Oral Answers to Questions
Ruth Jones Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Brandon Lewis)
May I first wish the hon. Lady a very happy birthday? Do not worry—I can assure the House that I will not be singing.
The shared prosperity fund is a central pillar of the Government’s ambitious levelling-up agenda and will deliver for communities across Northern Ireland. The fund will inject around £127 million into Northern Ireland over the next three years to support communities, boost local business, and invest in people and skills. We will be working closely with the Northern Ireland Executive and other key stakeholders to develop a plan that reflects the needs of Northern Ireland’s economy and society.
Ruth Jones
I thank the Secretary of State for his kind words.
According to the latest Asda Cebr income tracker, Northern Ireland has seen the largest relative fall in discretionary income, amounting to a huge drop of 13.3%. Living standards in Northern Ireland are under the most pressure in the UK, thanks to the Tory cost of living crisis, made in Downing Street. Does the Secretary of State agree that short-changing Northern Ireland with the shared prosperity fund, as in Wales, will only make things worse?
Brandon Lewis
Actually, we are boosting our investment in Northern Ireland. If the hon. Lady looks back over the past couple of years, to the previous spending review and the current one, she will see that we have just put in the largest block grant budget for Northern Ireland since devolution began in 1998, and that is aside from the extra investment we are making through the community renewal fund and the new deal, with £400 million for a range of infrastructure projects. We are making the biggest investment in Northern Ireland in decades, and I am proud of that. But she is right that we need to see productivity and employment continue to grow in Northern Ireland, as they have over the past few months, so that we have a prosperous Northern Ireland that can build on the benefits of the Good Friday agreement.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ruth Jones Excerpts(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Conor Burns
I totally agree, and what a wonderful, harmonious note on which to end Northern Ireland questions.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
People in Newport West and across Northern Ireland know that Her Majesty has always led by example and demonstrated the highest standards in public life, so can the Minister confirm that this Government will be following her example as they mark her platinum jubilee?
Conor Burns
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that Her Majesty is an example to us all. The House should unite in thanking her for her decades of dedicated service to our country and the Commonwealth.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ruth Jones Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Walker
I absolutely will. I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the comprehensive winter economy plan. The Government are providing support for businesses and employees throughout the United Kingdom with an unprecedented series of grants, loans and support schemes. We are steadfast in our commitment to strengthening the Union and levelling up opportunities for Northern Ireland to prosper, and that includes for our investments in the city and growth deals programme, which covers the whole of Northern Ireland.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Robin Walker)
In March this year, the Government made the Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020, which set out the new law on access to abortion services in Northern Ireland. Since then, we have been dealing with the response to covid-19. However, I am pleased that some service provision has commenced on the ground in Northern Ireland through existing sexual and reproductive health clinics across all the health and social care trusts. I hope that longer-term services can be commissioned as soon as possible so that access is available locally in all cases set out in the regulations. The Government stand ready to provide whatever support we can to Northern Ireland’s Minister of Health and his Department to assist them in this regard.
Ruth Jones
We all know that the time for debate about the need for abortion services for the women of Northern Ireland is long gone. These women deserve equality of access to these vital services without having to travel to the mainland. What discussions has the Minister had on the funding needed for the UK Government to commission and sustain new abortion services for the women of Northern Ireland?
Mr Walker
The regulations deliver equivalent outcomes, in practice, to the rest of the UK so that women and girls can enjoy similar rights in accessing abortion services in Northern Ireland going forward. We are in constant dialogue with the Executive about their overall funding settlement. As the hon. Lady will recognise, there have been substantial increases in their funding, thanks to the Barnett consequentials of funding across the UK, including in health.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill
Ruth Jones Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship tonight, Dame Eleanor.
Let me start by being crystal clear that Opposition Members firmly believe in the need for a strong internal market so that businesses can trade freely across the UK’s four nations. That trade is vital for our economy and our shared prosperity, but, as we have heard in recent days as the House debates this Bill in Committee, it must be an internal market based on a genuinely four-nation approach; it must not be a top-down framework imposed by Tory Ministers.
