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

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Caine, to his new role.

When it comes to day-to-day politics, Northern Ireland, for all its particular issues, encounters many of the same problems as your Lordships’ House and the other place. Last week the Green Member of the Legislative Assembly, Clare Bailey, joined many others in speaking out against the accelerated progress of a finance Bill without adequate scrutiny. Last week independent research discredited Edwin Poots’s exaggerated figures about the costs of a cross-party net-zero climate change Bill, led by Clare Bailey, which rather reminded me of your Lordships’ House hearing some exaggerated figures on sewage costs.

Our other Green Member of the Legislative Assembly, Rachel Woods, was meeting with the Northern Ireland Youth Forum, noting that far more needs to be done to ensure that the voices of young people are heard. Among the things that the youth forum has called for is votes at 16, something that young people in Scotland and Wales of course enjoy—a call that has been backed by the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People.

So there are similarities, yet we also have some real contrasts here that I think are interesting and possibly have some broader lessons for us. The legislation before us is based on New Decade, New Approach, an attempt to address the issues of the functioning of the Northern Ireland Executive exposed by experience. This is looking at a constitution, seeing a crisis and producing a planned and thought-through response. What a contrast to Westminster. It should not need a crisis for us to look regularly at a constitution and consider ways in which it might be updated; the constitution here in Westminster has not been updated significantly since women got the vote. So that is a different way of approaching a constitution—or at least part of a way. If we look across the border at the Republic of Ireland, there we can see how citizens’ assemblies and people’s constitutional conventions showed a way in which participatory democracy can effectively deal with and settle difficult political issues, as it did on both abortion and equal marriage.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, talked about the people being better consulted. The Library briefing on the Bill notes that the New Decade, New Approach deal was agreed by the five main Northern Ireland political parties. It does not talk about consultation with the people. None the less, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said, we seem to have some progress here —not sufficient issues are being dealt with, but at least some are.

However, there are many things that the Bill cannot deal with. The Minister talked in his introduction about the need for the economy to meet the needs of society. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, talked about the hit from Brexit, as many other noble Lords have, along with NHS waiting lists and the level of NHS services.

I want to add to that a report out today: a truly, deeply, shocking report from Action for Children, which found that more than a quarter of working parents in Northern Ireland expect to take on extra work or forgo time off to pay for Christmas, and that most of them will miss at least one key family event in that process. This comes after last year’s Christmas was cancelled by Covid.

Another report a week or so back showed that among the families hit by the £20 cut to universal credit in October, two-fifths are likely to cut back on heating and one-third are likely to skip meals, while 20% said that they expected to go to a food bank. I note that eight out of 18 parliamentary constituencies in Northern Ireland rank in the bottom third of the UK for children living in low-income households, and that the two-child limit for universal credit is felt particularly acutely in Northern Ireland.

We are tackling some constitutional issues here. But, as the Minister himself acknowledged, there are many other ways in which Westminster needs to provide more support to Northern Ireland to tackle the issues it faces, including constitutional ones.