just read out. It shows why the Government will not publish the risk register: they know that the case for their Bill would be demolished in an instant. People watching this debate will ask how it is possible to proceed when experts make such warnings and when NHS bodies warn of fatalities. To press on regardless would be utterly irresponsible and unforgivable. That is what the Prime Minister said today that he plans to do.

The truth is that the Government are not listening, as we have seen throughout this debate. The Prime Minister is surrounding himself with people who say what he wants to hear, while closing the door of No.10 Downing street in the faces of those who do not. He will not listen to the doctors and nurses with whom he was once so keen to have his photograph taken. It could not be clearer: he is putting his political pride and the need for the Government to save face before the best interests of the national health service. He is gambling with patients, with public safety and with this country’s best-loved institution. The Prime Minister asked people to trust him with the NHS, but we have learned today that he is running unforgivable risks with it. What his Government are doing is wrong and they need to be stopped.

I call on Members across the House to put the NHS first tonight. Vote with us for the publication of the risk register so that the public can see what this reorganisation will do to their NHS. They deserve the full truth and tonight this House can give it to them and correct the Government who have got things so badly wrong. I say to people outside who are watching this debate, join this fight to save the NHS for future generations. The NHS matters too much to too many people for it to be treated in this way. People have not voted for what is happening. [Interruption.] Not a single Government Member who is shouting at me now can look their constituents in the eye and say, “I told you that I was going to bring forward the biggest ever top-down reorganisation.” The more people who join this fight, the stronger our voice will become.

We promised this Government the fight of their life for betraying that trust and that is what we will give them. Tonight, this House has an opportunity to speak for the millions of people who care about the NHS and are worried about what is happening to it. I implore this House to take that opportunity and I commend the motion to the House.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nigel Evans and Julian Smith

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Julian Smith]

Is the hon. Lady telling the public that this Bill will expand selection? If she is, I believe that is a deceit.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The hon. Member should know that he cannot accuse another hon. Member of deceit. Perhaps he would like to rephrase his comments, and withdraw the word “deceit”.

[Julian Smith]

Of course I will. I think it is important—

[The First Deputy Chairman]

Do you withdraw that word?

[Julian Smith]

I withdraw that word, but I think it is important that we do not represent the Bill inaccurately. This Bill does not propose any expansion to selection in this country, beyond the terms embedded in existing legislation.