My Lords, I too join in thanking the Minister for outlining the contents of the Bill before the House today and in condemning the awful attack on Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell last week. Our hopes and prayers are with John Caldwell as he lies in hospital and we hope and pray that he makes a full recovery. We think of his family and we also think of those young children who were forced to witness a despicable, murderous attack. They are not the first set of children to have gone through this in Northern Ireland; many have grown up with the scars of having witnessed heinous and horrendous events. So many families were scarred, not just those who were on the end of physical attacks but those who witnessed these things. We think of those children and their families and what they are going through today.
This violence is wrong. There is no excuse. There has never been any excuse for violence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, pointed out, it has been condemned by right-thinking people throughout the last number of decades of Northern Ireland’s Troubles,
as they are euphemistically called, but we have to point out that today we are seeing a rise in people who seem to have forgotten the obscenity of violence and are now running around singing, “Up the Ra” and eulogising IRA atrocities. At the forefront of that are Sinn Féin leaders who, despite standing with other leaders the other day, continue to make a distinction. They eulogise and praise the IRA murders of police officers and innocent civilians, many of whom were killed in horrendous circumstances in front of their children. The Sinn Féin putative First Minister has recently eulogised such murders and, as long as that continues, it will set the environment and set a context in which others will follow. They will see it as legitimate to carry out this kind of violence. So we need to see an end to this eulogising of violence. It has always been wrong, there have never been circumstances in which it was justified, and Sinn Féin, if it really wants a shared future and if it really wants respect when it talks about human rights, should stop praising murder and terrorism.
I also join those who have spoken of Dáithí and his achievement. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said about young Dáithí and the courage and bravery of his family in carrying this campaign forward with such eloquence. Whatever our view may be on the particular piece of legislation, they have achieved an awful amount and a lot of credit goes to them. I am just sorry that there was an attempt by the Government to politicise the issue, trying to use it as a ruse to get the Assembly back, knowing full well that the legislation could be introduced at Westminster without putting the family through all of that. So I welcome the fact that the Government have taken action, just as action was taken on the energy payments which recently came to Northern Ireland.
I hope we do not hear too much about the fact that things cannot be done in the absence of the Assembly; of course they can be done, if there is a will. This Bill proves it. A few months ago, we were here debating the Bill which put back the elections in Northern Ireland to the Assembly for 12 weeks or so. Many of your Lordships warned—I remember speeches from both the Labour Front Bench and the Lib Dem Front Bench—that it was very clear that we would have to return to this, because there was no way that the deadline could be met. The Government refused to accept that at the time; we were told, “Oh, well, you know, primary legislation will be needed and we won’t have time for that going forward”. Here we are: the legislation is before us and time has been made. I respectfully and gently urge the Government, when they are bringing forward legislation, to be slightly more open and transparent with your Lordships about the reasoning.
One of the problems we have is that the reason we do not have an Executive is the current situation regarding the protocol. Remember that the Democratic Unionist Party First Minister—who was referred to by the Minister—resigned in office as First Minister. So this has not come about as a result of the Assembly elections; this happened before the Assembly elections. The reason why we do not have an Executive in Northern Ireland is that Ministers in that Executive have to administer and implement laws handed down by the European Union which they rightly believe do
damage to the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and no self-respecting unionist is going to put their hand to that. The Government were given plenty of time and plenty of warning right through from early February 2021 that action had to be taken; promises were made to the people of Northern Ireland by successive Prime Ministers on the Conservative side about addressing this matter, but nothing actually ever got done.
I do recognise that we are now on the cusp of hearing about what will be revealed very soon, and we look forward to studying the detail of that. But the reason that we are in this predicament today and the reason we do not have an Executive is that it does breach the principles of democracy itself. It does breach the Acts of Union, as upheld in the Supreme Court recently; it does breach the New Decade, New Approach document, which was the basis on which the Assembly returned in January 2020; and it does breach the consent principles of the Belfast agreement, based on the consent of both unionists and nationalists. There is not a single unionist in the Northern Ireland Assembly who supports the current protocol, for the reasons I have previously outlined.
In the coming hours and days, we will see the usual spin and propaganda from many people concerning the proposals we are due to hear about and have been, as I understand it, just released. Obviously, we need to take our time to study exactly what is being said; very often when we get the legislative detail, we find that it is very different from what is portrayed, what is spun and what is the subject of much commentary. Many people told us in emphatic terms—commentators, the media, politicians and many others—that the original protocol should be accepted. But they were wrong, and today proves that they were wrong. Have we heard any apologies for that? No, of course not. The political parties in Northern Ireland—other than the unionists—all called for the rigorous implementation of the protocol, which is now fully accepted to be flawed. So unionists will rightly not be taking advice, much of it coloured by political viewpoint. We will make up our minds on what is right for the union.
However, it is deeply regrettable that the Government have brought the monarchy into this matter through the decision to have the agreement take place in the circumstances in which we understand it to have taken place. This has been warned about over a number of days; I think it is deeply counterproductive and not helpful.
There are fundamental constitutional and democratic principles at stake. Fixes and carve-outs may solve some problems today, but the danger is that if the architecture—the superstructure—of the arrangements gives primacy to foreign law, people will need to think very carefully about the future implications for the separation of Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom, including what it means for democracy. We are talking here about elections to the Assembly and its restoration. Any Assembly Member in Northern Ireland—not just unionist Members—should surely want to have the power and the basic right to say yes or no to laws that apply to their constituents. What self-respecting legislator would willingly see that handed over to a foreign entity?
There are fundamental issues at stake. Will the Assembly be able to have the final say? That is key, and we will see. The Supreme Court, as I mentioned, recently handed down a very important ruling on the way that the protocol changes the foundation Acts of Union without consent, and any new deal will need to remedy that. That is one of the tests that the Democratic Unionist Party has laid down about removing the supremacy of EU law—in fact, it is the first test. Will that be removed? We shall see, but that is key. Is it too much to ask that people in Northern Ireland have the same rights of citizenship as people in the rest of the United Kingdom? We shall see. Is it too much that we exit the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom? Again, we shall see in a very short time.
Many who advocate for the retention of EU jurisdiction over Northern Ireland would be the first to rail against any similar arrangements for themselves. That hypocrisy is not lost on unionists. Whatever concessions from the EU, whatever improvements on the original protocol, unionists will judge any deal on sovereignty and democracy. Are our rights, as His Majesty’s subjects, equal to those of our fellow citizens in the rest of the United Kingdom? If the answer is no, we must not give up in our rightful quest and desire to have those rights fully restored.
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