Northern Ireland Banknote (Designation of Authorised Bank) Regulations 2020

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and welcome this instrument, which brings a practical reform necessary for Ulster Bank Ltd to continue to be an authorised bank issuing commercial bank notes in Northern Ireland through National Westminster Bank.

I must raise an urgent Northern Ireland issue as well. Last year, legislation which had all-party and Cross-Bench support was initiated in this House to provide modest financial payments to men and women who suffered the most horrendous physical and psychological injuries through no fault of their own during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Section 10(2) of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 imposed a statutory obligation on the Executive Office in Northern Ireland to have a scheme up and running by Friday 29 May 2020 so that claims could be made and payments quickly processed to these victims. However, not only is the scheme not operational, none of the structures to support it are in place as, again, they were statutorily required to be over three months ago, by 24 February 2020—that is, before the Covid-19 lockdown.

The Executive have palpably failed, indeed refused, to comply with the law. Even more damning is the heartless treatment of some of the most vulnerable victims of Northern Ireland’s violent past, who are now part of its living, tortured legacy. Elderly men and women, permanently disabled through no fault of their own by terrorist attacks some 50 years ago, are confined to wheelchairs or on prosthetic limbs, or are blind and live in permanent pain; and, because of underlying medical conditions as a result of their injuries, they now also live in constant fear of contracting Covid-19.

I and other noble Lords have met members of the WAVE Injured Group, whose campaigning over many years was the driving force behind the 2019 legislation initiated in your Lordships’ House. They had been expecting a pension to help them better survive in the last period of their lives, backdated to the Stormont House agreement of December 2014, but they discovered last week, only days before the scheme was due to commence, that nothing had been done—nothing had been done. As you would expect, they are devastated.

The Executive Office says that the Government should fund the scheme, and the Government say that funding should come from the Northern Ireland block grant. If that is indeed the cause of the impasse, there needs to be an urgent adult conversation to resolve it. Either way, it is completely unacceptable that the law has been flouted in this way. I ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as the sponsor of the 2019 Act, to have urgent discussions with the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland to resolve this shameful impasse. I hope that the Minister will respond positively on this matter. How on earth can politics have sunk so low that a severely injured victim, maimed for life in a terrorist atrocity decades ago, has now been forced to put the devolved Northern Ireland Administration on notice of judicial action, and possible judicial review, to force them to honour their moral and legal obligations?