Sorcha Eastwood
MP for Lagan Valley · Alliance · United Kingdom
“At Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister acknowledged the systemic and continued failings of Royal Mail. In Lagan Valley, the post does not arrive reliably; it comes in batches. People tell me that they get no mail for two or three weeks, and then a whole month’s-worth arrives at once.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Hear, hear—I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. In all honesty, I was reluctant today to say that Royal Mail was continuing not to engage with me; I felt that it was gaslighting and I was scared to mention that. It did manage to meet some of my colleagues in Northern Ireland at a local level, which I thought was generous.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It delivers to every address in the UK for the same price, whether to a farm in Northern Ireland, a flat in Cardiff or a college in Scotland. It is as much critical infrastructure as any road or cable. When it was privatised in 2013, we were promised better service and investment. Instead, we have had six years of missed targets.”
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“Absolutely. My constituency is actually still classed as a rural constituency, so I think that the right hon. Member’s point is really well made.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I absolutely do. That is an extremely distressing and poignant example. In Northern Ireland, confidential mail matters. Local groups supporting vulnerable people tell me that they are deeply concerned about letters ending up at the wrong address. A letter in the wrong hands in Northern Ireland can put people in real danger.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This House may be aware of alarming press reports that Jeffrey Donaldson, a former Member of this House and my predecessor in Lagan Valley, is under police investigation over allegations of rape within these Houses of Parliament.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“The mother of one of my constituents was taken off an orthopaedic waiting list because she never got the letter. These people are already waiting in pain, and when a letter fails to show up, the system blames them, and every missed appointment lengthens the queue for everybody. This happens elsewhere, too. A constituent got her jury summons after the deadline passed, and she spent days terrified that she would be fined for something that was not her fault. Driving licences, benefit cheques, bank cards and insurance documents just go missing. People pay extra for special delivery but items still sit for days, marked “in office”. Important legal documents go missing or show up opened.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“At Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister acknowledged the systemic and continued failings of Royal Mail. In Lagan Valley, the post does not arrive reliably; it comes in batches. People tell me that they get no mail for two or three weeks, and then a whole month’s-worth arrives at once. A letter sent across Lisburn can take over a week to arrive. People tell me that there is no difference between first and second class any more; it just arrives when it arrives. I know that second-class mail can now be delivered every other day. That is fine, but it is still supposed to arrive within three working days. Waiting weeks is not an alternate-day service. This is causing real harm. Northern Ireland has by far the worst health waiting lists in the UK. Because of postal delays, my constituents are missing MRI and CT scans.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members who have turned out today. In truth, any one of them could introduce this debate: we face the same issues, no matter where we are in the United Kingdom. I want to start by recognising the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee and its Chair, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne). In May, the Committee concluded that the Royal Mail service was unacceptable and that Ofcom’s approach had failed to secure the improvement needed. It has kept up the pressure. Its Chair wrote to Ofcom again just yesterday, and I will draw on that letter.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The real-life impacts of this failing service have been mentioned. A woman recently wrote to me and said that a handwritten card marking the anniversary of her mother’s death took nine days to arrive. For her, that was not minor; it was another blow on a day that was already hard. A sympathy letter, a birthday note or a Christmas card: these are careful, deliberate actions that we make to say, “I care about you. You matter. I love you. You aren’t alone.” When the post fails, that is what goes missing.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I absolutely do. That is an extremely distressing and poignant example. In Northern Ireland, confidential mail matters. Local groups supporting vulnerable people tell me that they are deeply concerned about letters ending up at the wrong address. A letter in the wrong hands in Northern Ireland can put people in real danger. Businesses are hurting too. In my constituency of Lagan Valley, we have a fantastic local business called the Pie Shop—it sells pies. It recently had a chance to bid for a contract that would see its products stocked in Harrods and whose commercial value it would be virtually impossible to estimate. But due to the Royal Mail delays, it missed the deadline to participate in the trial and it lost that—a huge blow to that small business. That will be replicated right across the UK.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Indeed. I thank the hon. Member for his work on this subject to date—it is very much valued and appreciated by all of us in this House—and I think that he has just illustrated the point perfectly. We have had the discussion and the debate around which items matter in terms of Royal Mail’s service. Parcels still manage to turn up on time and online orders arrive straight away, while letters sit in sorting offices. Everyone can see what Royal Mail is prioritising.”
