Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

This Bill is an outrage. It is an outrage to common decency in Northern Ireland; it is an outrage because, so far today, with the exception of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), no one has actually debated its clauses with regard to Northern Ireland. Instead, the Bill has been hijacked and used as a vehicle for every other subject under the sun and every other fancy that Members have with regard to their own pet subjects, important though they are. It is wrong that Northern Ireland will now be subjected to serious and perverse changes to its laws without proper scrutiny, without proper negotiation and without proper regulation.

Some 66% of the people of Northern Ireland have rejected the fact that Parliament should have a say on the matters that are under discussion in clause 9. In fact, they have said that they should be left to the Northern Ireland Assembly. The fact of the matter is that the Bill makes it less likely that a Northern Ireland Assembly will actually be put in place to negotiate, to debate and to legislate on these matters. As has already been said, 17,000 people have signed a letter opposing what is being done today. If we read that across to the British mainland, that is the equivalent of 500,000 signing a petition in a matter of four days.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that those who say that we must have some governance for Northern Ireland have interfered not only in the devolution settlement, but in a way that makes the law on abortion in Northern Ireland even more draconian than that in the United Kingdom? That is the one part of the United Kingdom where people do not want to see changes in the law on abortion.

[Ian Paisley]

The changes that are being proposed and that will affect Northern Ireland are the most extreme laws that will ever affect anyone in the whole United Kingdom with regards to abortion. Those laws will allow the termination of life at the point of birth—[Interruption.] Yes, they do. Those laws will allow the termination of life on a point of disability; and those laws will allow the termination of life based on the sex of the child—laws that are prohibited in this part of the United Kingdom, but that Members will inflict in our part of the United Kingdom to make a cheap political point. How cheap do they hold life? They appear to hold it very low indeed.

I think of the life of a young girl called Grace in Northern Ireland whose parents were told several weeks before her birth that, because of a chromosome disorder, her life should be terminated. That child is 15 years of age. She is a remarkable young woman, one of the highest achievers in her school—indeed, beyond that, she is a high achiever in life itself—yet today this House wants to destroy her life and would like to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of other unborn lives.