Colum Eastwood
MP for Foyle · Social Democratic & Labour Party · United Kingdom
“The Minister is making a passionate and important speech about a long-overdue piece of legislation. Freddie Scappaticci was the agent known as Stakeknife in the IRA. He was involved in lots of murders, but the Government have yet to unmask him as Scappaticci. Will the Bill put an end to the ridiculous position we are in by doing that?”
“Members are shouting from the Opposition Benches that people have been waiting nine months, but there are victims who have been waiting decades for this issue to be resolved.”
“The first thing to say is that there was an alternative. There has been a lot of debate recently about whether or not there was an alternative to murder and mayhem: there was an alternative and that is represented by the party of which I am a member.”
“His family were there and his mother had come home from Glasgow—she had had to leave, of course, after all that heartache and pain. There were 186 children killed in our troubles: 80 of them were killed by republicans, 50 by loyalists and 49 by the British Army or the RUC.”
“The people who went to try and comfort Stephen and see if he was okay were told that they would be shot as well. The soldier who carried out that murder—and that is what it was—was interviewed for one hour by the RUC.”
“The people who planted this bomb in Dunmurry have set their faces against the people of Ireland, who made the decision long ago that the only route to constitutional change is a democratic one.”
The complete record
Every one of 425 lines we hold for Colum Eastwood, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 9.
“The Minister says he supports the Good Friday agreement in all its parts. Does he support the bit that says that the Government should be rigorously impartial?”
“It is important to point out that the people of Ireland, north and south, will decide the constitutional future of Ireland—nobody else. This is a very good day for the people of Northern Ireland, and I am very glad to see it. We are about to see something very significant: we will have the first ever nationalist First Minister and the first ever nationalist leader of the opposition, and I wish them well. In order to properly maintain this progress and make the most of it, will the Secretary of State convene a process with all the political parties and the Irish Government to look at how we can reform the institutions of the Good Friday agreement, to make sure that no one party can ever pull them down again?”
“In the week of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, people in Derry are watching unarmed Palestinians being gunned down by Israeli soldiers. Over 25,000 people have now been slaughtered in Gaza. The Prime Minister has said—he has said it again today—that he wants to see a sustained ceasefire. My question is a very simple one: the next time there is a vote at the UN for a ceasefire, will his representative vote for it?”
“The edifice of government should not be the first thing that goes when we have a difficult decision to make. I think that that would take us a long way. I am glad that we have arrived at this point. I think that it tells us something about the direction of travel. The history of our place should remind us all that at some point we must take on our own dissidents wherever they may reside—in our own party, in our own community, or on social media. They need to be taken on because the representatives of a broad swathe of opinion—whether nationalist, Unionist or “not interested”—want ordinary people to be looked after. They want their health service to be properly resourced, they want their schools to function properly, and they want their public sector workers to be paid properly.”
“However, the first thing that must happen is that those who are elected to represent the people of Northern Ireland, and the person who is elected to be the First Minister, should be in place and allowed to do the job that they were elected to do. Then we will be able to have a proper discussion about how we should reform our institutions. A blind man on a galloping horse could tell you that we must reform those institutions, because they simply are not working. Let me make one plea today to all the other political parties, and I will make this commitment myself. If we do get Stormont up and running, the next time a particular political party has a major disagreement, can we have a discussion about it, and can we all commit ourselves not to pulling the institutions down?”
“I strongly believe, however, that the best time to have that conversation is when we have a Government and an Executive in Stormont, because I fear that otherwise we would end up in a five-year negotiation about what reform would look like, and all the while we would still not have a Government in Stormont and locally elected people dealing with people’s concerns. Some of us who are in the Chamber today have been through many long negotiations. I know that it is possible to go into a negotiation wanting to fix one little thing, and five years later not to have fixed it and to have done three or four other things that nobody asked for in the first place. We need to be cautious about that, and we need to be committed to reform.”
“They are the people whom we have asked to go and do the tough things for very little reward, and there is no longer any excuse for that money not to be paid. If there is a technical reason for it, I will come back tomorrow and we can debate a Budget Bill if the Secretary of State wishes, so that we can get money into those people’s pockets, but I do not believe there is any technical reason why they cannot be paid. We have talked about solutions, and a great many have been proposed. The hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) talked about reform, and we are up for that conversation. In fact, I think that our amendment would have got the Assembly back up and running, if we used a different mechanism for electing a Speaker as at least a first step, although we also understand that we must have properly reformed institutions in Stormont.”
