Claire Hanna

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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1. “Although many will experience few or manageable menopause symptoms, for some women the menopause is intense and bleak, and women often enter into it without having the right information or the right access to decisions. One woman—a robust and well-regarded professional at home—told me: “I’m going through it. It’s something I find difficult to discuss. I’m surprised at myself but just can’t. Rotten symptoms, making life miserable. Open to HRT but due to personal and family medical history, it might be difficult. GP says I need to see specialist at the clinic in Belfast but the waiting list is 4 years...It feels like a death sentence, bringing back trauma about family and my own medical conditions, and my physical symptoms make me feel like a stranger in my own body which is attacking me.”

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2. “I was amazed by the number of replies from people who are experiencing challenges with the menopause and those who are just delighted by this fresh climate of support and action. Many had very developed and constructive ideas for how to improve the situation. I am grateful to all the people who got in touch, particularly Siobhan Kearney of At One Wellbeing and Anne McGale at Menopause Wellbeing NI for sharing with me the benefit of their research and experience as practitioners. I also pay tribute to Marie-Louise Connolly, BBC Northern Ireland’s redoubtable health correspondent, who has been brilliant at forcing this issue on to the agenda in Northern Ireland and keeping it there; Members will appreciate that the policy agenda in Northern Ireland is fairly cluttered at the best of times.”

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3. “Over the past couple of years, primarily through the entry point of HRT supply issues, which Members have referenced, I have been engaging with constituents and others about the need for a co-ordinated approach to menopause support, one that is funded and joined up between the many Departments and areas of responsibility that have been identified today, and hopefully will be ultimately underpinned by legislation. That approach, of course, starts with awareness and understanding, which thankfully is improving as a result of many of the people in this room and others pushing the issue. Last night, I posted on social media that I would be taking part in today’s debate.”

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4. “I also commend the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), whose Committee is on the frontline of so many of the issues facing women, and the all-party parliamentary group on menopause that is capturing and organising all of the actions and ideas that are now flowing. I particularly want to speak up for women in Northern Ireland, who feel that this—like other issues that affect women, women’s health and women’s lives—is an area in which we are lagging behind other parts of these islands.”

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5. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I offer my warmest commendations and congratulations to the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has done such a magnificent job of raising awareness and understanding of the menopause. She has ensured that many women feel heard and understood, but crucially has also galvanised change—information, services, policy, and a strategy—to normalise and support something that half of the population are going to go through at some point. Many of us share her righteous frustration about the delay in implementing many of these changes, but the conversations and actions of the hon. Member and others now constitute a real movement for change and progress in this area, so that fewer women will suffer in silence or experience anxiety and ill health.”

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6. “Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) referenced “Derry Girls”, which is not a sentence I ever thought I would say. That very moving episode did show how living and breathing the values of the Good Friday agreement are for all of us. As Erin and Michelle said, none of this stuff is easy, but just because it is not easy is not a reason. We cannot keep closing the door to truth. Every conflict around the world will show that the truth will out. People need to understand that it is not going to go away. The Bill will not let victims and survivors to move on. I urge the House to change it.”

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7. “That is no mean feat, but it has not been delivered because it has not been actioned and has not been allowed to be delivered. Instead, the Bill and this interference in the justice system undermine the rule of law and block all pathways to truth and reconciliation. Deliberate fiction is being created today that this is about reconciliation. It is clear that that is hollow. The message is going out today not that anybody who has used violence for their political ends will ever have to be held to account, but that after a number of decades, if they did that in a uniform or in a paramilitary organisation the record will be wiped clean in a few years. That is an awful message to send to families and an awful message to send into the future in our turbulent part of the world. The hon.”

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8. “Members have cynically used the failure of successive Governments over decades to address this issue as an excuse to now “get Northern Ireland done”, but it is a consistent and recorded frustration of the SDLP that the needs of those who suffered the most have not been addressed, while perpetrators and politicians have gone on to a very bright future. In every single negotiation, absolutely every time—there have been five or six over the last 20 years—the offering and the outcomes for victims and survivors have been watered down. Everybody knows the Stormont House agreement was not perfect, but it was an international bilateral arrangement and it had the support of most of the parties—I think all the parties—in this House.”

