I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I have always been clear that I am an MP from Northern Ireland, not for Northern Ireland. It is his job and the job of his colleagues and other MPs to lead on issues that are affecting their constituents. I do not claim a mandate from Northern Ireland but, as I said in last night’s debate, I hope people will accept that it is the place that I will always call home. Family and friends still live there. I try to visit when I can and I care deeply about the place.
On the hon. Gentleman’s point about Westminster engaging in other issues that have been raised over the course of the debate on the Bill, I acknowledge that there is a deep frustration among people in Northern Ireland on a whole range of issues that progress is not being made. I think we are fast approaching the time when they will want politicians somewhere to do something. If that has to be this place, then, reluctantly, I would agree with him that after this current extension we have to think seriously about making some progress on all the matters that have been discussed. It would have to be, in my view, strongly based on a three-stranded approach, north-south co-operation with the Irish Government, and co-operation between the two Governments through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
I have focused a lot on process in last night’s debate and in my speech today, because I want to provide reassurance about the devolved settlement. When I made my speech to move my private Member’s Bill in February 2018, I quoted some of the wit and wisdom of people in south Armagh and Northern Ireland, and some of the Ulsterisms that were used. I have to say that it is not funny anymore. This is really serious and it needs to be addressed. This House has failed LGBT people in Northern Ireland before. It failed a generation of people in Northern Ireland by not decriminalising homosexuality, and condemned them to discrimination, to abuse and to living in fear many years after that stopped being the case in the rest of the UK. It failed people in Northern Ireland by not extending same-sex marriage when it became the law here, making people in Northern Ireland less valued than the rest of us. Tonight, we have the chance to do the right thing. People in Northern Ireland, and indeed across Britain and Ireland, are watching. I, for one, am not going to let them down. I hope colleagues do not let them down either.