Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. We have not seen much detail on reconciliation, but our Committee will consider it. I commend the Government on their much-improved relations with the Irish Government. It is testament to the Secretary of State and his new Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), that we are in this position, and I am very grateful to them for it, but we need to make reconciliation work going forward, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) says.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for her report. It has been a pleasure to serve under her chairship on that Committee for the past year, and it is a personal sadness that I no longer serve on it. She mentioned that the Committee received evidence about a collective loss of confidence and faith in the ICRIR. Will she take this opportunity to make it clear that we also received evidence setting out that there was no loss of personal faith or confidence in the leadership of that organisation? Sir Declan Morgan impressed us all with his honour, decency and candour. He just happened to be leading an organisation that was compromised for the very fact of its birth.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank the hon. Member for his service on the Committee, where his background in academia played an important role. Sir Declan Morgan brought integrity to the commission, and I thank him personally for his work. The evidence shows that it was not him but the set-up of the institution he was leading that caused it to fail.