Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Debate between Lord Alderdice and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I was happy to put my name to the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Empey, pioneered. I support many of the things that he said.

I will give two examples; a modest one, and one perhaps more substantial and persuasive. This question of maintaining the non-partisan stance and community appreciation of the Northern Ireland Civil Service is of enormous importance. Quite a lot has been written about the peace process in Northern Ireland, and most of it concentrates on negotiations between politicians, the people who are brought in from outside to assist, the role played by the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach and, in some cases, the impact of the United States, the European Union, the NGOs and so on. Very few of those papers point up the importance of civil servants in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, yet they were absolutely critical. A few of those civil servants—nominated by the Secretary of State and his successors—basically spent all their time engaging with politicians right across, and in some cases beyond, the spectrum to keep the process alive. Whether Governments changed, whether leaders of the political parties changed, with all the ups and down of elections those civil servants continued to meet. They would make minutes. They would ensure that meetings were held. They would keep people in touch with each other.

Very little is written about it. It was absolutely essential. As I have involved myself in peace processes in various other parts of the world, I have come to realise how important it was. In many places, almost right across the Middle East, for example, this is not a tradition in the civil service. It is difficult to make peace processes work in some of these places precisely because there is no civil service there of that kind—no non-political, non-partisan civil service.

I give another example. One of the problems I had when I became the first Speaker of the Assembly was how to staff it. Nobody had been there for decades, running, as clerks or other officials, an Assembly. There was only one body of people who could be called upon in sufficient numbers: the Northern Ireland Civil Service. People, particularly on the nationalist and republican side, were very anxious about this. They had come to a view, for particular reasons, some of them based on experience and some of them on suspicion, that the Northern Ireland civil servants would be biased towards unionists. We had a lot of negotiation about it, but we all came to the conclusion that there was no alternative, so the agreement was that we would take these people in—however, on only a three-year contract. During that period, there would be open advertisement, and people would come in from other places in society and outside Northern Ireland. There would have to be this transitional process.

The fascinating thing was this: as that period of three years went on, it became increasingly apparent to nationalists and republicans that the concerns they had had about the non-partisan nature of the Northern Ireland Civil Service were actually pretty groundless. As we came near the end of the time, people from those communities wanted to keep on many of the staff who had proved themselves perfectly capable of being loyal to a power-sharing cross-community Executive and Assembly. That was the quality of people and, to some extent, the culture, which was a more non-partisan one than was realised.

I have a real anxiety—in this situation, I do not think that examples on this side of the water are necessarily perfect—that Members of the Government on both sides in Northern Ireland might well be tempted to influence the appointment of some senior civil servants in a way that would not ultimately be in the interests of any of us in Northern Ireland. I ask the Minister to take very seriously the amendment put forward in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and myself, and to take it away and look at whether it is possible to accommodate the very legitimate concerns—not concerns about devolution of the function but about protection of the devolution of this function from adverse and partisan impact.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I was one of those contacted by the chairperson of the Northern Ireland Civil Service Commissioners about this matter and I support the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey said, this is a simple matter. It really should be straightforward and I cannot see that there can be a serious objection to the amendment that the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Alderdice, have tabled.

In the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, the provision was made to enshrine in statute the obligation of the Civil Service Commissioners that appointment to the Civil Service should be on merit following fair and open competition. We have always taken that as a constitutional principle of our Government. That Act did not apply to Northern Ireland—not that it was deliberately excluded for any particular reason, but it simply did not apply. However, exactly the same principles should apply, and I think everybody would want them to apply, to the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Indeed, because of the divided history of the Northern Ireland community there is a particularly strong reason why they should apply.

I was very pleased to hear what the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Alderdice, said, because over many years I worked with members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, as it were from the inside rather than working with them from a political perspective. My experience was exactly the same as theirs, as I would have expected: that members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service were politically impartial and appointed on merit. It took 150 years before these principles of fair and open competition were embodied in statute in Britain, following the Northcote-Trevelyan report. Once they have been embodied in statute, it seems to me that the same thing should be done for Northern Ireland, and before a question of devolving this function should take place. I strongly support the amendment. I hope the Government will say that they see no objection to it.