Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee — hearing of 8 July 2026: transcript & video

00:02 - 01:51

Speaker 3

Good morning and welcome to this public meeting of the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee. We're today holding the fifth public evidence session of our inquiry into Article 2 of the Protocol Windsor Framework, the so-called non-diminution of rights provision. We're joined today by expert witnesses who were involved in the negotiations of the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement, and in particular the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity, RSEO, chapter of the agreement, which is referenced explicitly in Article 2.1 of the Protocol, the Windsor Framework. You're all very welcome, we very much look forward to your evidence. We'd be grateful if the witnesses would introduce yourselves briefly the first time you speak.

Today's meeting is being broadcast and a verbatim transcript will be taken for subsequent publication. That transcript will be sent to witnesses to check for accuracy. I refer to the register of members' interests as published on the committee's website. Now we've got Mark Durkan in the room here in Parliament. We have Professor Monica McWilliams on screen.

Our third witness is not yet with us on screen, but I hope he will arrive fairly soon. So I'm going to start with the first question if I may, which is what was the starting point for the negotiations on equality and human rights provisions during the multi-party talks, and how did this relate to the six rights listed in the joint Downing Street Declaration of 1993? Professor McWilliams, would you like to go first?

01:51 - 02:46

Speaker 4

Yes, I have reviewed the minutes of the negotiations and there was a subcommittee on human rights and I can provide those. I've given my papers to Queen's University and indeed I think Chris McCrudden based his article on the origins of those rights on my papers and other work. And I also had the opportunity to ask David Ervine and Gusty Spence, who were at the negotiations, where did these rights come from? And they reminded me that they had been involved in the Downing Street Declaration at the request of John Major, who was then Prime Minister. And they said that they had a long discussion about these rights and in fact would argue that the origins came from a set of rights that they had drafted many years before.

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