 welcome to our speaker today who will speak on Brexit and Northern Ireland. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has been in political life as an elected representative for more than a third of a century since the mid-1980s. Among many other roles he has held ministerial office in Northern Ireland and served on the Northern Ireland policing board. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 2007 and knighted in 2016. He is currently the DUP's chief whip at Westminster and representing the constituency of Lagan Valley. Before handing over, just a brief housekeeping note, phones, if you could turn them off, would feel free to tweet during the speech. The Q&A will be on a Chatham house basis, so no tweeting during the Q&A, obviously, as that is off the record. With that, the floor is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming along to this event and thank you to Dan for his introduction. It's a pleasure to be here and I very much appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to discuss the role that my party has played and hopes to play at this historic time. At the outset, I want to say that this afternoon, as you would expect from an Ulsterman, I'm going to be pretty straight on what I have to say. I've come with a message and that message comes from the leadership of my party and it's not just for those in the audience this afternoon. I thought this was too good a platform to not to use for that purpose and I just want to say this. My motive in being straight talking is that we really want to find a resolution. That we want to find a way forward that works for both parts of this island and I say that genuinely in the hope that we can achieve that objective. Dan has already introduced me as Chief Whip of the Democratic Unionist Party in the House of Commons. Let's face it, there are quite a few stories about Chief Whips and whether they are true or exaggerate it, they tend to pin people like me as being somewhat unfavourable and rather scary like who could possibly believe that. And yet I was speaking at another event recently with a younger audience, forgive me, children. And some of them had been watching I think a little too much of the House of Cards. It might have been the British version I'm not sure but they had this kind of notion of what a Chief Whip was and had this sense that they were figures to be feared. Recognising that my own reputation as a sensible and polite person was on the line I sought to reassure them that there are different types of Chief Whip. There are some who are all stick and no carrot and these characters are rich pickings for Netflix and the like because they rule their backbenchers with a rod of iron. Not sure you'd get away with that in the DUP mind you but I'd like to take a more measured approach and I firmly believe more in the carrot than the stick and not just because the colour of the carrot either. At the end of the day a big stick is quite awkward to carry around anyway whereas a well sharpened carrot is just as effective I find. Therefore as Chief Whip I've had a very important role to play at Westminster in ensuring that the government is able to deliver its legislative programme since the general election in 2017. That has given me a very interesting insight into the way the government works in Westminster or doesn't at times. Most especially the whole debate around Brexit and how that has been taken forward in Parliament. One thing I've observed generally in politics and I think especially in the politics of Northern Ireland is that when people feel forced down a particular path that is rarely the route to a long term solution. The starkest example in my lifetime was the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and this morning I came through Hillsborough on my way here where of course in the castle that agreement was signed between the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Taoiseach of the day Garrett Fitzgerald. And it was an agreement between our two governments but crucially it failed to win the hearts and minds of Unionists in Northern Ireland and as a result it failed the test of time. When I consider the current withdrawal agreement that is designed to pave the way for the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union and in particular the backstop element of that withdrawal agreement then for me there are similar alarm bells that sound. The withdrawal agreement has so far been rejected by the House of Commons on three occasions overwhelmingly and in Northern Ireland every shade of Unionism is opposed to the backstop in its current form. If we are to lay the foundations which the next generation both North and South can build upon then we must recognise before it is too late that there is a seismic problem with the backstop. This issue should not be treated like a diplomatic football match where one side must win and the other must lose. We must step back and learn from history and work for a sensible and sustainable deal which can be supported by all sides. The members of this institute are amongst I believe the most experienced civil servants, diplomats, business leaders and opinion formers on this island. I'm not here today to rehearse the imperfections of the European Union, many of you strongly support the European Union and I absolutely respect that. However I think even the most enthusiastic cheerleader of the European Union project will readily admit that there are problems. Our two jurisdictions joined the EEC together in January 1973 and the objective at that time was one of economic progress but over the past 46 years