Northern Ireland

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am sure it is unnecessary to pay tribute to all Members who have spoken in an extraordinarily timely, appropriate and long overdue debate. It is a tradition of this House—it has grown over the years—for the wind-ups of Ministers and shadow Ministers to name-check every single speaker and credit them with the most extraordinary oratorical flourishes. I do not think that that is necessary and will simply concentrate on the finest and best speakers that we have heard this afternoon.

I will start, of course, with the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), who, as ever, commanded the House and held us in the palm of his hand when he described the economic and cultural renaissance that exists not by coincidence, but by virtue of examples such as the Titanic quarter, which is an extraordinarily interesting place to visit.

The Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee ran through its greatest hits. I congratulate him on eschewing the false modesty to which others might have succumbed when he told us about his successes with regard to air passenger duty, corporation tax and fuel laundering. How right he was to avoid excessive modesty. The respect that many of us who have served on the Committee have for him probably grew today.

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) made an extremely thoughtful speech, in which he spoke from a position of almost unrivalled authority. I have no doubt that his positive and forward-looking comments will have impressed themselves on all Members.

The hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) made an unusual comment. It is not for me to criticise my betters, which I entirely accept he is, but to refer to hon. and right hon. Members dusting off their speeches and running through their old prejudices on occasions such as these was outrageous, even though one should not criticise an officer. However, we respect him for his contribution and I hope that he will accept that there was no dusting off of stump and set speeches. I think that everything we heard this afternoon was fresh, new and positive and very much in the best traditions of this House.

When the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) spoke about a transformed city, she did so from an unrivalled position of authority. If there is one person in this House who stands as an example of the resilience of the people of Northern Ireland and their refusal to bow to sectarian assault, it is her. She has immense courage and her words resonated throughout the Chamber. When she spoke of the agonies of segregated lives, she described not only a current problem, but a future direction of travel, which we will simply have to address at some stage.

I enjoy it when my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) speaks of sport. She could have mentioned her own remarkable achievements in that area. When I met her and the Sandy Row boxing club the other day, we did not discuss all-Ireland boxing, but we have now been educated on it. Sports groups and organisations in Northern Ireland are providing leadership. Two football teams from slightly different traditions in Belfast—Crusaders and Cliftonville—have for the past two or three years, very quietly and peacefully and without great fanfare, been getting on with cross-community working. I am not sure whether they have ever been given credit on the Floor of the House, but I would like to give credit to the Crus and to Cliftonville for their achievements in that area. I also congratulate the appropriate Members of Parliament for the support that they have given.

The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) demonstrated yet again, as if reminding was needed, what a superb constituency Member he is. Should there at any stage be the remotest threat to any business, any entrepreneur, any start-up, any lock-up garage, any car boot sale, anything within the environs of glorious, beauteous Ballymena, who will come riding forth on his white charger to protect them but the hon. Member for North Antrim? He referred to tobacco packaging. One would almost think there was a constituency interest there. Now that I come to think about it, I remember that Roy Beggs, when he was a Member of the House, and I visited that factory and I discovered, when the free samples were being given out afterwards, how extraordinarily capacious the poacher’s pocket of Roy Beggs’s ulster could be. That was the large coat that he used to wear. I do not think I have ever in my life seen so many packets of Silk Cut disappear into one garment. Yet again the hon. Member for North Antrim has proved that he is a first-class constituency representative.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). He proved the old adage that if every single President of the United States is entirely Irish, particularly the present one, most Members of the House have some Irish ancestry. The interdependence and the links between our two nations, the shared ancestry, come across as a very important fact that we should never forget, because we are tied together in these islands by ties not just of history, commerce or convenience, but very often of blood, culture and shared history. It was salutary to hear his story of how people came to his constituency from Ireland and made a success, but he has never forgotten where he came from. We need to respect that.

The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) referred to a work in progress. As ever, she brings oratorical flushes and realism in one glorious melange of accuracy. Although her comments were slightly warning, she was optimistic but realistic. That is the reputation that she has. Were we to get into a competition with my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) about the beauty of various constituencies, South Down would be very high on my personal list. I mean to cause no offence to more than 99% of the House when I say that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is, in my opinion, one of the most decent, God-fearing and good-hearted Members of the House. He also has an oratorical skill and the skill of language and poetry. If I could understand what he was saying most of the time, I am sure that I would never forget his words. I did have the advantage of a translator. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, who has spent much time in Strangford, gave me a running commentary.

The hon. Member for Strangford referred to the fear in people’s faces and the sorrow in their eyes. That is poetry, and it is poetry from the heart. It is not an artifice but a genuine poetic instinct and an urge. If I may say so, it is an honour for us to hear that. He also used an expression that we should remember. It is one of the most important things that has been said today. He said that in Northern Ireland people are not only surviving, but thriving. That is something we should certainly remember. He also talked about how people are managing to overcome the difficulties that they face, and he did so with immense courage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), as ever the Pericles of Derry, the man who somehow manages to produce these wondrous verbal confections at which the rest of us simply stand back in amazement, identified an extremely serious point when he spoke about instability. He said that the instability is not to do with the inherent difficulties with the institutions; it is to do with other factors. We need to concentrate on that. As ever, he came up with a glorious expression that we will never forget, when he said that we should not be patronising people, nor ghettoising people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling made one of the best speeches that I have heard on the Floor of this House. It was a speech that was positive and realistic. It contained one line that meant an enormous amount to me: devolution does not mean disengagement. When my hon. Friend made that point, he put down a marker. It was not a party political point, but reflected the attitude of the whole House. That line resonated in what the Secretary of State said and she echoed that emotion.

Anyone who is listening to this debate should be sure of one thing: there is a cool, calm and determined attitude in this House. We have an unbreakable determination that the benefits of the peace process will not be lost. We will not, under any circumstances, go back to the cold, chill days of carnage and slaughter. We will move forward and it will be difficult, but there is an absolute commitment on the part of every single Member of this House, for the sake not just of our united nation or Northern Ireland, but our common humanity, to see this through and not to be beaten. The one message that comes from this afternoon’s debate is that there is a unanimity of view, emotion, strength and determination throughout this Chamber and, dare I say it, this country. If this debate has underlined that one point, we have achieved a great deal this afternoon.