By proposing mutual recognition without legally underpinning minimum standards, Ministers are ensuring that the lowest standard on food, the environment, air quality and animal welfare that is chosen by one legislative House must automatically become the minimum standard across all four nations. As Member of Parliament for Newport West, I have received many lengthy and passionate representations from residents across my constituency. It is clear that they want the highest possible standards, protected by our progressive Welsh Labour Government, a demand that stands in stark contrast to the shameless race to the bottom proposed by those on the Treasury Bench.
There are a number of important amendments to this Bill, and I pay tribute to those tabled by my Front Bench and others across the House. The Minister needs to be clear in winding up that amending this Bill and stopping the shameless power grab will be a key focus of this Government.
As today’s debate focuses largely on Northern Ireland, I urge the Minister to be mindful of the fragile peace holding that part of the country together. Last week, the hon. Members for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) spoke movingly about what peace has meant for Northern Ireland. Their words must be heard loud and clear by Ministers.
When thinking about the Northern Ireland protocol I was reminded of the wonderful work of our friend Lady Hermon, the former Member for North Down. In September 2019 she said in this Chamber:
“I think the Prime Minister owes the people of Northern Ireland some explanation of why he and his Government have treated the Good Friday agreement…in such a careless and cavalier manner.”—[Official Report, 3 September 2019; Vol. 664, c. 46.]
She was right then, and, sadly, she is still right today.
I do not always agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), but I want to thank her for her brave speech today, as she focused on the issues the Bill throws up and how it will affect our standing in the rest of the world.
The current Prime Minister has called himself the Minister for the Union; I have to say that these days he looks like the Minister for disarray, and frequently appears to be missing in action. A Government who were truly committed to the Union of the United Kingdom would not propose this divisive legislation. They would respect the devolved Administrations and the people who live, learn and work in our devolved nations, and propose legislation with the informed consent of the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies.
The Tory shadow Counsel General in Wales said this Bill risks seriously damaging the Union and resigned from the Front Bench in the Senedd, and he was right to do so. If the Prime Minister will not take the same dignified and objective stand as David Melding MS and resign, he must immediately stop trashing our international reputation, and must use however long he has left in office to start providing the good government my constituents deserve.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
It is always a joy to come in on the fag end of a debate, when so many people have said everything that needs to be said and we have had a surfeit of lawyers on what is a very legalistic Bill—I am not one, thank goodness.
There is much good in this Bill. It is about the continuity of trade and the integrity of the United Kingdom, the principle of mutual recognition and the principle of non-discrimination of goods within the UK, and there is much practical stuff that, in the absence of an early agreement with the EU, we need to do. However, I have serious reservations about the inclusion of clauses 41 to 45 because of the implications well beyond this Bill, or indeed, well beyond our withdrawal process from the EU. They raise serious question marks about the intent and good name of the United Kingdom in being party to other international agreements.
When a Government Minister at the Dispatch Box states that the UK will be able to break the law, albeit in a “specific and limited way”, parliamentarians should prick up their ears and ask why and how, and demand proper justification from the Government and the Ministers to whom this part of the Bill gives considerable and ongoing powers. When the Government published this Bill in a hurry, that justification, I feel, was just not forthcoming from the Government, and on Second Reading, I therefore could not support the Bill. I would like to support the Government. I would like to support the Bill, but I need more assurances.
Amendment 4, which was put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and which forced the hand of the Government with Government amendment 66, certainly helps, although it just gives an additional check without removing the powers reserved to the Government fundamentally. I say this as a concerned Brexiteer, but this is not a question of leave or remain. It has no impact on the UK leaving the EU fully after the end of the transition period on 31 December, but it does have an impact, potentially, on how we carry on our business in the world beyond the EU after 31 December.