the European Union project has gradually taken on a new life. I often tell the story when speaking in this part of the island that Eamon de Valera and I had a few things in common or maybe a few things in common. But one of them is the moorn mountains where I grew up as a child and of course Eamon de Valera represented the constituency of South Down in the old Northern Ireland parliament although I'm not sure that he ever took his seat in the parliament. And in 1985 I took my first step into elected politics by representing that same constituency of South Down in the former Northern Ireland assembly. When Eamon de Valera was signing the third amendment of the Constitution Act in 1972 to set the wheels in motion for membership of the EEC I doubt very much that he envisaged the plan that has emerged over the years of an EU with potentially its own army and with the increasing diminution of sovereignty for the member states. And I know that this is an issue not only for the United Kingdom. I know from my role on the Council of Europe where I said in the parliamentary assembly that this causes concern in other European states as well. They struggle with the reduction of influence of their member state, the increased use of qualified majority voting for adopting legislation, removing the national veto, the expansion of the number of policy areas where the EU has exclusive competence, the increasing use of the EU common values mechanism whereby Brussels can punish a country if their national parliament legislates in a fashion the EU feels is not in keeping with their values. People all across Europe struggle as they watch an economic body transform into a political body and I accept there are many people who endorse the direction of travel. But I think we would be foolish to ignore the voices that have concerns. In 2016, for example, to give you a sense of the influence of the European Union today, if all of the EU regulations approved in that year were laid end to end, they would cover the area all the way from, along the M8, from Calcanny to Cork, which is just over 150 kilometres of EU regulations if you laid them end to end. They have a lot of influence and as a member of parliament in the UK over half the laws that come before the UK parliament emanate from Brussels and to my frustration they cannot be amended. So as a legislator elected by the people of my constituency, I struggled with that concept. I think there was a time when it was possible to address the concerns of the United Kingdom on this front and I commend former Prime Minister David Cameron who made efforts to reform the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. But he was largely ignored in Brussels and genuine concerns that were raised by the UK I'm afraid were wished away by the people who wielded the real power in the European Union. Some may be surprised by this but my party actually supported what the Prime Minister was trying to achieve. We were desirous to have some reform of the EU so that the UK could continue in membership and I think it was frustrating that David Cameron wasn't accommodated in the way that I believe would have not only benefited the relationship between the UK and the EU but it would have been a wider benefit to the European Union itself. That democratic deficit between Brussels and the member states I think signals further problems that lie ahead for the European Union. And it was a central reason why in the EU referendum in 2016 with a 72% turnout, the biggest ever democratic vote in the history of the United Kingdom, the UK voted albeit by a relatively narrow margin to leave the European Union. I realise that I'm speaking this afternoon to an audience who largely support the European Union and who struggle to rationalise why anyone let alone a party from Northern Ireland would seek to leave the EU. And I would simply ask that for the moment you set aside those points of debate and consider that if we are all true democrats then we must at least respect and enable the UK to implement the will of its people as expressed in that referendum. It was not a regional or a local question, it was a UK question. Indeed the leave vote in Scotland and Northern Ireland represents the majority of the referendum result. While some are attempting to undermine the referendum result in the UK such actions I believe are counterproductive and send out the wrong signal to communities who for decades felt ignored but found their voice in June 2016. To ignore that voice I think would be to foolishly undermine democracy. I have to say that people like me who voted for Brexit didn't vote in ignorance. We supported the prospect of the UK taking back control of its money and its laws and its borders. We wanted our national parliament to be in control. In supporting Brexit we did not seek to undermine the existing agreements that underpin the peace process or to create a so called hard border on the island of Ireland and let me be clear about that. I have not ever attended a meeting of my party at any level where there was any suggestion that in supporting Brexit our objective was to undermine the peace process or any of the agreements that are associated with it. Or to somehow create infrastructure on the border that would make life difficult for people but we participated in a democratic process that came to a democratic conclusion. I often think that some of those who make the claim that Brexit is all about creating a hard border are playing on the fears of people who live along the border and who rely on cross-border travel to go about their daily business. That's not what we want. That