Pete Wishart
Main Page: Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and Kinross-shire)Department Debates - View all Pete Wishart's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Dan Jarvis
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, not least because I know that he also has a very long-standing affection for Northern Ireland, and I join him in praising the bravery of all those involved in the actions we saw a couple of nights ago. He is also right to raise significant concerns, which link to the point I made earlier about words having consequences. While the usual suspects, as he describes them, will come forward to try to derive some kind of political advantage from circumstances such as these, I genuinely believe that the majority of the public expect us to act in a sensible, consensual way—to address the problems about which people are rightly angry, but to do so in a way that brings people together rather than driving them apart.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
In my 25 years as a Member of Parliament, I never thought I would see a situation where masked men would go from door to door, seeking to drive families from ethnic minorities out of their homes. What happened on Monday was truly barbaric, but nothing in the world could ever justify that type of behaviour. I and others in this House have been warning about the rise of the far right and those pernicious people who would influence this type of behaviour on our streets. Will the Minister now acknowledge that we have a new, emerging problem with elements of the far right, and will he commit to ensuring that we tackle it effectively?
Dan Jarvis
I agree with the hon. Member that the scenes he describes were utterly abhorrent and not something that any right-minded person would ever want to see, whether in Belfast, the United Kingdom or anywhere else. I hope that there is shared agreement about that. On his second point, I acknowledge as the Security Minister that to keep our country safe we have to deal with a range of different threats that sit across the spectrum. That includes extreme right-wing activity, as well as a range of other specific threats. In truth, my approach is always to be ideologically agnostic, in the sense that it does not make a difference to me what the particular motivation or ideology is of those who would do us harm. I will make sure that we have the defences to stand against those threats, regardless of where they come from.