Early evening summary
Rishi Sunak is being investigated by parliament’s commissioner for standards over a potential breach of rules relating to the declaration of interests, related to his links to a childcare firm in which his wife is an investor. Sunak has told the Commons liaison committee that he has declared the interest to the Cabinet Office, for inclusion in the updated version of the register of ministers’ interests, which has not yet been published. (See 1pm.) But No 10 has not said when this was declared to the Cabinet Office. (See 4.27pm.) And No 10 has not explained why, if Sunak considered this something that should be declared, he did not mention this when explicitly asked at the Commons liaison committee hearing last month if he had any interests to declare in relation to childminder policy. (See 3.15pm.) This answer is hard to square with what the code of conduct for MPs says about the need for MPs to be “open and frank in declaring any relevant interest in any proceeding of the house or its committees”.
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Clinton says before he became president White House never wanted to get involved in Northern Ireland in case UK objected
Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and Bill Clinton, the former US president, have both been speaking at the conference at the Queen’s University Belfast today marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Blair was a lead figure in negotiating the agreement, but Clinton played a part too, speaking to the parties at a crucial point when No 10 felt he could exert leverage.
Clinton said that before he became president, the White House was nervous about getting involved in Northern Ireland. But he decided to change that by appointing an envoy for Northern Ireland. He said:
The state department had operated for decades on the theory that our relationship with the UK was so important we couldn’t mess it up.
Even President Kennedy, on his heralded visit to Ireland, did not go to the north and did not talk about it. This was one of those things that wasn’t done.
I thought it was crazy to deny such a large problem’s existence and to take a pass when we had the biggest Irish diaspora.
Recalling his controversial decision to give the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams a visa to visit the US in 1994, he said:
[Adams] asked for a visa and we agreed so I could make the United States look like an impartial body, we would grant the visa for two days but there would be no fundraising.
Everybody knew that a lot of money was going into Ireland from the north-east United States, but not on this trip.
We wanted to send a signal that we wanted to be involved but we wanted to be fair to everybody.
At the time it was crazy, they thought, but I thought it made all the sense in the world because what we were doing was not working and it seemed to me just from the talk that the public was maybe way ahead of the politicians in their desire to have some sort of resolution to this.
So I gave Gerry the visa and he kept his word as he always did in dealing with me, and the rest is history.
And Blair recalled his first meeting with Adams and his fellow Sinn Féin leader Martin McGuinness. At the time Adams and McGuinness were seen by their opponents primarily as representatives of the IRA. Blair said:
At the time this was very shocking to people, and you had to be prepared to do it, and I remember after I did it, after I met them for the first time I then went to a shopping centre for a visit. When I got to the shopping centre I was saying hello to people and so on, and suddenly this huge wave of people, including people who were wearing washing-up gloves – those plastic washing-up gloves, the last time I had ever seen anyone wear these was my mum – and I thought, ‘What’s going on here, what sort of protest is this?’
It was all to do with the fact I shouldn’t have been shaking hands with Gerry Adams because this was a big thing, there was a huge debate – yes you can meet him but you can’t shake hands with him. I said, ‘We’re going to meet him and we’re going to shake hands, let’s just do what you would do, one human being to another … We know we disagree about the past but let’s see if we can agree about the future.’
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