is not our objective. As someone who lost family and friends during what we call the Troubles and who strongly opposed terrorism in all its forms for both loyalists and republicans, I stand by and I continue to support the political institutions created under both the Belfast and St Andrew's agreement. My party will always support the democratic process. In August 2016 within weeks of the EU referendum my party leader Arlene Foster panned a letter jointly with the then deputy First Minister Martin McGinnis. That letter was written to the UK Prime Minister Theresa May and it's worth quoting I think from this letter in August 2016. And I quote, this region is unique in that it is the only part of the UK which has a land border with an EU member state. There have been difficult issues relating to the border throughout our history and the peace process. We therefore appreciate your stated determination that the border will not become an impediment to the movement of people, goods and services. It must not become a catalyst for a legal activity or compromise in any way the arrangements relating to criminal justice and tackling organised crime. It is equally important that the border does not create an incentive for those who would wish to undermine the peace process and or the political settlement. The letter concluded with these words. It will also be important to proactively seek out opportunities in any new arrangements that would be of benefit to the UK and its regions. This was a letter I believe written in the spirit of respecting the referendum result and seeking the best deal for everyone. It was pragmatic and constructive. As then First Minister and Deputy First Minister these two leaders were writing in the same spirit of mutual respect and common sense which enabled my party in Sinn Fein to reach agreement at St Andrews and subsequently to establish a power sharing government. At the heart of those agreements was a desire to move away from the politics of division and to build a shared future for everyone. I firmly believe that had these institutions, the political institutions, like the Assembly, like the North South Ministerial Council, been functioning throughout the period of the recent Brexit negotiations. And if the spirit of that letter written by Arlene Foster and Martin McGinnis had been reciprocated by everyone in London, Dublin and Brussels, then we I think would be in a fundamentally better and different place than we are right now. The Northern Ireland Executive, if it had been functioning, could have provided a forum for the Northern Ireland parties to try and reach a consensus. Equally the North South Ministerial Council had it being functioning, would have provided a forum within which Belfast and Dublin could discuss and agree on a mutually beneficial position on Brexit. Just think of the difference that would have made. If Belfast and Dublin had been able to sit down together and work this out, that has not happened and instead we have reverted to the politics of megaphone diplomacy. Despite the absence of the political institutions, I believe the Irish government could have done more to engage, understand and reach a consensus on the way forward with the political parties including my party from Northern Ireland. Again that has not happened. And I say this with no sense of bitterness, but I say it in all honesty. It is my view that Leo Veradker is the first Irish T-shock to subcontract his Northern Ireland policy to the European Union Commission. I think of Sean Lamass who tried to settle the border issue, not by bringing outsiders in to lean on unionists, but by means of trilateral talks between Belfast, Dublin and London. And the snowballs that Ian Paisley threw at the time would melt in later years and reveal that actually they weren't that far apart after all. As the principle of consent became the bridge that brought our two traditions to a meeting point. And those two words, consensus and consent, you're going to hear a lot from me this afternoon. The Irish government knew from an early stage that the border was sensitive. Therefore it ought to have been a matter where they sought consensus on how it should be addressed. Instead it is our view that the border has been used as a bargaining chip in these negotiations. At a time when cool heads were needed, the T-shock was photocopying articles from the Irish Times from 1972 portraying the provisional IRA bombing a customs post on the border. He was sharing this article amongst the EU leaders, but to what end? What was the point? We haven't had customs posts on the border for years. No one in the UK is arguing for that infrastructure to be put back on the border. The UK government has given a unilateral declaration it will not put any new infrastructure on the border. The UK has willingly signed up to the continuation of the common travel area across these islands which has huge implications for the movement of people across these islands. Let's not forget that in 1972 the border posts were targeted, not because they represented the United Kingdom being outside the European Union. They were targeted because they represented the United Kingdom government. That's not where we are today. Let us not also forget that that same mindset attempted to murder a police officer in East Belfast two weeks ago by placing a bomb under his car. We need to tread carefully and what frustrates me about the approach of the Irish government is that no one was even talking about building border posts in 2018 other than the Sinn Fein amateur dramatic society in South Armagh. They were the only people talking