Northern Ireland Protocol

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I always think it is good to reflect before speaking; being at this Dispatch Box does not always give you that opportunity, but I agree with what the noble Lord said. It is also the case, and again I repeat myself, that trade between the north and south is important to business and to the life of the island. The best thing for the people of Northern Ireland and the whole of the United Kingdom is prosperity, which is assisted by free and wide trade. I hope that this agreement contributes to both north-south and east-west trade.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords, I think that concludes the time for questions, unless the House decides otherwise.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, can I just appeal to the House to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey?

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

Thank you, my Lords. This is a hugely optimistic Statement from the Prime Minister and understandably, because it makes things so much better than the protocol did. But sometimes optimism can be taken back when the detail is examined. I have a specific question for the Leader of the House. Yesterday in Parliament, and in an article today for the Belfast News Letter, the Prime Minister stressed the importance of the Acts of Union. That is welcome, but the agreement is lacking a legal text and the Command Paper is lacking further explanation on how the Government plan to lift the subjugation of the Acts of Union in domestic law. Could the Minister tell me what actual steps will be taken in domestic law to release the Acts of the Union from their present subjugation, as said by the Supreme Court? In the absence of legal provisions to remedy the effect of Section 7(1)(a) of the 2018 Act on the Acts of Union, all references in the world to our foundation and constitutional situation will mean nothing.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, we believe that the framework we have put forward is consistent with the Act of Union in its fullest sense. In my personal opinion as a unionist, that is a vital text. On the noble Baroness’s specific questions about how we will take this forward and what action might be taken, I will write to her, if she will allow me, as part of the ongoing discussion. If there are any worthwhile observations, I will put that in the Library.

Business of the House

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal]

That Standing Order 44 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Tuesday 7 February to enable the Northern Ireland Budget Bill to be taken through its remaining stages that day.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the Northern Ireland Budget Bill is clearly very important to people in Northern Ireland. I fully understand why His Majesty’s Government want to get this legislation through in one day, but it is important that your Lordships remember the reason why we have to do this. We are doing this because there is no Executive and there is no Executive because of the protocol.

The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill had its First Reading here in July, then we had Second Reading in October, three long days of Committee and then silence. As the Bill is so important, I want to query why this is. Can the Minister give us some idea of when this very important Bill, which should be going through while the negotiations are continuing, will come back to your Lordships’ House?

Every week something new happens that affects people in Northern Ireland because of the protocol. We have a ridiculous situation where, if I fly from Belfast to Faro or Mallorca, I do not get duty free. If I fly to London, I do not get duty free. If I fly from London to Mallorca or Faro, I get duty free. When I asked His Majesty’s Government why this is, I was not told the honest reason: Northern Ireland has been left in the EU and therefore the EU will not allow us duty free, and neither will His Majesty’s Treasury. We are in a twilight, limbo situation. Your Lordships must realise that this cannot go on. Will the Minister kindly tell us when the protocol Bill is coming back to this House?

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Before my noble friend replies, could he accept that many of us wish the Government every possible success in their negotiations? This protocol came about as a result of a treaty negotiated by Her Majesty’s Government, as they then were. Therefore, we bear responsibility for it. They tried to fit things into a straitjacket when it should have been, as I said last week, a much more flexible garment, but the fact is that this should be sorted out by negotiation and not by a totally unsatisfactory Bill being driven through your Lordships’ House. It is a very great pity indeed that those who have been elected to represent people in Northern Ireland are sulking rather than meeting, as they should, in the Assembly to which they were elected to debate this and other things.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I find it rather depressing that Her Majesty’s Government have had to bring forward a Bill to ensure freedom of speech in higher education. I grew up in an era when you aspired to go to university not just to get wonderful academic teaching leading to a degree, but also to have the opportunity to explore new ideas, face challenges you had not met before, widen your horizons and challenge some of the traditional views. The idea that someone might not like what you said and try to stop or cancel you—a word we had never heard of in those days—rather than debating or arguing was unimaginable.

