I apologise to you, Mr Hoyle, and to the Committee, for slipping out at a critical moment and missing part of the Minister’s speech.
I wish to address new clause 70, moved by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). I wholly sympathise with the sentiments she expressed. I worked on Merseyside through the ’80s and ’90s, and I remember the bomb scares and the real horror. We did huge trade buying hides in Northern Ireland and southern Ireland, and I remember just how difficult and grim it was. I totally sympathise with all those who lived through it. I wholly concur with the hon. Lady’s tribute to her sadly late husband and all those in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the security forces, the British Army—I proudly wear the wristband of the Royal Irish, which is stationed in my constituency and represents Irish men and women from every single one of the 32 counties—and the Ulster Defence Regiment who held the peace. Under intense, miserable provocation and terrorism, they enabled the peace process to take place.
It is worth remembering that there was extraordinary bipartisan unity in the House. John Major’s Government took some hideously difficult decisions, including to start talks while terrorism was still being conducted. The Labour party under Tony Blair took up the process, and that resulted in the Belfast agreement, but do not forget the bipartisan support in Dublin and Washington. It was the absolute unity among the two main parties in the three capitals that helped to bring about the peace. We have to pay tribute to all the local players who also had to swallow hugely difficult decisions. I pay particular tribute to Lord Trimble, who brought about the agreement.
It is at this stage that I shall mention the European Union. As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) mentioned, the European Union is mentioned only twice in the Belfast agreement—first in the preamble and then in article 17 in a quick mention about the North South Ministerial Council. Obviously, the European Union has been supportive. There has
been significant peace money. In the Government’s position paper, it is clear that that peace money could be continued after 2020.
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I can wholly sympathise with the hon. Lady’s new clause. I started my involvement with Northern Ireland 10 years ago. I was the shadow Secretary of State. The agreement had gone through and I made it my business to go every single week. If I missed a week, I would double up the following week. For three years, therefore, I went every week. I then became the real Secretary of State, which was a huge honour, and carried on the work of my predecessor, Shaun Woodward. Devolution of policing and justice had gone through and we carried that on. The first decision that we had to make was to publish the Saville report. On day one, I told my civil servants, “We will publish it as rapidly as possible, in as good order as possible.”
Therefore, this party wholeheartedly participated. We began that under John Major. In opposition, we supported the Labour party and we carried on with that in the coalition Government, of which I was proud to be a part. Therefore, no one should be in any doubt about the strength of our unity. The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) and I took part in a broadcast this morning together, and there really was not much that we disagreed about, except that he would like to stay in the European Union and I am looking forward to leaving it.
In some ways, the sentiment of the hon. Lady’s new clause is absolutely held across the House. I have some sympathy with the comments of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who said, “Why not just let it go through?” but, having consulted someone who knows considerably more about law than me, it does seem to me to be justiciable and, given the deliberate ambiguities of the text of the Belfast agreement, which we all understand the reasons for, it seems to me that subsection (5), which
“does not permit the Northern Ireland Assembly to do anything which is not in accordance with the Belfast principles.”
gives immense breadth of decision making to a judge to decide what is in accordance with the Belfast principles.
I am wholly in sympathy with what the hon. Lady has proposed and I strongly support the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry)—sadly, she is not in her seat; she would probably like to hear of that support. I came into the Chamber in the middle of the Minister’s comments. He was being very emollient. He should sit down with the hon. Lady and just see whether, by Report, we could not work into the text some mention of the Belfast agreement that is not justiciable.