Dr. Stephen Farry:

Good afternoon to all our witnesses. I acknowledge the hard work all the commissioners do in engaging with all the political parties and actors in London, Belfast and elsewhere.

I will pick up on a few themes, through comments and possibly some questions arising from those. Unfortunately, most of them will probably be directed at Ms Kilpatrick. I want to elaborate a little more on the prospects around an assault on the Human Rights Act at Westminster. We saw a statement this week from Alex Chalk, the Secretary of State for Justice, stating that the UK Government no longer has any plans to repeal the Human Rights Act. How does that then weigh against what is happening with some individual legislation? On the Illegal Migration Bill, and I appreciate it is still probably a fairly fast-moving situation, does Ms Kilpatrick have any read-out from the implications of the UK Court of Appeal judgment that essentially dismissed the Rwanda scheme from the Home Office, although it is currently being appealed, potentially to the Supreme Court, and what that means for the way forward? Does that then recreate some further risks that the UK Government may seek to pull away from the convention?

Will Ms Kilpatrick also talk about the international standing of the NIHRC and the potential jeopardy in that regard arising from the funding challenge? Will she explain how some of the work on Article 2 is ring-fenced under the protocol-Windsor Framework, while other aspects of the work of the commission, by contrast, are not given the same respect, for want of a better term, by the UK Government?

I will go back to the issue of the common travel area, and probably the interface with the Illegal Migration Bill and what is happening with electronic travel authorisation. As the UK diverges, in many respects, from good practice around the CTA and international human rights standards, is there potential for more tension to arise between Ireland and the UK on how borders are managed, as they move in different directions on how all this is managed?

I apologise to the other witnesses. Unfortunately, my questions are probably for Ms Kilpatrick but I welcome other views as well.