Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Owen Smith Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Conor McGinn]

Absolutely. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen) is in his place. He is married to a Tyrone man. As an Armagh man, I make no further comment on his choice of husband and his county affiliations. [Laughter.] He makes the point frequently that, when he is in Scotland they are married and recognised by the law, but when they get off the plane in Belfast they quite simply are not. That cannot continue and, from a Unionist point of view, is anathema to anyone who values equal rights within the Union as a whole.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and I wholeheartedly support his new clause. Does he agree that we in this House need to remember that it is not unique for us to propose to legislate from Westminster in respect of Northern Ireland? It is not particularly anomalous. There have been myriad occasions in recent history, during the difficult periods of the political process in Northern Ireland and over the past two years, when we have legislated effectively in this place to either put in place important provisions for the people Northern Ireland or to keep the peace process on track. This is an important instance when we should do likewise and step in in the absence of the Assembly.

[Conor McGinn]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he said and for the work he did as shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. This and other issues we will discuss today, on which I am sure he intends to speak, were critical to getting us to the point where we are now.

I want to close my speech because there are myriad other important issues—

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[Nigel Dodds]

My right hon. Friend has made an important point. We are to have four hours of debate on this and a number of other devolved issues, but that is not the way in which such laws should be made. Members who have railed against emergency procedures, a lack of proper scrutiny and all the rest of it would be the first to protest if we were dealing with a different issue.

[Owen Smith]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that there have been instances in the recent past when we have legislated in this place on what has ostensibly been a devolved competence? I am thinking of, for example, the provision to extend access to medicinal cannabis to Northern Ireland.

[Nigel Dodds]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is mistaken in relation to that issue, but there have been instances in which legislation has been passed for the whole UK, which was entirely appropriate because there was no dispute about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and what he says is true—it is a fact. Those figures have not been refuted. Indeed, they have been endorsed. I thank him for reminding the House clearly of the 100,000 lives saved because of not having abortion on demand in Northern Ireland.

Last year, an abortion was carried out every two and a half minutes in England and Wales—that is of every hour, of every day of the week, with no holiday and no break. Was that the intention of the Abortion Act 1967? No, it was not, but it was the result. I heard the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) say that she is speaking for women from Northern Ireland as no one is speaking for them. I seek gently to remind her that I am here, speaking on behalf of my constituents.

As of Monday evening, my office had received 443 emails on this issue, the majority of which were from women in my constituency, and 412 of the emails opposed any attempt by this place to change abortion laws in Northern Ireland through external interference, with some even labelling this as an attack on devolution and democracy. Just 31 asked me to support these amendments. That means that 92.5% of my constituents—the people I am paid to represent in this House—have asked me not to accede to this amendment. Their reasons replicate mine: some are opposed to what brings about abortion on demand, and some are incensed that Members of this House will not “interfere” to bring about a resolution on urgent health and education matters, but will step in over our heads on a matter that was one of the last to be discussed at Stormont and to be voted against.

Members of this House cannot have it both ways to boost their own profile. Clearly, I speak for the majority of my constituents—I am happy to say that—and indeed for the 60% of those in national polls who would not be in favour of abortion on demand. I hope that I have spoken with gentleness and concern but am yet clear. The people of Strangford have been clear to me and we must also be clear: what is being asked here is not the desire of the people.

I end where I started, ever conscious of the time that you have allowed me, Dame Rosie, by saying that both lives matter and both rights must be upheld. This proposal protects neither, so I will not support new clauses 1, 10, 11 or 12. They do not represent the viewpoints of the majority of people in Northern Ireland.

[Owen Smith]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke, as he always does, with sincerity, conviction and gentleness. I will respect his request that we are respectful of the views of others in this place, even when we do not agree with them. I also respect the views of right hon. and hon. Members from Northern Ireland who today have expressed their frustration that we are not debating what I suppose many in Northern Ireland would feel is the primary political issue of the day: the restoration of the Executive and the political process that is ongoing there. I feel, as he doubtless does, that we spend too little time in this place debating issues that affect people in Northern Ireland. Arguably, we are becoming strangers in this place to many of the issues that affect people in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, as this place becomes a rather more English-centred Parliament, often by accident.

