It would be hard to find any good person who dislikes the Strangford DUP MP Jim Shannon.
Published: 16 January 2025
In parliamentary circles, he’s seen as a thoroughly decent, genuine guy who treats everyone with courtesy and is a strikingly industrious contributor to debates, committees and questioning of ministers.
He’s assiduous in raising issues that concern his constituents, but his interests range much further.
I couldn’t help smiling when he asked Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently whether he had had “discussions with the Holy See on the future of the Tridentine Mass at the Chartres pilgrimage in France”.
It was, I reckoned, lucky for Mr Lammy that it was a written rather than an oral question.
What bothered Mr Shannon was what was upsetting the 18,000 pilgrims: the Vatican’s war on traditional services and the Latin mass.
This, he explained to the Irish Catholic journalist who was clearly bewildered that a DUP MP was taking this up, concerned him as chair of the all-party group on international freedom of religion or belief. Seeing international freedom of religion or belief as a crucial human right, he opposes believers being restricted in practising their faith.
And while “a proud Protestant and a unionist”, his duty is to speak out for people of any faith or none.
Mr Shannon’s social conservativism about issues like abortion and gender have brought him Catholic voters and his advocacy of the persecuted everywhere brings him respect for his genuine tolerance.
So I was worried when recently I learned that in 2016 the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority had investigated mileage claims from his constituency office that were five times greater than the second highest claiming MP, accounting for 26.1% of staff constituency mileage claimed by the entire House of Commons.
Were there feet of clay peeping out from below the robe of public service?
No, it turned out.
The investigative officer had revealed that the problem was that all the claims were genuine. Like their MP, Mr Shannon’s dedicated staff couldn’t say no even to supplicants from outside the constituency.
Having spent two days in the constituency office, the investigator “had noted that the telephones rang incessantly and there was a constant flow of people giving the impression of a hospital casualty department”.
However his staff’s technical breaches of the MPs’ Scheme of Business Costs and Expenses required Mr Shannon to reimburse £13,925,86, which he had done immediately, his integrity intact.
Horrified by the craven attitude towards China of our new government, I was pleased on Tuesday that a familiar Northern Irish voice was standing up for morality in the final question to Rachel Reeves.
“While I welcome the UK-China economic and financial dialogue, as the chancellor will know, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, I have repeatedly highlighted in this House human rights abuses in China, with regard to Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and Christians in Hong Kong and China. How will the Government and the chancellor make sure that safeguards for British money and goods are put in place to ensure that economic engagements do not directly support those violations? Human rights concerns, forced labour, denial of religious freedom and ongoing suppression in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan must be remembered at all costs and in all deals with China.”
All good people in Northern Ireland should be proud him.
