High Court Judgment (John Downey)

Debate between Naomi Long and Nigel Mills

Thursday 27th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

Yes, there is a real question about what the legal status of the letters is now. We can argue about whether they were intended to be amnesties. The question has now become: has this judgment somehow elevated their status to something that was not intended?

The end of paragraph 45 of the Downey judgment refers to a letter sent by the then Prime Minister, which said:

“The Government is committed to dealing with the difficulty as soon as possible, so that those who, if they were convicted would be eligible under the early release scheme are no longer pursued”.

That is basically saying that somebody who could have been prosecuted and would have got a two-year sentence would now no longer be pursued. I am not sure how I can construe that as just being a factual statement. It appears that the intention of the Prime Minister at the time was to give some assurance that people who had gone on the run would not be prosecuted in that situation. That strikes me as being an amnesty under any other name. As the old saying goes: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. This looks very much like it was intended to be an amnesty.

[Naomi Long]

It is constantly raised that the letter was issued in error. However, in the judgment the real influence came from the content of the letter combined with the testimony given as to what the effect of the letter ought to be. Personally, having read the judgment, I think that the issue of the erroneous nature of the letter was in many ways a red herring. If another letter, accurately written, had been presented with the same testimony from the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) and the others who gave testimony, the effect would have been exactly the same.

[Nigel Mills]

Yes, I think the hon. Lady must be right on that. The judge seemed to think that the process was meant to confer some kind of assurance on people and that the letter had to be read in line with that, but I am no expert.

We ought to look also at the concerns expressed at the start of this process by the then Attorney-General, who is quoted in paragraph 36 of the judgment. He said that he was

“seriously concerned that the exercise that is being undertaken has the capacity of severely undermining confidence in the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland at this most sensitive of times. Individual prosecution decisions have to be justifiable within the framework in which all prosecution decisions are reached and I am not persuaded that some unquantifiable benefit to the peace process can be a proper basis for a decision based on the public interest”.

Those concerns have not arisen retrospectively; there were concerns at the time about what the process would really mean and what it would be seen to mean to various people in Northern Ireland. That is why I welcome the inquiries into this situation.

Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Debate between Naomi Long and Nigel Mills

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Naomi Long]

The hon. Lady is correct to say that the Electoral Commission for Northern Ireland supports the amendments and believes that they would be practical in providing adequate support and advice to donors and political parties to make them fully aware of the change by January 2014. No substantive reasons have been given for this move not being able to proceed by 2014. Given all the issues surrounding transparency, and the public concern about the opaque nature of political funding in Northern Ireland, it is important to take this opportunity to make it clear that we want maximum transparency for the public there. We want the kind of transparency that the rest of the United Kingdom already enjoys, but which, for security reasons, we have been unable to enjoy until now.

For me, this is a matter not only of amendments 7 and 8, which I have tabled. I also want to refer to the other amendments in this group. Amendment 2 differs from those amendments, in that it seeks to set in stone the lifting of the veil of secrecy on party political donations in Northern Ireland by October 2014. It would not entirely remove the Government’s ability to extend the period further in an emergency. The Bill could, for example, include an order-making power to ensure that the Government could come back to the House in an emergency and reinstate the existing provisions, but they would need to have a substantive reason for doing so and they would have to bring their argument to the House and gain its support.

I put on record at Second Reading, and I want to do so again today, that this is not about being cavalier or dismissive about the security situation in Northern Ireland. Nor is it about dismissing the potential threat to those who donate to political parties. It is about accepting that that should not automatically, as of right, outweigh the public’s right to scrutinise donations to political parties. If we lift the bar and allow donations over £7,500 to be published, in line with the rest of the United Kingdom, people will factor in that decision when deciding whether to make such donations. Given that all the political parties have said that they get very few donations of that size, the proposal would not impede the normal democratic fundraising capacity of the Northern Ireland parties.

It is also important to confidence and trust that the public should believe that their elected representatives are not available for sale. The only way to convince people of that is to maximise transparency around these issues. No political party can defend itself against that charge while the secrecy continues to exist, because the information will not be in the public domain and available for scrutiny. My own party reveals such information voluntarily, and we encourage other parties to do so, but I believe that as of October 2014, we should be moving towards a more normalised situation for donations. The onus should be on donors to decide whether they wish to donate, knowing that their donation will be made public.

I shall listen carefully to what my colleagues in the Democratic Unionist party say about amendment 6. My understanding is that their intention is to remove entirely the possibility of donations to the Northern Ireland political parties from the Republic of Ireland. I cannot support that, and I want to explain why. Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances are reflected not only in our constitutional arrangements but in the fact that some parties operate on a Northern Ireland-only basis, some on a UK-wide basis and others on an all-Ireland basis. Taking that into account, I believe that it would be unfair completely to close the door to donations from the Republic of Ireland. A situation could be created in which parties that operate on an all-UK basis could receive donations from Dundee, Devon and Derby, while those that operate on a Northern Ireland-only basis would be unable to receive donations from Donegal or Dublin. I think that would be unfair.

