Belfast: a near-fatal knife attack, and the question it forced on the Commons
A man in his forties is fighting life-threatening injuries in a Belfast hospital after a knife was held to his throat in the street on Monday night — an attack three passers-by ran in to stop. Within a day it had become a political emergency: serious disorder across the city, a flood of claims true and false, and an Urgent Question that put the Northern Ireland Secretary on the spot over immigration and the border — close to the only part of this Westminster can answer for. It was the gravest story of the week; it was also a week in which MPs voted eight times, six of them on steel.
The divisions, closest first
Written questions, by department
The most-asked subjects
A sample of the week’s questions
The Urgent Question, and the answer the Secretary of State couldn’t give
With policing and justice devolved to Stormont and the PSNI, Westminster’s hold on the Belfast attack is narrow — which is why the Commons’ set-piece on it, an Urgent Question from the DUP’s Gavin Robinson, turned on the reserved questions of immigration, asylum and the border rather than the investigation itself (charged as attempted murder; the victim, a man in his forties, is fighting life-threatening injuries and has not been named). Robinson pressed on the suspect’s reported five-year visa and on community cohesion; Carla Lockhart on the land border with the Republic. These are legitimate questions, and the House pressed them — but the one that mattered most, whether the man charged had entered the UK legally, drew only that Hilary Benn could not confirm it.