Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Paul Masterton

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

[Paul Masterton]

I would be incredibly frustrated by that. I will come on to the point about cherry-picking, which the hon. Member for Belfast East made last night. I do not pretend to be an expert on Northern Ireland just because I lived there for a bit and I still have friends there, but my strong instinct is that the people of Northern Ireland are not convinced that devolution is coming back any time soon, and that they do not particularly care who makes the decisions, as long as the decisions are made.

We heard the list of 67 issues from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee report. I am frustrated with myself because, had I properly thought about this, there might have been good reason to table 67 discrete amendments—keyhole surgery amendments—to give Ministers incredibly limited powers, strictly for the purposes of doing certain things, such as implementing some of the strategies that have been gathering dust and making some changes to legislation. People in Northern Ireland want and need those changes now, but they do not particularly care who enacts them.

The point about cherry-picking is right. These are the wrong issues to use as test cases. What we are doing is messy, divisive and emotive but, by the same token, I do not think it is wrong to do it. Therefore, I will support new clause 1 and amendment 9. I think that they have been neatly and carefully drafted, to continue, as far as possible, the optimism that there will be a restored Executive and Assembly. If there is, those provisions will fall away. I will not support new clause 10 because—as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and others set out—it goes too far in making underlying changes to legislation.

I will sit down and shut up now. I will just add that I find the whole situation in Northern Ireland completely unconscionable, but not because I am a dyed-in-the-wool Unionist, who bizarrely wants to roll back devolution—I am not. We have to accept that this is the United Kingdom’s sovereign Parliament. Allowing Northern Ireland to effectively wither on the vine only serves the interests of Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin is the blockage to getting the Assembly up and running. I can see no evidence that that situation will change, certainly not in the next few months. Unless we change the underlying structure of how the Executive and Assembly are formed, it will be open to Sinn Féin to collapse them at any point in the future. At one point or another, we in this place must say that we will stand up in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland, whichever side of the community they are from, and, in certain discrete measures, neatly and tightly drafted, introduce the effective change that they need and are crying out for.

We shall be back here in six months’ time, and I hope that a large number of those 67 issues will be up for consideration. I also hope—this is directed at the Government Front Bench—that we will deal with the legislation properly and will not try to rush it through in two days, which has led to all the issues of scrutiny that have been raised by Opposition Members.

I think that this is a bit of a dog’s breakfast, but we are where we are, and I shall be supporting a couple of the amendments today. Let us hope that my negativity and pessimism are misplaced and that by the end of October we will have a brand-new shiny Executive, but I suspect that I will not be holding my breath.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I rise to support new clause 1, along with amendment 9, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), and new clauses 10, 11 and 12, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy).

The reality facing women in Northern Ireland is that, under current legislation, they can be sent to prison for life for ending a pregnancy. Abortion is not available to women in Northern Ireland in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, rape or incest. That is not a situation that we would tolerate for any of our own constituents, and we should not be tolerating it for UK citizens in Northern Ireland. The UK Supreme Court takes the same view, and has stated that the lack of access to abortion for women in Northern Ireland is a breach of their human rights.

I think it very unfortunate that the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) sought to undermine committees of the United Nations and CEDAW to try to make points that should not be made in the context of this very important issue. I think that that was unacceptable, and that all of us in the Chamber should be upholding the UN’s findings and supporting all the reports and recommendations from CEDAW.

It is not even as if the legislation in Northern Ireland actually prevents women from having abortions. It prevents some women from having abortions—those who, for a variety of reasons, such as poverty or a set of family circumstances, are not able to travel to England. That is an appalling situation for women in Northern Ireland, and we must do something about it.

I thank all those who have campaigned for many decades in Northern Ireland to change the law relating to abortion. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North and for Walthamstow, who have done so much in continuing to raise the issue in Parliament and with the Women and Equalities Committee. I suspect, however, that I am the only Member in the Chamber to have campaigned against the abortion laws in Northern Ireland for decades. I began campaigning with a group of women for the Abortion Act 1967 to be applied to Northern Ireland. We thought, even back then, that it was important for women throughout the UK to have the same access to abortion, wherever they lived, and for their human rights—although I doubt that was the language we used at the time—to be upheld uniformly.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Paul Masterton

Thursday 10th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is nothing short of a tragedy that today we are discussing this totally inadequate deal at the 11th hour, with the threat of “this deal or no deal” still being exercised by the Government, despite there being no majority in the House for no deal. It did not have to be this way.

As many others have said today, the Prime Minister should have reached out across the House to secure a cross-party agreement that we and the country could coalesce around. Instead, she pandered to her own Brexiteers and set ridiculous red lines, which is why I am voting against the agreement. It rules out a permanent customs union with a British say; it does not deliver a good deal on services; it would limit access for British businesses to vital EU markets; and it does not sufficiently guarantee workers’ rights or consumer or environmental protections. There are no guarantees that equivalent arrangements with EU programmes and agencies will survive the Brexit process. There is also a lack of clarity about our security arrangements and what will happen in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the political declaration is so big and conditional that I am surprised any Member could vote for this deal. I cannot understand what they think they are voting for.

I want to concentrate on four areas regarding why I think this is a bad deal, and why leaving the EU is not good for my constituents. First, as others have said, it will make my constituents poorer. The North East England chamber of commerce—not a bunch of remoaners —say that more than half its members believe that leaving the EU will have a negative impact on their company. Treasury analysis from 28 November shows that the north-east will be worse off after Brexit, with a GDP reduction of between 3% and a massive 16%, and with pharmaceutical and automotive industries most at risk. The loss of funding from the European Regional Development Fund for infrastructure and skills development will be a huge blow to the region, and as yet the Government have given no guarantees that the Prosperity Fund will replace that funding for the north-east.

The second issue is university funding. It is no coincidence that the previous two higher education Ministers resigned their positions, because they know this deal is bad for our universities. Universities UK has been clear about what is needed from the Government in terms of guaranteeing access to the EU’s research and innovation programmes and research networks, yet what we see in the political declaration is very vague language indeed:

“The parties will explore the participation of the United Kingdom in the European research infrastructure consortium”.

That is no guarantee whatsoever. The third reason is that the EU provides strong policies that seek to protect our natural environment, heritage, rights at work, and helps us to tackle climate change, but again there is no guarantee from the Government that those policies will be maintained.

Fourthly, I come to Northern Ireland. A few weeks ago I asked the Prime Minister to come back to the House with guarantees to ensure that the Good Friday agreement would not be put at risk by her deal. I therefore read the addendum on Northern Ireland with great interest, but I was saddened because, although it mentions the importance of the unique relationship with Ireland, and of fostering the development of the seamless border that now enables unprecedented levels of trade and co-operation, it contains nothing to say how that will be achieved. All the points in the addendum relate to the operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and I am afraid I was led to believe that the Government have not realised that the Assembly has not been sitting for two years. We need to hear a lot more from the Government about how they will ensure that the Good Friday agreement—in particular the cross-border institutions and structures that support it—will not be diminished whenever Northern Ireland leaves the EU. The Government have heard from other Members about the issues with the backstop, but I want to hear about the Good Friday agreement.

[Paul Masterton]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am sorry, I will not because we are short of time.

If the deal is voted down next week, as we expect it to be, and if there is no general election, the House must have the guts to go back to the country and ask again for people’s opinion on this deal. When people voted in 2016, in good faith, we did not have the details of this deal, and in order to make progress it is important to allow them to be considered.