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.”
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“This may all turn out to be a dead cat, but let me tell the Government very clearly that every single day more and more people—people we would not even expect—are saying to me that this Union is very close to becoming a dead duck.”
“I want to thank former Vice-President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Richie Neal and Congressman Brendan Boyle for all that they have done to support our peace process and for all that they have said this week. They have been very clear: there will be no trade deal with the United States if this Government do violence to the Good Friday agreement or this protocol—no trade deal at all. It is not me saying that; it is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Speaker of the House of Congress and, potentially, the next President of the United States. That is the reality that we are risking with this Bill.”
“Of course, the DUP tonight are talking about the Good Friday agreement and interpreting it for us. They were standing outside the gates of Stormont when it was being negotiated, shouting and holding placards. How did that all work out? The protocol is there to protect us from a hard border. That is why it is there. Without that protocol, the only thing we are being offered to protect us is the word of a man whose word can clearly not be trusted. Openly admitting that he is going to break international law by being prepared to break a deal that he just did with the European Union has consequences. People in this House need to remember that Ireland has very good friends in the United States.”
“Two key principles of that agreement are that there will be no hard border in Ireland and that local people will make local decisions for local communities. This Bill rips up both those principles. This is not just about trade. It is much more fundamental than that. We are not going backwards, despite what the Government or anybody else in this House will try in order to drag us back. We are refusing to go back to a place that caused so much hurt and so much pain, despite what anybody says. This Government know nothing about the Good Friday agreement. Some prominent Members in this House opposed that very agreement. They have risked nothing for peace. They have not had to live with the violence, intimidation and division. John Hume spilled his sweat so that nobody else would have to spill their blood. This Government know nothing of that.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, “I believe that these arrangements are in the interests of Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole. It is a great deal for our whole country.” —[ Official Report , 20 December 2019; Vol. 669, c. 149.] Not my words, but those of the Prime Minister. How can anybody trust the word of the Prime Minister when he does a deal not even a year ago and he comments on it in those terms, but now he is ripping up that agreement only a few months after he made it? How can any of us believe a word that comes out of his mouth? Last month, we lost Ireland’s greatest son, John Hume, the pathfinder for our peace, the creator of the Good Friday agreement. He understood what that agreement was about. We have been told by Ministers in this House and on the airwaves that we need this Bill to protect the Good Friday agreement.”
“The truth is that, whatever reassurances the Secretary of State gives today, the people in Northern Ireland simply cannot trust a word that comes out of this Tory Government’s mouth. At every single turn, they have used us as a bargaining chip, as a useful tactic and as part of a cynical game. Rather than taking his steer from cosy chats with the Democratic Unionist party, will he once and for all accept that people in Northern Ireland—the majority voice in Northern Ireland—will accept nothing less than the full implementation of the protocol?”
“Given the devastating impact of Brexit on my constituency and the decades of under-investment and neglect by successive British Governments, will the Prime Minister agree to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that a freeport area is developed in Derry to try to address the long-term economic imbalance? Will he agree to meet me and a delegation from the city to progress this project?”
“Of course, keeping people safe in Northern Ireland should always be the priority. However, that has not always been the case. In 1981, Paul Whitters, aged 15, was killed in Derry, and Julie Livingstone, aged 14, was killed in Belfast. Both were killed with plastic bullets. The files relating to their deaths have been reclassified and withheld until 2059 and 2064 respectively. Does the Secretary of State agree that there is no good reason to keep those files closed, and will he now act to allow the parents of those children to see the files?”
“In Ireland, both jurisdictions are working hard to organise contact tracing on a north-south basis, but the Prime Minister’s obsession with avoiding a Brexit transition extension means we risk crashing out without a data-sharing framework, which will critically undermine our ability to protect people from covid-19. When will he put the lives of people in our community above petty, narrow Brexiteer politics?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. But given the dismissive attitude of some in his Government on this particular issue, how can we in Northern Ireland have any confidence that he will faithfully implement the Northern Ireland protocol? Given all that is happening right now, is it not surely time to begin to agree to a transition period extension so that we can finally get a proper agreement on Brexit, which is, in our view, impossible to do at this time?”
“I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. She spent an awful lot of time working to get the Northern Ireland Executive back up and running. The deal that was crafted by the British Government to do that contained many, many promises and many, many commitments. The Barnett consequential payment of £210 million that has been announced by the Chancellor today will go nowhere near dealing with the commitments contained in that agreement. That needs to be thought about, and we need some clarity from the Chancellor. Does she agree that it is just not enough to say that we will have all these commitments but we have no money to pay for them?”
“On behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, I want to thank every single Member who did the work that could not be done in Northern Ireland to ensure that our brothers and sisters were entitled to full equality where they had been denied it for far too long. One of the groups at the forefront of that campaign and of our work in particular with lesbian and bisexual women in Northern Ireland was HERe NI, but it is about to have its funding cut. Does the hon. Member agree that that cannot be allowed to happen and that the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Executive have to do everything in their power to protect that vital service? One of the key things it does is look after the mental health of lesbian people in Northern Ireland. It cannot be allowed to happen.”
“Last week we lost a political giant in Seamus Mallon. He was an outstanding parliamentarian, and a seeker of justice for everyone. One injustice that burned in him until his dying day was the murder of Paul Quinn, who was beaten to death by an IRA gang in 2007. They broke every single bone in his body, to the extent that his mother could not place rosary beads in his hands when he was in his coffin. In the aftermath, the now Finance Minister Conor Murphy said that Paul was linked to criminality. That was a lie. Does the Prime Minister agree that Conor Murphy should retract that lie, publicly apologise, and give any information that he has about Paul’s murder to the Police Service of Northern Ireland?”