I understand why many in your Lordships’ House do not seem to think that the Bill is right but, sadly, I believe that the need for it is now clear and the reasons for the changes are many. I refer to the Policy Exchange report from 2020, which found a significant lack of “viewpoint diversity” at universities. Some of the statistics were shocking. As someone who campaigned all over the country for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, the one that stood out for me was that just over 50% of academics would feel comfortable sitting next someone at lunch who was known just to have voted to leave—not even to have campaigned, so I will not be getting many invitations to academic lunches. That is just for having used your vote democratically in a parliamentary approved official referendum.

We have seen individual academic career prospects and access to research funding adversely affected by discrimination based on the individual academic’s views. Of course, the hounding of Professor Kathleen Stock, forced out of Sussex University by constant and repeated abuse and intimidation because of her views, has been slightly a focus of this Bill. But if this could happen to someone such as Professor Stock, how many other people coming into university to teach for the first time suddenly find that they have to be very, very careful about what they say?

A higher education council study is also alarming. It tracked attitudes of a representative sample of university students over the past six years. What it found should alarm all of us. The new generation of university students is increasingly supportive of removing from their campuses words, ideas, books, speakers and events they find uncomfortable or offensive. They seem willing to impose restrictions on others and to curtail views they disagree with. “Safe spaces” seems to be this new buzz word. We have to shield students from words and ideas that make them uncomfortable, and if you question or challenge this orthodoxy, you should be punished or ostracised. Matthew Goodwin pointed out in an excellent article on Unherd that a lot of this is happening right here in our own universities: refusing to allow tabloid newspapers to be sold on campus; banning speakers—maybe only a few, but nevertheless—who offend students; supporting getting rid of academics if they teach material that offends; and removing memorials of historical figures.

I do not want to stop anyone—to stop students—protesting about something they feel strongly about, and I do not believe the Bill does. In my day, we were always protesting about apartheid in South Africa, for example. I do not even mind students criticising lecturers on the grounds of the quality of their teaching; again, I do not think the Bill does that.

Academic freedom must be the primary duty of universities, and it should be defined more broadly than it is in the Bill. Too many of those in charge of our universities have been too weak or complacent to fight back against some of this behaviour. Too often, they have given into any demand from the student body, which must be agreed with at any cost, or they agree with anything that looks like it is the latest fad or, if I may use the term, a woke issue.

There will be amendments to this Bill which will make the protections of academic freedom stand fast. For example, in saying that HEPs must take reasonably practical steps to secure freedom of speech within the law, the duty is not clear enough. The responsibility to secure lawful free speech on topics of an academic or political nature should be an absolute and positive duty. I am sure that other amendments will come through your Lordships’ House, many of which have been suggested by what I consider to be the excellent Free Speech Union.

This freedom of speech Bill is about education, and education is devolved, but surely freedom of speech in universities across the United Kingdom should be in the Bill. In Northern Ireland we have one Russell group university, Queen’s University, and the University of Ulster. Why should this not apply there? If we wait for an Assembly to do something like this, none of us, not even the youngest Member of your Lordships’ House, will be around to see it happen. An amendment should be brought in to include those universities. Freedom of speech should not be a devolved issue. I remind your Lordships that, in the Ashers cake case, the Supreme Court recognised that ECHR Article 10 must include the right not to have to say what you do not believe. Prohibition of forced speech must be a key element of freedom of speech.

The Bill can be amended for the better to meet some of the challenges that noble Lords have already mentioned, but I support it. If it is changed quite a lot, it might be a wake-up call to those in authority in universities who have perhaps taken their eye off what academic freedom really is.

Sue Gray Report

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the public were clearly very angry when they first heard about what had been going on in Whitehall. But now we have had the Sue Gray report—I commend her diligence—a full apology from the Prime Minister and the Metropolitan Police report, and we have seen changes in Downing Street. Outside this place and perhaps some elements of the media, I think many elements of the public—probably the majority now—really do want to draw a line under all this so that we can get on with the issues that are really affecting the country. But does the noble Baroness agree with me that there will be some people who will never give up criticising the Prime Minister because they do not like the fact that he took us out of the European Union, and that this still underpins a huge amount, particularly in some elements of the media? We all think what happened in Downing Street was shocking, but the apology has happened—let us move on.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

