Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I was just about to say that I have published a draft copy of the guidance and placed it in the Library of the House so that hon. and right hon. Members can have a clear sense of what it seeks to do. The important point is that throughout my period as Secretary of State—I put on record how supportive the hon. Gentleman was when he was my opposite number of the need to make legislative changes on limited occasions in this House for the essential running of public services—when we in this House have taken decisions and passed legislation, we have been very clear that what we are not doing is changing policy. Policy and legislation cannot be changed by anything in this Bill. It is about allowing civil servants to make decisions that have been part of a policy that has previously been agreed. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman looks at the draft guidance in the Library, and says if he has any suggestions for how the guidance could be strengthened or improved to help civil servants.

I want to be clear: civil servants in Northern Ireland Departments have acted in an exemplary fashion. They have behaved without political cover and without an Executive or Ministers in a way that we should all commend. They have enabled public services in Northern Ireland to continue to be run, and the people of Northern Ireland are continuing to receive their public services. Significant reform is needed in many public services, but this is not about policy decisions on reform. It is about enabling those public services to continue, because the best way to change policy and law in Northern Ireland is for Ministers to be in Stormont making those decisions on behalf of the people who elected them.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Can the Secretary of State say how many legal actions have been initiated in the few days since the contents of clause 3(4), on the retrospective empowerment of civil servants, were made known? I would be grateful for her confirmation or otherwise, but my understanding is that those legal actions that have been initiated will not fall within the scope of the retrospective action that she is seeking to take through clause 3.

[Karen Bradley]

Perhaps it is best if I write to the Chair of the Select Committee with specific details, although I want to be clear that we have put in a specific reference to decisions taken since the Executive collapsed because we do not want those decisions that have already been taken to be challenged on the basis that once the Bill is in place there is more cover for civil servants. We want to ensure that the decisions that have already been taken are not undone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this Second Reading debate. May I start by expressing my admiration of and gratitude for the Secretary of State’s energy and perspicacity in trying to achieve a settlement in Northern Ireland? Whatever regrets we have about the situation in which we find ourselves, we are all united in our admiration for the energy that the Secretary of State has applied to this process. I sympathise with her, because in the actions she is taking she is trying to sail between Scylla and Charybdis: on the one hand, she must do nothing that would impede the restoration of proper democracy and the devolved settlement in Northern Ireland; on the other, she must do what she knows to be best for the people of Northern Ireland. I shall comment largely on my perception of Northern Ireland lagging well behind where it should be, and increasingly so. I shall express in unequivocal terms my fears about what that might mean in 10 months’ time, if we are no further on.

On Monday, I had the great pleasure of visiting Belfast with members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. For the first time—to my very great shame—I visited the Royal Victoria Hospital, where I talked to deeply committed and dedicated professionals who are right at the top of their game and who work there doing their very best for the population of Northern Ireland. I must say to the Secretary of State that I came away deeply depressed, because it is clear that Northern Ireland is not getting what it deserves. In comparison with the population of the rest of the United Kingdom, it is lagging significantly behind on key healthcare indicators. We heard that morning from service users, particularly in the fields of mental health and cancer care—key healthcare areas. Were their experiences to be replicated in our constituencies, we would be very upset indeed. The reasons are complicated, but we are left to conclude that the absence for nearly two years now of Ministers capable of taking decisions is a significant part of the piece.

We are now to complicate another 10 months of potential delay, with no clear solution following that. We could call another election but, as has been alluded to already, without good will on the part of both the principal parties in this matter, it is likely as not that we would get pretty much the same outcome. I have detected no particular enthusiasm or appetite for an Irish language Act, which is the biggest roadblock to the process. I get a lot of people asking, “Why don’t I have the same healthcare expectations as people over the other side of the Irish sea?”, but I do not get angst expressed to me about the inclusion of an Irish language Act. It is self-evident that the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland simply want to get on with their lives. They want to have expectations across a range of public sector functions that at least approximate those that exist in Great Britain. It is a failure for all involved if they do not achieve that sort of approximation. We have a devolved settlement, so there will always be difference—of course there will—and I guess we should celebrate that, but the people of the United Kingdom have a legitimate expectation that, broadly speaking, outcomes will be similar right across the piece. That is not the case in Northern Ireland, and it is getting worse. We have to work out a way to deal with that.