“That is not the fault of the people who have been asked to go into the tough places and do the tough work for very little pay. We proposed an amendment—and we understand that the scope of the Bill is very narrow— calling on the Secretary of State to pay those workers. Last week 175,000 people were on picket lines across Northern Ireland, in the cold and the snow. I think people will know that my preference is for the DUP to return to government as soon as possible, so that we have democratically elected politicians making these decisions and we can get the money into those people’s pockets, but I am furious that ordinary workers have been used as a political pawn because of our political failure. That is absolutely unacceptable. Those people need their pay rise today. They are the people holding this thing together.”
“Any of us in this place who believes in devolution and put their shoulder to the wheel around this peace process, should ensure that, very soon, we have democratically elected politicians in Northern Ireland dealing with these issues. I find the state of our health service embarrassing. According to figures that I saw the other day on dementia diagnoses, some people in the western part of Northern Ireland are waiting nearly six years for a diagnosis. In what modern democracy should that be seen as acceptable? We are very lucky that people are not out on the streets in uproar over such figures. The public sector is tied together with a string, and our health service is at the point, if not beyond the point, of collapse.”
“Members: “Hear, hear.”] I think we are in a more hopeful place today than we have been. Last week, I was expecting to debate a much wider piece of legislation that would have seen us going in a different direction. If today’s Bill symbolises that we are getting closer, at least, to a resolution, we must welcome that and give it space. Nobody is more frustrated at the slowness of the process than I am. Nobody has expressed frustration more than I have about how we got into this situation. It is nearly two years since we had a Government in Northern Ireland; before that, we had covid, which was a very strange time, and before that we had three and a half years, after Sinn Féin brought the Government down, of having no Government. People in Northern Ireland now feel that the default setting is to have no Government. That is not good enough.”
“The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) and I have not agreed on much recently—in fact, he kind of drives me crazy—and we do not agree on much of what we have debated today or over the past couple of years, but I strongly believe that he comes at this from a position of strong belief. He comes at it in an attempt to represent his constituents. He comes at it from a good place. It is a different place from me and we want to end up in a different place—and I might argue that he is helping us along in that regard—but I say this very clearly: those people who have threatened him today could not lace his boots, and every single democrat in this House or elsewhere should stand in solidarity with any of us who are being attacked like that. [Hon.”
“He was an advocate for the voiceless until the very end. I want to extend our sympathy and love to Tony’s family and friends, and to all who loved him. On behalf of the people I represent on our island, I say, “Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam”. May he rest in peace.”
“I was delighted to host him in Derry a few months ago for a few pints in a local hostelry, where we had great craic and told great stories, and to see him again in the Strangers Bar for a pint just before Christmas—sometimes we actually met without having pints. One thing stood out to me on the many occasions on which I saw him after he got sick. We all knew that he was not well, but he wore it so lightly. As others have said, he did not talk about himself or his own illness; he talked about us and asked us questions about how things were going. I think of some of the contributions that he was making in this place at the end of his career. He was talking about arms exports to Israel, he was talking about Rwanda, and he was talking about and advocating on behalf of private tenants who were not being treated properly.”
“I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that when he was the shadow Secretary of State, during a very difficult period in our politics, we put those qualities to the test many times, and in the numerous meetings that I attended with Tony and representatives of other political parties in Northern Ireland, there was not much tolerance and restraint on display, but he was there to calm us all down. I think it important for me also to say that Tony’s interest in Ireland did not start when he became shadow Secretary of State; it was a decades-long pursuit of truth, justice and peace for the people of our island. His friends in Ireland will never forget him, as he never forgot us.”
“We have heard much about the many roles that Tony played during his time in politics, in the House, in the Labour party, as a police and crime commissioner, and as the interim Mayor of Greater Manchester. He was also a champion of the underdog, someone we could all learn from and someone I absolutely looked up to. He was a great friend of mine from his time as the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I was a newbie in this place in 2019, and he helped me to navigate the corridors and the strange rules that govern this place. The chair of the parliamentary Labour party, the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), talked about Tony’s tolerance and restraint.”