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“They use the email address provided, diligently setting out the issue once more, and eventually get a reply saying that the address is no longer monitored. A complaints system that tells you nobody is listening is not a complaints system.”
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“I think the hon. Lady has perfectly anticipated the next paragraph of my speech. She is absolutely right that such responses make an already bad situation even worse. If we knew that our business or organisation was already under fire—for the life of me, I cannot understand why Royal Mail simply has not sought to improve how it responds to complaints. Indeed, some of my constituents have told me what happens whenever they try to complain. The online complaints form has gone. As already suggested by the hon. Lady, the phoneline is a generic national number and it can take up to an hour to get through. If someone does get through, they are given a complaint number and promised a reply within three days, but weeks later they are still waiting for an answer.”
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“The hon. Member makes an excellent suggestion, and he is quite right that it should not be on Members of this House to conduct such an extensive and ongoing campaign, almost fielding the complaints, as it were. I thank him for his leadership on that. Speaking of leadership, I now turn to the leadership of Royal Mail. I want to be fair to Royal Mail—it deserves a right of reply—but I cannot say what its leadership thinks, because its leaders will not meet me. I wonder why.”
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“I think many people underestimate just how difficult a job that was, at any time. But now? I dread to think about the stress and pressure that those posties are under.”
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“Hear, hear—I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. In all honesty, I was reluctant today to say that Royal Mail was continuing not to engage with me; I felt that it was gaslighting and I was scared to mention that. It did manage to meet some of my colleagues in Northern Ireland at a local level, which I thought was generous. However, this matter is a reserved matter, it does sit within this House, and I think that right hon. and hon. Members, including Front Benchers, have gone an awfully long way to accommodate Royal Mail when, as the hon. Member has just said, its representatives should be presenting themselves in this House, not the other way around. I want to turn now to the posties. I declare an interest: my stepdad was a postman many years ago in Sheffield, and he has permanent back problems as a result.”
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“I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I really feel that he has hit upon the crux of the matter here. We are being told that Royal Mail has identified issues that it is now trying to rectify through recruitment and so on, but if people already know that the workers holding up this once-great British institution are being treated in the way that they are, that will not be an advertisement for anybody to work for that organisation. That troubles me. Our postal workers are not the problem. Our posties are doing their absolute best to hold things together but, as has just been highlighted, they are leaving in their droves.”
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“Workers have ideas to fix that, but they are being shut out and treated as if they are part of the problem.”
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“Absolutely. My constituency is actually still classed as a rural constituency, so I think that the right hon. Member’s point is really well made. We have already discussed the delays in the actual letters arriving, but in this day and age, when so many people are isolated, sending an old-fashioned letter is in itself almost an act of rebellion against such an impersonal society. Indeed, for some people right across the UK, in every constituency, their postie will be their only point of contact. It would be an absolute shame if we lost sight of that in all of this. Postal workers are seriously worried. Some of my own constituents who work for Royal Mail tell me that management simply are not listening. Experienced staff are gone, and new workers are brought in on worse terms, as we have already heard.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Absolutely; again, the hon. Member has got to the real nub of the issue. It almost feels as though it is handy and convenient for Royal Mail to pit worker against worker and person against person. By doing so, I think it is seeking to evade its responsibility and role in all of this, and we must not lose sight of that. Royal Mail is rolling out a new delivery model by Christmas, apparently, which the Communication Workers Union reports is causing huge problems in hundreds of offices right across the country. Is it not better to fix what is broken before making it bigger? Why roll it out right before the busiest time of the year?”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I absolutely agree. I may be pre-empting the conclusion of my remarks, but I think that is something we all now have to consider. Royal Mail is more than simply a postal service. It is the red pillar box and the wee red van going up and down country lanes to our small family farm. It is more than just a letter.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even Ofcom says that “persistent failure…may raise…fundamental questions about the long-term provision of the universal service”. I agree. We are at that point. As the BIST Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, put it, the current position “leaves unanswered who will take responsibility for identifying and closing the gaps in postal regulation”. Ofcom points to the Government, the Government point at Ofcom and the post sits in the delivery office. The BIST Committee gave Royal Mail and Ofcom until 22 November to show real improvement. If they do not, the Secretary of State should consult on changing Ofcom’s powers.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I wholeheartedly agree. Royal Mail says quality is improving, believe it or not. To be fair, recent quarterly figures showed a slight pick-up, but it has not met its annual delivery targets in six years. My constituents do not read quarterly reports; they rely on social media to see whether the postie is coming. It is a completely unacceptable situation. We also hear that stamp prices keep going up. Citizens Advice suggested capping stamp prices if delivery targets are not met. It is a simple rule: if you don’t deliver the service, you can’t raise your prices. Will the Government back that plan? Who is supposed to fix this issue? Ofcom, as we have heard, has fined Royal Mail more than £37 million in three years. If fines changed behaviour, things would be fixed by now.”
