Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019

Colum Eastwood Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I have spoken this evening to the Taoiseach and the Secretary of State about this very sensitive period in the negotiations, but as many other Members have already said, the time is well past. Tomorrow we will have been without a Government for three years. The people we represent have not had a Government for three years. Let that sink in. Look at the consequences for our health service. Our health services are at breaking point. Our school budgets are at breaking point. Our nurses, for the first time, are on strike right now. They have been used as a political pawn in this process, because of our failure to deliver for them and the people they look after every single day of the week on our behalf.

I agree with the shadow Secretary of State. No matter what happens in our talks process, take the nurses and the healthcare workers out of this and provide them with the pay they work for, deserve and are entitled to. They should not have to strike one more day to get their full entitlement, which they absolutely and totally deserve.

This has gone on for far too long. I for one, as leader of the Social Democratic and Labour party, have already committed myself to compromise on behalf of the people whom we represent. Other parties now need to step up and get ready to compromise, because the deadline is Monday, and the deadline should stay Monday. We cannot drag this out any longer, because the people whom we represent screamed very loudly at the last election. They are fed up, and what do they want? What are they saying to us? They are saying, “Get back to work.” Compromise is not a dirty word. We have learned that through many difficult negotiations, through many years of coming together and bringing our communities together. We cannot lose that progress. We cannot go backwards. It is up to us to sort the problem out.

Let me say one more thing. There is nothing called direct rule any more. That is gone. It is outlawed. We cannot go back to the days of rule from this place over the people of Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement, the St Andrews agreement, and every agreement since states that devolution is how we do our business now. If we cannot have devolution—although we should not countenance that—people need to understand that the automatic response is not direct rule, because the nationalist population will not accept it, the Irish Government will not accept it, and the St Andrews agreement has ruled it out as an option.

So what must we do? We must recognise that a voice in governance must be given to both sides of our community, to all the minorities; and we are all minorities in Northern Ireland now. If we do not compromise, the next step will be not rule from London, but some form of joint rule from London and Dublin. People need to recognise that when we are talking tough in these negotiations.

It is time to bury the hatchet, because the issues that are at stake in these negotiations, important though they are—and I have strong views on all of them—are not as important as people dying on waiting lists, they are not as important as nurses not being paid properly, and they are not as important as our schools not being able to fund the education services that we need to give to our young people.