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

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

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.