“Last week the Israeli ambassador in London said the quiet bit out loud when she implied that the Israeli Government are trying to totally destroy the Gaza strip. Has the Foreign Secretary hauled her in to explain that this Government oppose that policy, or is it the case that this Government are comfortable with that position—just as they seem to have been comfortable, alongside the US Administration, with the total and utter slaughter of innocent Palestinians over the last three months?”
“Israel’s stated aim in this conflict is the destruction of Hamas, and the UK and US Governments have given it a blank cheque to achieve that aim. I have not met one serious expert who believes the destruction of Hamas is possible, so how many deaths will it take before the UK Government closes their cheque book to Israel?”
“I have been to Gaza. It was a hell on earth before this latest bombardment and it has been absolutely flattened over the last few weeks. The hon. Member will know that one of the lessons from our peace process was that the only way to bring about a political settlement is to stop the killing first. When 1,400 Israelis and over 11,000 Palestinians lie dead, surely now is the time to stop the killing and call for an immediate ceasefire.”
“A few short months ago, the world came to Belfast to celebrate the Good Friday agreement. At the heart of that agreement was the realisation that we could not use violence as a tool for revenge or to achieve our political aims. As 1,400 Israelis and almost 6,000 Palestinians lay dying or dead, when will the Prime Minister say enough is enough? When will he call for a ceasefire? When will he tell Israel to stop meting out collective punishment to the people of Gaza, and when will he and other world leaders insist on a political solution that involves a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people?”
“I join the Prime Minister in strongly condemning the despicable, horrendous acts by Hamas last week. It was and is an ongoing war crime. Of course, though, one war crime does not excuse another, so will the Prime Minister please speak to Prime Minister Netanyahu and ask him to stop dropping bombs on innocent children in Gaza? Some of us know all too well that unspeakable violence should not be met with unspeakable violence. We know in Ireland that the only option is to relentlessly pursue peace through dialogue.”
“The Secretary of State says he cannot put himself in the shoes of the victims, but he could listen to them. Can he tell us how many or what percentage of the victims he has met have shown support for this piece of legislation?”
“The Minister made this very point at an event that I was at at the weekend, but it was Chatham House rules so I am not allowed to talk about it. He puts forward the argument that the parties just could not agree, but I was involved in many of those discussions and I can tell him that the British Government dragged their feet month after month around the issue of onward disclosure. That is what happened, and it is important to put that on the record. The vast majority of political parties and victims’ groups in Northern Ireland supported Stormont House but the British Government just did not want to do it. That is why it did not get delivered.”
“With the disappeared, again, IRA people were provided immunity within the context of the organisation that was looking to find those bodies, and we still have bodies out there that have not been found because those people did not come forward and tell the truth even when they were granted immunity. The lie that is being used to sell this Bill is just that: a lie. It is patently untrue and it will not do anything to give people the truth and justice they desire.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way again. The premise of his argument and some of the arguments we have heard from Members on those Benches, which are sometimes extremely condescending to victims who have been going through this for many decades, is that people will come forward with the truth if we grant immunity. Well, there is one glaring example that proves that is totally wrong. During the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the soldiers were granted immunity within the context of the inquiry. One after another, they lied through their teeth, and that has been proven by an international public inquiry.”
“It is impunity, giving people a licence to murder people on the streets of Derry, Belfast, Newry and across Northern Ireland, and also on the streets of London. I do not understand how any politician can stand and look at the faces of crying victims and tell them that this is the right thing to do. I am ashamed that this is happening today. Let me say one thing to end: I know these people. They have had to struggle for decade after decade. This will not be the end for them and we will be with them in support, right to the end.”
“It is an attempt by this Government and dark forces within the security apparatus of this Government to close down access to truth and justice. We all understand that justice will be hard to get for many families, but most of those families have not even had any truth. The process of investigation gets them truths. I can take Members to loads of families today who never once even met a police officer, even though a loved one was murdered. Does anybody here believe that the IRA are going to come forward and tell us who bombed a particular pub or who shot a particular person? It is utter nonsense. This is an attempt to close down access to the truth and it is an affront to democracy. Immunity?”