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9. “There is the issue of a cycle of reinvestigations, but this had not been investigated properly in the first place—many victims never spoke to a police officer—so that is why issues come back up. Oral history and the exploration of themes and patterns will also be mangled if the Bill becomes law. We are clear that there is not a pathway to justice for absolutely every family, but oral history has been a way of giving voice to victims and survivors, capturing some of the complexities of the conflict and understanding its deep and tangled roots. However, the Bill denigrates that approach and uses it as window dressing for what is actually impunity. Will those who have waited for decades and had the shutters pulled down now be sent to the library to read about people who have been hand-picked by the Secretary of State to tell their stories?”

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10. “Inquiries and inquests are far from an ideal method of dealing with these issues, but they have been delivering some outcomes for families and wider society. Government Members have used Operation Kenova and Jon Boutcher as some sort of an amulet in defence of the Bill, but those inquiries and inquests have advanced huge amounts of information to families about the IRA cover-up machine. Members have mentioned inquests. In my constituency, we had the Sean Graham bookmakers killing, when loyalist paramilitaries killed five Catholic civilians. It later emerged that one of the weapons used was part of a shipment organised by a military intelligence agent, and another weapon handed into a barracks elsewhere in the constituency was ultimately handed back to those paramilitaries. That information had not been disclosed before.”

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11. “As I said, the architecture has not been put in place to do it properly, and it has been weakened by a refusal to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and by delays in provision, but it seems that even those piecemeal provisions have brought forward too much truth for some people. The Secretary of State’s arbitrary diktat on claims last Tuesday forced dozens of families to try to race to issue proceedings and washed away years of good law and practice. That casual statement, not even made to the House—it was a written statement—drove yet another coach and horses through the process, and families who had been given promises by the legal system are now thwarted because they are placed in a queue over which they have no control.”

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12. “The Bill waves through immunity for each of those killers, and people really need to give their heads a wobble if they think that those perpetrators will just go quietly and not use their new get-out-of-jail-free passes to firm up their self-serving versions of the past. As my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) explained clearly, we have an example from the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, which was established in 1999 to give some comfort to families left without a body to bury. Despite immunity and the process being risk-free, only half of such cases have been solved. Alongside the amnesty, the Bill pulls down the shutters on the alternative pathways to justice and the existing patchwork of mechanisms for dealing with the past.”

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13. “Paul Gallagher, who was paralysed aged 21 when the Ulster Freedom Fighters took over his home to murder his neighbour, suffered the further indignity of the man believed to be responsible for that shooting saying that he shot him because he was a provo. He said that those words hurt more than the six bullets that entered his body in 1994. Columba McVeigh was a teenage boy who was disappeared by the IRA, and his family still have not been allowed the basic dignity of a body to bury. He was made a non-person by allegations that he was a collaborator—allegations by an organisation that we now know was riddled with informants and which thought that that was an acceptable thing to do to a teenage boy.”

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14. “It is not for the people who have carried the weight of the conflict for decades: it is for the people who have the most to hide. In the autumn just passed, I was part of a delegation of TDs, Senators and MPs who, under the Oireachtas’s Good Friday Committee, met a variety of different victims and survivors one afternoon. We discussed a range of issues, and one thing that came out organically in a number of conversations was a pattern in how the trauma of bereaved people is compounded through the denigration of the victims by those who killed them. The daughters and sons of people murdered by the British Army in Ballymurphy in 1971 told us about the marginalisation and shame that they faced for many years as allegedly the daughters and sons of IRA men and women.”

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15. “Members have glibly referenced accusations not being proven in court, but it will not be possible to prove them in court if the Bill becomes law. Members also mentioned South Africa, but this is so far removed from what happened in South Africa, where victims provided impact statements and could be present, along with their lawyers who could cross-examine applicants. It is not even clear in the Bill that victims’ families will be notified if an amnesty is granted. However much Members do not want certain offences to be in the Bill, it is clear that sexual violence will be covered by the amnesty. We know that people conducted and covered up systematic sexual abuse in paramilitary organisations, and they too will be eligible for immunity under the Bill. It is clear to everybody who the Bill is for.”

