Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Debate between Lord Alderdice and Baroness Hoey

Committee stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will just say something briefly on Clause 4 and the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. A civic forum sounds brilliant, does it not? But I am really not sure what we mean by a civic forum. I presume that this is a probing amendment, because clearly we could not support something where we have no real idea of how anyone would get on to it; who would be representing who; what the rules would be; whether they would get paid to come—would someone coming up from Londonderry/Derry get their fair pay?—or whether it would move around and people would be moving around with it.

I think this is one of those ideas that sound great but in practice would become just another group of people—mainly the same people, probably, who are already involved in politics in the wider sense in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is quite a small place, as those of us who come from there know, and everybody knows everybody, really. Wherever you go, people know somebody who knows somebody—probably sometimes they are even a relative. I am therefore not quite sure how this would work. We have, for example, a very strong Women’s Institute in Northern Ireland, where WI groups meet in the country areas regularly and do great work; we have the Young Farmers’ Clubs; we have all sorts of other organisations already, such as residents, tenants and community associations; and a huge amount of work is being done by churches and community groups. I am just not sure about introducing another layer of supposed democracy and accountability—I am not sure who it would be accountable to, anyway.

I hope that the Minister will treat this with great care, because it is one of those things that sounds good and could be set up, but then we discover that it is in fact pretty meaningless and does not do anything to move things forward in Northern Ireland.

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on this, but I just want to pick up on some of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, has just said. We know exactly how such a thing would be established, because it was—it was running. When I was the Speaker, I met regularly with Chris Gibson, who was the chair of the Civic Forum, so this is not some kind of thing where we can say, “We’re really not sure what it is, how it will happen or where it would be”—it was operating. The puzzle is not whether it could operate, but why, as a part of the agreement that was voted on, it stopped operating.

There is an argument that it could have done more at the time. One of the discussions that I had with Chris Gibson as chair was to encourage him to take more initiative in enabling the forum to do things. My goodness, we sit in the House of Lords, which is in itself not entirely different from this proposition, which is that you have people who are not always involved directly and immediately in party politics but nevertheless have a role to play.

Therefore, I just flag up, after what the noble Baroness says about being puzzled as we do not know what it would be like or who would be appointed and so on, that it was in fact in place.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

That was 20 years ago.

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

Twenty years ago, indeed. The agreement itself, which is the basis for the Assembly, from 20 years ago, was the basis for the Civic Forum as well. The puzzle is how it has been possible to talk about implementation of the agreement and not talk about something that was voted on and supported in a referendum. I just flag that up.