“I really hope that the Irish Government listen to the calls by some of us to take this UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, because the Bill is an affront to human rights and article 2. Every single expert I have spoken to agrees with me on that, and every single victim agrees with me on that as well. The Secretary of State used the phrase “effective information recovery process” a lot of times. “Effective information recovery process”? I can take him to families today whose children—14 and 15 years old— were shot in the troubles and their cases have been closed by this Government until 2064 and 2065. Those people tell us they want an “effective information recovery process”, but the Government are denying victims “effective information recovery”, so that tells me that the Bill is based on a lie.”
“I have their names going around my head right now—I have put many of them on record in this Chamber during the passage of the Bill. I am deeply ashamed that we are doing this today. There is a pretence in the proposal for the Bill that somehow the British Government were not an actor at all in the conflict in Northern Ireland. That is patently untrue. They say that local political parties in Northern Ireland are just squabbling, cannot come up with any answers or deal with the problem. That is patently untrue. We came up with the answer, which was Stormont House. The reason it was not delivered is that the British Government dragged their feet and changed their policy after “New Decade, New Approach”. That is a fact.”
“There are a lot of things that get me angry in this job, but this has got me more angry than anything I have ever had to deal with. The people sitting on the Benches occupied by Members representing Northern Ireland’s constituencies have had to deal with, get to know and work with the victims of our terrible past for decades. Frankly, I am embarrassed today, as I do not know what I am going to say to them when I speak to them after the debate, because as a whole—as a body politic—we have failed them. We have a peace process, we have peace and lots of us have been able to move on, but we have left a very significant cohort of people behind, and we are rubber stamping that today. Some people will walk through the Lobby coldly, without having the names of the victims ringing in their heads.”
“I think that Simon Byrne has made absolutely the right decision in resigning today, given everything that has happened in recent weeks. However, there is a much deeper and more significant problem than just one individual, and it is one about which we have been warning for years: the real crisis in the recruitment and retention of Catholic PSNI officers and staff. Does the Secretary of State agree that the best way of dealing with that crisis is to bring back 50:50 recruitment?”
“Operation Kenova, run by Jon Boutcher, has been lauded around the world and is internationally respected as a good approach to dealing with these issues. It has family approval. Families are bought into the investigation and the outcomes they desire. It proves the point that, if we want to get to the truth, we have to investigate. Time after time, whether it is the Government or paramilitary organisations, they have proven to us that they will not give the truth just because we ask nicely.”
“Members do not believe me, they should read the Saville report. One after another, they lied through their teeth. The notion that, if we give people immunity, they will all of a sudden come and tell us all they know is just not practical or realistic. I do not believe victims will engage in that process. I also want to say something about the nonsense that we have all these vexatious prosecutions. Nobody has ever pointed one out to me. There are no vexatious prosecutions. I would love someone to tell me exactly how many British soldiers served time as a result of what they did in Northern Ireland. It would not take very long to count them. We are disappointed that Lords amendment 20 is being opposed by the Government.”
“He has met victims’ groups, human rights groups, the United States Administration and European politicians, and he has met all of us. I would love to know whether he came away from any one of those meetings with the impression that people actually wanted this Bill. As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said, we do have an agreement: not only are we agreed that we are opposed to the Bill, but we are agreed that Stormont House is the way to carry out this process. To pretend that we have all been fighting over this issue for the last seven or eight years is just nonsense. Moreover, the pretence that the Bill is about allowing people to get to the truth is quite easily debunked. I remember the Bloody Sunday inquiry. The soldiers were offered immunity within that inquiry and they lied through their teeth; if hon.”
“Unlike some of the people who have been involved in this debate more recently, who have left the Chamber of course, we care about the victims and we want to put the victims at the heart of all this. I have been working on this issue for about 20 years. I know many of those victims. They are not people who want to live in the past; they are people who want a better future. But unless we deal with this issue, they will never be able to have the reconciled future that they crave. The Bill is a licence for impunity and a signal to other countries that they can murder their own citizens and get away with it, but mostly it is legislation written in very dark corners of the British establishment to ensure that light is not shone into those corners. The Secretary of State tells us he has had a lot of meetings and I am sure he has.”