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“First, will the Government consult on changing Ofcom’s powers, if service has not improved by the Committee’s 22 November deadline? Secondly, will the Government consider linking stamp prices to delivery performance, as Citizens Advice has proposed? Thirdly, what guarantees do we have for Christmas deliveries this year? Fourthly, and finally, will the Government review Royal Mail’s ownership model, to protect the universal service for the long term? The public hold up their end of the bargain: they buy the stamps, post letters in time and wait. The system is letting them down. My constituents want to trust the post again. The Government, Ofcom and Royal Mail all have the power to put that right, and this Christmas is the time to show it.”
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“I ask the House: who do we want to be as a society? Do we want to be a country that can no longer promise that a card will reach a grieving daughter, or a hospital letter will reach a patient? Or do we want to be a country that treats the post as what it has always been—a promise to every address— and protects it? As I said earlier, this is about more than just letters. What are we as a country, if we can no longer rely upon a service that is nearly as old as time itself? Given current geopolitical instability, it would also be remiss of me not to put on the record the grave concerns that I have about critical national infrastructure being owned overseas, rather than in our own country. For my final requests, I am asking the Government for four things.”
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“It delivers to every address in the UK for the same price, whether to a farm in Northern Ireland, a flat in Cardiff or a college in Scotland. It is as much critical infrastructure as any road or cable. When it was privatised in 2013, we were promised better service and investment. Instead, we have had six years of missed targets. A company unanswerable to its owners will always be tempted to favour its most profitable work. The universal service obligation is meant to guard against that. Fines have not been enough. Other countries subsidise their postal providers or bring them into public ownership, as Ofcom notes. I go further here than the Committee has, but I believe it is time to review Royal Mail’s ownership and governance, so that the universal service obligation is protected in the public interest.”
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“That is a real question that we must seriously investigate. I am sure that other right hon. and hon. Members across the House would attest to wanting further robust mechanisms to challenge many of Ofcom’s other remits successfully. I wonder whether the Minister will commit today to consult on changing Ofcom’s powers. Finally, I turn to the bigger picture. As we have heard from right hon. and hon. Members in the debate, this issue is about much more than just simply Royal Mail and letters. For the first time in its 500-year history, Royal Mail is owned by an overseas company—the highly profitable EP Group. The Government approved the takeover, but serious questions remain about our sovereignty. Royal Mail is a British institution.”
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“I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister, the Lib Dem spokesperson and all right hon. and hon. Members who contributed to this really good debate. We have fleshed out some of the core issues, and colleagues across the Chamber have made helpful suggestions on the price of stamps, the link to targets, the payment of executive bonuses when targets continue to be missed and the fact that we need to give serious consideration to whether Royal Mail should have been privatised at all. This issue is absolutely not the fault of posties, and I thank them for their service. It is incumbent on us all to listen to them. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the performance of Royal Mail.”
