Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I shall have to answer procedurally, but of course we understand the political implications of where we are. The most significant, if I may say so, is the collapse of the institutions because of the legitimate concerns of Unionism and of the DUP in particular. That is why the Secretary of State and I have been very clear that we recognise the legitimate interests of all parties, including the European Union and Ireland, and it is why we are resolute in the United Kingdom’s own interests. Of course if we completely conceded our interests we would achieve a deal within weeks, but the point is that this country and this Government are humble in accepting the legitimate interests of the EU and resolute in defending our own. I very much hope that we will reach a negotiated settlement.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on power sharing in Northern Ireland.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

I engage regularly with the Northern Ireland parties—indeed, I spoke to all the Executive party leaders only this morning—and I will continue to keep my Cabinet colleagues fully apprised of those discussions.

[Mr Dhesi]

The Secretary of State told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that he would be calling an election

“at one minute past midnight”

on 28 October, but that did not happen, which has left Northern Ireland in limbo. Reports have since emerged that the Secretary of State was directly overruled by the Prime Minister. Is that true, or did he mean to intentionally mislead a parliamentary Committee?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I do not believe that I was overruled by the Prime Minister.

Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

When we last debated this Bill in June, the context was that Sinn Féin had just threatened the collapse of the institutions. Fast forward back to groundhog day, and we are here again with the DUP dangling the future of those same institutions before us. The context of both those threats is the same: the pandemic is still rampant, there are issues in the education service, we have the worst health waiting lists in these islands by a mile, and, without a climate change plan, Northern Ireland is a laggard with no binding targets at all. That seesaw of instability and stop-start governance is the last decade and a half in microcosm, with each of the two lead parties replicating the same tactics and threats, and criticising each other for doing the same, with each particular episode draining away the confidence and belief of the people of Northern Ireland in power sharing.

I fear that, with this Bill, we have missed some of the opportunities to improve governance, cohesion and the sense of possibility that the institutions were based on. For all that the letter and spirit of the Good Friday agreement have been invoked in recent years, either for or against Brexit and the protocol, that spirit of power sharing and genuinely working the common ground in the interests of people in Northern Ireland through mutual endeavour are quite absent from today’s Assembly. In our amendments in Committee and today, the SDLP brought forward practical suggestions to try to improve the atmosphere and improve governance. We have been very clear—this was echoed by a number of witnesses in Committee—that no amount of rules and regulations will force the parties to share power properly unless they truly believe that it is the right thing to do, but it is appropriate that we should try to improve the mechanisms involved. The Good Friday agreement always allowed for that level of evolution, and that is something the SDLP has supported before—for example, in the introduction of opposition provisions.

It is a fact that the Good Friday agreement was negotiated by the widest possible range of political voices, that it was put to the people and that the people in the north and south of Ireland endorsed it. The St Andrews changes, which include a lot of the flaws, were not endorsed in that way. They were negotiated by, and for, the two large parties and imposed without recourse to the people of the island, and that shows. The flaws in the election of the First Ministers are illustrative of the rot and the culture of mistrust in the Assembly. There has been much discussion in recent months about the concept of parallel consent, when in fact the election of joint First Ministers, as was, is the centrepiece of parallel consent and the most real example of it in strand 1.

In the early years of the Assembly, the First Ministers were elected from the Floor of the Assembly by a majority of all present and both designations. That allowed for cross-party consensus building and coalition building, which have disappeared in the last decade and a half. That was done to spare the blushes of the larger parties because they did not want to be seen to be endorsing each other in the voting Lobby, but that has had, and continues to have, a knock-on effect on the wider political discourse. We know that leadership in any organisation comes from the top, and it is the same in Northern Ireland. These changes, which we have tried to address through amendments, will allow each Assembly election to be reduced to a first-past-the-post race to become top dog, even though, as others have pointed out, one cannot even order paperclips without the say-so of the other. This will serve to suck all the oxygen out of the political discussion and allow every other issue to drain away.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that it is beneficial for the good people of Northern Ireland to have a functioning Northern Ireland Assembly rather than getting edicts from here in Westminster. Does she agree that it was even more destabilising for Northern Ireland when the UK Government, as part of the Brexit deal, signed a Northern Ireland protocol that they had no intention of honouring? Is that not even worse for the people of Northern Ireland?

[Claire Hanna]

I agree entirely. Among the many things that we discussed under the Good Friday agreement, the primacy of the rule of law and of trust are contained in that as well. They have gone out of the window in recent months, which is having a knock-on effect in Northern Ireland.

I regret that our amendments were not adopted, but the mechanisms that we tried to insert into the Bill were around that sense of joint purpose and common endeavour, as well as accountability. When the First Ministers were elected by the MLAs, they were accountable to the MLAs. The failures of the current process became very clear when Members of the Assembly tried to hold to account Ministers who had been responsible for terrible governance failures in the renewable heat incentive scheme. It became very clear that the First Minister did not feel that she was accountable to the Assembly, and indeed, due to those changes, she was not.

It is also worth saying that the mechanisms that we proposed would have been compatible with an overdue review of designation. I very much agree with the point raised by, among others, the Chair of the Northern Ireland Committee that, as currently operated, the designation structures for people opting to be nationalist, Unionist or other are locking in sectarianism. They were very well-intentioned; they were designed to manage a traditional conflict between two traditional communities, but Northern Ireland has evolved and it is appropriate that we should look to evolve those structures as well.

The Minister referred to the Bill being New Decade, New Approach, no more and no less. It is a missed opportunity, but it is worth saying that it includes some things that I do not remember from New Decade, New Approach, including the removal of key phrases and mechanisms from the ministerial code of conduct. It is still not clear who had problems with the language on transparency and accountability as it stood in the original agreement and in the 1998 Act, but I use that as an illustrative example that it is not a faithful transcription of the New Decade, New Approach all-party agreement and therefore other mechanisms could have been advanced.