about border posts and yet the T-shirt felt that it was important to make this an issue as a bargaining chip. Now all is fair, love and war. It's politics and people will use whatever means they need to achieve their objective provided they're lawful and democratic. I accept that. But how do you build a consensus on addressing the border issue in the context of Brexit if you exclude one key element of the process namely unionism? And sadly I believe what we've witnessed over the last two years has been more the politics of turning plowshares into swords rather than swords into plowshares. And we need to step back from that. At the outset I touched on the need to win both hearts and minds of all sides if any agreement is to be successful. Yet as I've said the Irish government has sought a solution on Brexit which they know and they've been told does not have the support of unionists because of the backstop. They abandoned the politics of consensus and instead now find themselves claiming to be a guarantor of the Belfast agreement whilst being at loggerheads with Westminster, with the UK government which is the co guarantor and with unionism all shades of unionism in Northern Ireland. Is that where we want to be 20 years on? Not a credible voice in unionism has raised its voice in support of the backstop in its current form and Parliament has three times now overwhelmingly rejected the draft withdrawal agreement simply because of the backstop. And we cannot ignore that reality and I think we need to reconsider the approach on this issue. And I want to be clear this afternoon. The DUP and every unionist party I know in Northern Ireland does not want a hard border on this island. I cannot say that often enough. Nor are we at Westminster advocating for a no deal outcome. But I have to say that is where we are heading unless there is a changed mindset and approach in these next few weeks and months. There is no doubt that a no deal Brexit will have major implications for both economies on this island especially for the agri food sector. Over 50% of Irish beef exports go to the British market. Great Britain is by far the biggest market for Northern Ireland producers and manufacturers and the UK is a crucial market for the Irish Republic. Those are facts. No one can deny that this is the case and we are concerned that the backstop has the potential to create a new border, a border in the Irish sea. And that has major consequences for both parts of this island. But it also has major consequences for the political consensus that underpins the agreements that are crucial for the peace process. And at the heart of that peace process, at the heart of that political dispensation is the principle of consent. I want to see the political institutions restored and we are continuing the talks at Stormont even today to try and achieve that. The DUP is clear. If the Secretary of State convenes the assembly tomorrow we will be there without any preconditions. We will appoint our ministers, we will go into government. We want Northern Ireland to have a functioning government today. And we want to see the Northside Ministerial Council back in action enabling Dublin and Belfast to sit down and discuss these issues. But that may not happen in the next few weeks. And yet that dialogue is important and it must continue. I think that if we proceed on the basis that is proposed and the backstop goes forward, in the opinion of unionists it would represent a fundamental breach of the constitutional arrangements underpinning the Belfast and St Andrews agreements because it will not have the consent of unionists. Therefore it has the potential and I do not say this lightly. The potential to undermine the delicately balanced consensus created as a result of those agreements. And in my opinion represents a serious threat to future unionist participation. If this is to be avoided then the UK concerns around the backstop do need to be addressed. The Irish government says that the backstop is intended to be temporary but then they refuse to consider a time limit or a means of unilateral withdrawal. Which means the backstop could be indefinite and I'm not going to bore you with all the details of what that means but it has significant, significant implications for Northern Ireland. It has significant implications for the political consensus that was arrived at under the very delicately balanced agreements. That's the risk that the Irish government is taking in refusing to consider the UK concerns on the backstop. And yet there is a prize to be achieved here. Would it not be a more powerful message sent out across the world if somehow we could manage to arrive at a consensus and how we handle this and restore the political institutions? Demonstrating that the North South relationship on this island can endure and manage such change through consensus. For our part the DUP is willing to work to bring about sensible resolutions and as we have in the past we will work with the Irish government on those areas that are of mutual concern and benefit to us all. We want to try and find an outcome that works for both parts of this island that avoids a hard border on the island or a new border in the Irish sea and is capable of commanding the support of both London and Brussels. And as I've said we want to see the restoration of the political institutions. For there's no doubt that fully restored institutions would help rather than hinder in the challenges that lie ahead. I believe we will only be able to succeed in this endeavour when each of the parties recognise that any restoration agreement in relation to those