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“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This House may be aware of alarming press reports that Jeffrey Donaldson, a former Member of this House and my predecessor in Lagan Valley, is under police investigation over allegations of rape within these Houses of Parliament. This follows his sentencing last week to 15 years for 18 charges of non-recent child sexual abuse crimes, including the rape of a child under the age of 13. Clearly, this is a live police investigation, and I would not wish to prejudice it. However, I know that former and current members of staff on the estate may be deeply affected by these reports. What advice can the Chair give on how we can support those who are distressed by this news and on how we can encourage anyone with concerns to come forward?”
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“Does the Secretary of State agree that, despite what others in the Chamber may think, it is vital that both the British and Irish Governments work together? Indeed, if we do not have that arrangement in place and there are issues around the disclosure or onward passing of facts, those will never be flushed out?”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I want to put my thanks on the record again. But at the crux of this discussion is how it must go out from the House that terrorism was always wrong, and that people in Northern Ireland and across the UK need to understand now that these letters never had been, never will and shall not be used to frustrate or deny any potential prosecutions that may come forward. Too many people in Northern Ireland have felt that too many had been cosying up with terrorists in the past. I hope that people will take comfort from knowing that these letters never will and never had that effect.”
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“I made this point yesterday and I will make it again today: some sort of thesis seeks to suggest that people who served inherently did something wrong that could lead to the so-called knock on the door 10, 20 or 30 years later. That troubles me deeply.”
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“I know that some ground has been gained in the contemporisation of the operational environment in which people served in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the British Army and the RUC, and for that I have the utmost sympathy, but we will not have a situation, will we, if something arises, where the GOC will be in the dock? That is just not going to happen, and I am not sure that that is correct, accurate or fair. I want to have my final say on veterans, because there is a concept of natural justice at play and we should not seek to supress it. We should not seek to make that dirty or something that is at odds with every other member of society. Where I depart from some others is that I think something has entered the discourse. I have been involved with veterans for many years, and this is something that entered the discourse recently.”
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“Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson), and yesterday the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) hit on the same theme. Many of the people who came to Northern Ireland to serve were teenagers, or people from largely working-class communities. People have sometimes told me that they felt uncomfortable in another part of the UK with how they were expected to react to events or to some of the conversation and chat around and among them, or even about them. Earlier, the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis) referred to the operation at Loughgall, which he said had been approved by the general officer commanding. That is something to consider.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was a result of proven politicisation of the Attorney General’s power to overturn DPP prosecutions. A system that allows such disparity cannot be relied on, and that is why the Good Friday agreement sought to take that power away. New clause 50 would give it back. Our concerns about the new clause are not theoretical; they are based on past experience—experience that the Good Friday agreement had to rectify. That power for the Attorney General cannot be allowed to return. Let me make some wider points. Yesterday, along with many others, I made the point that this cannot be a debate about victims versus veterans—I note there are still some veterans in the Gallery, and I wish to reiterate that before the Bill goes to the other place. I would posit a different version of events. We heard some excellent remarks from the hon.”
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“I want to make some initial comments on new clause 50 and the role of the Attorney General. I will be fairly straightforward in my opinion on that: I do not support it, and I have severe concerns about where it will go—a political appointee and a member of the Government consenting to the prosecution of serious troubles-related offences. New clause 50 matters greatly in Northern Ireland because it unpicks a key reform that flowed directly from the Good Friday agreement. The criminal justice review mandated by the Good Friday agreement was explicit that “there should be no power for the Attorney General to direct the prosecutor, whether in individual cases or on policy matters”. That reform was not created out of nowhere; it was not in the abstract.”
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“I do not think that that is the case—in fact, I know for certain that it is not—but as I said yesterday, we cannot have a scenario in which just because someone wore a uniform, that means that any wrongdoing should not be investigated.”
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“I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, with which I think a lot of Members will have sympathy. It builds on the point I sought to make yesterday, which to me is completely related and concerns the national security veto. We know for a fact that through disclosure and other troubles legacy-related cases, some people involved with the security services and security forces at the time have said, “We are being forced to redact or stop disclosure of information that frankly in the court of public opinion makes things look a hell of a lot worse than they are.” That contributes to an ongoing narrative that takes me to the point I was making before the intervention, and the inherent thesis that everyone who served at some stage did something wrong.”
