The Future of the Northern Ireland Assembly

Debate between Lord Caine and Lord Coaker

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, regarding duties under Section 9 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act. He will be aware that Northern Ireland departments are still able to spend money into next year and I hope the matters to which he refers will be decisions taken properly and rightly by an incoming Executive after 5 May.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not acceptable, two years after Parliament passed regulations setting up the framework for safe abortion services, that women and girls in Northern Ireland still do not have access to high-quality abortion and post-abortion care? Is it not the case, as the Minister expressed in his recent Written Statement, that without access to services in Northern Ireland, women and girls are placed at high risk of harm? If the Secretary of State is in the unfortunate position of needing to pass further regulations following the Assembly elections in May, what is the expected timeframe for these regulations and for the provision of services?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for his question and for the constructive and bipartisan manner in which he approaches this issue, and many others, when it comes to Northern Ireland. I agree with him completely. The amendment put forward by his honourable friend in the other place was in 2019, and since then this Parliament has passed regulations setting out a framework for the delivery of abortion services. It has passed a directive from the Secretary of State on the Executive to have services in place by tomorrow—that is the deadline. We are still waiting for those services to be delivered, so our view is that the Executive have had ample time to resolve this issue. So far as a timetable is concerned, I cannot give the noble Lord precise dates, but we expect the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to move quickly on this. Should that not be forthcoming, the Secretary of State will intervene after the elections in the way in which he set out in his Written Statement.

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

Debate between Lord Caine and Lord Coaker

Committee stage
Monday 13th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Caine (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, for these amendments. If I may, I will on this occasion take them in reverse order.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, the Bill follows the standard practice of allowing two months before provisions come into effect following Royal Assent. However, I have listened to the arguments and I am very happy to repeat the assurance I gave the noble Baroness at Second Reading that we will go away and return to this matter on Report. She has my assurance on that point.

I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. He raised a number of important points about the implementation of the agreement. He reeled off, if I may say, quite a long list from Annex A—

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Not all of it.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

No, not all of it, but I hope he will forgive me if I do not reply in detail to each and every point. I will look at Hansard and write to him on any that I have missed.

The noble Lord was particularly focused on a number of the financial commitments. I can tell him that, thus far, the Government have allocated over £700 million of the £2 billion funding in New Decade, New Approach, which had the impact of ending the nurses’ pay dispute he referred to in his comments. As I mentioned at Second Reading, we have already contributed towards the creation of the Northern Ireland graduate-entry medical school in Londonderry and supplemented the new deal for Northern Ireland with £400 million to promote Northern Ireland as a cybersecurity hub. The noble Lord referred to the fiscal council, which has been established. It was originally a commitment in the fresh start agreement, which was repeated in New Decade, New Approach. That has been established.