Speeches by Benn.

“Yes. As you will know, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Nick Thomas-Symonds, is the co-chair of the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee. His opposite number is Maroš Šefčovič, but I work extremely closely with him on a pretty regular basis. Indeed, the two of us have met you to talk about the Windsor framework. We…”

“You anticipate my answer.”

“Many things have crossed my desk since I took up this post, but the question that you have raised is not one of them. The lead would be taken by my colleague Peter Kyle, because he has responsibility for AI. All I can undertake to do, if it is helpful, is to drop you a line with some response to the perfectly fair poin…”

“There is a clear process to be followed. I initiated the consent vote by writing to the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It then falls in the first instance to the First and Deputy First Ministers, if they wish, to table the vote. It remains to be seen whether they will. If they do not, it falls to any other m…”

“I have received a letter this morning from Matthew O’Toole, drawing my attention to the motion that was passed. There are going to have to be terms of reference for the work of the independent review. I raised an eyebrow when I saw the reference to representation for Northern Ireland in the European Parliament.”

“Frankly, I do not understand how that would work. The focus of the review is on articles 5 to 10 of the Windsor framework. That is what it is about and therefore one would expect the terms of reference to ask the person who is appointed to focus on precisely that. If they wish to include other things, I suppose that th…”

“I take the concerns of everybody who has been affected by Brexit extremely seriously indeed. I have met a number of businesses. They are well aware of the opportunities that businesses located in Northern Ireland have. They do not need a lot of selling to them because they are busy taking advantage of the dual market a…”

“We had a lovely conversation about other matters.”

“The Northern Ireland Executive have had the objective of building Casement Park since 2011. It is a shared Executive commitment. The prospect of the Euros slightly complicated matters, because it was an extraordinary opportunity. When the Euros were awarded to the United Kingdom and Ireland, everyone thought, “Casement…”

“It is a great sadness to everyone. What an opportunity this was for football in Northern Ireland. It was great that we were awarded the Euros. There were all the stadia that were built, apart from one that was not built. If you had said, “Yes, we are going to go ahead with it”, you might think that in 18 months you wou…”

“I would be very happy to meet the GAA again, definitely, having met Jarlath Burns, albeit by video.”

“First of all, I read your predecessor Select Committee’s report and all of the recommendations you had made. What is the truth here? The truth is that the power-sharing arrangement contained in the Good Friday agreement and amended subsequently enabled power-sharing Government to come to Northern Ireland. That was an e…”

“It is a really fair question to ask, but it needs to be directed above all to those who have collapsed the institutions. When we seek elected office, and if we are lucky enough to be elected, we take on a responsibility. Being in Government, taking decisions, is tough. It is difficult. You get a lot of criticism and ag…”

“It is an addition to it and a very welcome one because, let us be frank, relations between the last UK Government and the Irish Government were pretty bad, to put it mildly. We have been through a torrid time, not least when the last Government signed agreements and apparently had absolutely no intention of honouring t…”

“I hope what we have said today suggests that we are focusing on all of them.”

“I am worried about Mark, who has not been able to say anything. He is probably sitting there thinking, “That’s fine by me”.”

“There is a defence review taking place. There are two particular issues that are very close to your heart, in relation to Spirit and Harland & Wolff. It is really important that we achieve an outcome in which both of those continue to contribute to aircraft manufacture and to the building of ships. I do not know if it …”

“You were going to ask about that anyway.”

“Yes, of course. As you will be well aware, Boeing is buying back Spirit, because it has had some problems with Spirit’s quality control—I think that would be a fair way of describing it—in the United States. That is not a reflection on any work that has been done at Spirit in Belfast, but it has indicated that it does …”

“I agree with you that there is an opportunity. To take advantage of that opportunity, you have to have the capacity to make the things that those who are engaging in defence procurement want to buy. You also need to have stability to encourage investment in Northern Ireland. One observation I would make, going back to …”