“I wish that we did not have to be in this Chamber. I am glad that the Labour party has committed to repealing the Bill once it is law but, in reality, between now and the new Labour Government, a lot of people could have little letters that they can bandy about because they will have got away with destroying lives and families, and this British Government are giving them a blank cheque to do it.”
“But I know that, to get to that place, we cannot keep glorifying the ugliness and horribleness of the past. Whatever the future brings, we still have to come together as a community, but the Bill gives cover to those who are putting Ulster Volunteer Force flags up lampposts or singing “Up the ‘Ra” in pubs. I appeal to anybody who thinks that that is a good way to bring society back together again to talk to some of the victims I speak to regularly, many of whom I know very well. All those things hurt them. Although the rest of us have been allowed to move on and build a life as a result of the peace process, they are still stuck, and not because they want to be. They are more future-focused than anybody I have ever met, because they do not want their grandchildren to stay stuck having to deal with the mess that they have been left.”
“Although we work tirelessly on this—lots of people did in political parties in Northern Ireland—I have always believed that the dark forces within the state will do all they can to prevent the full truth of what happened from coming out. Some people say that they oppose the Bill because it creates a moral equivalence between the British Army and paramilitary organisations. That is not why I oppose it. I oppose it because it benefits murderers, whether or not they were wearing a uniform. That is a fairly simple principle to stand by. What we are talking about here is much more important than has been mentioned. We are talking about how we can build a future together—a reconciled future for our people. Some of my colleagues here want that to be within the United Kingdom; I want it to be within a new united Ireland.”
“His brother Emmet, who has been fighting for justice ever since, says that the “real winners” of this legislation are the perpetrators of violence, and he is absolutely right. Some of the files in Stephen’s case will not be opened until 2071, almost 100 years after Stephen’s murder. James Miller, whose grandfather David Miller was killed by the IRA’s horrific bomb in Claudy in 1972, said: “I describe it as the family having a sore, and that sore is there all the time—it’s open and we just want that sore to heal.” James went on: “They are just closing the whole process down…for a reason…. A lot of stuff may come out that will make the government look bad.” That is what this is about. I have been dealing with this for 20 years.”
“The right hon. Member is absolutely right. The families involved—we do have to be careful—in those investigations are largely very happy about the way in which Jon Boutcher’s team have dealt with them. But, of course, some people—a lot of people—do not want the truth to get out: people in the British Government, people in paramilitary organisations, and some people who were in both of those things at the same time. They do not want the truth to come out because they are very worried that the glorified version of their history actually turns out to be a dirty little war. Stephen McConomy was 11 years old when he was shot in the back of the head at very close range by a British soldier firing a plastic bullet in Derry in 1982.”
“Can I ask the hon. Gentleman to be very careful in his language? The last time that solicitors were named in this House, we ended up in a very bad and dangerous place. I would just ask him to be very careful about his language, because we can never go back to those days, and people in this House should not be giving licence for that.”
“That is an interesting take on the matter, given what I remember happening at the time. Yes, the Ulster Unionists had some reservations about the agreement, but all the other parties supported it. It was up to the British Government, along with the Irish Government, to implement it, and it is only because the British Government went off on their own—without the Irish Government—and undermined it by ignoring rather than implementing it that the Bill has ended up in this place. In my strong view, this is where the British Government have always wanted to take things.”
“My grandmother once told me that two wrongs do not make a right. Is the hon. Gentleman making the argument that just because Sinn Féin brought the Executive down for three and a half years, it is okay for the Democratic Unionist party to do the same?”
“I think that is a discussion we will have in the coming years, and I look forward to having it in a respectful manner. If the Secretary of State is serious about getting the DUP to go back to work in Stormont, I will be with him in that endeavour, but it is long past time that a time limit was put on this nonsense. Have the discussions, have the debates, work with the Government—I am all for all of that—but we need to be back in government, dealing with the people’s problems and the people’s concerns. If that does not happen, we cannot have this kind of direct rule by the back door, because the next step in that—people should listen to this—has to be greater involvement of the Irish Government in the affairs of Northern Ireland.”