I think the EU has behaved disgracefully throughout the negotiation period. It has exploited shamelessly the unique position of Northern Ireland as our land border with the EU but subordinate to the very important status conferred on it by the Good Friday agreement. It has used all sorts of underhand tactics to promote its pet causes, to keep the UK under the control of EU laws and regulations, be that British fisheries or state aid considerations and preventing us from being able to compete fairly, which is all we ask. “Unless you give us what we want, we will impose checks and tariffs between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and there is nothing you can do to stop it”—runs the subtext of the negotiations.
It has now become clear that the EU is trying to reinterpret the terms of the withdrawal agreement to impose control over internal markets within the UK that no other country would tolerate and none has been required to agree to as part of any other EU trade deal. Of course, as we heard from many hon. Members, the EU is no stranger to breaking international agreements when that suits it, especially as regards the WTO. Has the EU really been negotiating an agreement in good faith, especially when a precedent has already been set of what was possible with a Canada-type deal?
Despite all this, it does not, and should not, mean that we, the United Kingdom, have to follow suit and act badly as well. The United Kingdom has a reputation for upholding the rule of law. The Conservative party has always had as one of its most cherished doctrines the importance of upholding the rule of law, so I share, for once, the concern of many lawyers who are worried that these clauses represent a significant risk of violation of the UK’s international law obligations, including the principle of good faith and sincere co-operation; that the Northern Ireland protocol and associated case law would have a subordinate role dependent on ministerial interpretation; and that this would have potentially a serious impact on the reputation of the UK as a centre for international legal practice and dispute resolution. This would not go down well, given the professed ambition of UK, quite rightly, to be a leader in global trade and a trailblazer for free trade in particular. As the former Attorney General put it, assenting to these proposals
“would amount to nothing more or less than the unilateral abrogation of the treaty obligations to which we pledged our word less than 12 months ago, and which this parliament ratified in February.”
If we do not like what we signed, there is an arbitration process, so finally, I am genuinely bemused about why these clauses have been brought forward now and what they were intended to achieve. There is nothing in the Bill or in the Government amendments about them only being used in extremis, after all those other routes have been exhausted, and that includes the formal arbitration process. If we are going to pre-empt that arbitration process by saying that we will not go to arbitration, why include an arbitration process, and if we do believe in an arbitration process but we will not follow the result if it goes against us, that arbitration process is worthless and pointless.
Why now? Why not when negotiations have not come to a conclusion, if that is the case, despite the severe strain that this move has put on them? Why not nearer 31 December, if it has become clear that a deal has not been reached and the EU is determined to enact our worst-feared scenario? If this is a bargaining tactic, it does not seem to have gone down very well. It has not made negotiations any easier. It has not made a US trade deal any easier. It has not made any other trade deals any easier.
If this really is a bargaining tactic, it is necessary to be able to deliver on it, and there are doubts about whether the Bill can get through the other place. I am afraid that I just do not understand it. I hope that before we vote, Ministers will make everything magically clearer. I may give the Government the benefit of the doubt, but if it comes back for the vote of the Commons—not the Lords, notably—and those questions remain unanswered, I will not be able to support a Bill that retains these clauses unqualified. I hope that the Minister will prove me wrong.
Oral Answers to Questions
Ruth Jones Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Most people in this country would agree that the system of automatic early release of terrorist offenders has run out of road and that it is time to find a way, as we are doing, to make sure they are properly scrutinised by a parole board or an equivalent.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
It was this Government and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary who legalised medicinal cannabis, and I undertake that he will certainly be happy to meet the hon. Member’s constituents this afternoon.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 7
Ruth Jones Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
May I begin by repeating what the Secretary of State has just said, because we can ask no more of the victims, and obviously we can ask no more of Lord Justice Hart. The report before us includes this telling sentence:
“There is no doubt that victims of abuse have shown incredible dignity throughout the inquiry and that an apology is long overdue.”
In fact, the victims have shown incredible dignity over the many years they have suffered as a result of the abuse and as a result of the delay and obfuscation by the political system, which failed to address the record of the past and the needs of those individuals. I share with the Secretary of State and with his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), the view that that there is a sense of urgency, as we have heard in the Chamber. The hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) is right, and made the valid point that between 1922 and 1995, the period covered by the Hart inquiry, there were significant amounts of time under direct rule, when the responsibility for the governance of Northern Ireland lay with Whitehall and Westminster. We should bear that in mind, because it gives us all the sense that we need to bring this to a credible conclusion.
