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

Conor Burns Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Davies-Jones]

I wholeheartedly agree with the right hon. Lady. She is right that the Welsh Language Act 1993 massively strengthened our culture in Wales and us as a country. I press the Minister on when we can expect that legislation to be forthcoming.

Our amendment would help to push forward progress on two key areas: a Bill of Rights and the re-establishment of a civic forum. On a Bill of Rights, we on the Labour Benches are well aware that it is a reserved responsibility for the Secretary of State. The tightly drafted nature of the Bill meant it was difficult to put responsibility on the Secretary of State himself. Nevertheless, a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland was first promised in the 1998 Good Friday agreement, but progress towards its development has repeatedly stalled. The establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights at Stormont earlier this year represents a fresh attempt to move things forward. A Bill was an essential and fundamental safeguard of the Good Friday agreement, and it is simply wrong that it has not been developed. Action is needed now.

We believe the Secretary of State should take action by responding to the forthcoming report of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the House of Commons Committee on a Bill of Rights. The Secretary of State should request that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission provides advice on a Bill of Rights, further to its functions as set out in section 69(7) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The Secretary of State would subsequently lay before Parliament legislation giving effect to that advice. It is time to act.

On a civic forum, we believe that that was an important feature of decision making envisaged under the Good Friday agreement. Done well, it would give communities a strong say in decision making. It would give a voice in a deliberative forum to groups not often considered, and could vastly improve decision making in the process. The Good Friday agreement was about a new participative politics. The argument the Women’s Coalition put forward for a civic forum was as an advisory second chamber designed to give the trade union movement and businesses, as well as the community and the women’s movement, a place in political policy making. The prize of that expertise and knowledge is a durable solution that keeps communities on board, one that I hope will be considered going forward.

Finally, I will turn to the amendments in the name of the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) and my hon. Friends the Members for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). On new clause 1, on the appointment of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, it is clear that that was not envisaged by the Belfast-Good Friday agreement, but it is becoming an issue that must be dealt with through collective agreement. Polling shows, particularly among younger people, that identity is no longer binary. People identify as Irish, British and neither. It is far from inconceivable that the first and second-placed parties could come from neither Unionism nor nationalism. That raises important questions for the post-Belfast-Good Friday agreement and post-St Andrews power sharing mechanisms. I urge the Secretary of State not to put off serious consideration on this topic any longer. New clause 1, in the name of the hon. Member for North Down, raises questions that cannot be ignored and it is time for collective discussion.

On new clauses 2 and 4, we recognise the value and logic of a more consensual approach to electing the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, as envisaged by the Belfast-Good Friday agreement.

On new clause 3, in the name of the hon. Member for North Down and my hon. Friends the Members for Foyle and for Belfast South, the logic is again clear. The First Minister and Deputy First Minister have exactly the same powers: each have an equal say in the affairs of Northern Ireland and each have a fundamental right for their position to be respected. Equality was the essence and the spirit of the Good Friday agreement, and that is reflected in the joint powers held by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. New clause 3 reflects that, and it is one the Secretary of State should take away and look at seriously. Whichever tradition is elected to the position of First Minister and Deputy First Minister should be respected. Failure to do so simply undermines the principles of the Good Friday agreement. We hope the Minister will seriously consider the proposals.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Conor Burns)]

It is a pleasure to be back at the Dispatch Box. I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I might briefly beg the indulgence of the House. I was in my office on Sunday afternoon, having had a very busy period in my first weeks in the Northern Ireland Office. There were some letters on my desk that were addressed as personal. I opened one to find it was a letter congratulating me on returning to Government from our late colleague Sir David Amess. I would just like to place on record my tribute to David. I knew him well. We served together on the all-party parliamentary group on the Holy See and had very many enjoyable trips to Rome. He had an irrepressible and irreverent sense of humour, and one was always cheered up by being in David’s company.

This has been a fascinating debate. It has been a debate, if I may say so, of two parts: the debate that makes reference to what is actually on the Order Paper and the amendments that have been tabled; and then there was the majority of the debate, which bore very little relationship to what is on the Order Paper or the amendments before the House. I will, in endeavouring to respond to various points, try to stick to the amendments and the Order Paper.