“I thank the Secretary of State, the Tánaiste and all their officials for the enormous effort that was put in to make sure that the institutions of the Good Friday agreement were restored. In particular, I welcome the commitment to the Graduate Entry Medical School at Magee in my constituency of Foyle. As the Secretary of State will know, and as has already been said, there are lots of commitments in the deal, and there is a gap between the commitments and the financial package offered. One of the commitments in the deal is to extend and expand the Magee university campus to 10,000 students. We have been waiting since 1965 to see that achieved. Will the Secretary of State continue to work with the Irish Government and our newly established Executive to finally, once and for all, see a full-sized university in Derry?”
“It is time to bury the hatchet, because the issues that are at stake in these negotiations, important though they are—and I have strong views on all of them—are not as important as people dying on waiting lists, they are not as important as nurses not being paid properly, and they are not as important as our schools not being able to fund the education services that we need to give to our young people.”
“If we cannot have devolution—although we should not countenance that—people need to understand that the automatic response is not direct rule, because the nationalist population will not accept it, the Irish Government will not accept it, and the St Andrews agreement has ruled it out as an option. So what must we do? We must recognise that a voice in governance must be given to both sides of our community, to all the minorities; and we are all minorities in Northern Ireland now. If we do not compromise, the next step will be not rule from London, but some form of joint rule from London and Dublin. People need to recognise that when we are talking tough in these negotiations.”
“They are saying, “Get back to work.” Compromise is not a dirty word. We have learned that through many difficult negotiations, through many years of coming together and bringing our communities together. We cannot lose that progress. We cannot go backwards. It is up to us to sort the problem out. Let me say one more thing. There is nothing called direct rule any more. That is gone. It is outlawed. We cannot go back to the days of rule from this place over the people of Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement, the St Andrews agreement, and every agreement since states that devolution is how we do our business now.”
“No matter what happens in our talks process, take the nurses and the healthcare workers out of this and provide them with the pay they work for, deserve and are entitled to. They should not have to strike one more day to get their full entitlement, which they absolutely and totally deserve. This has gone on for far too long. I for one, as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, have already committed myself to compromise on behalf of the people whom we represent. Other parties now need to step up and get ready to compromise, because the deadline is Monday, and the deadline should stay Monday. We cannot drag this out any longer, because the people whom we represent screamed very loudly at the last election. They are fed up, and what do they want? What are they saying to us?”
“I have spoken this evening to the Taoiseach and the Secretary of State about this very sensitive period in the negotiations, but as many other Members have already said, the time is well past. Tomorrow we will have been without a Government for three years. The people we represent have not had a Government for three years. Let that sink in. Look at the consequences for our health service. Our health services are at breaking point. Our school budgets are at breaking point. Our nurses, for the first time, are on strike right now. They have been used as a political pawn in this process, because of our failure to deliver for them and the people they look after every single day of the week on our behalf. I agree with the shadow Secretary of State.”
“May I just point out—I know it was not said very often in the previous Parliament—that the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain? In every election since, they have reasserted their rejection of Brexit. Government Members talk about one nation and all that, but will they recognise that Northern Ireland and Scotland have once again, and very loudly, rejected this Brexit and every other kind of Brexit you could possibly come up with?”
“I will end with one other comment. A proposal has been mentioned today by a number of people, including by the Prime Minister, who said, “Watch this space.” The Government want to build a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland. Well, they would be much better suited building a decent road from Belfast to Derry.”
“An international tribunal has stood by the fact that they were innocent and were unlawfully killed. Is prosecuting those veterans vexatious? No, it is not. We will resist this attempt to undermine our peace process and our political progress, and this insult to all the victims of our terrible, terrible past, who have been denied the opportunity to find full truth and full justice since 1998. We stand by every single one of those victims, no matter who the perpetrator was. Government Members need to understand that if they begin with an amnesty for the British Army, they will end up with an amnesty for everybody; that is the door they are opening with this proposal. It would better suit the Prime Minister and the Government to stand by all the innocent victims who have been searching for truth and justice for far too long.”
“I am glad to see now that the Democratic Unionists are very concerned about the checks between this island and our island. It is a pity that they did not think about that when they drove the Brexit agenda, and when they rejected Theresa May’s deal. Now we are in a situation that none of us is happy with. We are in a situation that every one of us should be trying to reverse and to reject. Equally damaging to our progress and our peace process is the current proposal that basically gives an amnesty to British soldiers for whatever they carried out in Northern Ireland during our very, very difficult troubles. I come from a place called Derry. In 1972, 14 innocent civil rights marchers were gunned down by the British Army on the streets of Derry. They were demanding their rights and they were marching against internment.”
“Our mission is to unite all of our people, not divide them any further. We intend to represent nationalists, unionists and everybody else, and we will do that to the best of our ability. This Prime Minister wants to drag us out of the European Union against our will. I know that he has a huge majority, but the only majority that I am concerned about is the pro-remain majority in Northern Ireland that has thankfully now got its voice back in this place. We may be few in number, but we intend to be very, very loud in voice. The Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit is totally reckless. It drives a coach and horses through the Good Friday agreement and the relationships that we have built up over many years, right across our community and right across our islands.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. No pressure then! As the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, may I thank the people of Foyle and Belfast South for the resounding mandates that they have given my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) and me? We will not let you down and we will not take your support for granted. I also want to thank my predecessor for the work that she did in the constituency. I stand here, Mr Deputy Speaker, as an Irish nationalist. In fact, I stand here because I am an Irish nationalist, not in spite of it, because I believe that every single person in all our constituencies needs to be properly and fully represented. I am glad to be here, but we are not narrow nationalists. We come from the tradition of Parnell and Hume. Our vision is big and it is broad.”