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LAST UPDATE | 5 Jul 2024
VETERAN LABOUR MP Hilary Benn was comfortably re-elected in the Leeds South constituency, taking home a 54% share of the vote.
Benn has held that seat since 1999, and is the son of Tony Benn, who was also a veteran MP who held the seat at Westminster for 47 of the 51 years between 1950 and 2001.
However, Hilary Benn (70) did not inherit all the beliefs of his father and once described himself as a “Benn, but not a Bennite”.
While his father Tony, who died in 2014, was an anti-war campaigner, Hilary Benn supported the Iraq war while serving in Tony Blair’s government and later defied then-leader Jeremy Corbyn to back military action against the Islamic State in Syria.
Hilary Benn was Secretary of State for International Development from 2003-2007 under Blair and was Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2015-2016.
He lost this role after a failed coup against then-leader Corbyn in 2016.
Following a reshuffle of the Labour Shadow Cabinet last September, Benn was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Today, he was appointed as the Government’s Secretary for Northern Ireland.
This appointment was welcomed by Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie, who said it was “an indication of the importance (Starmer) places on Northern Ireland”.
It’s highly likely Benn will continue in this role with Labour in power.
The Act resulted in new civil litigation being barred, while inquests into Troubles deaths which had not concluded oral hearings have been stopped.
The PSNI will no longer have responsibility for investigating unsolved crimes relating to the Troubles and those investigations have switched to a new commission – the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).
The body has taken on the remit to investigate hundreds of unresolved legacy deaths and cases of serious harm which happened before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Benn said he would retain this body but wanted to see if it could command the confidence of victims’ families.
Benn said a Labour government would restore legacy inquests and the ability for Troubles victims to bring civil cases.
He added that Labour would not scrap a new truth recovery body set up to investigate unresolved Troubles deaths, but wanted to see if it could command the confidence of victims’ families.
Benn told BBC Radio Ulster that the Act is “painful” for victims’ families and that it marked a “door being slammed shut in their faces”.
He added that a Labour Government would remove a controversial part of the Act designed to provide conditional immunity for some Troubles offences.
That element of the Act has already been struck out after it was ruled unlawful by the High Court in Belfast, although the UK Government began an appeal against that ruling last month.
Benn said he would restore civil cases and inquests.
He added that he wanted to go back to the approach to legacy set out in the Stormont House Agreement which envisaged separate bodies for information recovery and investigations.
“The fundamental problem with the Legacy Act, which is supposed to deliver for families, is that families do not have confidence in it,” said Benn.
“If you have a system that doesn’t command confidence then you have a problem which needs to be fixed.”
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These projects are really good for kids. And teachers like that are worth their weight in gold.
@Marg murphy,
They’re not kids, they’re 18-22 year olds, and this looks like something you would see in the jungle.
Talk about dumbing down.
@eamon go back to bed
@Donnacha Bhoicaire,
You’re easily impressed, no wonder Ireland’s colleges have such low rankings.
GMIT is far behind MIT.
@eamonn. I should have read beyond the first line the article where I read “schoolchild”. I thought it was a primary school project.
@Marg murphy,
Yes, if it was young children who built it, then it would be impressive.
Eamon Mac I really feel sorry for you and your negative life. It’s very sad for you
You don’t really seem like someone people would like.
Tis a little on the exposed side for a winter classroom.
Good for cider parties in the summer though.
Good thinking.
Robinson Crusoe would be proud of you.. !!
You can’t be doom and gloom all the time, sometimes a bit of been positive can lift you up.
Agreed
Housing problem solved, no morgage.
Well you can’t beat there optimism about the weather!
Fantastic to see how rapidly Mayo civilisation is advancing.
This is simply awesome. Yes it’s not brick and mortar boring thinking that would leave a huge carbon footprint. It’s out of the box thinking that encourages more out of the box thinking. I remember looking out glass windows of lecture rooms on a nice sunny day wishing for something like this. The fact that brick and mortar buildings are assumed to be a “continuous improvement ” from such structures as this makes one think about construction methods and it’s success could probably be measured by the pride that all involved have when they look at it. Large scale team building exercise with a functional result that can be used by many. Not all will see but not all have creative ability and less have creative ability with follow through. Congratulations to you all.
Thank you for your comments Croistoir. The project is part of an ongoing Green Campus initiative under Local Agenda 21 funding. The students explored the principles of place based education whilst constructing the classroom. The module that students were taking which this project is part of was sustainable environmental management. If you require any further information please contact me via the Facebook page.
Aodan
There’s an awful lot of ar$eholery in this thread.
See if you can spot who I’m on about.
I’ll post the answer in a short while. :-)
Eamon MacGowan?
Too easy
Well at least it’s air -conditioned!
Great to be able to do this without planning permission, wheelchair access, fire restrictions etc……..
It’s part of an environmental sustainability management module, exploring the principles of placed based education. It for the entire community not just the college but for local national schools and youth organisations.
Amazing health & safety has not shut it down !
They’ve been watching too much Bear Grylls.
I hope they wont be given the job of designing social housing.We might freeze to death!
Yeah wow fair play, threw it together as a wee little project!
When the sad fact remains that millions of children around the world do actually have their whole schooling in such lacking facilities due to poverty.
This is so Irish, any old halfhearted effort will do.
Shure it’s grand!
Relax eamon I’m sure it was meant as an exercise to get some youngsters out of a lecture hall and thinking outside the box, no one, well except Gerard, was suggesting this was the solution to all the worlds ills
Get some help Eamon. You appear to have a major malfunction. Well don’t gmit
Racist comments, to me, are suggestive of a certain tardiness with regard to the evolutionary process.
It doesn’t look a bit impressive to me.
A bit naff.
Students should be out protesting and throwing stones at the police.
Not wasting their time building such ridiculous childish tree houses.
P.S
I built a better tree-house than that when I was 9 years old.
Erm, can I ask is it hurricane proof?
Are you thinking of teaching a class there during one of our frequent hurricanes?
I could be cynical and point out how hedge schools came into my mind when I first saw this article. The country was under an administration that cared little for the common people at that point. Some things don’t change
have your say