Although we agree with the thrust of the Bill, we are beset and bedevilled by a culture of veto and stand-off, and this would have been an appropriate opportunity to try to fix some of those things. For example, to the best of my knowledge, the Assembly has not delivered a single piece of equality legislation. I listened to hon. Members speaking about why we could not pass equality legislation, in this case in the form of language legislation, because there is so much to do on health and education. There is no doubt about that, but those same parties have been running the show for a decade and a half, and in many cases they hold the specific ministerial briefs about which they speak. Every other region of these islands is able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Equality provisions can be advanced while meaningfully delivering for the people of Northern Ireland.

Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman has highlighted some of the challenges in how we deal with such issues and move forward in this difficult reality. As we work through some of the details in the weeks ahead, we will talk to victims’ groups, political parties and people such as him to take things on board to ensure that, when we do legislate, we can help Northern Ireland move forward and have everything dealt with in a genuinely holistic way so that if we say we will end the unfair cycle of investigations that is serving nobody, we can do so properly.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Margaret Valente was just 30 years old when, in 1980, her husband was abducted by the Provisional IRA and held captive for three days before being murdered. Ten years later, her son-in-law was brutally murdered by the Ulster Volunteer Force. To this day, she has no idea whether there was a thorough investigation into either murder. How can the Secretary of State stand there and say that the response to this staggering failure of justice for Margaret and hundreds like her must be to close the book altogether and cruelly deny her any chance of finding the truth about what happened to her loved ones? Would Conservative Ministers be so insensitive about coming up with such ludicrous legislation if a member of their own family had been such a victim?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

We lost two people in this House.

Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend asks a good question. It is right that with the PSNI taking forward this review and investigation and the police ombudsman doing its review and investigative work, it could be prejudicial to have another process running alongside. In terms of assessing whether the Government have fulfilled our article 2 obligations, we need to let these processes work through and then make that decision.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

In 2012, Sir Desmond de Silva QC’s review found that

“a series of positive actions by employers of the State that actively furthered and facilitated his murder”,

yet even that review had serious shortcomings, as identified by the Supreme Court. At long last, the Government must hold a full public inquiry into the murder of lawyer Patrick Finucane, because in direct contravention of what the Secretary of State has just mentioned, the chief constable of the PSNI has said it is

“our view that there are currently no new lines of inquiry. We now need to decide if a further review is merited given all the previous investigations into this case.”

Why is the Secretary of State procrastinating and adding to the heartache and pain of the Finucane family?

[Brandon Lewis]

I think I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question several times already today. The simple fact is that on 2 November, the PSNI notified my Department of the investigative review process it will be starting in early 2021. I think he might be getting his timelines wrong in terms of what he is referring to, because it is not until that is completed that the PSNI can know whether there is anything new that will also inform our decision around our article 2 obligations. That is the right process. I trust the PSNI to do its job professionally.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend says, he has been a consistent campaigner on this particular issue. We have announced over £3.9 billion of new additional capital funding for the NHS up to 2022-23, and the majority of that is to support the implementation of the local sustainability and transformation partnership plans. Major projects are under consideration across the country, and we intend to announce one large-scale scheme the size of the Shrewsbury and Telford plan every year going forward. They will be based on high-quality plans, but they will arise from local NHS leaders. It is important that such plans are driven by the local NHS, but they will ensure better care for patients.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Q7. It is said there is no greater pain than losing a child, especially in circumstances that are entirely and easily avoidable. My Slough constituent Mark Scaife, whose son Michael tragically drowned in the Jubilee river, was shocked to learn that schools are not required to teach water safety and the impact of cold water shock. Does the Prime Minister agree that, as we are currently in the middle of the Royal Life Saving Society’s annual Drowning Prevention Week, now is the opportune moment to discuss this matter with ministerial colleagues and to announce the compulsory inclusion of these vital lessons?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important issue. Our sympathies are with the family.

We take the teaching of water safety very seriously, which is why we are supporting the National Water Safety Forum’s national drowning prevention strategy, which aims to achieve a 50% reduction in drownings by 2026 by encouraging people to stay safe while enjoying themselves. We have made sure that swimming and water safety is compulsory in the national curriculum for physical education at primary level, but we recognise there is more to do. We have established an implementation group, and we are reviewing the recommendations of the report, which is part of the Sporting Future strategy that aims to improve the swimming curriculum.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What we want to do is negotiate a good, close partnership—a special partnership—with the remaining EU27 so that we can continue to see good trade, as far as possible tariff free and as frictionless as possible, between companies here in the United Kingdom and those in the EU27. We also want, as my hon. Friend indicates, trade deals around the rest of the world to ensure that we are taking advantage of the opportunities that those trade deals give, because that means more prosperity and more jobs here in the UK.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister and I represent Maidenhead and Slough so we are good neighbours, and I want first to place on record my immense gratitude to her, and indeed half her Cabinet, for having come to my aid recently to help increase our majority from 7,000 to 17,000. I could not have done it without them.

Constituents, businesses and unions in my constituency feel aggrieved that various Government-announced initiatives have seen little or no progress. The electrification of the train line between Slough and Windsor has now been deferred—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am trying to be accommodating to colleagues and I want to hear the hon. Gentleman, but the rest of the question must be just that: one sentence and a question mark at the end of it.

[Mr Dhesi]

Will the Prime Minister please assuage the concerns of my constituents and reassure them that the western rail link to Heathrow will be treated as a priority matter so that it is dealt with immediately?