The Bill is deliberately limited in its scope. It is designed to implement the agreements reached under New Decade, New Approach. I make this point to all hon. Members who sit for Northern Ireland constituencies. Critically, those agreements were entered into by the parties in Northern Ireland. That is why we deliberately limited what we seek to do here. We are seeking to implement those commitments. We do not think it is the role of Her Majesty’s Government to innovate in this space when future changes, were they to be made, should be driven by the parties in Northern Ireland.

[Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I understand entirely the point the Minister makes, but there have been occasions when the Government—both Governments, in fact—have given commitments. One is on an Irish language Act, or legislating for Irish language provisions and the rest of the cultural package. The Government said that they would do that by the end of October if legislation or agreement was not reached in Stormont. A spokesman for the Government reiterated that commitment at the start of this month. Can the Minister tell us when he is going to bring that legislative package forward? If he cannot tell us that today, can he at least give an assurance that the Government will hold to their word, and are still committed to legislating for Irish language and other cultural provisions?

[Conor Burns]

What I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that the Government have no intention of introducing an Irish language Act. We will bring forward a cultural package in which Irish language will play a part, but he knows as well as I do that language in Northern Ireland is often analysed very carefully, so we are not proposing such an Act. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will have more to say on that in due course.

I read carefully the Committee stage and evidence sessions of the Bill to familiarise myself with the content before this debate. I place on record my appreciation for my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who had a very clear grasp of matters.

In essence, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) summed up the Bill in his intervention on the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry). This Bill implements the commitments in New Decade, New Approach; it does no more and no less. My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) of course oversaw the negotiations that gave rise to that document. This Bill delivers on our commitments and seeks to put the institutions into a more sustainable format, should we ever—as we hope we do not—reach a position where the institutions again become vulnerable.

The hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) hit the nail on the head: what the people in Northern Ireland want us to focus on is the national health service and deprivation. That was certainly the message I got when I visited the Caw/Nelson Drive Community Action Group in his constituency and the Greater Shantallow Area Partnership. They were talking to me not about the intricacies of governance in Northern Ireland, but about their lives in their community, and how the Executive and the UK Government could make their lives better. That should absolutely be our focus.

There was an outbreak of consensus between the hon. Member for Foyle and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I had a very enjoyable visit to the latter’s constituency. I met the Portavogie fishermen, who were powerful advocates for what needs to happen to support the fishing sector in Northern Ireland, and I enjoyed my visit to Castle Gardens primary school near the Bowtown estate. The hon. Gentleman, too, talked about health and education. Those are the priorities, and hopefully the stabilising measures we are bringing forward today will ensure that the Executive remains functioning and operational and can get on with those important matters within the devolved space—in particular, the national health service in Northern Ireland, which is under great stress indeed.

Another axis developed during the debate between my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). It is a rare thing that they find common ground and consensus. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset talked about the six months, and I would say to him that six months is a limit, not a target. We are trying to create maximum space, but we would hope that the Northern Irish parties would want to move quickly.

My hon. Friend suggested that perhaps the agreements were past their sell-by date. It is for the parties in Northern Ireland, if they want to innovate in that space, to get together and talk, but we are very clear that our job is to implement, to arbitrate and to oversee the agreements as they stand. Some of the amendments concerning the titles of First Minister and Deputy First Minister and some of the points made about the changing demographics within Northern Ireland may be things that the parties in Northern Ireland will want to come together to address, but we do not believe it is our role to be forcing that change on the parties in Northern Ireland within the devolved space without their consent.

Other parts of the Bill come, of course, from the requests of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, particularly the revisions around the ministerial code. We have taken what they have said and sought to put it into the Bill. We have also sought to return the petition of concern to the purpose for which it was originally intended and to make it more functional.

This is a straightforward and sensible set of proposals, aimed, as I said, at putting the governance system in Northern Ireland on to a more stable footing, to recognise some of the concerns that have been put to us, to honour the commitments that Her Majesty’s Government entered into in New Decade, New Approach. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Stephen Farry]

I will make some brief comments in closing the debate. First, I thank everyone who took part and presented their views. It was a largely good-natured debate. I thank in particular those on both Front Benches, including on the Government Front Bench, for their comments in that regard.

There is, shall we say, a certain tension between those who want to faithfully implement New Decade, New Approach—I include myself in that category—and those who acknowledge that we are almost two years on from that point, a lot of politics has happened and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. We must be mindful of the next set of crises that are coming; sadly, this is Northern Ireland, and there is always a crisis around the corner, so we must be mindful to anticipate that in a reasonable way and act ahead of time, for once, rather than having to do so after the crisis emerges.