Claire Hanna MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Apr 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q2. Today, the Trump Administration will announce new tariffs that will hurt working people in the US and around the world. Does the Prime Minister agree that, at a time when big tech has grown fat by corrupting our politics and preying on young people, the wrong approach would be to pander to his bullying tactics and the tech billionaires in his imperial court by cutting the digital services tax? Can he assure the public that the poorest will not get cuts, while the richest get a free ride?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Independent Reporting Commission: Seventh Annual Report · Hansard source

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  After all these years, people are bewildered that we are still talking about transitioning paramilitary groups, which have continued to recruit, to grip and to poison communities and current-day politics in Northern Ireland. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that we learn from all the things that have not gone right, and all the previous attempts at transition? Will he commit to ensuring that there is no payday for former paramilitaries, that we take a serious criminal justice approach, and that there are preconditions on such things as emblems and financial assets? Does he agree that that makes it even more important that we get the infrastructure right on the legacy of the troubles, and move towards getting back on track as a serious rule-of-law society?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q15. People in Northern Ireland are sick to the teeth of paramilitaries, the menace of sectarianism and keeping people stuck in the past. In the light of the announcement yesterday on transition, does the Prime Minister recognise that people will be highly sceptical of the process? There must be real learnings from the failed transitions of the past. There can be no rewards for paramilitaries for hanging on, but there must be robust criminal justice, flags off lampposts and streetcorners, and community-funded policing to allow communities that have been brutalised by paramilitaries to finally look forward to a confident and shared future.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  Throughout the troubles, both state and non-state actors committed unlawful killings that have created harm and scarred families across both our islands. Does the Secretary of State agree that his Government, working with the Northern Irish parties, must find and build bodies that honour the Stormont House obligations of articles 2 and 3-compliant investigations and ensure that no victim-maker—nobody who carries out an unlawful killing, whether UK state forces, IRA or UDA—has the right to suppress truth from families?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Legacy Discussions · Hansard source

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  Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney described Sean Brown as a man of “goodwill and integrity” who represented something better than we have grown used to. We meet the day before his family are forced back to court, and in the week of the anniversary of the Kingsmill massacre; the sole survivor, brave Alan Black, is waiting for a long-overdue ombudsman report. Those two incidents were among the most nakedly sectarian in a squalid conflict, but decades on, those in and out of uniform who created victims—rather than the victims themselves, who have lived with the consequences for decades—are still driving the process. Will the Secretary of State commit to ensuring that his forthcoming proposals, which I know he is working on intensively, remove the NIO veto under the guise of national security? Will he commit to root-and-branch reform of ICRIR and to exposing collusive behaviour, and will he hold to the standards agreed by all parties in both Governments at Stormont House?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I was agreeing with the right hon. Member that the trade rules have nothing to do with the past. I was also hoping to remind him that the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister), who spoke before him and tried to equate the murderous campaign of the IRA with the protocol, degrades everybody in this Chamber, and degrades every victim of that campaign. I respect the right hon. Gentleman, and he knows that. I am sure he agrees with me, and that he was as mortified as everybody I know hearing that.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister indulge me for a moment? Can we just kill off this canard about mutual enforcement? The Bill goes much further than suggesting mutual enforcement. It seeks to remove Northern Ireland from the European Court of Justice, and therefore from the single market. It is not just about in-market surveillance; it is about entirely removing our economy, including our agri-foods economy, from the single market. Does the Minister agree that that is why this proposal is magical thinking and why it is simply not on the table?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Patrick Finucane Murder · Hansard source

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  The brutal murder of Pat Finucane in front of his wife and children was mired in collusion before the killing, as it has been in the many long years since. Today is about the tenacity of the Finucane family, including my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Belfast North (John Finucane), but it will have resonance for many other victims of the troubles whose needs have, for many years, been put behind the needs of the victim-makers who want the truth to remain covered up. I am so glad that the truth may now finally out for this family. As the Secretary of State knows, many other families have faced obstruction from state and non-state actors in their quest for truth and a reconciled future. I am thinking of families such as those of the victims of Freddie Scappaticci, the family of Sean Brown, and many others. Will the Secretary of State commit to the same swiftness and determination in removing the barriers that have been placed in front of those families in their quest for truth?