Definitely not. I would not ask the hon. Gentleman to endure that—that would be too much of a challenge.
I say this very gently: I never cease to be amazed by people suggesting that the DUP is or was opposed to the Good Friday agreement. I want put that on the record, because it is important to do so. The reason for that suggestion is undoubtedly the fact that we did not support the Good Friday agreement in 1998. The events of the last 25 years cannot be collapsed into an appreciation of a world frozen in time in 1998. Not one year but 25 years have passed, and if we want to build on the Good Friday agreement to promote peace for the next 25 years, we must never lose sight of that fact.
Although that suggestion no doubt fits the caricatures through which many prefer to operate, the truth is that the DUP was never completely opposed to the Good Friday agreement. The agreement always contained significant elements that we supported, such as power sharing and cross-community consent. I understand exactly how the communities came together and brought that forward: two completely opposing traditions had to find a methodology through which we could agree on a democratic process and move forward.
Before I go into any more detail, I want to put on the record my thanks to all those people who served. The Secretary of State rightly referred to the contribution and service of the police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the PSNI, and the soldiers of the Ulster Defence Regiment. I declare an interest, since I served in that regiment for three years and served 11 and a half years as a territorial soldier, so I was a part-timer for 14 and a half years. Their sacrifices and contributions were so significant to moving the peace process forward so that we could find a future that we can, hopefully, agree on for our children and our grandchildren. I have three boys, all married, and six grandchildren. I want my legacy to my six grandchildren to be a future where they can get on together, live in harmony and have equal rights with everyone. That is my choice.
The Good Friday agreement always contained significant elements that we supported, and I have referred to power sharing and cross-community consent. The reason the DUP could not support the Good Friday agreement in 1998 was that it involved the release of murderers from prison back into the community, where they could
live alongside the families of those they had murdered. I know there are MPs in this House—I am one of them—who represent constituencies where people have been released from prison, causing great angst to people in the community, and those MPs have reflected that in the House. The Home Secretary has responded many times to questions that I and others have asked about that, so hon. Members can understand why we suffered angst over it at the time.
The Good Friday agreement also involved welcoming the political wing of the IRA into government at a time when the IRA had not decommissioned its weapons. Those were two critical issues for us at the time—two things to which the Democratic Unionist party could not and would not reconcile itself—and a large proportion of the population of Northern Ireland shared those concerns.
However, let me make it clear now that that did not mean we did not support the rest of the Good Friday agreement. Nor did it mean that we were unwilling to fight for the rest of the agreement. That commitment resulted in the seminal St Andrews agreement process, which we in the DUP thought—and I think the Government accepted—made the Good Friday agreement process even better, because it addressed the issue of decommissioning, which helped the democratic process to move forward.
The truth is that the Good Friday agreement, amended by the St Andrews agreement, lays a foundation for a stronger and better future. I believe that very strongly and so does our party. It forms the foundation for everything we have done in government since 2007 when, for the first time, we agreed to power sharing—an agreement that opened the door to a period of relative stability in the governance of Northern Ireland until 2017.
I was an MLA at the time, and I was very pleased to support my leader, Dr Paisley. I am glad that the Secretary of State referred to him, by the way, because we need to remember all the architects who made the process move forward, and he was one of them. Perhaps not everybody in our party had the same confidence that we had in 2007, but we went ahead with the process and, as it went forward, those who perhaps were not 100% convinced began to feel that the process was one to pursue and support.
The lesson that we can take from the 10-year period of relative stability from 2007 to 2017 is that it is only possible to make progress when we fashion an environment that both Unionists and nationalists can buy into. That is the whole secret of this process; it is the secret of where we are going and what we need to aim for. The journey from 1998 to 2007 was worth it because it created an arrangement that rose to that challenge.
If we want to secure a positive future from the vantage point of today—we can always look back with great knowledge, because we know what happened—we must recognise that, tragically, the delicate balance of our politics has been destabilised by the EU creating an imperative for the construction of a new arrangement that Unionists cannot buy into. Yet as I look to the future, I am very clear that the greatest threat to peace arises from the threat to the Good Friday agreement. We should be in no doubt that the threat is now acute.
If the United Kingdom is to honour its treaty obligations in the Good Friday agreement, they must be respected in domestic legislation. How, then, are the key commitments
in that agreement given expression in UK law? I will refer to three Good Friday agreement commitments that are particularly important for Unionists. I want to put them on the record in a constructive fashion to lay out the scene and make a case.
The first is the principle of consent. That is given effect by the following text in the treaty:
“While a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and, accordingly…Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and…it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people”.
That is as clear as can be, and there should not be any issue. That commitment is clear and prohibits any change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland that involves a shift away from government by the UK towards more government by the Republic of Ireland, save with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland.
People say that national opinion polls are not always entirely accurate. Well, there can be a variation of 3% either way. I will quote two polls just to put on the record the feelings of the people of Northern Ireland today. A national opinion poll in The Times in August last year indicated that about 50% of people in Northern Ireland wanted to stay in the United Kingdom and 27% wanted to go with a united Ireland, while the other 23% were non-aligned voters. The Belfast Telegraph did a similar poll on the non-aligned voters, and it found that 53% of those people wanted to stay within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The point that I am making is that the vast majority of people—be they big “U” Unionists or small “u” unionists —want to stay within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We believe that that is very important.