political institutions is balanced and is seen as fair. We are ready and willing to play our part in delivering that. But beyond the here and now we need to look at future relationships in the light of Brexit, both between the UK and the EU and crucially between both parts of this island. And let me say that the DUP is up for that. We're up for exploring the potential that there is in that relationship between north and south. But a lot depends on how we handle Brexit and that will have a major bearing on how we proceed. And the constitutional and economic integrity of the United Kingdom cannot be undermined. It has to be respected. If the protectors of peace agree that a new border north south is unpalatable then I think they must also recognise that a new border east west is equally so. The potential for greater cooperation on this island is there. We all know that. But I'm afraid the backstop could actually inhibit and limit this because of the lack of consensus. Consent and consensus are essential to the building of the relationships north south and east west. And I think it was refreshing to see this acknowledged by people like Seamus Mallon, one of the key architects of the Belfast agreement. In 2017 my party leader was the guest speaker at the Kalarney Economic Conference and during her address she compared Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and our relationship as being similar to two semi-detached houses. Whilst we share the same neighbourhood the houses are a bit different on the inside and sometimes we even hang out different flags. And we use different currencies but we need to work together as neighbours. Whilst frost penned about how good fences make good neighbours there must be a final and absolute acknowledgement in London, Brussels and Dublin that no one is interested in building walls on this island. Brexit does not alter the fundamental need for reconciliation. It does not prevent us from perseverance in the building up and the rejuvenation of the relationships between our peoples within Northern Ireland on this island and between Ireland and the United Kingdom. As with all things in life you can either view the challenges in front of us as threats or opportunities. I view them as opportunities. The opportunity to strengthen the foundations laid in the peace process. The opportunity to bring a fresh figure to working the political institutions created under that process. The opportunity to make this island both in Northern Ireland and the Republic a place that future generations can be proud of. The only people who will prevent this, the only people who will stop us from grasping these opportunities are ourselves. We must learn from our history. We have a history on this island sadly at times of getting it wrong. Some of you will have heard me quote this before forgive me but it bears repeating. I'm often drawn to the words of the late Major Willie Redmond, Member of Parliament and a proud Irish nationalist. Willie Redmond, though he didn't need to, went off to the western front and he fought at the Somme and he lost his life at Messines. In the winter of 1916 having witnessed the carnage of the Somme, Irish men from all traditions and persuasions and backgrounds slaughtered in their thousands. He wrote these words from the western front to his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, the author. And I quote, it would be a fine memorial to the men who have died so splendidly if we could over their graves build a bridge between north and south. In the midst of the carnage and the mayhem of the western front, with no end in sight Willie Redmond could lift his vision beyond that and see an island and a future that was about building bridges. My how we need Willie Redmond's now. Think of the trouble we might have avoided if this island had more bridge builders like Willie Redmond. Yet here we are a century later, 100 years later. And in the midst of another difficulty, certainly not on the scale of the Somme, we're still talking about borders and not bridges. What we need now are leaders with the vision to see beyond the current difficulty, to see the Ireland north and south that goes beyond Brexit and builds on the relationships that we identified in the agreements that need to be addressed and built and strengthened. Surely we can learn from the past and go the extra mile this time to get it right. And so in conclusion, I say to my friends in the Irish government, consent and consensus are the essence of bridge building, bridge building in relationships. That is what we desperately need to find in these coming months and for our part we're ready as we have been to sit down and find that bridge. It may be a time limit to the backstop. It might be a unilateral means of withdrawal. It doesn't need to be something earth shattering. We're not asking for something that will fundamentally undermine what is proposed. And I hope that in the spirit of building the bridges that Willie Redmond spoke of. In the spirit of finding an outcome that is inclusive, an outcome that brings consensus across the community, unionist, nationalist, north and south. An outcome that represents and recognises the principle of consent that is at the heart of the political dispensation created under the various agreements. In the interest of getting a way forward, I hope that in the coming weeks common sense and pragmatism will prevail and that we will find a way forward that enables unionism, nationalism, people north and south on this island to move beyond the current difficulty and to reassert ourselves in the task of building bridges. Thank you.