Westminster Hall

9 July 2026

Westminster Hall House of Commons

00:27 - 00:31
Speaker 1
Order, order.  I call Jim Shannon to move the motion. 
00:31 - 01:59
Speaker 2
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and thank you for doing that for us today.  And this is a subject matter I've asked for some time.  It's a subject that's close to my heart, not merely as a matter of policy, but it's also as a matter of conscience, of human dignity, and of our shared responsibility for those who are the most vulnerable in our world.  I thank honorable members for attending. 

It's always a pleasure to see the Minister in his place and he's always very jovial and very friendly.  And he does always try, I think anyway, Mr. Chairman, to give us the answers that we hope to have, and also to other members who have attended as well.  I want to start my contribution by referring to a constituent.  Her name is Margaret.  She is 83 years old. 

She lives in the Ards Peninsula where I live in my constituency of Strangford.  And she still keeps a photograph on her mantelpiece of the street where she grew up.  It wasn't in the Ards Peninsula, it was in Belfast, a street that no longer exists because it was destroyed, one of the casualties of the troubles that we had in Northern Ireland.  So Margaret speaks about the cold, she speaks about the fear, and she speaks about the long, painful shadow of conflict.  And she does that from experience, she does that because it's her story and as an 83-year-old she can remember it very, very well. 

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