I have a degree of sympathy, however, with the concerns expressed by the Democratic Unionist party on Second Reading about the potential for overseas donors to put money through the Republic of Ireland, essentially circumventing the rules on foreign donations. Indeed, I supported the Select Committee recommendation in paragraph 44 where we set out our concerns about that. Although we stopped short of recommending that all donations from the Republic of Ireland be stopped, we did recommend that the Secretary of State should seek to include provisions in the Bill that would close that particular loophole. I would be happy to support measures to do that, but I do not feel that it would be just or right to support measures that would simply put a bar on any donations from the Irish Republic, even if those people are resident and are donating to a party that operates on a Northern Ireland basis. That would not be fair or just.

I encourage all Members to consider amendments 7 and 8. Some might not agree with amendment 2, but I do not believe that the hands of the Secretary of State are in any way tied with respect to security judgments. I believe that amendments 7 and 8 will ensure clarity for donors, who will know that any money above £7,500 donated from January onwards will be subject to publication at whatever point in the future the Secretary of State decides that it is safe to declare the information. Clarity will be provided for members of the public who will know that we are moving in the direction of full transparency, in the same way as any other region of the UK. This draws the line under what has been a very tortured issue for a very long time. I hope that when the opportunity arises, Members will vote in favour of increasing transparency on these matters.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I rise to speak to amendment 2, which is in the name of the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) and myself. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady’s speech, and I am grateful to her for supporting the amendment that I proposed—one that is obviously consistent with the recommendations of the Select Committee on the matter of transparency for larger political donations. This recommendation was not disputed in the Committee and there was no vote or dissenting voice, as can be seen in the report. Looking back over the evidence given to the Committee by every Northern Ireland political party, it becomes clear that there is little evidence that the parties are receiving many donations above this specified amount, so it is not as if we are talking about a large number of people potentially at a security risk.

A fair number of the parties favoured transparency, and the hon. Member for Belfast East has pointed out that her party already publishes its donations, while the Green party and Sinn Fein said they were in favour in the evidence given to us. It is not quite so easy, however, to find on Sinn Fein’s website all of its donations. Some of us have tried and have asked, but the information does not quite seem to be there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Naomi Long]

Even if we judge that the risk now is high, the point is that there will never be a point at which we can say there is no risk. This provision is about transitioning and saying that the donor must now take some responsibility for judging whether to take that risk, and that that risk should not always outweigh the public interest.

[Nigel Mills]

Absolutely, and if this amendment were passed, a donor would still have 14 months in which to make any donations they wanted to make and have them not made public. I suspect that would get the political parties through the 2015 general election, and that if they planned things carefully, they could get enough funds to get through the 2016 Assembly elections, so there would be no detriment to party funding until perhaps the 2020 elections in terms of the need for very large donations. That would give everyone a large amount of time to adjust to these new transparency rules.

I therefore ask the Minister to set out why the Government are apparently reluctant to go down this route even for the largest donations. I note that in their response to the Select Committee they said they would carefully consider any restrictions on transparency after October 2014. It would be useful to understand what their criteria are for making that decision. I accept, however, that the Minister cannot, and should not, tell us the specific intelligence he has about security threats.

Northern Ireland Members obviously understand Northern Ireland politics better than I do, but it is my understanding that the details of anyone who nominates a candidate or who stands for a council are published. If we have not had any evidence that there is a real security threat to people participating in those aspects of Northern Ireland democracy, why do we have this threat in respect of donations? It is worth asking how credible it is to have those two opposing situations, whereby it is safe to nominate or stand but it is not safe to donate money. I am not sure whether there is a very convincing argument for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Naomi Long]

Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone. It is unfortunate that the noise blotted out all the praise that I was heaping on the Government, because I am just about to stop and start to highlight areas where they have not been quite so generous. However, I do appreciate that these issues are being addressed. I very much support that, as did the Select Committee.

These provisions are being proposed for a very good reason. Serving in two legislatures involves the physical challenge of being in two places at once. The conflict in sitting times between the House of Commons and the Northern Ireland Assembly means that Members who wished to be here today for this business would have to be absent from the Assembly, where they could be questioning Ministers and holding them to account. There is significant evidence that that creates a democratic deficit either there or here.

The problem is not restricted purely to Members who sit in the House of Commons. I recognise that the House of Lords is not structured in the same way as the Commons. Its Members do not have an electoral mandate and therefore do not have the same demands on their time with regard to constituency business. However, as a revising Chamber with a primary focus on legislation and scrutiny, it is hugely important that its Members are free to dedicate themselves to that task without the interference of a constituency burden and the other legislature that they would have to deal with when they are at the Northern Ireland Assembly.

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with the hon. Lady. Does she accept that, as I propose in amendment 3, this must apply even more to the European Parliament, which is even further away and has some kind of elected legitimacy, at least while we are in still in the European Union and it is relevant to us? I cannot see how someone can serve in Brussels and in Belfast at the same time.