I welcome the Bill, but it should have been introduced to the House well before now—incidentally, that would have given us more time to consider it—because I am afraid that the situation we are currently in was predictable. We have simply lost time. In so far as it is a straightforward, simple Bill that will achieve the outcomes that the Government want, I very much welcome it, although I would have gone much further. The need to go much further is in the guidance. I hope the Secretary of State has some sense from the House that we are likely to support her in the development of the guidance in the months ahead.

I assume that the guidance is the same as that which was given in draft form to the helpful Northern Ireland Office officials who briefed the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee a few days ago. Getting hold of a copy today was quite difficult, but if it is more or less the same, I have been through it and must say that it is cast in extremely anodyne terms. It refers to decisions made by the Executive who have now folded, and to the draft programme for government and its 12 exciting outcomes, which are of course not outcomes at all but aspirations cast in the most anodyne terms imaginable.

In the weeks and months ahead, the Secretary of State will be faced more and more with Northern Ireland slipping backwards compared with the rest of the United Kingdom, unless some fairly significant policy decisions are made. I do not know the extent to which, on the basis of this Bill, it is safe for the Northern Ireland civil service to make some of those decisions, because some of them are really quite complicated, but they need to be made if we are to see key public services restored to the level at which they should be.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern not only about the policies that the civil servants will not implement—indeed, the Bill would not give them the powers to implement them anyhow—but that civil servants may even avoid the day-to-day functions of government, because the Bill does not instruct them to do anything? It simply says that it does not prevent them from doing anything. Given the inertia, caution, procrastination and lack of decision making that we have seen so far in the Northern Ireland civil service, there is no guarantee that any decisions will be made, even with the Bill.

[Dr Murrison]

With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, he is a little harsh on the Northern Ireland civil service, because of course civil servants will act as civil servants always do. They are not politicians, they do not do policy and they are acutely aware, all the time, of legal challenge. I take my hat off to David Sterling and his people for doing what they have managed to do since January or March 2017, but the fact is that key decisions have to be made. We have already heard about the distinction between policy and decision making; some of the decisions are policy, but some are simply nuts-and-bolts decision making. I fear that there will come a point when the line will be crossed, and the Secretary of State may very well come back here to seek further guidance from this House on what she can legitimately do to prevent the backsliding to which I have referred and hopefully start making progress on some of these key public service areas.

Reading through the guidance, I am heartened because it seems to give the Secretary of State really quite a lot of scope. She will have heard—and, I suspect, will continue to hear in the balance of this debate—a great deal of support from across the House for her being pretty proactive in issuing guidance to the civil service so that it can do what is necessary to advance the day-to-day living experience of the people of Northern Ireland. In particular, I note the enjoinder in the guidance that “particular weight” must be given to the avoidance of

“serious detriment to the public interest, public health and wellbeing”.

In response to the point made by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) a few moments ago, I will reflect briefly on one example, which I mention as an exemplar more widely applicable to the whole piece. At the Royal Victoria Hospital on Monday, we heard from a group of cardiologists—people who are leaders in their field—how the inability to share data with the rest of the United Kingdom was proving to be an impediment because there was a failure of a particular decision that had to be made by a Minister. That has clear implications for healthcare in Northern Ireland, because if Northern Ireland cannot compare and contrast its performance and what it is doing with other parts of a similar healthcare service, it cannot really make improvements. That is just a small example of the kind of thing that we are talking about today which I hope will be covered in the guidance. I urge the Minister to ensure that the guidance that she issues is much more specific than that laid out in the framework published today. I think that she will end up having to issue really quite a lot of guidance, and I urge her very strongly indeed to push the limits as far as she possibly can.

I was particularly taken with the remarks of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), who speaks for the Opposition. It is actually quite rare in this place that there is much in the way of consensus. Mercifully, reaching it tends to be easier in matters to do with Northern Ireland than in most public policy areas. The hon. Gentleman’s remarks, which I very much welcome, were exceptionally positive in regard to our sense that the Secretary of State really will have to issue guidance that is as prescriptive as possible, within the scope of the Bill, in order to move things along in Northern Ireland. That is the sense that I got from the hon. Gentleman’s remarks.

