Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 30th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. I have been scratching out bits and pieces that I was going to say and I was going to scratch out the bit about a referendum, but then I thought I would support it, since it had not come up. One of the problems we have in Northern Ireland is that we have a lot of politicians who say they are speaking for other people, but when you go around the country it is remarkable how few people they are really speaking for when they become hard line and morally demanding. That is all I shall say. Perhaps a referendum would at least settle it one way or another.

I welcome the Bill, although I think its scope is not nearly wide enough and it is very late in the day. The question has been asked: why it is an emergency; why urgent? The part of the Explanatory Memorandum entitled “Why is Fast-tracking necessary?” says “to provide clarity” and to “clarify the powers”. That does not mean that it is urgent. It means that the Government have sat on their backside and have done nothing since the Assembly crashed. Many of us in Northern Ireland would have said that that was incredibly predictable anyway. There seems to be very little forward thinking. If we look back for a moment at what happened in the Second World War under the coalition Government—I was not around—there was a single aim: to win the war, which they did. What happened afterwards? The whole thing burst apart. The Chuckle brothers, for once, had a single aim: to stop the violence. They stopped the violence and wanted power sharing. They got it, but what happens after a Government or a person achieve their aim? They make friends with their enemies to do so, but can they really work together in peace? There is a flaw there. I am not against devolved power or devolved organisation and co-operation, but it is difficult to believe that it will go on for ever. Therefore, many of us thought that it was fairly predictable.

There are people who think that the Assembly—I am not running it down—was the be-all and end-all of everything, and that all the decisions were made because they flowed out of it. They were not, it was not easy and it was commendable that people were trying to make it work. It is by no means a perfect system. It made government very difficult, and it made life in Northern Ireland very difficult. You could not get things done because there were contradictory signals the whole time. The Government have ignored these fundamental facts for far too long, and there has been little forward planning. When you plan forward, we were taught in the military—I know this is getting military—to carry out an appreciation, but to make fundamental assumptions and base those assumptions on fact. If you do not refer to them, you begin to run into trouble. The Government should refer to them more.

In addition, lately, the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach seem to have taken back seats—they have hardly engaged at all on this issue. Their predecessors were much more active and provided more leadership. We were grateful for it, and it provided a great deal more impetus to getting people together, without a shadow of a doubt—let alone a mediator, which is for other people. I am pretty even on that. In future, we should demand much more involvement and determination from the Government and Westminster. The only democratically accountable body that we, as citizens in Northern Ireland, currently have is here, because the Assembly is not sitting. I also realise that we do not want direct rule; however, inasmuch as we are making laws today to enable certain things to happen, why are we not passing legislation to enable Ministers to be appointed from here for a short, specified length of time? That would not be direct rule; that would be interim management of the situation. I think it is quite a good idea, but others have thought about it and binned it a hundred times. It would be time-limited in the same way that the Bill is. We would then avoid this whole issue of Civil Service responsibility and power, and judicial reviews. This is obviously a minefield and it is very difficult. The Civil Service is outstanding, but we are pressurising it into making decisions on which there will be comeback. It would also mean that policy introduction would be current, not retrospective, as it tends to be at the moment, taking a long time.

Perhaps all this lack of attention, lack of action and legislation with limited scope is intended not to upset the two main parties—the DUP and Sinn Féin—and therefore achieve a return to Stormont. Again, I say to the Secretary of State and the Government—who say, “This is our aim”—that of course it is their aim. They say, “This is our wish, we believe it will happen”, to which I say, “Face the fundamental facts”. Enough people have pointed them out today and I certainly do not need to go into all that detail.

Personally, I believe that Sinn Féin has no intention of going back until after Brexit and possibly after later discussions further down the Brexit road. It is waiting for the wheels to fall off this wagon and it wants to pick something up. If you were in Sinn Féin’s situation and wanted a united Ireland, what would you do? You would do exactly what it is doing. We should not be wasting dividend or any bonuses on Sinn Féin at the moment. You can use them only once and if you use them and do not get what you want, the next time round you have to leave it the heirlooms. We should not be going down that route. As has been said, the DUP has its own problems. It is not entirely one-sided but it appears that in that context Sinn Féin will say no.

The people of Northern Ireland, from all communities, feel totally frustrated and demoralised, with little hope of any progress. Somebody said—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Empey—that people are not happy and everyone thinks that devolution and the Assembly are wonderful. I can tell your Lordships that people in Northern Ireland do not say that, because devolution has not worked for them, and that is that.

One has to remember that the vast majority of people—Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or whatever—are for peace, for a quiet time and for their own government. However, added to that is the number of people from not only Great Britain but Northern Ireland who served in the Armed Forces, and now our veterans are being hounded, when every one of them volunteered to serve—to lay down their lives if necessary—for our peace. Let us not squander all this by pussyfooting round those who brought about the Troubles. We need—from the Government especially—leadership, determination and legislation with the required scope until we get our Assembly and Executive back, but it has to work properly.