Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-10-24
Topic: Civil Rights
Stella Judith Creasy (Labour, Centre-left): I shall speak to new clause 7, which is about equal rights in Northern Ireland. I hope that Members across the House who have already supported the new clause will recognise that it is an incredibly reasonable request to put to the Secretary of State, about an incredibly important issue for the House, and indeed for many people in Northern Ireland I do not intend to speak for long, because many others wish to get in. I simply want to set out three important points about this reasonable new clause—first, how it respects devolution; secondly, why it addresses issues that cannot simply be left any longer; and thirdly, how we believe it has relevancy to this House and the obligations of Members of this House as part of the Good Friday agreement The new clause requests the Secretary of State’s acts to be held to account because of what the Bill does—it recognises that since March 2017, we have not had an Assembly in Northern Ireland. [Interruption.] January 2017; I apologise to the Secretary of State. It has been too long for residents of Northern Ireland not to have a functioning Government, and it has an impact on their lives. The Bill recognises that resolving the dysfunctions behind that is far ahead of us at the moment, and so gives powers to the Secretary of State and to the civil servants to exercise the functions of Government. [Interruption.] It does give power to the Secretary of State because it gives her guidance powers; I believe those are quite powerful, and the new clause speaks to those powers For avoidance of doubt, the new clause would not create a new law in Northern Ireland, but it would recognise that there are thousands of people in Northern Ireland whose lives, right now, are affected by two key human rights issues; and they are indeed human rights issues, because they are issues on which our courts are currently discussing, ruling and indeed appealing. They refer in particular to a person’s right to marry who they love, and also to the right of women to have bodily autonomy—to make the choice, if they so wish, not to continue with an unwanted pregnancy. Both of these have been subject to court action, because we recognise that in Northern Ireland they have different rules. Let us talk about the consequences of those rules. When it comes to abortion, we know that right now in Northern Ireland, if you are raped, and you become pregnant as a result of that attack, and you seek a termination, you could face a longer prison sentence than your attacker. We know too that gay couples in Northern Ireland, when they step off the plane, no longer have their relationship respected in the way that any of us would wish our relationship to be respected. They do not have equal marriage in 2018 Both of these sets of circumstances come about as a direct result of legislation that was written in this place. First and foremost, sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and also, because of the Matrimonial Causes (Northern Ireland) Order 1978. So there is a relevancy for us in this House, because legislation written here is having a direct impact on the human rights of people in Northern Ireland today.