“Maybe we need to think about that. We do not even sit in Dáil Éireann and we are able to bring that kind of money into our communities in Northern Ireland. Imagine the impact that we would have if 20% of Teachtaí Dála in Dáil Éireann came from Northern Ireland. [ Interruption. ] I think some people sitting not too far away from me have done an awful lot for the cause of Irish unity, and I am very grateful to them for it. We hear a lot about the Barnett formula, and it is useful that we discuss how the funding envelope is decided, but it is maybe also worth considering why we need so much underpinning from the British Government. Has the economic unit of Northern Ireland ever really worked to its full potential? I would argue that it has not.”
“I hear all the time about transformation in health and the waiting lists that we have. We cannot do anything about those if we do not put money in up front. Yes, we absolutely have to take tough decisions, but health needs to be properly funded and resourced so that we can do that. All the while, there is €500 million in the shared island unit to fund projects in Northern Ireland. The Irish Government are investing in Northern Ireland. Only two or three weeks ago, I was able to secure £38 million to expand the university at Magee in Derry. We have seen support from the Irish Government for the Narrow Water bridge. And lo and behold, the Department of Health in Dublin is funding 250 nursing and midwifery places at a cost of €10 million. That is only the start of the investment that the Irish Government are making in Northern Ireland.”
“A police officer was nearly killed a number of months ago because people in Northern Ireland are trying to kill police officers, and they would if they could get away with it. And we are telling them: “You have to find cuts in that budget as well.” The implementation of the domestic abuse, stalking and people-trafficking legislation cannot get done because of a lack of funding. Our community sector is being absolutely decimated. Community groups, particularly in the most difficult and disadvantaged areas of Northern Ireland, have stepped into the void during decades of difficult times. They are stepping into the void where Departments are not dealing with the issues that they have to deal with, but we are going to decimate those groups as well. We have talked about health.”
“We have cut the holiday hunger payment for the most vulnerable kids in our society—that is what we are doing. It is absolutely shameful. A number of weeks ago, I went to see Bunscoil Cholmcille, a school in my constituency. It is a great Irish-medium primary school. Those kids are being taught in huts with holes in the walls and damp in the cupboards—the place is falling apart. It will have its 40th anniversary next year. It is a wonderful school doing great work in our community, but we are teaching kids in huts that are falling apart, and rain is getting through the roof. We cannot even pay our teachers or classroom assistants the wages that they should be entitled to. We have already talked about the massive issues in the PSNI, and although we are told that there is £32 million extra for it, there is a massive hole in that budget.”
“That is one thing that has resulted from cuts being made to our budgets. The Foyle cup will see thousands of young people coming to Derry next week to play football—people from all around the world—but it is now under pressure because of cuts from these decisions. We are actually talking about cutting funding for university places. We should be trying to expand university places in Northern Ireland. I hear from the Secretary of State and everybody else that skills are the No. 1 issue for turning the economy around, but we are talking about cutting away at that as well. We are cutting Invest Northern Ireland—the people who are tasked with bringing jobs to regions of Northern Ireland. Others, including the shadow Secretary of State, talked eloquently about the issues in our Education Department.”
“We did not get to watch the whole match because it was interrupted by a bomb scare, but he listened to me—he had no choice, because he was sitting right beside me for most of the match—talking about the difficulties in the city and the need for proper investment in drug and alcohol recovery. He was sitting in the Ryan McBride Brandywell stadium. Ryan McBride was a wonderful captain of Derry City who sadly died far too young. There is a foundation in his name—the Ryan McBride Foundation—which does fantastic cross-community work with schoolkids in all types of schools right across Derry and Strabane, but it has had its funding to deliver those projects cut. We are nearly at the point where the Ryan McBride Foundation will not be able to exist if it does not get replacement funding.”
“It is absolutely clear that this Budget is a tactic to put pressure on the DUP, but actually he has swung, missed the DUP and instead hit the most vulnerable people in our society. Is it the responsibility of a child with special educational needs and disabilities in a school to get the DUP to go back to work? Is it the responsibility of an elderly patient waiting for a hip replacement—remember, one in four people in Northern Ireland are on hospital waiting lists—to get the Executive back up and running in Northern Ireland? No, it is not. This is a callous, cack-handed attempt at political positioning and it clearly is not working. Not that long ago, I brought the Secretary of State to watch a football match in Derry.”