Northern Ireland Troubles Bill

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Alex Burghart

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

I concur greatly with my hon. Friend’s remarks, and I will return to them in a few moments.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The shadow Secretary of State pointed out that the Secretary of State assured us that there will be no input from the Irish Government set out in the Bill. Yet, first, the Irish Government were the only ones consulted. Secondly, there will be appointments made. Does he see the possibility that a Government who have acceded to the demands of the Irish Government in this Bill could also accede to suggestions for people to be nominated to the advisory committee, meaning they could therefore have Irish proxies under the Bill, despite the assurances given by the Secretary of State?

[Alex Burghart]

The right hon. Gentleman raises interesting and important points. We are concerned about the question of who will have access to sensitive national security information within the legacy commission’s framework? It would be good to have clarity on that from the Minister later.

Sixthly, there was some confusion on the Labour Front Bench recently about whether former IRA personnel would be able to serve as a legacy commission officer or as a member of the victims and survivors advisory group. Perhaps when we get to Committee the Minister could clear that up and provide legal guarantees that that will not be the case.

Draft Transparency of Donations and Loans etc. (Northern Ireland political parties) order 2018

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Alex Burghart

Tuesday 19th December 2017 General Committees

[Sammy Wilson]

With your instructions, Mr Hosie, I will move on to where we are with this debate. Despite the fact that everything was known—we have already had it outlined in the Committee today—the Opposition spokesman still supported, right up until the summer of this year, the publication date, despite the controversy that there was and despite the allegations that have been made by Sinn Féin regarding the money.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is coming to the crux of the argument as I see it, which is that there was full transparency. Given that there was and given that in January all political parties apart from the Alliance party and the Labour party agreed that it would be wrong to backdate by three years, to now transform that policy to say that things should be backdated by three years is to again put at risk some people in Northern Ireland who may have given donations in the years between 2014 and now. It is political point scoring and it is not taking account of the political—[Interruption.] It is not about protecting people in Northern Ireland who may be in danger if this delegated legislation does not go through. The Opposition will be culpable in anything that happens to those donors past this point.

[Sammy Wilson]

I made the point in an intervention that there was an expectation that some people who had made donations post-2014 would not be put into the public domain. There is a real issue around it.