Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Laurence Robertson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

I join the Secretary of State in his condemnation of the actions taken yesterday, which were another attempt to kill innocent men, women and children. That is totally unacceptable in any part of the world. For it to continue in the United Kingdom is abhorrent to all right-thinking people. I congratulate the Secretary of State on the work he has done over the past few weeks, which to him probably seems like months. He has done his utmost to bring the parties in Northern Ireland together to get the institutions up and running again. I thank him for keeping in touch with me, as Chairman of the Select Committee. That has been very useful, so I thank him. I wish him well in his future discussions.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) for his performance over many, many years in this House. He has worked here for many years and I was very sorry to hear that he will not be seeking re-election to Parliament. He was a long-standing, very active and extremely good member of the Select Committee for many years before he took up his present position. I can confirm that he is a tough negotiator, but he is a fair man and it was a great pleasure to work with him. I wish him well for the future.

It is unfortunate that we have to be here yet again to discuss these matters and it is unfortunate that the rates have to be set from this place. It is not entirely democratic and it is not in any way satisfactory that, following an election with a high turnout of voters, we end up taking decisions here in this place that should rightly be taken in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, it is worse than that, because that is just a microcosm of a bigger situation. I know that many individuals and businesses in Northern Ireland see the breaking down of the institutions as a distraction from what they want to do. Only last week, I had a meeting with representatives of a business that wants to expand and bring potentially hundreds of jobs to Northern Ireland. They do not know where they are. They do not know what the position is. They do not know how the planning process will work, because it is a large application. They really do regret the present situation. It is not one in which any of us want to find ourselves, but here we are again.

I am glad that the Secretary of State outlined the options. He did not actually use the words “direct rule”, but that is obviously what we will be sliding towards if no agreement can be secured and we cannot get the institutions up and running in Northern Ireland. I do not want that to happen. What I do want to happen is, for instance, the addressing of the concerns that that company raised with me last week. I want the company to be able to create those jobs in Northern Ireland without the distraction of election upon election upon election, and the making of decisions in a piecemeal way. That is not what people of that kind want.

I was in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago on a social visit, speaking to friends there. They are Catholics, which is an important factor because of what I am about to say. They said to me, “For goodness’ sake, Laurence, get on with it and bring back direct rule, because that is only way we will see any decisions made.” They do not particularly want direct rule—most people probably do not want it—but if it comes to a choice between chaos and direct rule, people will go for direct rule. They will have to.

It is unfortunate that we have reached such a position, but let me say to those who are likely to bring about that situation—and they are not, I believe, those who are in the Chamber today, but those who refuse to take their seats in the Chamber—that it would be rather paradoxical and strange that the one party that says that it does not want rule from this place should be the party that will bring it about. How odd will that be?

If those people are listening, let me inform them of what direct rule really means. I was a shadow Minister when we had direct rule in previous Parliaments, and it does not mean that everything is decided in the Chamber. It does not work like that. There are Committees upstairs with 20 or so members—hand-picked by the Whips: let us be honest about that. Very few of those members would be from Northern Ireland, because of the mathematics involved. Important matters are decided in those Committees. That is the reality of direct rule. I would ask those who are getting in the way of the institutions’ being set up again, “Is that how you want Northern Ireland to be governed?”

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that members of Sinn Féin have form on this issue, and that—this may have some resonance in the current circumstances—when they want to dodge hard decisions, they are quite happy, despite their “Brits out” rhetoric, to hand powers back to Westminster so that it can make those hard decisions, as they did in the case of welfare reform about a year and a half ago?

[Mr Robertson]

That is a very good point. I genuinely do not know what their logic is. As I have said, theirs is the party that shouts the loudest about its opposition to British rule, as they call it, yet theirs seems to me to be the party that will shortly bring it about. As I have also said, I do not want us to go down that road, and there is still time to avoid it.

That takes me to my next point, which is about power-sharing. I think that those on all sides, if they sign up to power-sharing, must accept what that means. It means working with people whom you do not necessarily like. It means working with people with whom you do not necessarily want to work. It means compromising on certain policies. You do not always get the exact policy that you want. Come to think of it, I suppose that every political party is like that. We all have discussions within political parties; we all have disagreements on policy within political parties. We all have to work within political parties with people with whom, perhaps, we do not want to work. That is the reality of politics. In fact, that is the reality of many jobs. People who work in companies have to work with people whom they do not like. They have to work on policies which are set by management and with which they may not agree. That is the nature of work. If people are not prepared to accept compromises—if they are going to run away every time there is a difference of opinion, and take the ball home, and bring the institutions down—the system simply will not work. I think that all parties—I am not talking about just one party—must accept that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson]

I do not want to bore the House with the details of what happened last December, but the First Minister made it quite clear at that stage that she believed that she had nothing to hide. She was prepared to face an inquiry of whatever status was required to get to the truth, and that is still her position. In fact, she is co-operating on this.

The Bill is also necessary because of the way in which the finances in Northern Ireland have been left. Again, there are lessons to be learned from this. I suspect that the Secretary of State will have to come back at the end of June with another Bill to implement the budget in Northern Ireland. It will not be a satisfactory budget, because it will probably be based on last year’s distribution of finances to ensure that 100% of the budget is spent, and no new priorities will be set. As the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), stated, one of the central planks of the Executive’s economic policy cannot to be contained in that budget, because it will not be possible for this House, while we remain in the EU, to legislate for the reduction of corporation tax and, of course, to allocate funds for that. That will be a missed opportunity for many firms and prospective investors in Northern Ireland.