I do not believe, however, that the clauses that have been brought forward today are an attempt to hijack this debate. They are in some respects—new clause 1 and amendments 9 and 5, and the issues they pertain to—a reflection of the fact that, as Ron Davies, a former denizen of this place observed, devolution is “a process” and “not an event”. As someone who served the most recent Labour Government as an adviser in both Wales and Northern Ireland and who as a parliamentarian has served as shadow Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland, I think our attitudes to devolution are changing. In some respects, although we cannot have a hierarchy of rights, this debate is about the sense that some rights must be seen as universal and must, indeed, supersede the right to devolution. Those rights are, in particular, the rights we are talking about today: reproductive rights for women and the right for the LGBT people of Northern Ireland to be treated equally to their brothers and sisters throughout the rest of the UK.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

On what trumps what and what is more important, issues with cross-party support that the Northern Ireland Assembly should bring forward to the Northern Ireland Executive have already been identified, and they include the institutional abuse scandal. What gives Members the right to trump those sorts of issues? Let us be honest: the passing of certain legislation here puts people’s lives at risk. I believe that the life of the unborn is a life. It is not a foetus; it is a life. There is the potential that legislation will pass and create a problem for the future.

[Owen Smith]

Let me agree with the hon. Gentleman partly. As I shall talk about in a moment, I do believe that this place should legislate on the late Sir Anthony Hart’s recommendations on historic abuse. I am loth to suggest that there is a hierarchy of rights, but there are certain inalienable universal human rights that should be observed and afforded to people in every part of the world, including Northern Ireland. We are increasingly mindful of the fact that we in this place cannot allow ourselves to be hamstrung by the fact of devolution when it comes to the failure to see those rights observed for and afforded to women and the LGBT community in Northern Ireland. That is why this place, with lots of reluctance on the part of some Members, such as me, who are Unionists but who also believe fundamentally in devolution, is coming to the view that there should now be not just reports but legislation in this place to put in place those rights for Northern Ireland.

I support new clause 1, which was spoken to excellently and eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), who has been a brilliant campaigner on the issue in recent years, and I also support the excellent work undertaken by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) in respect of women’s reproductive rights in Northern Ireland. However, I wish to concentrate on two other issues that have not been spoken about much today but that are addressed in the series of new clauses and amendments: first, the pension for victims of the troubles in Northern Ireland; and secondly, the victims of the historical sexual abuse in care homes in Northern Ireland, which the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) mentioned a moment ago. When I was the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I spoke from the Front Bench on these issues and devoted a lot of my time to them, and I shall simply repeat what I said from the Front Bench about what I think we ought to do.

Let me illustrate and humanise the issue of a pension for severely physically disabled victims of the troubles—those people in Northern Ireland who were injured through no fault of their own, of whom there are around 500—by talking a little about the case of a man I have met on many occasions and whom I greatly admire: Peter Heathwood. In 1979, Peter was in his flat in Belfast when loyalist gunmen broke in, dragged his wife down the hall by her hair, and shot Peter twice, paralysing him for life. The configuration of the building in which they lived meant that when the ambulance men arrived, they could not put Peter’s damaged, broken body on to a stretcher, so he was put into a body bag. He was carried down the steps of his flat in the body bag. His father, Herbert, arrived at the scene thinking that his son, Peter, had died, and collapsed of a heart attack and died. Peter has been paralysed and in a wheelchair since 1979, unable to work, and surviving on benefits. He is a perfect, awful and tragic illustration of the reality of the lives of some 500 members of our community, our country, in Northern Ireland who were injured during the troubles. He is a perfect illustration of why this Government—any Government in Northern Ireland or in this place—need to act with compassion and speed to help those people and to offer them a victim’s pension, as has been talked about for so long, to give them the extra support that they need.

Many right hon. and hon. Members, particularly from the DUP, quite rightly point to the difficulty that is at the heart of the reason why this has not been done. It is that, among that 500, there are perhaps 10 people who were injured by their own hand, who, in the course of commissioning acts of terrorism, blew themselves up or shot themselves. The consideration, as always, has quite rightly been that it would be invidious if those people, having tried to perpetrate violence against the state and against innocent victims, were then supported by the state. I completely understand that, but I simply say that people like Peter are getting older. They will die at some point; many people have died in the intervening period. It was back in 2014, at the signing of the Stormont House agreement, that the state in our country effectively decreed that we should be offering this support to those people.

[Bob Stewart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

Let me finish this point then I will gladly give way.

My simple plea is that we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good in this place. We should legislate to provide for these people. I think that that will happen, and I am pleased about that, but I urge the Secretary of State to get on with it.

[Bob Stewart]

It should not be beyond the wit of man to devise a system where someone who has actually caused damage to himself is not part of this scheme. Peter requires to be compensated as much as possible and as quickly as possible. It may well be that we will be bringing further measures back to the House, because, frankly, it does not look to me like we will get the Northern Ireland Executive up and running within the time period, and it is time for us to take some action to support people in Northern Ireland.

