Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for presenting this budget. I feel rather sympathetic towards him in that he cannot come here for happy debates. One day, I hope that he will be able to do so. Luckily, much of what I was going to say has been said but, in particular, I would like to say that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, looked at this from an objective point of view and gave one or two...
Viscount Brookeborough: I have just a quick point. When we talk about the individual giving all the relevant and truthful knowledge, to what extent will he be asked about the other people involved in the incident, whenever it was? If he fails to give information on them, does that mean that he has fallen short of what is required by the commission, because there is virtually no incident that did not involve a...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I have listened to everything. I have not bothered to intervene because I basically agree that this is not a great Bill and that all we can hope to do is make it less damaging to what is happening in Northern Ireland. The one thing that strikes me is that reconciliation is on the face of the Bill. I have been struggling with that and with the definition of “reconciliation”. I...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, this is not a devolved issue, and it therefore affects Northern Ireland as well. Does the Minister not agree that conservation of the countryside and the built environment is a very high priority? The effect of continued government policy along this line, especially in Northern Ireland, is that a lot of older houses—nice heritage houses—are ignored, and people simply build new...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I support these amendments and I support what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, just said about children. Children are the future for Northern Ireland, and integrated education and more understanding between the communities are all-important. This form of glorification is directly appealing to them. The integrated schools are fine. We are also moving into joint...
Viscount Brookeborough: Does he mean that the commission will ask them who their accomplices were and that they must not refuse to name them?
Viscount Brookeborough: Perhaps the noble Lord would like to ask the question of what information given to the commission by somebody seeking immunity will be made available to the victims. That is the point at which reconciliation breaks down—when the names of the other people involved will horrify most families, people who have never appeared on the radar.
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I would like to mention one factor which may be naïve and maybe I just cannot see it, but we appear to be talking about amnesty for individuals who have committed a heinous crime of some type. I wonder whether noble Lords understand what actually occurred in practical terms? This is from my own experience of living there and serving there. Early on in the Troubles there were cowboy...
Viscount Brookeborough: I suggest that the noble Lord may have meant GB-based veterans and not UK-based veterans, since Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I want to say briefly why I support this amendment. I must declare an interest in that I am a military veteran who served for a long time in Northern Ireland and members of my family were in the police. Veterans are, inevitably, really against the Bill, but I think one ought to accept that veterans are not just people like me and not just their families: they are our societies. If...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, whose stand on terrorism and violence, and what she has done for many years, I admire very much. I do not necessarily come to the same conclusions as her on everything, but she is fully aware of that. I appreciate, from Northern Ireland’s point of view, the amount of effort that is going into trying to do...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am a member of the Order of St John in Northern Ireland—and therefore St John Ambulance—and we do not have a heatwave. Can I ask the Minister: what consultations have gone on with volunteer ambulance services in England, of which there are several, what has been the result of those and how many ambulances are they prepared to put on standby in...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, would the Minister like to recognise that his answers smack of the Government burying their head in the sand and not accepting that some malpractices do go on? Those of us who have lived in Northern Ireland—where the motto used to be, “Vote early, vote often”—know that where there is election, there will be fraud. Does the Minister not agree that the Government should pay...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I rise to support Motion T1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. Because this is something which has been brought in, one must look at what the current situation is. The current situation is that it is an open border, and we have heard that there will be no one on it. Even before Brexit, the situation was that we had border officers at the airports and ports because of...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I support this amendment. At this late hour I will not go into everything I said in Committee, but I live on the border and see it every day. I deal with and know people who cross the border every day. I know of many people who do not have Irish or British passports. They are not citizens of either country. Many of them are eastern Europeans who have remained and who work on both...
Viscount Brookeborough: As I understand it, people are allowed to apply before they leave the services. While people are serving, the Government have huge charges for every soldier, airman and seaman every day of the week. For those who choose to apply for citizenship prior to leaving, why could this not be a normal cost of administration suffered by the MoD as part of its commitment to them?
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I support both these amendments but will speak more particularly to Amendment 178 than to the one on Hong Kong, of which I have no experience. This was all brought home to me when I was asked to present medals for one of the operational tours in Iraq. In presenting the medals to a regiment that had Commonwealth soldiers in it, I was giving a medal to somebody and saying,...
Viscount Brookeborough: Can I just make one point? Northern Ireland is the size of Yorkshire. What the Minister is really stating is that somebody who goes on holiday to Yorkshire must not go to a neighbouring county for any reason without complying with this regulation. I am terribly sorry, but this is complete and utter rubbish. It is nonsensical and it is not going to work. What do people do if they go touring in...
Viscount Brookeborough: My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. I had not necessarily thought about saying anything, but she mentioned me in her speech. First, I declare an interest in that we are involved in tourism at home. Secondly, my brother is chairman of Tourism Ireland, a cross-border body that survives on funds from both the United Kingdom and Ireland to market the...
Viscount Brookeborough: The Minister talks about consultation. I ask her to let us know who has been consulted and how many of the cohort group have been. Clearly, it will be very wide of the mark if none of them has been spoken to. So how many people, who, when, and has it involved the cohort?
