Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Debate between Lord Lexden and Lord Trimble

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I supported my noble friend Lord Empey’s amendment in Committee and I support the current version of this valuable amendment with no less vigour. He has explained its aims and objectives fully and I have only a little to add from my own Conservative and Unionist perspective, which is identical to that of my noble friend, who is the chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party. The not unimportant constitutional issue which the amendment seeks to address is simple and straightforward. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which created the devolved institutions through which the Province is largely governed today, made no provision for the establishment of an Official Opposition with the appropriate rights and privileges. My noble friend has explained the reasons for that omission and this amendment would fill that constitutional lacuna.

It contains, as my noble friend has emphasised, no element of dictation or compulsion. It makes soundly based constitutional provision for the establishment of an Official Opposition, while leaving the Northern Ireland Assembly entirely free to judge when it would be appropriate to invoke this valuable addition to the constitutional order under which it conducts its affairs. In other words, by inserting provision for an Opposition into the 1998 Act, this amendment would supply the one element which is missing from Northern Ireland’s remarkable constitutional dispensation that followed from the Good Friday agreement, and so complete that dispensation. It therefore has great significance but it would do something else of importance as well. It would signal this Parliament’s support and encouragement for the evolution of Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions in the direction that public opinion in the Province increasingly favours: towards a state of affairs in which the Government are challenged in detail, day by day, by an Opposition who fulfil the great constitutional function prescribed for them of providing,

“a standing censorship of the government, subjecting all its acts and measures to a close and jealous scrutiny”,

as one leading late 19th-century authority on the constitution put it in resounding language.

Is it not right—is it not indeed the duty of the Parliament which brought into being Northern Ireland’s unique constitutional order—to support and encourage its evolution so that the devolved institutions that operate under it can carry out their work with ever growing success as the years advance? Your Lordships might consider what beneficial effect an Official Opposition could have had if they had been in existence today. They could have prevented the restrictions that limit so worryingly the operations of the new National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland—a matter that aroused grave disquiet when we discussed it in Committee. An Official Opposition might also have made it unnecessary for us to hold the debate on defamation which is to follow shortly.

Some say, “Leave the Assembly entirely free to follow its own course. Do not trouble it with advice from Westminster. Do not disturb it by strengthening the constitutional basis on which it operates by making statutory provision for an Opposition and placing that provision at the Assembly’s disposal for its introduction”. That does not seem to me the right, constitutionally sound approach. As my noble friend has explained, the Assembly could establish an Official Opposition under its own Standing Orders. However, that, in his own striking phrase, would be a grace and favour Opposition, existing through the good will of the Executive with their commanding majority in the Assembly. To work well, an Opposition would need stability and confidence. If they rested on a statutory basis under this Parliament’s legislation they could not be removed precipitously or capriciously. Let us now take the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to the point that is now needed by adopting this amendment.

In replying to the debate in Committee the Minister said:

“It is important that a formal Opposition should have sufficient status if they are to be effective in holding the Executive to account. The Government will reflect on what has been said in the debate and we will certainly return to this on Report”.—[Official Report, 3/2/14; col. 22.]

I hope at the end of this debate my noble friend will be able to tell the House that the Government will either adopt this amendment or will bring forward something similar at Third Reading.

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Empey, tabled his amendment on this matter in Committee I added my name to it. I make clear that the absence of my name from this amendment today does not mean that I have changed my mind. I agree with what the noble Lord has said and I hope he gets a very positive response from the Minister.