[Owen Smith]

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman. It should not be beyond the wit of man to create some sort of process and a mechanism to do this, but, to date, it has been beyond the wit of the men and women in this place and in Northern Ireland to do so. That is because of the thorny issue of how we define a victim in Northern Ireland. I understand that that is a complex area from which there would be many ramifications, but we really must legislate on this.

Finally, on the victim’s pension, I want to pay tribute to the work of the WAVE group in Northern Ireland, which has been quite brilliant in supporting the victims of the troubles and in pressing the case for a pension. It is doing great work, and I know that the Secretary of State is a great fan of all that it has done. I also wish to pay tribute to Sir Anthony Hart, who, I was shocked to learn in the Chamber today, died just this morning. Sir Anthony was a very distinguished judge who took on a very difficult task in 2012 on behalf of the Assembly to undertake a review into the historical abuse in 22 homes run by the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland and Barnardo’s in Northern Ireland between 1922 and the 1990s. It was the biggest such inquiry ever undertaken in the UK, and it found that there had been grievous abuse of boys and girls in these homes over a very long period, and he found—he undertook harrowing work—that there should be compensation to the tune of £7,000 to £100,000 paid out to those victims. Sir Anthony died this morning with his work unfinished, with the legislation not passed either by the Assembly or by this place, and that is a badge of shame for politicians in Northern Ireland and in this place. We desperately need to act on this, too, because those victims deserve it; they deserve Northern Ireland’s politicians to do it, but if those politicians cannot, they deserve us in this place to take our responsibility and to legislate here.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith). I rise to speak in support of new clauses 1 and 10, and the string of amendments, especially amendment 9, which is a very important compromise amendment when it comes to what we are trying to do today. I will start with the issue of equal marriage.

It will not have escaped us all that it was London Pride just this weekend, and we had a message from the Prime Minister to the LGBTQI+ community across the UK, in which she said:

“I will only be your Prime Minister for a few more weeks. But I will be your ally for the rest of my life.”

As other hon. Members have mentioned, an ally is not simply someone who stands up and says, “I’m with you.” An ally is someone who stands up and does something. In successive Prime Minister’s questions, we keep hearing the word “legacy”, and what a legacy this would be for the Prime Minister. When she was Home Secretary, she helped—pushed by my dear friend Baroness Featherstone, the former Member for Hornsey and Wood Green—to put through the equal marriage legislation, and she could be the Prime Minister who allows that legislation to apply across the UK. I sincerely hope that is where we get to today.

I hear the worries about our having to take these decisions, but the fact is that there is no devolved legislature for us to supersede right now; the Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat for two years. I contacted Members of that body this morning to say, “We’re doing this. Is there any particular message that you would like me to send to my fellow Members of Parliament?” Stephen Farry—an MLA for our sister party, Alliance—said that he would obviously much prefer it if MLAs were able to implement such measures themselves, but wanted to convey the following message: “Don’t be frightened”. They are behind what we are trying to do. We forget that the democratically elected Northern Irish MPs who sit here, very rightly expressing the views of their constituents, represent just one of many parties in Northern Ireland, the majority of which support equal marriage, as was shown in the vote in 2015. The Alliance party has been challenging and requesting reform of the petition of concern for a while because of the outcome of the 2015 vote, so it is worth reminding ourselves that we should be—in this case, anyway—pushing at an open door. And we can see it ourselves; 76% of people in Northern Ireland want equal marriage.

I was grateful to be able to visit Belfast and speak to students at Lagan College. It is all a bit of a mess there right now, but the families of some of those students would normally have voted for the DUP. The students said that they were embarrassed that Northern Ireland did not have equal marriage and that they would much rather see it brought in. They did not understand how society had moved so far in one direction, yet Northern Ireland was lagging behind.

Interestingly, Barnardo’s has come out for equal marriage, as has the Children’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland—and so have the businesses I have spoken to; they told me that Northern Ireland not yet having equal marriage sent a message to the workers they were trying to attract: “This is a slightly odd place.” That is not at all a reflection of what Belfast is actually like. Northern Ireland needs to move with the times. It is entirely right that this place does what Northern Ireland had already asked for before the power-sharing arrangements broke down, and it is for that reason that I am proud to be a co-sponsor of new clause 1.

I turn to the thornier issue of abortion. No one here can fail to be moved by what we have heard—not just by Sarah Ewart’s story, but by all the others too. Until I became an MP, I did not realise that there was this extraordinary discrepancy between the law on abortion in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the UK. I simply did not know, because in the UK media, in general, this kind of thing is not really spoken about. So one of the very first things I did when I was elected was to sign the amendment that allows Northern Irish women to access abortion in the UK. We know that that is not enough—that such provision needs to be closer to home.