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

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Department: Northern Ireland Office

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

Carla Lockhart Excerpts
2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd June 2021

(2 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
Read Full debate Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Act 2022 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Carla Lockhart Portrait Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
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The New Decade, New Approach agreement certainly paved the way for the return of the Northern Ireland Assembly in January 2020, and this was welcomed by everyone. It is therefore ironic that the backdrop to today’s Second Reading debate is a decision of this Government to threaten to usurp the role of the Northern Ireland Assembly in the exercise of its newly restored powers, not to prioritise the promises and pledges on health, the economy and education but to prioritise a cultural package. Mention has already been made of this, but I need to reiterate that the three-year long crisis and absence of devolution in Northern Ireland was precipitated by Sinn Féin’s refusal to share power unless and until its demands were met. In doing so, it held to ransom not just the other political parties in Northern Ireland but every person on the health service waiting lists, as they spiralled out of control.

Somewhere along the line, the fact that the sustainability provisions in this Bill are actually needed as a direct result of the behaviour of Sinn Féin would seem to have been forgotten. A former Member of this House for the Foyle constituency used to say, “What gets rewarded gets repeated”, and that is never more true than today. Last week, Sinn Féin played the same old trick again and, surprise, surprise, was richly rewarded by this Government. That is the message that will have been heard loud and clear across Northern Ireland. The precedent has been set. If Sinn Féin was prepared to use such tactics to speed up the delivery of a cultural package, many in my community would ask why Unionists would not adopt the same approach when the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK is at stake, under the guise of the protocol.

At its heart, this Bill is about the sustainability of the political institutions in Northern Ireland, yet the delay in introducing this legislation has contributed to the lack of political stability in the Province. Had the Government introduced this legislation sooner, they might have avoided the ransom politics of Sinn Féin, who were prepared to hold the political institutions hostage over the timing of a cultural package set out in NDNA. Having spent three years working to secure the return of powers at Stormont, Sinn Féin wasted no time in giving back control to Westminster, not because the DUP refused to implement the cultural aspects of NDNA, but because it would not do so ahead of other priorities within that agreement. As a Unionist, I suppose the fact that Sinn Féin has changed its message from “Brits out” to “Brits in” should be regarded as progress. However, the fact that the Government are prepared to pass legislation without the consent of the Northern Ireland Assembly on matters that are entirely within the devolved arena at the behest of a party that does not even take its seats in this House is beyond parody.

The last time the Government breached the Sewel convention, with regard to abortion and same-sex marriage, they did so under the cover of the absence of the Northern Ireland Assembly, much to my frustration and despair. Today, no such pretence or pretext exists. Instead, a new exception to the Sewel convention has been created. In the light of this background, the fact that elements of this Bill will not achieve the desired objectives seems almost irrelevant. Let us take just one example. When the First Minister or Deputy First Minister resigns, as happened last week, there can now be a period of up to 24 weeks to replace them without the need for a fresh election, but there are no arrangements in place to allow the institutions to function credibly during this period. In the absence of a First Minister or Deputy First Minister, no Executive can meet and Ministers are unable to take significant or controversial decisions. That is not a sustainable way to do business, and I hope that those arrangements can be looked at again in light of recent experience.

My party signed up to New Decade, New Approach in its entirety, not because we welcomed every dot and comma but because we believe in devolution and we believed that the agreement was a pathway forward for the devolved institutions. It was by no means a deal without fault, but with waiting lists spiralling out of control, with the challenges posed by Brexit, with the need to address educational underachievement, with welfare reform mitigations coming to an end and with so many other issues pressing on people’s lives, we engaged with other parties to stop the harm that Sinn Féin’s boycott was doing to ordinary people in Northern Ireland.

However, NDNA is about more than the cultural provisions on which there is considerable focus. It also deals with the reform of public services, policing resources, infrastructure investment and so much more, yet on much of this there has been no progress and nothing said. The voices on these Benches from within the Government and the Opposition that are so exercised by the Irish language question are silent on the worst waiting lists in the whole of the United Kingdom.

The Bill is designed to address the sustainability of the political institutions in Northern Ireland, yet in the final analysis the Assembly will be sustainable only if the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland is respected. My party is prepared to lend its support to the Bill tonight, but I have very real concerns that the Bill is too little, too late. Through their actions in recent days, the Government have damaged the devolved settlement in Northern Ireland in a way that they would never countenance doing in Scotland or Wales. The real challenge for this Government in the coming weeks will be to address their commitments in New Decade, New Approach in relation to the UK’s internal market. I trust that, in that endeavour, we can count on those in this House who supported the Government’s approach to the culture package to display the same enthusiasm in that regard.

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

Full Debate: Read Full Debate
Department: Northern Ireland Office

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

Carla Lockhart Excerpts
Carla Lockhart Portrait Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
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Like other Members on both sides of the House, I desire a stable Stormont and a Stormont that offers good government to the people of Northern Ireland. Indeed, I am sure everyone who is present today shares that desire.

