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

Claire Hanna Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson). We served together as Belfast city councillors and his voice and his views are always worth hearing. I believe that if they were the values and views projected by his party we would be in a much better position. While not seeking to put him on the spot, I think that was a very important point to make about the fact that if we, as five parties, went to the Government—if I am hearing him correctly—and spoke about how much a veterinary agreement would solve many of the problems facing us in Northern Ireland, he believes the Government would listen. I hope that that is the case, because he, like me, will know that there is progress to be made and fixes to be done on medicines. He will know that there is not a person in Northern Ireland who has been denied cancer drugs as a result of Brexit or anything else, but that constructive spirit would take us very far indeed and I would like to endorse the proposal.

January 2020, before covid and Brexit, might feel like a completely different place and time politically, but the politics of the past fortnight have been a reminder of the culture of crisis, stand-off, side deal and repeat that dogged devolution and the operation of the Good Friday institutions, and preceded the 2017 to 2020 collapse and the New Decade, New Approach deal that followed it. That came after three years in which Northern Ireland was a governance black hole. While the whole world was talking about the Good Friday agreement, its institutions were lying empty. Because of that, the agreement spans very many issues, including waiting lists, support for victims of the troubles, third-level education and childcare. Those were the preoccupations of the SDLP during the negotiations and I think they better reflect the preoccupations of the electorate as well.

It is worth reminding Members that it was not the deep desire of the power parties that restored Stormont, but the message sent by the electorate in December 2019—my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) were elected in that election—and the message sent by striking healthcare workers. Credit for getting power back to the Good Friday institutions goes to them, along with, it must be said, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who by all accounts and all regards is the best Northern Ireland Secretary we have had in a generation. His commitment was matched by the then Tánaiste Simon Coveney. They, and particularly the healthcare workers and the striking nurses in Northern Ireland, deserve credit. They and other people voted for a break in the stalemate, but they expect and need a lot more than just the absence of stalemate. They want delivery on all the policy commitments in New Decade, New Approach and in terms of change to the governing culture.

There is no doubt that covid has been an immense drain on political and legislative time, and there is no doubt that Brexit has been a drain on good will and political energy, but neither of those explains or excuses the paralysis that has beset many of the commitments in New Decade, New Approach. Culture and language fall into that category. They are not, in fact, among the most complex and challenging issues. The New Decade, New Approach commitment endorses a three-dimensional legislative compact that was drawn up by the Office of the Legislative Counsel in Northern Ireland, so it was not one-sided or maximalist. It means that many of those who for many years and in good faith campaigned strongly and honourably for an Irish language Act will see that the legislative guarantees are not as free-standing or as far-reaching as they wished to see.

That should have meant that those who opposed the Act would be encouraged to recognise that its nature, balance and thrust were not in one direction and not out of proportion in terms of purported cost or unwanted impact on anybody. Edwin Poots himself, as he was departing, said that one of Unionism’s faults is that it plays up the wins of others and plays down its own achievements. This is a very good example of that. This was an opportunity for the DUP to agree to a balanced package and I regret that it seems to be rejecting it. The Assembly has passed other legislation since its resumption last January, so there is no reason it could not pass this “Blue Peter” “Here’s one we made earlier” Bill. The only reason it has not passed it is resistance and reluctance. The former First Minister Arlene Foster waited until her resignation statement to commend the package, but that was a proportionate perspective that could have been used, in partnership with her fellow First Minister, to bring forward the Bill that would have been a significant part of an honourable legacy for her, a meaningful gesture towards a shared future and a signal that the DUP is willing and able to share power.

Like the hon. Member for North Down, the King George V speech has caught my attention today as well. There is a lot in it that is worth quoting. I am not usually given to quoting monarchs, but perhaps some of my DUP colleagues will take it more from a former king than they will from their neighbours. As well as the points that the hon. Member outlined, he talked about a Parliament for Northern Ireland being

“an instrument of happiness and good government for all parts of the community”.

He talked about

“moderation, with fairness and due regard to every faith and interest”

and about bringing forward

“a new era of peace, contentment, and good will”

upon

“sure foundations of mutual justice and respect.”

I say, 100 years on: please can we have another crack at doing that? The words ring very true.

