Hilary Benn

I say to the hon. and learned Gentleman that we can remain stuck in the past and think of a thousand reasons why, “This isn’t good enough,” and, “We shouldn’t do this,” or, “We shouldn’t do the other.” The responsibility on the House is to try to find a way of moving forward, because the fact that so many families do not have answers is a product of—if I may say so—people being stuck in the past, and we need to move beyond that. The hon. and learned Gentleman is mistaken, if I may gently chide him, in saying that these proposals have been co-designed with the Irish Government. I have said already that I would have taken these steps regardless of whether we reached an agreement with the Irish Government, because the mess left to us by the last Government forces whoever is in office now to deal with the consequences of a piece of legislation that did not work. But I will agree with him on one thing: in the end, it will be the families who will decide whether this new approach allows them to find the answers. I cannot say too many times that that is what really matters in all this, because it is those families who have influenced me more than anyone else in the discussions I have had.