Let us look at why we have no budget, because this gives an indication of where Sinn Féin is and the prospects for an agreement. We do not have a budget in Northern Ireland not because the Executive could not agree one, and not because it was rejected by the coalition partners, but because there was never a budget brought forward to the Executive. Why was that the case? I think that Sinn Féin could not face the reality of having to introduce a budget in which hard decisions needed to be made. Of course, that was true about the restructuring of the health service. There was a report on restructuring the health service that set out how money could be saved and how some of the problems it faces could be addressed, but Sinn Féin did not act on it. Why? Because that involved hard decisions. When it came to welfare reform more than a year and a half ago, Sinn Féin did not act either. It was quite happy for that to be dealt with by the Government here.

There is a question that must be asked by those of us who are involved politically in Northern Ireland: is Sinn Féin serious about getting out of the impasse, or is it quite content? Those in Sinn Féin will never answer this, but are they quite content for the process to roll on and on, to have direct rule, and to have difficult decisions about the budget, the allocation of resources, Brexit and all the other things that concern them decided here? They can then blame the big bad Brits, but keep their hands clean and maintain the myth in the Irish Republic, perpetuated by the bearded guru, Gerry Adams, that somehow they have an economic policy that can avoid any austerity measures. The one thing they do not want is to have to introduce austerity measures or cuts in Northern Ireland while they are promising people in the Irish Republic that they have some kind of economic magic wand they could wave if they were only in coalition down there.

This is the question that the Secretary of State has to ask. It is the question that we as a party have to ask, too, as well as the other parties in Northern Ireland. What concessions does Sinn Féin really want, or might direct rule suit its purposes until the election takes place in the Republic? Why did those in Sinn Féin not bring forward a budget? Why did they not make hard decisions when they could in the Northern Ireland Assembly? They consistently—this has always been their position—run away from these decisions. If that is the case, we will have an impasse after the election on 8 June.

The difficulty in the talks is that we have seen the reason why Sinn Féin cannot or will not go into government change almost weekly. First of all it was the RHI, but RHI is hardly mentioned now. The Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was right—was the RHI such a big scandal that it should have resulted in a constitutional crisis? At the risk of causing some anger among Government Members, let us look at the RHI throughout the United Kingdom, and at Drax power station, where a coal mine down the road was closed while wood pellets were brought from halfway around the world. There is no cap on the subsidy—it started at £400 million, it is now £600 million, and by 2020 it will be £1 billion. Did any Minister resign? Did the Government fall? No, yet a £25 million overspend that has now been corrected in Northern Ireland caused a constitutional crisis.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman makes the point very well. I put it to him that there is no issue that this House could face that would persuade us to disband the whole Parliament, is there? That is the point.

[Sammy Wilson]

This is a point that was made time and time again. Of course, Sinn Féin was ably assisted by the BBC, which, for 70 consecutive days, I think, kept the issue in the news bulletins. Of course, now it has been dropped and we hardly ever hear it mentioned.

There are other issues that have come to the fore, such as the Irish language Act and the denial of rights of Irish language speakers. Of course, I wish the hon. Member for Blaydon well when he leaves this House, but we saw the face of the Labour party in this House this afternoon and we heard the voice of Sinn Féin. When Labour’s spokesman gave his speech at the Dispatch Box, we heard the same kind of excuses, we heard that people were being denied their right to speak the Irish language. They are not being denied their right to speak the Irish language. We fund the Irish language through the Assembly to the tune of £171 million. We allow Irish language schools to be opened and fund those schools when there are as few as 14 pupils in them while at the same time closing schools in the state sector with 50 or 100 pupils in them. Yet we are told that we somehow or other do not give proper treatment to those who wish to speak the Irish language. Councils are free, if they wish, after following the requirements of the legislation, to put Irish street names up on streets across their areas, yet we have this myth perpetuated that the Irish language and the refusal to accept an Irish language Act are the big impasse in the talks.

We heart parroted again today—surprisingly, I even saw the Under-Secretary of State nodding his head—ideas about people being denied their rights on gay marriage and denied certain abortion rights. I simply say to the Minister that the whole point of devolution is that people in the regions of the United Kingdom have the opportunity to make the laws that they believe best reflect the views in their society. I would say the same to the Labour spokesman. If you want uniformity, do not devolve the issue. If you are allowing differences in different parts of the United Kingdom, respect devolution and respect the views of the parties elected to those Assemblies, who, by the way, stand on their manifestos, who do not hide their view. We have never hidden our views on these issues in our manifestos; people vote for us on the basis of our manifestos and we then have a duty to reflect that in the decisions that are made.

It is not about rights, of course, because, despite all the rhetoric from Sinn Féin about equality, respect, rights and so on, we have seen that when it comes to the rights of those who served in the security forces, there is no willingness to show respect. When it comes to the views of the people we represent on many of these issues, there is no respect there. In fact, there is a recommendation that we should somehow abandon the promises we made to those people. I say to the Minister and the shadow Minister, do not be taken in by the idea that that is the cause of the impasse in the talks.

We have been told that the issue is Brexit. I find that very strange coming from Sinn Féin, because the one party that will not shape the Brexit talks, the negotiations or the outcome of Brexit decisions in this House is Sinn Féin, because its Members do not attend. Yet they want a broad coalition against Brexit. The Social Democratic and Labour party does not like to say that it wants to get involved with a sectarian pact with Sinn Féin, so it is trying to portray it as a liberal, progressive pact against Brexit, which also includes the Alliance party, which seems a bit reluctant, and the Greens. Let us not be in any doubt: any pact on any seats that involves Sinn Féin and the SDLP is a sectarian pact—it is not about changing Brexit—