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“I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. If we are going to discuss these things, I think it is important to be accurate. The Omagh tragedy occurred in Northern Ireland in August 1998.”
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“I am not going to pretend that that was an unusual happening.”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Bill provides a way to try and give those people the knowledge and understanding of who pulled the trigger, and where and when, then I will support it. I thank the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn); I am glad that he is in his place. I want to get something off my conscience that has bothered me since the day and hour that I set foot in this House and took part in these debates: we have not done justice to all the victims through these debates—we just haven’t—and it hurts, and I think it is shameful. I stand here as somebody who has veterans in her house. I am proud of them; I do not try to diminish or do away with that. But I also stand here as part of a family who have suffered from paramilitary violence, through nothing other than sectarianism.”
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“No comparable jurisdiction gives Ministers that power over transitional justice reports. I want to draw attention to a theme that has been present throughout this debate and many others. We live with this every day in Northern Ireland. That is not to say that those veterans who live in England or further afield do not either—but this dictates our policy in Northern Ireland of how we do things today. It is still there. As other Members have alluded to, those members who served for Northern Ireland did not get to leave. They did not go away; they served their tour of duty on their home patch. The reverse is true as well: many victims of paramilitary violence will still see the perpetrators today. Many of them will know things through hearsay, rumour or gossip, but they are not quite sure.”
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“The Government’s appeal is before the Supreme Court but undetermined, yet they have still included the provisions and certified the Bill as ECHR-compatible on the strength of an “expectation” of winning. [ Official Report , 20 October 2026; Vol. 791, c. 10WC.] (Correction) There is a conflict with international and ECHR standards. UN special rapporteurs warned that the veto could curtail victims’ right to know the truth and be incompatible with international law. The Government’s “neither confirm nor deny” stance—earlier this year much maligned, to the stage of being mocked, with the Stakeknife case—showed that the involvement of agents at all should not be disclosed. This cannot be squared with the ECHR duty to hold effective investigations capable of establishing state agents’ involvement in a death.”
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“However, on record there are paedophiles who were used by the state. Indeed, it is often a mirror image, but they were there to serve a purpose. We knew about the paedophilia and child abuse, but we let that go because we felt there was a security value. I will just let that sit with Members for a moment. The relevant Secretary of State could be marking their own homework. The joint framework suggests that the Home Secretary and Defence Secretary could also redact reports, even though MI5 and Military Intelligence are potential subjects of the investigations in question. That has already been found unlawful, but the Government have pressed ahead anyway. The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland found the equivalent provisions in the legacy Act 2023 incompatible with the ECHR—in the Dillon judgment.”
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“The Bill lets the Secretary of State redact legacy commission reports to families on national security grounds. That is not limited to protecting lawful covert methods; it can conceal the role of state agents and informants in killings currently attributed solely to non-state actors. If you will briefly indulge me, Madam Chair, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) and his amendment 4, which I will support—as I have done already. We discussed that amendment within the realms of paramilitary offenders—the hon. Member eloquently articulated that point—but there were also state agents who were paedophiles and operated with impunity. We were told after the fact that they were involved in saving numerous lives. That is obviously a question of hindsight, and very conveniently difficult to disaggregate.”
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“Indeed, there is precedent for the risk: the irregular appointment of the second police ombudsman was followed by a lowering of the office’s independence in legacy investigations, leading to an independent inspection and suspension of the historic function of that office. I will now turn to some of my greatest concerns in the amendments we are discussing today—there are also concerns about what we will discuss tomorrow. The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) has already started to tease out some of the issues with the national security veto, as has the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne). This issue really bothers me, and I feel that it should bother other Members. The veto can hide state involvement in killings. Indeed, it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge and start to deal with that aspect of our past.”