As I say, the Prime Minister himself has acknowledged that there is a lot of anger and upset among the population about what happened in No. 10. He has accepted that, which is why he has apologised wholeheartedly. The noble Baroness may be right that there are still divisions over Brexit, but I think we are all trying to move on now and come together. She is absolutely right: we now need to address the real issues facing people every day, particularly the cost of living—of which noble Lords will hear more very shortly.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, listening to the wonderful tributes that have been made in your Lordships’ House, I was wondering what His Royal Highness Prince Philip, if he was looking in—as he will be—to see what we are saying, would be thinking. He would probably be thinking, “Why on earth are they all going on like that, and why are they all going on so long?” After such a long and productive life of service and duty—leaving his legacy in so many areas of our public life—his devoted support to Her Majesty the Queen and his work in promoting this country to not just the Commonwealth but the rest of the world, I hope he would realise that this celebration of his life is very important, not just to all of us here today but to the whole country.

His interests, which have all been mentioned, were never academic. They were always full of practical engagement—what he could do to make things work better seemed to be his everyday thought.

I have a couple of personal reasons for my interest in and admiration for the Duke throughout my life and my sadness at his death. Prince Philip was born in the same year as my wonderful mother, although four months earlier. Before she died in her 96th year, she always kept a close interest in, as she would say, watching him getting older too. Like the Duke, she was active right up to the end of her life.

As a child born just after the war ended, I inherited the Royal Family scrapbook about the time of the coronation and kept it up to date for many years. Looking back through it at the weekend, I was struck—the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Morrow, and the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, referred to this—by the many paper cuttings of his visits to Northern Ireland, my home. He was born in 1921, the year that Northern Ireland was founded; maybe that was part of the reason for his genuine love of that beautiful part of the United Kingdom, which he visited many times, as has been said. His death has brought forth many poignant tributes from the people he met.

But it is the support for young people, particularly those involved in sport—whether of the outward-bound type of trekking, camping, abseiling and caving or the more traditional sports—where my admiration is greatest. He took an interest in them all. When I first came to live in London and financed my way through an economics degree by using my qualification as a PE teacher to teach part-time in east London, I remember noting the numerous visits he made to local boxing clubs as part of his support for the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs. That great organisation, now known as London Youth, was one of the first of very many charitable organisations that he devoted his time and support to. In March 1948, he was present at the finals of the boxing competition at the Royal Albert Hall. Unlike many, he really understood the discipline that boxing gave young people and the life skills that those in the boxing clubs taught to so many.

When I was appointed the first female Minister for Sport, I received a very lovely letter from the Duke enclosing a lecture he had given in 1979 on the purpose of sport at the physical education association. He knew that, as a former PE teacher, I was an advocate of physical education in schools; he was more interested in that, I have to say, than the fact that I was the first woman to be Minister for Sport, and he wanted more qualified PE teachers. That lecture, which I reread over the weekend, showed just how far ahead of his time he was in his views on sport: the way professionalism and money were becoming much more influential, and the need for sport to continue when schools shut for the summer. He was critical, even back then, of the reduction in the number of PE teachers, playing fields and green spaces. Again, his work with the National Playing Fields Association as president for 64 years was a hands-on role; he even had a desk in the office to co-ordinate the Silver Jubilee appeal for the charity.

In all the sporting organisations of which he was president or patron, he did not limit himself to the formalities of the role but would question, cajole, advise and give practical help. I saw that personally in all the letters he sent to me as Minister for Sport. He was always questioning why it could not happen and why the bureaucracy was getting in the way. He was always pushing to get the numerous sporting bodies to co-operate rather than compete with each other. At one event at Buckingham Palace, where he had got a small group of us together to discuss what needed to be done, I said to him over dinner, “I think you would have made a really great Sports Minister”. I am afraid I cannot tell noble Lords his response; I really do not think that he would want me to put it into the public domain. But I actually meant what I said. We will all miss him, especially those involved in sport, but he leaves that amazing legacy, particularly for young people.

To add to what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, I also congratulate the BBC. I have been a great critic of many aspects of the BBC in recent years, but its coverage of his death has been very good indeed, and it has got the tone exactly right on this very sad occasion.

All our thoughts now must be with Her Majesty and the rest of the Royal Family. After all, whatever anyone has said today, this is a family loss above everything else. I think the humble Address says it all, and I support it fully.