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16. “The approach is structured to make it routine and fool-proof for perpetrators to get amnesty, which must be granted where a person has provided an account that is true to the best of their knowledge. That is a subjective test, and there is no test proposed of the actual truth of a perpetrator’s account. The perpetrator knows that the amnesty is available and must be granted if they assert that what they say is true. There need never be any word about those who called the shots. The claim that prosecutions may follow for those who do not take part rings hollow when no new investigative body or pathway for prosecution will be created. The ability of the DPP to pursue prosecutions is theoretical, because if the Bill is passed the DPP will not be able to pursue prosecutions.”

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17. “The Bill explicitly overrides devolution: senior personnel will be appointed to the new body by the NIO and the Secretary of State; rules on immunity will be made by the Secretary of State; national security and other vetoes, which for many years have been used as thwarting mechanisms, will be in the hands and at the whim of the Secretary of State; and those responsible for oral history will be in the hands of the Secretary of State, as will the budget. The purpose is to embed the control of the Secretary of State over the narrative and the outcomes. The Command Paper in 2020 was an explicit amnesty, and this is the same thing, but in a less explicit way. It is clear to everybody what it is.”

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18. “Ensuring the success of any legacy initiative requires independence—it is crucial to credibility —but unfortunately the Government are not independent on legacy. State actors and agencies were party to the conflict, and many of their personnel were perpetrators. While many served faithfully and to the best of their ability, some colluded with paramilitaries. In direct conflict with the Stormont House agreement, the Bill places expansive and extravagant powers in the hands of the Secretary of State and a Government who are not trusted by a large number of the peoples in Northern Ireland.”

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19. “It pretends to be about truth and reconciliation, but it will be difficult for people to shake the belief that—as with other major challenges facing us in Northern Ireland—it owes a lot more to placating parts of the Conservative party than it does to a good-faith attempt to get information for victims and survivors, and to aid societal healing. In the face of opposition from every victims group, academics, legal experts and international commentators, and without the express consent of any political party in Northern Ireland, it is an act of institutional hostility for the Government to present the legislation as a fait accompli without the normal engagement. It is unwanted and unworkable.”

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20. “The legacy of the conflict is like a fog all around us. It affects politics in the everyday, and throughout this afternoon we have had a few glimpses of stories. Hon. Members will know that every time we meet a group or read a book, we hear a heartbreaking story that we have not heard before. Each one was a senseless loss that changed the futures and the lives of the families involved. Each of them is deserving of justice. It is understandable that people say that we need to move on. Nobody wants to move on more than victims and survivors, but the Bill and the approach to legacy over recent years will not let them do so. It is blandly declared to be about reconciliation, but it will be a barrier to truth and reconciliation.”

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21. “It is curious that the Foreign Secretary chose to quote polling rather than the fresh election results that show a comfortable majority of people supporting the protocol and an even larger majority rejecting the idea of holding the institutions to ransom. She is misrepresenting our position and that of the people of Northern Ireland, who want the protocol as a protection from Brexit. While they are happy to see it evolve, they know that there was not a whisper about consent or consensus when the Conservatives and the DUP were voting gleefully for ever-harder versions of Brexit. Where there is unanimity, it is in distrust of the cynical approach of this Government. When will this Government stop using our fragile shared society for their own malign political needs?”

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22. “Members have pointed out, politics does not work without trust, integrity and confidence in good faith, and we have heard outlined the corrosive effect of this saga on politics. There is also the impact that the Prime Minister has had on relationships in Northern Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations, as we scramble to manage the carnival of reaction that has followed the Prime Minister’s decisions and pronouncements on Northern Ireland, and the gap between those decisions and those pronouncements. By promising one thing and doing another day after day, and by threatening every few days to pull the pin on article 16, he has regressed the region I represent by many, many years, and he has been untruthful to us and about us. Whatever people’s views on the politics and the constitutional issues of the past five years—”

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23. “I do not want to repeat all the points about the timeline, leadership, the distorting and degrading effect of dodging accountability, and this Prime Minister’s unfitness to lead at any time, but particularly in these turbulent times. However, I want to put on record the views of the many people from across South Belfast, and indeed Northern Ireland, who have expressed to me their revulsion at and rejection of the mendaciousness and lack of integrity displayed over the past couple of years by the Prime Minister, and by the praetorian guard of MPs and Ministers who debase themselves and their constituents every time they repeat the wild excuses put before them. As hon.”

