Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Viscount Younger of Leckie Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

I want to give you a feeling of some of the more prominent people who have signed this letter to the Prime Minister. All Members of the House of Lords are allowed to sign; everyone else has to be from Northern Ireland. We have the noble Lords, Lord Rana, Lord Maginnis, Lord Empey, Lord Brennan, Lord McCrea, Lord Morrow, Lord Alton, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. We have MLAs from all parties: Daniel McCrossan, Sinéad Bradley, Patsy McGlone, Justin McNulty, Robbie Butler, Carla Lockhart, Paul Givan, Arlene Foster—leader of the Democratic Unionists —David Hilditch, Peter Weir, Jonathan Buckley, Mervyn Storey, William Irwin, Gordon Lyons, Edwin Poots, Keith Buchanan, Thomas Buchanan, Gary Middleton, Michelle McIlveen, Joanne Bunting, Alex Easton and Maurice Bradley. We are into the MPs now: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, Nigel Dodds, the honourable Ian Paisley, Gavin Robinson, Paul Girvan, Jim Shannon, Gregory Campbell and Emma Little Pengelly. The lawyers include the reverend Brett Lockhart QC. There are councillors, such as Anne McCloskey, Peter Martin, Robert Adair and Stephanie Quigley. Then there are academics, such as Dr Esmond Birnie, and bishops such as Bishop Treanor, Bishop Farquhar, Bishop McKeown and Bishop Walsh. There are the doctors: Dr Coulter, Dr Hardy and others. I missed the venerable Robert Miller, who is the archdeacon currently running Derry.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

May I just inquire whether the noble Baroness is listing all the names on her list? It would be helpful for the Committee, with the hour that we are at, if the list could be severely shortened.

[Baroness O'Loan]

The Reverend Norman Hamilton has worked on the interface in north Belfast for 20 years, and hundreds of clergy and ordinary people—doctors, nurses and lawyers—all signed, from all sides of the community. They wanted one thing: to be respected as people and to allowed to make their own law on this amendment. That shows how concerned people are about this matter.

My amendment would not prevent legal change on either abortion or same-sex marriage. It would simply have the effect of restoring some constitutional integrity to Northern Ireland. It requires that there should be a consultation with the people of Northern Ireland, as there would be with any legal change on either issue in Northern Ireland, and most importantly that the views of the currently elected Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly be recorded for or against any regulations and that the regulations should not be laid before Parliament if they do not receive majority support from those Assembly Members. One thing I have not done is to introduce anything resembling a petition of concern, about which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, spoke earlier. The legislation could pass by a simple majority.

One thing I noticed this afternoon was that the unborn child was largely absent from the debate. When mentioned, there was in some quarters a rolling of eyes and expressions of contempt. Yet it has to be said that abortion is about killing babies—real babies. Without Amendment 23, the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill will go down in British constitutional history as one of its blackest moments of all times, when constitutional due process was completely swept aside because of the conviction of parliamentarians, none of whom represents Northern Ireland, that the end justifies the means. That is never a good place to be. We have heard it said that it does not really matter at all if Northern Ireland’s MPs voted against this, because it is a matter of human rights and if you want to be in the UK you have to accept abortion as a human right. There is no human right to abortion, and I think that is slightly contemptuous of Northern Ireland’s MPs.

The Member for Walthamstow, who introduced new Clause 10 in the Commons, said this morning that this is an attempt by the DUP to hold us all to ransom. At this late hour, I perhaps need to assure noble Lords that I am not a member of the DUP. I am a Cross-Bencher and, as far as I can remember, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, is not a member of the DUP either. This is something that a cross-party group of 16,000 people are asking us not to do. This is the truest cross-community co-operation from all sectors of our community, from all sides, all places in our beautiful country. We have agreement that we do not want abortion railroaded through in the Bill. I ask noble Lords to at least grant Northern Ireland MLAs the courtesy, the respect and dignity of their roles as elected members and allow them to present their views on this matter. I ask noble Lords to give the people of Northern Ireland the same respect and provide for consultation. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, the Minister kindly accepted the amendment I proposed on this matter earlier. I fully accept that we were not co-ordinating on it. I support the proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Black. He knows that and we have talked about this before—he has been to Belfast. He has explained exactly what is at stake, in a very coherent contribution. It is a mystery why this progress has been so slow, but that is where we are. I find myself in total agreement with his contribution.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I have very few remarks to make in response to my noble friend, but I thank him for his long speech. There is no doubt that defamation law in Northern Ireland does not reflect today’s digital age. To echo my noble friend’s words, reform is indeed needed. The issues at stake here hit the very heart of the relationship between citizens, media and the state. It is important to deliver protections in the field of freedom of expression.

My noble friend would like to see progress made to update the Northern Ireland law and I understand that position. There are certainly parts of the Defamation Act 2013 that could usefully be extended to Northern Ireland. However, this Act removed the presumption of trial by jury for libel actions. This may of course shorten and reduce the cost of libel actions.

It is of note that the 2017 Review of Civil and Family Justice in Northern Ireland by Lord Justice Gillen noted the extremely important function of the jury in defamation cases in the context of the Northern Ireland jurisdiction, in particular its role in finding whether the plaintiff has been defamed. As the Gillen review notes, juries in Northern Ireland have been traditionally considered the best fact-finder to judge what words or statements mean in the local context with its unique history, and whether they are considered defamatory in any case. These are matters that involve justice and freedoms, and on which the particular jurisdiction is important. The devolved nature of defamation law in Scotland is reflected in the fact that only a very limited number of provisions in the Defamation Act 2013 have been extended to Scotland, in particular around statements or reports which arise in the scientific or academic field.

Similarly, defamation law is a devolved matter for Northern Ireland; therefore, simply extending the Defamation Act 2013 to Northern Ireland is not appropriate. Further, I understand that, prior to the passage of the Defamation Act, the views of the Northern Ireland Executive were sought as to whether they wished to make a legislative consent Motion to provide for the Act to apply in Northern Ireland, but they declined to do so. Decisions to reform the law should be taken by a restored Northern Ireland Executive. This will allow the unique Northern Ireland context to be taken into account in any reforms. I regret that I am not able to help my noble friend but I respectfully request that he withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who supported this amendment. As the remarks from my noble friend Lord Lexden made clear, this is an issue on which we have been pressing for many years now. I remember well his debate in Grand Committee four years ago, yet no progress has been made. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his comments. Yes, indeed, a legislative consent Motion was declined at the time but no real reason was given for that and none has been given since, which I do not think is satisfactory when we are talking about an area of law of such importance as libel and involving such fundamental human rights as those of freedom of expression. This is an area to which I fear we will have to return. I will take up my noble friend Lord Duncan’s offer to meet to talk about how we might make progress in this area. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.