I do not wish to go on too much longer, but I want to mention another point. In the Brexit context—there is always a risk that a debate like this will be overtaken by the issue of the moment—a great deal is going on in Northern Ireland at the moment that is of a unique nature. I have mentioned healthcare, but much of the economy in Northern Ireland is pretty unusual and has a uniqueness that needs to be reflected by those who are currently dealing with Brexit. Of course, it is a perfect storm in a sense, because not only is there a uniqueness regarding the various sectors; there is also a lack of an Executive—of a body advocating specifically for Northern Ireland. Now, the Government will say, “Well, it’s for us to negotiate in Brussels”, which is perfectly true, but we know full well that Scotland and Wales are separately making their points to our interlocutors in Brussels. That is not the case for Northern Ireland.

[Lady Hermon]

In relation to Brexit and the Secretary of State’s guidance following this legislation, would it not be helpful for the Secretary of State to look back at the letter signed—if my memory serves me correctly—on 13 August 2016, just months after the referendum, by both the then First Minister Arlene Foster and the then Deputy First Minister, the late Martin McGuinness? Would not that be helpful in showing the priorities that the then First Minister and Deputy First Minister felt were relevant in the Brexit negotiations?

[Dr Murrison]

I usually agree with the hon. Lady and I agree with her on that point. Of course, the general principle in these matters is that one relies on what has gone on before—the decisions of the Executive and so on. It would certainly be in that tradition and spirit to rely on the remarks of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister at that time, as a starter for 10.

The issue I have is exemplified by the farming and growing sector in Northern Ireland, which the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) will remember we have debated at some length in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. There are particular facets of Northern Ireland quite apart from the border that need to be considered in the context of Brexit. It is important for provision to be made to ensure that that happens. I am not clear that it has happened to the extent to which I would like, and I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on that.

I also ask the Secretary of State to reflect on the Select Committee’s report, “Devolution and democracy in Northern Ireland—dealing with the deficit”, which we published in May, and which made some helpful suggestions on how she might consult with the public and various bodies in the absence of an Executive. If this goes on and on, and she is led more and more to issue guidance and consider policy, it is helpful—particularly in the context of the Good Friday agreement, but in any event—to ensure that she has consulted as widely as possible.

If I feel a little disappointment about this Bill—a very concise piece of legislation, on which I congratulate the Secretary of State—it is because it has not really reflected in any meaningful sense the recommendations made in the Select Committee report, which is now just months old. I think that is a mistake, because some of the suggestions are pretty unobjectionable and would have helped matters along, particularly measures such as civic forums, which have been tried before quite successfully and which could give the Secretary of State the sort of confidence that she was doing things that had the support of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland. That is in no way to try to subvert the institutions set up by the GFA or to suggest that they are not going to be restored, but in the interregnum it is important to get some sense of what people want. Those sorts of innovative bodies are a possible solution in the context of Northern Ireland.

We all hope that the Executive will be restored sooner rather than later—I think that the Secretary of State is as confident as she possibly can be that this will all happen within the next 10 months—but Northern Ireland is a unique and special place, and sadly we cannot necessarily guarantee that that will be the case. We therefore need—this has been mentioned previously—some idea about what will then happen.

We have to work on the assumption that a further general election will result in nothing new. Sometimes when we throw the cards up in the air, they fall down in a way that may surprise and delight us—or otherwise—but our working assumption has to be that such a thing will not change very much, which is presumably why the Secretary of State has not called an election up to this point. We will then have to decide what to do. Although I welcome the Bill, we cannot continue to kick the can down the road. One way or another, sadly by force of circumstance, the Secretary of State may again have to start making some of the difficult, crunchy decisions that have been made in this place since 1998.

One thing is for sure: it is simply not acceptable for the people of Northern Ireland to continue to sustain the sub-optimal public services about which my Committee has heard evidence, despite all the hard work of those on the ground and all the effort to try to stop up the gap indefinitely. I sympathise with the Secretary of State in her dilemma and absolutely support her intention to get the Executive back up and running, but I sound a cautionary note and ask her to start thinking: what on earth do we do in 10 months’ time, when we are back in the same place?

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Rarely do we get such fine, sweeping oratory in a Bill Committee. That is probably one of the few advantages of fast-tracking legislation. I am afraid that I am going to turn the temperature down a couple of notches in speaking to my amendments 1 to 9, which are all far more prosaic than new clause 7. I will certainly not be able to match in any way, shape or form the oratory we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson). These are nevertheless, I believe, important amendments to an important Bill. They deal with clauses 2, 3 and 4.