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24. “For context, in the same period the parties took place we were held to a strict one-parent bedside rule, and were only allowed to swap every 5 nights.” That meant that for six weeks that family, as they managed a child with very serious cancer and a baby at home, saw each other for only five minutes every five days as they swapped over at the bedside. That reminded me of all the things that people across our countries and regions were going through. There have been many very powerful and effective speeches from Members from across the House. I particularly welcome those from the Conservative Benches that show that this is not a partisan issue.”

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25. “I had intended, as I am sure had many other hon. Members, to be in the Chamber this afternoon for the scheduled debate on childhood cancer, particularly because of a very moving story of some constituents of mine and the long, hard road they have been on with a child with very serious cancer. I emailed the family last night to tell them that that debate would not now take place and this one would instead. I do not know them personally; I did not know their politics or whether they would be annoyed that such an important attempt to discuss cancer research and care was to be disrupted by this attempt at accountability. Bella’s dad replied to me saying that he hoped the PM, “can take some ownership for his actions.”

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26. “I am trying to give a sketch of the impact of the Prime Minister’s character on the politics of the region I represent. As Members know, this is not just about the parties, although one of the few things I have in common with Boris Johnson is that we share a birthday, so I know exactly where I was—”

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27. “I know where I was on 19 June, and it was not at the 40th birthday party I had intended to have with family and friends. Like other people, I was following the rules, as I think most people in this House did. This is an inflection point. Hon. Members have an opportunity to put down a marker about the long-term and increasingly irreparable damage that is happening to the public conversation, trust in democracy, and relationships within these islands. I hope that we will all be able to put down that marker today.”

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28. “The country is rightly interested in what the world thinks about it and has an interest in transitioning to clean sources of energy, but it is vital that as its Government implement this deal, they bring forward a new approach to managing, serving and dealing with indigenous communities.”

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29. “It is courageous that those issues are being confronted head-on, and I say that as someone who lives somewhere where for 25 years we just tried to keep closing the door on the truth, allowing the perpetrators on various sides to move on with their lives, and the victims not to have clarity and the release of justice. We understand that the truth commission will publish its report, on which it has engaged heavily, a couple of weeks after the presidential election—come what may. What is clear to me, and what I hope hon. Members will be able to use their influence to ensure, is that the crucial issues of land reform, land abuse and theft, and the accruing of resources, are not lost as we implement the peace deal. It is clear that accompaniment and scrutiny is important in Colombia.”

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30. “We are rightly confronting the human rights implications of our dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, and it is appropriate that we also focus on impacts in other areas. Coal is over. Everybody knows that that mine and many others will close in the coming years, but it is important that we use our influence to ensure a just transition for those communities and other communities whose rights have been abused. We must ensure that these issues are not lost in the implementation of the peace deal. I have tried not to do that Northern Irish thing of overlaying and viewing every single international issue through the prism of where we grew up, but I must say that it is encouraging and courageous that Colombia is dealing upfront with the issues of truth and justice as a pre-requisite for reconciliation.”

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31. “It is worth saying that those developments have almost no spill-over economic benefit to the communities. Workers and the materials that supply the mine are trucked in, and coal is noisily and dustily trucked out. We drove past a train that was so long that we were driving past it for literally 10 minutes. At all hours of the day and night, it spills out coal dust. The basic human right of these communities to somewhere to live—as they have lived for years—is not being protected. They have not had the opportunity to feel the benefits of peace and security at the end of the conflict. The water is sold back to them in plastic containers, and there is no benefit whatever to the communities.”

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32. “Wherever one looks there is a massive crater in the environment that looms over and oppresses people, both visually and environmentally. They have had the air around them, the soil under their feet and the water that they depend on polluted by mining practices. There has been a sharp increase in disease. Some people have already had their water supply diverted—or risk having it diverted—to satisfy the mine’s insatiable need for water. We visited the Arroyo Bruno—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree has better Spanish than me—around which communities have lived and grown sustainably for many hundreds of years. Those communities now face an existential risk to their existence and human rights, and those who are attempting to stand up for those rights are particularly at risk.”

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33. “Our visit focused on the effects of mining in the La Guajira region to the north-east, near the Venezuelan border, and on the Cerrejón mining company, which is owned exclusively by the giant corporation Glencore and clearly treats indigenous communities as an inconvenience. We looked at the failure of national and transnational governance structures that seem unwilling or unable to deliver justice, rights and fair play for those communities. We met communities in the Sierra Nevada who had been displaced with woeful resettlement packages, or who were threatened by displacement due to the massive mine, which is literally hundreds of kilometres of open-cast. It is the biggest mine in Latin America, and is a shocking and violent vista.”

