Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Lady introduced her ten-minute rule Bill yesterday, and I know she is a campaigner on a particular topic, which I suspect is what she is referring to. This Bill does not make civil servants lawmakers, so they will not be able to change the law—quite rightly. It also does not enable them to take new policy decisions, because it would be wrong to ask civil servants to do so. Civil servants across the United Kingdom act in an incredibly professional and independent way and they follow the decisions and the policy recommendations of Ministers, and it is right that they do that. The answer to the hon. Lady’s question is that we need Ministers in Stormont, because Ministers in Stormont could quite rightly make those decisions. They could change the law, and they could make policy decisions on behalf of the people who elected them, and that is what the Bill is about—enabling us to have the best conditions and framework for talks to recommence, and for the parties to come back together and do the right thing by the constituents who elected them.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

As I understand it, the Bill before us allows vital everyday public services to continue. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend could possibly give us some examples of the types of everyday public services that the Bill will help to continue. I suspect they include health, education and transport—things that we all use every day—and it would give greater clarity to everyone to hear those examples.

[Karen Bradley]

I would strongly advise my hon. Friend to read the guidance, but she is right: the purpose of the Bill is to enable public services to continue to be delivered; and to enable decisions around infrastructure projects, where there has been clear ministerial direction in the past, to be taken, so that we can see continued economic growth. We have seen incredible economic growth in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years. We have 60,000 more people in employment in Northern Ireland today than in 2010. I want to build on that. I do not want to see Northern Ireland go back. In the absence of an Executive, we are in great danger that Northern Ireland will come to a standstill. We cannot allow that to happen. However, the Bill is about the essential running of public services. It is not about policy decisions or changing the law. It is about enabling civil servants to carry on running those services.

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[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I will try to be brief, but this is a subject that I hold close to my heart. Let me start by saying how much I wish that we were not here. As someone who grew up in Northern Ireland and was born in Omagh at the beginning of the troubles, I spent my childhood knowing what it was like to live at a time of violence within the United Kingdom. This year marks 20 years since the Omagh bombing and 20 years since the Good Friday agreement, and the peace that we have today is precious, and also very fragile as the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) reminded us.

I have said before in this Chamber that we should not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement. We should not jeopardise it with a hard border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. We also should not jeopardise the right to self-determination that the people of Northern Ireland made with their clear decision that they wished to be part of the United Kingdom and part of our precious Union here. It is always difficult for someone like me who is no longer living in Northern Ireland but is watching from afar to form a view, but I think that it has partly been having Stormont and having local decision making that has meant that the Good Friday agreement has lasted for so long. Local decision making is key to holding this whole situation together. So that is why I wish we were not here: I wish the Stormont Assembly were meeting and we were not put in the position of trying to pass legislation in this place.

I was back over in Northern Ireland last month, and time and again people outside politics were telling me how frustrated they were by the current situation—not only by the lack of decision making in Stormont, but by what that is doing for key decisions that affect everyday lives. They mentioned many projects—local transport projects, health projects and a particularly beautiful education project. In Omagh, on the site of the old Army barracks, there is a £140 million investment to build the Strule schools project, which will bring all six secondary schools in Omagh on to one site, so instead of the Catholic and Protestant children being in different schools where they never meet, they will still have their own school ethos but they will meet and be together. That will be such a powerful sight, but when I drove past it, the gates were there but there was nothing behind them because the project continues to be delayed. We need to ensure that the civil servants in Northern Ireland can get on with making the key decisions, and we cannot wait forever. That is why I will support Ministers in ensuring that they can get local decision making going.

I want to talk a bit about the subject of abortion, which I know will come up again and again today. I have spoken about it in the Chamber before, and it is an emotional issue on which people have strong personal views. I support the right to choose, and that is something that I believe in very strongly, but I also feel very sensitive about people in one part of the world telling people in another part of the world what they should do on this issue. It is an issue that should be determined locally.

When I spoke about this last time, it was on the eve of the High Court judgment on human rights. I pointed out that if part of the UK were found not to be upholding key human rights, we in this place would have to act. When I was back over in Northern Ireland, I had the opportunity to listen to the testimony of a mother who had had the most hideous experience of being forced to carry a baby to term, even though the baby was never going to live and actually died in the womb.

It is worth having another read of the High Court judgment, because on the one hand it says that we are in breach of our human rights in key areas such as rape, incest and foetal fatal abnormality, but on the other hand the judgment does not stand formally because the Court ruled that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission did not have the legal power to bring a case in its own name. As I understand it, that is a failure of the legislation that was passed here under the then Labour Government. The language was not clear enough in the Bill that established the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to give the commission the power to bring such cases in its own name. That issue needs to be corrected, and I am told that that would put the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission on a level playing field with its equivalents in other parts of the United Kingdom. If that had already been the case, that legal judgment would have been binding, which would have helped to facilitate the local changes that are needed to ensure that the women of Northern Ireland do not have their human rights breached.

There are many more things that I would like to say. I believe that it is still worth fighting for frictionless trade across the Northern Irish-Irish border and across the Irish sea and the English channel. By finding a solution that keeps the whole Union together, we will find a relationship that works for our ongoing relationship with Europe as well. I will support the Bill this evening, but with a heavy heart, because I wish that we did not have to be here.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

First of all, that was not further to the point of order. Just as the Chair has no responsibility or control over what Ministers say in the House, so they have no responsibility or control over what the Leader of the Opposition says in the House. I say the same to the hon. Gentleman as I said earlier: facts are being disputed, and I am quite sure that he will question the Leader of the Opposition closely the next time he has the opportunity to do so.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I, too, raise the point that the Leader of the Opposition claimed today that record numbers of people were on zero-hours contracts. That is false according to the House of Commons Library, which makes it very clear that the number has dropped from 903,000 to 780,000. How does one clarify the matter, in order to ensure that the Library remains a trusted source of data?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point, because we all rely on the Library to give us balanced—