My amendment 1 is, as it were, amendment 20 in the name of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd)-lite—that is, it does not delete clause 2 but simply, modestly removes a subsection. That subsection deals with the expediency of not seeking the House’s approval to extend the provisions we are discussing in terms of the Executive. I tabled the amendment to explore with the Secretary of State what “expediency” might mean, because we are handing to her a range of quite important powers in unusual circumstances. That suggests to me that the Committee really needs to do its utmost to scrutinise what is going on. It does not seem to me that the word “expediency” should really creep into the lexicography at all. My point in tabling this simple and modest amendment is to probe the Secretary of State on the circumstances in which she would see fit to enact this extension without the prior approval of the House.

Amendment 2 is the guts of what I want to discuss. It really cuts to the chase in terms of the Bill, because it deals with guidance, which is the single most important part of the proposals before us. It seeks, for example, to be more prescriptive in the sort of guidance that I would like the Secretary of State to give to the Northern Ireland civil service. We discussed some of this on Second Reading. I believe that that would be an improvement, having gone through the draft guidance that has been published, of which, presumably, all right hon. and hon. Members who are interested in this matter have got copies from the Library. The amendment goes further and makes it more prescriptive.

The flagship issue is Hart. There is cross-party and cross-community support for the Hart report, and there really can be no excuse for not cracking on and doing this now. I very much hope that in the forthcoming guidance the Secretary of State will enable that process to be advanced. I have cited Hart as No. 1 in my list of things I seek her to be specific on, because it is obviously the No. 1, big ticket issue that people would like to see action on. People out there really cannot understand why action has not been taken.

[Sir Mike Penning]

I do not understand why Hart has not been done. There was huge courage within the Northern Ireland Health Department when we got medical cannabis for constituents in Northern Ireland when we were getting Billies and Alfies over here. People had the will and they needed the confidence. Is my hon. Friend sure that this legislation will give them the confidence, because clearly they are frightened and something is holding them back? They have done it for medical cannabis, so surely they could do it for Hart.

[Dr Murrison]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, which elegantly exemplifies what I am going on about and brings me neatly on to—

[Owen Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Murrison]

Before I move neatly on, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Owen Smith]

I have signed the hon. Gentleman’s excellent amendment, but does he not understand from the legislation and, indeed, the answer we heard from the Secretary of State earlier that, in her view, this does not allow her to enact any of the recommendations made under the Hart review? Is he not deeply disappointed by that?

[Dr Murrison]

I am not really sure that that is the case. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the guidance, which I am sure he has now read. On the third page, the guidance states that particular weight must be given to any

“serious detriment to the public interest, public health and wellbeing”.

That seems fairly clearcut to me. I think that the Secretary of State will have got the sense of the House today on her being proactive in the guidance that she is able to issue.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Some of the concern is that this is actually not that straightforward. The terms of reference that set up the Hart inquiry clearly said that what came after the findings was not a matter for the chair of the inquiry. There are issues and decision points in those recommendations. To use a quick example, Hart recommends legal aid or separate legal representation for each of the people coming forward to a redress board. That has never been agreed. There would be a huge cost and, in my view, a lot of bureaucracy with that approach. There are decision points in the recommendations that, as I understand it in terms of the guidance, could not be made by a civil servant, because there is no consensus at this stage on those matters. That is the complication, and that is why the Secretary of State needs to step in and make those decisions.

[Dr Murrison]

I do understand that. One point I made on Second Reading was that I was slightly disappointed that the Bill does not advance pretty much any of the recommendations we made in our report on the democratic deficit, published in May. Had it done so, there would be scope now for even more consultation, using formal structures, which may have assisted the implementation to which the hon. Lady rightly refers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) mentioned cannabis, which leads me on to healthcare—a matter that is of particular importance to my Committee right now, since we were at the Royal Victoria Hospital on Monday, where we took evidence from a number of service users. It is very clear from the guidance, which cites public interest and public health, that this matter is preying on the mind of Ministers.

It is a crying shame that there is no proper cancer strategy in Northern Ireland right now. There is one published in 2008, so it is out of date. We have a situation where, to pick one condition at random, the outcomes for prostate cancer are far worse in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the country. This is pretty clear. If we do not have a cancer strategy and we believe that a cancer strategy will be of assistance in improving outcomes, of course outcomes will be worse if one is not in place. To get a cancer strategy, we need some form of direction to civil servants to get on with it and, furthermore, to implement it.

