Professor Kieran McEvoy:

We were just chatting about the new Secretary of State before we came in. Neither of us know him. He was at the Northern Ireland Office previously but neither of us know him or have met him so do not know anything about him. As to whether this will make any difference, it is hard to know. Obviously, we do not know. It is worth putting on the record that I was in the public gallery when the debate on the Second Reading of the Bill was taking place in the House of Commons. Julian Smith, the former Secretary of State, made an excellent and very powerful speech about the Bill and he abstained on it. He, along with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, was involved in re-establishing devolution.

As part of that, there was a commitment in 2020 to implement the Stormont House Agreement within 100 days. That was the last time we saw a kind of sensible diplomatic, bilateral approach with the Irish Government, building consensus with the parties. The Stormont House Agreement was what was signed by the parties. Four of the five parties supported it. The Ulster Unionists were more ambivalent. It was the obvious place if we wanted to build political consensus. The last time one saw common sense and diplomacy was when Julian Smith was Secretary of State, but it behoves all of us to try to build alliances with progressive elements within the British Parliament and British civil society. I absolutely agree that we should all be in outreach mode and work with whatever progressive bits we can find. For example, we took a position on this, that we would not work on technical amendments to the Bill. That is not our natural approach. We are fixers. We are basically nerds trying to help, and doing so in a lawful, human-rights-compliant way, but when the six of us met as a team, we thought we could not be seen to be trying to fix this Bill. It is just not fixable. That is a big thing for us. If it had been a sensible Bill, after the First Reading or the Second Reading, in a normal set of circumstances, we would have been all over it. We would have been working with all of the political parties and the Government basically trying to help to nuance and draw on our international experience and so forth, but we took the view - with a heavy heart - that this is not fixable. That does not mean we are not engaging with people. We are talking to everyone. I think it is the same for everyone. We are all hoping against hope that common sense will prevail and alliances can be built with sensible people on the other side of the water. I do not know whether the shifts in recent days in politics will make any difference.