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34. “The issues are exacerbated by a residual level of violence in the country, carried out with impunity. From my point of view as a fairly casual observer, it appears that the state is at best absent and at worse complicit in many of those violent human rights abuses. That should concern us morally, but it should also concern us because the situation is exacerbated by extractive industries that are exploiting Colombia’s natural resources in a way that means a very small number of people accrue large profits; those of us here accrue benefits in material goods, but the process leaves only negative environmental and social impacts for local communities.”

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35. “When we were there we met representatives of both the agencies, elected representatives, the United Nations, those processing peace, former combatants and, crucially, local communities that are already engaged in doing so much about the shocking and perilous situation on the ground for those who stand up for the protection of human rights. As Members have outlined, Colombia’s conflicts spanned five decades, with a death toll of around a quarter of a million, including 45,000 children. As others have said, that includes 25,000 disappearances, where people did not even have the dignity of a body to bury. Clearly, many millions more were displaced due to a conflict that is, at its core, about land; that is the substantial and core unimplemented part of the peace agreement.”

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36. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this debate, which comes at a time between the fairly muted five-year anniversary of the peace agreement and next month’s elections. Those elections will set the direction for the implementation of that peace agreement. I visited Colombia earlier this month, along with the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), at the invitation of ABColombia, which, as Members will know, is a coalition of key Irish and British international non-governmental organisations, including Trócaire, Oxfam and Christian Aid who accompanied our visit.”

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37. “The tensions of the past five years, as the hon. Member for Rochdale said, are probably a topic for another day—indeed, we probably do talk about them every other day of the year, so I am happy to park them for today. Though our relationship has been turbulent in the longer past and in the recent past, it can and should be mutually beneficial, warm and reconciled. I say thank you to the Irish people in Britain and the British people in Britain and in Ireland who make that so and wish everyone a happy St Patrick’s Day.”

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38. “Thanks to the Good Friday agreement, Irish people here have been able to step forward even more. We encourage them to keep doing that and not to be afraid to lead in British-Irish relationships at the many cultural, social, business and sectoral levels where they provide a natural nexus. We live in the shadow and the shelter of each other, as President Michael D. Higgins acknowledged during his historic state visit and address here in 2014. Confident in our relationship as equals and with mutual interest, we can “embrace the best versions of each other”. The Irish in Britain are doing so every day; many are moving on from the traditional binaries of the past and embracing the “or both” part of the Good Friday agreement, not feeling that they have to decide between being British and Irish if they do not wish to do so.”

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39. “As others have said, the conflict playing out in Ukraine reinforces the need to protect what has been the most successful peace and reconciliation project in generations. It is a fact that the violence and at times the depravity of the troubles—all of it, and all that went before it—drove a wedge between people that has been difficult to bridge, but it is precisely because of those painful aspects of our history that we must continue to work to deepen and maintain friendship, co-operation and reconciliation, to put that cycle of mistrust in the past and to realise the reciprocal benefits of cultural, personal and trade ties. It is a statement of fact that a strong, pluralist Britain is in Ireland’s interests and vice versa. Nothing will change that.”

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40. “Indeed, what better opportunity than this to celebrate Seachtáin na Gaeilge, Irish Language Week, which is taking place now and is an opportunity to celebrate Irish language and culture across the island and across the world. Irish people in Britain are a strong thread in British-Irish relations and a critical part of the ethos and architecture of the Good Friday agreement. John Hume always saw, and the Social Democratic and Labour party to this day have always seen, those three strands of the agreement as interdependent, indivisible and mutually reinforcing. Cherishing and nurturing the strand 3 relationship is core to the role of SDLP MPs taking up our mandated place in this House. That is something we take very seriously.”

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41. “The deep integration of Irish people on this island has not come at the expense of pursuing distinctive Irish sports, traditions and arts, which, as others have mentioned are flourishing. Indeed, in many parts, British TV presenters and journalists frequently claim some of Irish people as their own. The only surprise is that our current Home Secretary has not spotted British citizenship being conferred on people and come down on it like a house of bricks. Fosta, Seo Seachtáin na Gaeilge, coicís go deimhin, agus tá imeachtái ar fud an tír, agus ar fud an domhain a thugann faillí dúinn cultúr, teanga agus oidhreacht na hÉireann a cheiliúradh.”