When the institutions were torn down by Sinn Féin in early 2017, 1 was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The new Assembly had embarked on a fresh mandate with many promises to tackle the huge waiting lists, but unfortunately Sinn Féin, for the sake of its own selfish, narrow political agenda, shattered the hopes of that Assembly, and they were extinguished. Three years followed that have seen our public services degenerate. The legacy of Martin McGuiness’s resignation is seen to this day: longer waiting lists, a health service that is stretched beyond its limits, a social housing crisis, a roads infrastructure that is crumbling, missed investment opportunities for job creation, and other public services held back.

Of course, for those three years the Government did nothing to face down the petulant, self-serving actions of Sinn Féin, which is deeply regrettable. A kid-glove approach was adopted when it came to confronting Sinn Féin and its reckless actions, and sadly we remain under this threat, for we know that the Government have stated that if the cultural package contained in “New Decade, New Approach” is not delivered to Sinn Féin’s timetable, it will be brought through in this place.

Let me urge the Government to exercise extreme caution in this regard. If they are serious about letting elected representatives govern Northern Ireland, it simply cannot continue to be the case that when agreement cannot be reached or takes longer than one party may wish—and the established trend is that the party jumped to is Sinn Féin—the Government take the powers back to this place. That is the recipe for instability, and it is also the fuel that fires the growing disenchantment and disillusionment in the Unionist community with the whole Stormont edifice.

The Secretary of State knows of the deep hurt many people felt in Northern Ireland when the Government chose to intervene in the provision of abortion. A matter that was so profound to so many people, and on which agreement could well have been reached given time and space, was brought back to this place to placate the pro-abortion lobby and the pro-abortion parties for whom these services could not be delivered quickly enough.

This pick-and-choose devolution settlement only leads to discontent and disillusionment. It makes people ask what is the point of devolution if the Government intervene when the agenda of some must be satisfied. We can strengthen the legislative framework to make the institutions more stable through this Bill, but the greatest threat of instability to the institutions comes from a people that sees no point in them.

In this context, the necessity is for the Government to act to resolve the widespread community concern about the Northern Ireland protocol. Time is moving on, and the patience of this party and the people is not without limit; indeed, it is stretched to breaking point right now. Promises of progress, of conclusions in weeks, are just talk. Let us see the action that is needed to ensure that political stability is restored to Northern Ireland and the damaging impact of this disastrous protocol for all the people of Northern Ireland is consigned to the past.

Colum Eastwood Portrait Colum Eastwood
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I entirely agree with what the hon. Lady said about the fact that Sinn Féin should never have pulled the Assembly down, and about the implications of that for our health service and our public sector in general. Now she has moved on to the threat from the Democratic Unionist party over the protocol. If she does not believe that any political party should threaten the institutions of the Good Friday agreement and the outworking of that, which is good government and good public services, will she speak to her party leader and ask him to withdraw his threat to those institutions?

Carla Lockhart Portrait Carla Lockhart
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The hon. Gentleman will know that the protocol is damaging everyone within Northern Ireland, both economically and constitutionally, and I would ask him to go and speak to the businesses that are being impacted on a daily basis by the protocol. It certainly undermines the delicate balances of the agreement.

I have listened to the remarks from the hon. Members for North Down (Stephen Farry) and for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), and I am sure that I am not alone in finding it somewhat ironic that those parties that hold the Belfast agreement as some form of religious text have sought so hard to change some of its underpinning elements. We see this in the attempts to change the appointment of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and to change community designation, and in the quest to reform the petition of concern mechanisms, all of which were created and championed by those who now wish to do away with the old and bring in the new for their own political advantage. We in Northern Ireland are well used to the hypocrisy and double standards of the Alliance party and the SDLP, which are there for all to see in their amendments today.

Simon Hoare Portrait Simon Hoare
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The hon. Lady makes a valid point about the views of business being heard during this further stage of negotiation and consultation with regard to the protocol. She is right on that, but I am failing to understand why tearing down Stormont and removing the voices of elected local representatives to make their case would help those businesses.

Carla Lockhart Portrait Carla Lockhart
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The hon. Member will know that we have not done that. We want this Government to act on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland. Lord Frost and his colleagues have heard clearly about the need to act and the damage that this is doing economically and constitutionally, and the hon. Member would do well to listen to the people of Northern Ireland and not just take it for granted that he is aware of their views.

I reiterate that if this Government continue to placate Sinn Féin’s ransom demands by legislating in this place to satisfy them, devolution will fail. Furthermore, if the provisions of the Belfast agreement around cross-community consent and our constitutional position continue to be set aside in the context of the future relationship between the UK and the EU pertaining to Northern Ireland, devolution will fail. Regardless of this Bill, the next few weeks will test the Government on their commitment to stable devolution in Northern Ireland.