House of Commons19 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Indeed, the Committee on the Administration of Justice also notes that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland appointing judges would reverse the process put in place after the Good Friday agreement reforms, which created NIJAC as an independent body to appoint the judiciary. The Secretary of State’s broad powers mean that a future Secretary of State for Northern Ireland opposed to an independent rule of law legacy investigation could make further appointments to frustrate the legacy commission’s purpose. One example would be appointing judicial commissioners to write the findings of legacy commission reports after investigations.”
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“I want to make some remarks on the amendments that I have tabled, and some more general remarks, given the debate so far. I will discuss amendments 39 to 42, which, in my opinion, the Government amendments have not addressed. Amendments 39 to 42 provide for judicial panel members to be appointed by the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission, not the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Judicial appointments should remain within NIJAC’s remit to maintain independence and public confidence in the process, as well as to safeguard against future politicisation. It is disappointing, therefore, that the Government’s amendments make no provision to address this, despite concerns raised by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and UN experts.”
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“I apologise. I have mentioned veterans tonight who I know are prepared to support the Bill, and there are veterans’ groups who have a different view of it. I completely appreciate that there are veterans’ groups that are absolutely against it—some of them are my constituents, too. It would be wrong to say, though, that there is a homogeneous view among all veterans, and I think that is worth restating. I would just express my gratitude for the hon. Member’s service—it sounds like he was very close to my home whenever he was in Lisburn. He will remember that last week was the 30th anniversary of the bombing of Thiepval Barracks, in which one soldier died. I completely understand where he is coming from.”
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“I hope to God that those people in the Gallery understand that and do not go away from this place despondent tonight. I am glad more people from Northern Ireland are not listening to this—I really am—because there has been a lot of grace lacking in this. Let’s stop playing games. No one has any right above another. It has been many, many years, and many mistakes have been made. All I want anybody in Lagan Valley, Northern Ireland, across the UK and wider afield, where people have been drawn into what was such an intimate, insidious and disgusting conflict, to know is this: you are seen, and you all matter. We are not going to get this 100% right, but if we do not act now, people will die—many already have—without the truth. I will be supporting this carry-over motion tonight.”
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“It is at times like this that I feel very despondent. I share some of the frustration expressed by the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) tonight, because I do not think it is ideal that I am standing here with 180 seconds to try to sum up what this carry-over motion and this Bill mean. The people of Northern Ireland have heard it all before. This is not perfect, and the manner in which it is being done is far from perfect, but people have died waiting. We have been at this in Northern Ireland for at least 20-odd years. I am not going to stand in the way of any family. I have held the hands of families—families I know from my constituency—people who served, people who were innocent Catholics, and people who were innocent Protestants. No one person is above anyone else.”
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“Northern Ireland voted to remain, and believe you me, no part of the UK has suffered more through Brexit than Northern Ireland. If there is a chance to make sure that my constituents in Lagan Valley have cheaper electricity, we are there. What assurance can the Prime Minister give me today that he is in live discussions with my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that Northern Ireland gets the best out of any possible deal?”
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“Does the Secretary of State agree that in the mouth of this crisis, it is incumbent on all Members of this House and everybody across Northern Ireland to engage respectfully across all communities, all of which have suffered in the past few weeks?”
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“I never thought that in my lifetime, I would see again Land Rovers lined up outside Drumcree church. The people of Northern Ireland did not clamour for this, and that includes people who are Unionist, nationalist or other. They did not want to revisit this incredibly dark chapter in our history. While the cost of living bites, this operation cost around £5 million at the time of conclusion. What we have now is picking up the pieces. The Secretary of State has referred to the language that we use. In the past week, Members of this House have referred to people of the Garvaghy Road as rabble and have referred to the Garvaghy Road as needing “sanitisation”.”
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“I call on Members across this House to help our campaign to ensure that Northern Ireland gets three fully funded cycles of IVF or ICSI—intracytoplasmic sperm injection—because those women experience that loss and potentially never gain that baby in their arms. I ask Members to be mindful and to help me in that cause for women in Northern Ireland. Lastly, I thank everyone who is sharing their experiences tonight—you are incredible.”
House of Commons12 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