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42. “As a result of that contribution and mutual support, I have no doubt that the Irish centres and networks in Britain will be stepping forward to offer support, service and space to Ukrainian refugees in their time of need. While the common travel area privileges the Irish in Britain and the British in Ireland, as befits our close neighbourly relationship, the Irish stand in solidarity with others across the world who have had to leave their homes because their home was not safe or because they could not make a life there. We know how it feels to be cast at times as a suspect community, and to be at the bottom of the pile. That experience is reflected in the internationalism of the Irish community and the support that they offer to migrants and minorities from elsewhere.”

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43. “Ireland, to our great shame now, pushed out many unwanted people to England, who then found acceptance, solace and opportunity here, and for that we are very, very thankful. Irish people and their descendants have not only found a good home in Britain; they have helped to make it a good home for other people. The work of Irish people across all classes of work, skills, vocations, talents, enterprise, creativity and service is rightly a source of pride—from roads and buildings in decades past to those at the very top of industry and the creative sectors today, and throughout many decades and very much during covid’s curtailments, within the National Health Service. It was lovely to see that represented and celebrated in the parade at the weekend.”

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44. “Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) who played such a key role in events yesterday and who has exemplified and represented the Irish in Britain for many years with inclusivity, practicality, confidence, wit—lots of wit—and stories, and we are very proud of him for it. It was not always an easy landing for Irish people in Britain. We know that many faced discrimination and isolation, but Britain, and England in particular, provided refuge, acceptance and opportunities for people who, in many cases, had been rejected by Ireland. Perhaps that was because they were pregnant, because they were gay, because they were different in some way or because there was no work for them.”

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45. “I am very grateful for this opportunity to take part in a debate to celebrate the contribution of the Irish in Britain and the very deep bonds of friendship and neighbourliness between our two islands. The other quote I remember from Edmund Burke was when he said that, for most English people, their ambition about Ireland was to hear no more about it, but I thank all the Members participating today for having a much wider ambition. It is a pleasure to follow Members from across the House who have done so much to honour and deepen the contribution of the Irish to the fabric of Britain. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this debate and the others who have spoken. I also thank the hon.”

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46. “I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving voice to our many constituents who want a compassionate and expansive humanitarian response. Certainly, in Northern Ireland, many people see that just a few miles south, the Republic of Ireland is offering a broad-based welcome. People in Northern Ireland are dismayed that they are unable to give practical support. They see efforts to achieve the society that we want being thwarted again by the UK Government’s policy. The hon. Gentleman mentions processing issues; does he agree that those issues highlight the culture of “no” that exists in the Home Office? That culture has prevented people around the world who are fleeing conflicts from making a new life here—from being able to work, and from receiving the sanctuary that most of our constituents want them to receive.”

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47. “The phrase “Take back control” resonated with many people, but with some of the funds that have traditionally underpinned social progress and economic progress in Northern Ireland, it appears to mean taking back control and handing it directly to London.”

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48. “The manifesto explicitly outlined the involvement of the devolved Administrations, although stakeholder engagement events a few years ago were characterised to me by polite generalities and weak assurances, and unfortunately the Government do not appear to have met those commitments, either about the breadth and the scope of the scheme or about the engagement with partners. From what information we have, we know that funding will come directly from Westminster, without the involvement of local authorities or devolved Parliaments. In Northern Ireland, some of the bodies that have been administering European funds for the last several decades and that have experience and trusted links are apparently being retired at this point, amid a centralisation of power.”

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49. “I beg to move, That this House has considered the shared prosperity fund and the devolved Administrations. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise an issue and hopefully to get some clarity on a matter of concern and potential opportunity for a number of third sector partners and others in Northern Ireland. It has been almost five years since the shared prosperity fund was first floated as the replacement for the loss of EU structural funds after Brexit. The SPF was included in the Conservative manifesto, which claimed that the focus would be on reducing inequalities between communities and that the Government would consult widely on the design of the fund.”

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50. “So far, the experience is not good. People need information, and they need some experience that is not handing cash to people registered in Monaco and Oxfordshire.”

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