My Lords, I have just returned from Sierra Leone as chair of Christian Aid to see what this country has achieved there. People there speak with great affection of the actions taken by the UK Government to restore peace—at an absolutely awful time, when people’s hands were being chopped off. Sierra Leone is to go through a general election. Already, there are a lot of fears, but I hope that it will progress in a way that will lead to greater and greater peace in that country.
Edmund Burke, commenting on the French Revolution, said these words:
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.”
Whenever the Minister has commented on, or introduced a Bill on, Northern Ireland, he speaks with such candour and sensitivity. I thank him for the way in which he handles matters vis-à-vis Northern Ireland.
We have to support the Bill. Organ and tissue donations are vital because medical science has so improved. It is not on for Northern Ireland to be lagging behind the rest of the United Kingdom in this, so I hope that the Bill will get through pretty quickly and be passed.
I admire greatly the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for his work both in Northern Ireland and, more importantly, during the time South Africa was facing a bad apartheid. He resolutely wanted to see things change and improve. I congratulate the noble Lord on that. However, I am slightly puzzled by his question to the Minister around why this Bill has come here instead of the power being with the Secretary of State. My understanding of the law is this: if powers have been devolved by law, nothing can take them back unless a new law is
passed. If I were in Northern Ireland, I would not want the Secretary of State suddenly being given greater powers, because it might suggest that we have not quite devolved those powers. They were devolved by an Act of Parliament, and so to intervene in any situation—because of the absence of power-sharing—requires a Bill; it can be done only by a Bill. The Minister and I are tired of hearing endless Bills, but that is the only way to do it, because the Government who are supposed to be working are not really working.
There is one more thing I want to say. When people shoot a police officer while he is training children, it leaves everybody with a chill on their back. No matter what political views you may have, I believe that violence in the end defeats those who want to go by violence. The time has come for all of that to stop. I am glad that, when I came back from Sierra Leone, I saw people protesting, saying, “We are not going back. Enough is enough.” If that is the case, I hope that the good men and women of Northern Ireland will resolve the whole question of why the devolved Government are not doing their job.
The amended protocol, of course, may not have everything in it, but I suggest that we are going towards goods coming out of Great Britain and into Northern Ireland, and vice versa, in exactly the same way, and clarification about goods that are likely to end up in the EU, where we are not in the customs union. Having been involved in the past, for a number of years, in reconciliation around the Drumcree marches, I sincerely hope that the dawn has come—although there may still be a number of questions that will not actually be resolved.
In the end, the only way to prove that a thing is good is if it works. I make a plea to my very good friends in Northern Ireland: if Sierra Leone can begin to find a way not to be ruined by tribalism—it even changed its legislation to allow a third of the people in Parliament to be women, which was not previously the case in that society—and to move forward, surely Northern Ireland ought to do better.
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