If the issue is the UK Government legislating over your head on the Irish language, the opportunity still exists to send a signal to your neighbours that you are prepared to do it on their behalf. Withholding legislation on language as a worn-down bargaining chip is not a basis for meaningful sharing—neither, though, is Sinn Féin’s tactic of withholding the whole of devolution to achieve it. Sinn Féin criticised the DUP for withholding its nomination and the DUP criticised Sinn Féin the week before for withholding its nomination, with each party righteously condemning the mirror-image tactic from the other and each instalment draining away belief and faith in power sharing among the general population.

Over recent weeks, against the backdrop of no movement on bringing forward these legislative terms, the SDLP, as an honourable party to New Decade, New Approach, explored with the Secretary of State whether those pre-published legislative terms could be included by amendment to this Bill, which is, of course, a vehicle for advancing those aspects. Although he rested the onus us to design the relevant amendments that might be scoped, we established that the Government were not opposed in principle or practice to Westminster legislating for that, on the basis that it had been signed off by all five parties. We are grateful for the assistance of Clerks and drafters in navigating those possibilities.

We had proposed to table specifically and faithfully the legislative drafts that were agreed by all those parties and drafted by the Office of the Legislative Counsel—no more and no less were we going to do—and, in draft format, those amendments run to only 23 pages, so they would be even fewer in Bill form. Now that the Government have declared in public what they had agreed in private, the obvious question occurs: why not now with the means available to us with this Bill? There is a real argument, we believe, that it would be better to incorporate this package into this miscellaneous approach to New Decade, New Approach rather than leaving it until October when other factors might be at play. We have seen slippiness and slipperiness when it comes to previous commitments. As others have outlined, we are grossly overdue legislation relating to victims and New Decade, New Approach, so we do not and cannot have blind faith in how the Government will discharge that commitment, or what concession or other factor they will read into it in the autumn. We hope that the people of Northern Ireland and the Gaeilgeoirs of Northern Ireland do not look back in a few months on this as a missed opportunity.

This tale of the last few weeks of bad faith and foot dragging are the last 14 years of stop-start governance in microcosm. For all that the letter and spirit of the agreement are used as an amulet for people for or against Brexit, the spirit of power sharing and working the common ground, and of building trust through mutual endeavour, are quite absent from the Assembly. Watching that daily in the media drains away those feelings in the public. We are now very far off the vision that in 1998 created infrastructure and architecture to manage differences and to be able to realise a better future in Northern Ireland.

There are other issues on which we will table amendments, and we will not resile from New Decade, New Approach, but we will put forward ways that would strengthen the provisions in that and correct some of the divergence from the concepts of the Good Friday agreement—on, for example, restoring the joint nature of the First Minister’s office, which has been distorted by St Andrews. That was a centrepiece of strand 1, and although we hear a lot of waxing about parallel consent, that was the part of the Good Friday agreement that spoke about parallel consent and about the Assembly collectively nominating the First Ministers who would then be accountable to it. That foundation that would embed those concepts in the Assembly as an act of leadership from the top down was stripped out by the DUP and Sinn Féin at St Andrews.

Similar corrections to the petitions of concern are sensible and valid. It was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle outlined, a mechanism designed to protect minorities, but instead it is used to thwart them. In fact, it is now thought of as a byword for veto, and that extends to the vetoholic tendencies of the DUP in the Executive and other corruptions of the agreement inserted at St Andrews. The three-Minister provision is causing absolute logjam in the Executive office and prevents Ministers from bringing forward progressive and productive legislation because they know that it will be thwarted at the Executive.

There are a number of other good points to be made and discussed around the issue of designation, which runs the risk, when it is wielded as it is by the larger parties, of locking in and embedding some of the sectarianism that the Good Friday agreement was designed to phase out. We look forward to discussing some of those issues.

Stability and sustainability ultimately will not come from rules and procedures; they will come from people believing, understanding and accepting that sharing power with their neighbours is the right thing to do, and not just sharing that power because the law tells them that they cannot make decisions without it. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) made a number of good points about how devolution is not just about preventing conflict, because if we look at Scotland and Wales, it is of course about local power being in local hands, and about people being able to realise opportunities that those elected close to the ground will understand.

The hon. Member for Belfast East about spoke about common grounds and shared values. They are what we all want; they unite people of all backgrounds in south Belfast and in Northern Ireland as a whole, but they are currently absent from the top the Assembly. They would be displayed if the DUP were willing to advance all the aspects of the New Decade, New Approach deal, and if they were, legislation would not be required from this House.