Northern Ireland Executive

Emma Little Pengelly Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

I share the frustration on both sides about this issue. We need to be extremely careful. It may be clear to one person on one side of the House, or to another person on the other side, that a particular Department in the Northern Ireland civil service is acting to the full extent of its powers or perhaps drawing back a little further from using those full powers, but the point is that at some stage, that becomes a political judgment rather than a professional civil service judgment. When it becomes a political judgment, the answer at that point, of course—as many people on both sides of the debate have rightly said so far this evening—is for there to be an Executive at Stormont and for the devolved Assembly to come back into play. Ultimately, until that happens, the judgment of the civil servants has to be just that—within the scope of the Act. It is very hard for politicians to say that this civil servant is doing a good job and that civil servant is doing a bad job unless we get the politicians in place in Stormont who have the natural legal locus and the democratic mandate to do so.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

Although the Minister has stated that this could become a political judgment in terms of civil servants, the reality is that the law is there. There are parameters around the exercise of the powers given within that legislation. We would like to see consistency in the discretion that each of the permanent secretaries or senior civil servants has. I asked the Secretary of State on a previous occasion to consider looking at guidance being issued to permanent secretaries to get that type of consistency. What all of us are finding at the moment is that there is a disparity in the way that permanent secretaries and civil servants are operating the powers that they have been given objectively in the Act.

[John Penrose]

I accept that there will be different views about whether some Departments are using those powers to their full extent and others are not. To coin the phrase used by the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who spoke for the Labour party, we are being asked to tread down a primrose path in saying that this particular part of the Northern Ireland civil service is using those powers to its full extent and this one is not. Ultimately, this has to be something that is decided, led and ultimately arbitrated by the devolved Assembly and devolved Ministers. All of us feel this frustration, but it is becoming a rather circular argument if we say that we should be trying to push them one way or the other. We have to set those rules, but ultimately, if people are not happy with the way that they are being applied, provided that they are being used within the rules of the law that we have set in the EFEF Act it is then up to the Northern Ireland Assembly. I am afraid that it is as fundamental, as simple and as difficult a truth as that. The only answer is for the Northern Ireland Assembly to come back.