[Jim Shannon]

One thing we have discussed in the Select Committee is the scourge of diabetes. In Northern Ireland, we have the largest percentage of people with diabetes per head of population in the UK. We also have the largest proportion of type 1 child diabetics in the whole United Kingdom, with Scotland coming second. We need a strategy in place for that. We had a strategy before, which covered all the regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but we cannot do that today because we do not have the wherewithal. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we really need to see some action in the Health Department, to address all chronic diseases, including diabetes and cancer?

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I do not want to labour the point, but I feel the need to briefly mention the fact that screening for cancer in Northern Ireland is frankly woeful—it is way behind. We cannot have a situation where there is faecal immunochemical testing in the rest of the UK, but it is denied to people in Northern Ireland, and they also cannot get HPV screening for cervical cancer. That is just not acceptable. But for these things to happen, we need some form of direction, however it comes, and that is a matter for Ministers and those who draft measures of the sort we are discussing and, of course, those who deal with the consequentials of the guidance that we are dealing with.

[Owen Smith]

I make no apology for going back to the Hart inquiry, because there are hundreds of victims of historical sexual abuse in Northern Ireland who will be watching this debate and wondering whether action is likely to be taken by the Government as a result of this legislation. I think that we are still very unclear whether the Secretary of State interprets this legislation, as the hon. Gentleman and I do, as giving leeway to civil servants in Northern Ireland to undertake further action. Through him, may I urge the Secretary of State to intervene at some point before the close of the Committee this evening and clarify whether this will allow action on Hart?

[Dr Murrison]

The purpose of amendments tends to be to elicit such answers from Ministers, and it will be very interesting to hear from the Secretary of State how she would like to play this, because I am hoping that we will have some encouragement in that respect. Hon. Members have certainly given her every encouragement. I have been struck by how much encouragement to be proactive in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland there has been during this debate. I think that the Committee understands full well that a great deal needs to be done, and it needs to be done fairly quickly on a number of important public policy issues, of which Hart is just one.

The guidance makes a great deal of the public finances and the economy in Northern Ireland. Goodness me, we could debate all day the economy in Northern Ireland and where that needs to go. One thing we have been particularly struck by as a Select Committee is of course farming and growing in Northern Ireland: horticulture is far more important there than in the rest of the United Kingdom. One of the recommendations we are very keen on is that there should be a proper farming strategy in Northern Ireland very soon. At the moment, it is having to compete with the Republic, where, if I am honest, the Government in Dublin have been really quite proactive and have placed farmers and growers north of the border at something of a competitive disadvantage, with or without Brexit.

Things need to be done, and fairly urgently, to improve productivity in Northern Ireland, while recognising the unusual nature of farming in Northern Ireland and recognising that farming in Northern Ireland is not the same as farming in the rest of the United Kingdom. In the main, we are not talking about East Anglian barley barons in Northern Ireland, but about small family farms. That is why the guidance, which I hope will preoccupy the Secretary of State in the weeks and months ahead, should produce a firm statement about what the civil service of Northern Ireland needs to do in relation to producing such a farming strategy. If we have no restoration of the Executive by the end of the year, we should certainly give some attention to that directly.

I will skip the rest of my amendments because they are simply to do with ensuring that there is added scrutiny of these measures and the guidance that flows from them, as well as with the appointment function to be exercised by this House, as cited in clause 4, and in particular—if I may make this suggestion—by my Committee.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

I would not of course challenge the Chair on the grouping of these amendments—that would be poor—but I would gently say that two hours for the range of amendments before us on a great many subjects is not sufficient. This is not satisfactory, and I hope that the Government will learn that we have a deep interest in the issues across Northern Ireland and will give us more time.

I have worked with the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) on a number of health issues in England and Wales, and the points he raised in his amendments about health inequalities across Northern Ireland were well made. I particularly want to highlight amendment 22, especially in relation to pensions, in the name of the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine). Such a measure is in the gift of the Secretary of State, and we certainly wish to see it progressed.

Most of my comments are going to be about new clause 7, and I will start with same-sex marriage. I was proud to be a co-sponsor of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), and I was a witness of his speech last March, which was one of the best I have heard in this Chamber. I should say that, although I am pleased to be married, he beautifully encapsulated the equality point when he told us the heartfelt response made by one of the people he was speaking to in south Armagh. The man said that, frankly, gay people had the right

“to be as miserable as the rest of us.”

With respect to the fact that people who love each other cannot build a happy life together as a married couple in Northern Ireland, he asked in that speech:

“Does anyone think that is fair? Does anyone think that is right? Does anyone think that can continue?”—[Official Report, 28 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 791-792.]