The Secretary of State will know that the shock that was experienced when Parliament was prorogued several weeks ago was felt across the whole of Northern Ireland and across the whole nation, and by no one more than the victims of institutional abuse, who thought that that the probability that at last they were seeing some resolution of their suffering was about to be truncated. I hope that today we can give some comfort to those victims that all is now back on track.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
We are here today because the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament illegally and tampered with our timetable for debates and discussion. Does my hon. Friend, like me, recognise the importance of all the nations—England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and, of course, Wales—that make up our United Kingdom? Does he share my grave concern about the downgrading of the important issues we are discussing that affect people across Northern Ireland? Those issues should not be an afterthought to fill the agenda, but today they very much feel like they are.
Tony Lloyd
That puts into context the unfortunate remarks last week of the Attorney General, who told us that this Parliament had no moral basis. This Parliament has enormous moral compass, no more so than when we examine the kind of issues that we are now examining. This is the message that ought to go out. There can never be a time when the House of Commons is irrelevant, and that is certainly not the case when we are debating the justice and urgency that victims are entitled to have. Members of the House of Commons must be here to do that.
There are things in the report that I strongly welcome. I strongly welcome, for example, the appointment of Brendan McAllister as the interim advocate, as that is an important step forward. From 12 August, I think, Mr McAllister has been engaged in work that he can achieve. In the end, we want a permanent commissioner to be appointed so that they can work across the piece, particularly with victims of abuse.
I do not need to speak for an awful lot longer, as I simply want to make one point. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is absolutely right that we need a firm timeline. I would strongly welcome the return of devolved governance in Stormont. Every Member of the House ought to want that. If it can be done and the legislation can expeditiously be put through that Stormont process, we welcome that. However, in the absence of Stormont we need a definitive view that this can be completed in the House of Commons.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
I want to speak about this report for several reasons, so I thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. The main reason I am here is that I believe in the Union of our United Kingdom. I am fiercely proud of Wales and, of course, Newport West, but I also respect England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In the absence of a devolved Administration in Northern Ireland, I think it is important for all of us in this House to speak up loudly and proudly for all the good people of Northern Ireland.
The lack of a devolved Government in Northern Ireland worries me. It also worries the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) and many other colleagues on the Opposition Benches. Thanks to the strong and active Labour Government in Wales, I see the transformative impact that a devolved Government have on my constituents every day, and it is important that the people of Northern Ireland can share in the same.
The report gives a round-up of progress, but it is very light on next steps. I want to see a timeframe for the legislation, as do the people affected in Northern Ireland—and we all want to see it now. It is frankly disgraceful for the Government to play games with the people of Northern Ireland, and to try to prorogue this Parliament rather than get to grips with such long-standing and important issues. We have so much of the people’s business to do, as was evidenced by the urgent question of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) this afternoon. I would like the Minister to confirm that the legislation in relation to historical institutional abuse will feature in the Queen’s Speech; we need to know if it is a priority for this Government. I will leave my remarks there, but I want to place on record how disappointed I am sure that Northern Ireland-related business appears to be an afterthought to this Government. They need to change their approach, and do it fast.
Northern Ireland
Ruth Jones Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Julian Smith
As I mentioned earlier, we have been having good discussions over the summer. I met the Irish Foreign Minister last Friday and we will be meeting again this Friday. I hope to push forward, with him, on working with the parties to get into a position where we have the best possible opportunity to get Stormont up and running.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
We heard from the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) yesterday about the Prime Minister’s failure, to date, to meet the Taoiseach, so what engagement on Prorogation has there been with the Irish Government in their capacity as co-guarantors under the Good Friday agreement?
Julian Smith
I meet the Irish Foreign Minister regularly, but I have not discussed the issue of Prorogation.