It was understood by the Unionist community that that protection was translated into domestic law—in section 1 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998—and it was on that basis that we signed up to the Good Friday agreement, including the DUP from 2007. When the protocol was introduced, it effected a significant change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, partly suspending article VI of the Act of Union to protect the integrity of a new legal regime in Northern Ireland, made for and by a polity of which Northern Ireland is not a part and in whose legislature it has no representation. Specifically, the people of Northern Ireland found themselves subject to laws in 300 areas that would be made for them by a legislature representing the Republic of Ireland, in which they had no representation. Unionists went to court to get that struck down on the basis of the consent protection in the Good Friday agreement, as a significant change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, involving a shift in governance for some purposes from the UK towards the Republic of Ireland, had been effected without any attempt to secure prior sanction from the majority of the population. That was a significant change, and one that concerns us.
Government lawyers responded by arguing that the relevant domestic legislation had not given effect to the Good Friday agreement consent provision that prevents any change in the constitutional status of Northern
Ireland, save with the consent of the majority of the population. Instead, they argued that the relevant legislation—section 1 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998—prevents one specific change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, save with the consent of the majority of the population: the complete departure of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom to join the Republic of Ireland. The Court agreed with the Government lawyers.
The second protection that has now been ignored is the principle of cross-community consent. The relevant cross-community consent provisions in the Good Friday agreement commit the state parties to
“arrangements to ensure key decisions are taken on a cross-community basis”.
That was translated effectively into section 42 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that these protections no longer apply in relation to article 18 votes on the protocol by the Assembly because section 42 has to be read subject to section 7A of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. There have been completely disingenuous attempts to argue that this is acceptable because the agreement only requires cross-community consent for Stormont decisions if they pertain to devolved matters. That makes no sense at all and is terribly disappointing.
The principle that there can be no majority votes in Stormont when one community objects is not an innovation of the Good Friday agreement—it is a basic convention of Stormont politics of the past that goes back way beyond 1998 to 1972. The Parliament of Northern Ireland that operated from 1921 until 1971 did so on a majority basis, which was believed to have been a contributing factor to the outbreak of the troubles from 1969. I would subscribe that some of the ways that politics were done in those days contributed to the problems. When the UK Government intervened to terminate the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1972, they sought to replace it with a power-sharing arrangement, and from 31 March 1972, it has been a principle of Northern Ireland governance that governance through Stormont must operate on the basis of non-majoritarianism.
The Good Friday agreement is not significant for limiting the application of that convention, to say that henceforth, from 1998, it is okay for majority decisions to be made from Stormont so long as they are not on devolved matters. Instead, its significance arises from its affirmation of the central importance of the convention that decisions from Stormont must be made on a cross-community basis if either community requires it.
The political problems flowing from the Supreme Court judgment are huge, and I want to put them on record. I welcome the fact that we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the agreement, but our reasons for being objective at that time were the two conditions that we sought relating to our concern over the release of prisoners and the holding of arms, as decommissioning had not taken place. One can only begin to appreciate the difficulty when one has regard for the nature of the majority decision that is proposed by article 18 of the protocol. The provision on cross-community consent is not invoked all the time; many votes at Stormont are on a majority basis. The point of the cross-community provision is that if ever either community feels that
a measure brought before Stormont constitutes an existential threat to it, that community can be protected by invoking its right to use the cross-community consent mechanism. Mindful of that, we must ask, does the removal of the cross-community consent of article 18 matter that much?
The article 18 vote, which could happen any time from 1 November 2024, will not just be controversial but will be more controversial that any majority vote of the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1971. It brings a constitutional change not within Northern Ireland but between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, effecting a transfer of governance from the UK towards the Republic of Ireland, as laws that were once made by the UK are made in a context that does not involve the United Kingdom but does involve the Republic of Ireland. The proposal is that next year, rather than moving forward, we will unfortunately move back not simply to the early 1970s, which would be bad enough, but to an even more difficult time that has not yet been experienced. That would be catastrophic and cannot be allowed to happen.
The third protection of the Good Friday agreement that is of particular importance for Unionists is the commitment by the state parties to uphold the right of the people of Northern Ireland to
“pursue democratically national and political aspirations”.
That right has to be understood from the point when it was embraced in 1998-99, when the people of Northern Ireland had the right to pursue democratically national and political aspirations by standing for election to make all the laws to which they were subject. The protocol and the Windsor framework terminate this because they create a situation in which the people of Northern Ireland can no longer pursue democratically national and political aspirations in relation to 300 areas of law to which we are subject. So far, 640 laws have been imposed in relation to which our Good Friday agreement right to pursue democratically national and political aspirations has been taken away. These are now made for us by a polity of which we are not a member and in whose legislature we have no representation.
It is very striking that as we approach the 25th anniversary of the agreement, with the desire of many to celebrate— and it is right to celebrate it—the greatest attacks on the agreement are taking place right now. Some of the parties that were fully supportive of it seem to be pointing their fingers and asking questions. Going forward, these matters cannot be papered over. We must remember that progress in Northern Ireland has only ever occurred when it has been possible to fashion a framework that both Unionists and nationalists can buy into. I say it again: that was the secret of the process in 1998. That was the secret of the process in 2007, and it is the secret of the process today in 2023. It was the secret behind the 10 years of stability between 2007 and 2017, and its demise—especially since 2021—is entirely the result of ignoring the reality.
I finish with this: the UK Government now have a choice. I for one hope that they will learn the lessons of the 2007 to 2017 period, and will ensure going forward that the Good Friday agreement, amended by the St Andrews agreement, is upheld and not ignored. If they do not, then for many in Northern Ireland and for myself, I fear for the future of Northern Ireland.
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