Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

We await with bated breath the Minister’s great revelations and technical epiphanies.

Whatever the Financial Secretary says about the complex dimensions of this, there is nothing complex about the simple logic and justice of the proposition that wholly and solely-owned mutuals and credit unions should be able to benefit from a devolved tax rate.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Assembly’s Committee for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, which he used to chair, is also supportive of the stance that he and other Northern Ireland Members are taking? It believes that mutual societies and credit unions based in Northern Ireland should be included within the Bill and able to avail themselves of the same reduced rates of corporation tax as other Northern Ireland-based organisations.

Newry HMRC Centre

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Mark Durkan

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I sit on a cross-border committee organised by Newry and Mourne district council. A representative from HMRC in Newry attends its meetings and deals with illegal fuel laundering. The last meeting was some six weeks ago, and good progress has been made on that, on foot of the report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, and the good work being carried out by HMRC in dealing with illegal fuel laundering.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

As my hon. Friend knows, Foyle House in Derry, in my constituency, is also affected by the proposals. She is rightly emphasising the fact that jobs are at stake, but does she agree that the quality of services is also at stake? When other taxation services have moved out of Northern Ireland, not least those involving the administration of tax credits, many people—particularly cross-border workers—have been left with very poor services and chronic problems.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his useful intervention. I agree wholeheartedly that there is a need for this service, particularly in regard to cross-border working, as there is a considerable interchange of population between the north and the south. In his case, it is between Derry and Donegal; in my case, it is between Newry and Dundalk. In my area, there is a memorandum of understanding between both councils, north and south, to deal with economic issues in order to pump-prime the local economy.

Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Mark Durkan

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

On this question, we disagreed with the Select Committee. We agreed with it on some things, and changed the draft legislation accordingly, but we did not agree with it on this matter.

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

[Ms Ritchie]

rose—

Changing Perceptions of Northern Ireland

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

All of it.

[Ms Ritchie]

All of it.

Civilian Deaths (Ballymurphy)

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) first.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I commend my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I, too, have met the Ballymurphy families in Westminster, at Stormont and in Ballymurphy. I am struck not only by their innocence but by their sheer humility and need to find justice and truth. Does my hon. Friend agree that the activities of the Parachute Regiment must be examined in connection with their use and deployment at the time in Belfast, Derry and throughout Northern Ireland?

[Mark Durkan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Wider questions must be asked of the powers that be, in both military command and political oversight, about how the Parachute Regiment was deployed in Northern Ireland in those days. Clearly, the Parachute Regiment’s behaviour in Ballymurphy should have been factored into the thinking about its future deployment. People should have had that in mind when it was decided to send the Parachute Regiment, specifically, to Derry for Bloody Sunday. Of course, the Parachute Regiment must account not just for the deaths in Derry and Ballymurphy, but for the killing of two innocent Protestants, Mr Johnston and Mr McKinnie, in September 1972 on the Shankill.