Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare]

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. We have sought to be equal across the piece. On a personal note, I have some considerable sympathy with those MLAs who have made representations to me over these past eight, nine or 10 hours. They say, “We want to be there. We want to be addressing the issues of health, housing, transport, infrastructure, encouraging inward investment, growing the economy, and making sure that the prosperity dividend of the peace process is felt across the communities of Northern Ireland. Why should we be held up from doing so because of one party?” Indeed, the artist, Sara O’Neill, sent me a message this morning to say that, as the protocol—the principal, legitimate concern of the DUP—is reserved to this place, and nothing to do with Stormont, would it not make more sense for the DUP to boycott Westminster and not Stormont?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

I will not give way, because I want to be quick.

That is the principle underlying these amendments. I hope the Secretary of State will use his powers and use them speedily, because a message must be sent to the taxpayers of Northern Ireland that, if no one else is on their side, this place is.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I rise to speak to new clause 6 in my name and that of the shadow Secretary of State. I will not repeat too much of what was said on Second Reading; the Labour party has accepted the need for this legislation and, as its measures are so time limited, we do not think it needs significant changes. The Government have been clear that they have used previous Executive Formation Acts as the basis for this Bill. Our probing amendment has taken the same approach and is based on a section the Government put into the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019.

New clause 6 would simply require the Secretary of State to publish a report explaining what progress has been made towards the formation of an Executive in Northern Ireland if the deadlines in the Bill are passed without one being formed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) has set out, we need to hear from the Government how they will use the extra time this Bill gives them.

During the oral statement at the beginning of this month, the Secretary of State made several commitments at the Dispatch Box in response to Labour suggestions. We are really happy to work constructively with the Government on how we approach Northern Ireland. He said he would be happy to convene multi-party talks and request that the Foreign Secretary brief the Northern Ireland parties on protocol negotiations. He will know that those would be very constructive steps, but it is not clear if they have been taken yet.

As these debates have shown, there is a wealth of history to learn from on how the Government can move things forward. In the other place, my good friend Lord Murphy, who was very involved in the peace process, had this advice for the Government:

“The one thing I would stress in what I ask the Minister is that the negotiations themselves should be very different from what has occurred over recent months. First, there should be a proper process and plan, and there should be a timetable and a structure. There has been ad hocery, if you like, over recent months”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 November 2022; Vol. 825, c. 760.]

The deadlines in this Bill mean there is no more room for ad hocery. In 2019, when there was no Executive, the Government convened more than 150 meetings in a nine-week period. Similar ambition is needed now, and the House must be kept updated.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I had not intended to speak, but I really cannot allow the comments made by the Chair of the Select Committee to go without challenge. For someone who has chaired a Committee specifically on Northern Ireland for a number of years to state to this House that the protocol has nothing to do with the Northern Ireland Assembly is frankly amazing. The Northern Ireland Executive are responsible for implementing key elements of the protocol. The Assembly has a legislative role in relation to elements of the protocol and a four-year duty to decide whether the provisions of the protocol are to continue or not. For someone who ought to know better to suggest that the Assembly has nothing to do with the protocol is amazing.

[Simon Hoare]

I said the Assembly had nothing to do with the negotiation of the protocol. That is reserved to Ministers in this place. On the implementation, of course, the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but the negotiations are reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. That is the point I made; it was not about the implementation.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The implementation is the problem. The negotiation, hopefully, will deliver the solution. Therefore, we cannot divorce the Assembly from the impact the protocol is having, and it is simply unrealistic to do so.

[Sammy Wilson]

It is surprising that the Chair of the Select Committee has so little knowledge of something that we would expect him to be able to talk about with some degree of clarity. Does my right hon. Friend accept that it would be totally unreasonable to ask Unionists—who are opposed to the protocol and who believe it damages the constitution and their position in United Kingdom and hurts the economic standing of every citizen in Northern Ireland—to implement the thing to which they are so opposed?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Not only would that be unreasonable, but those Assembly Members were elected on a mandate not to do so.

[Claire Hanna]

Does that mandate extend to the former Minister at the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs who, while government was being withheld from people, was writing to UK Government Ministers asking for portions of the protocol to be retained, to benefit financially farmers such as himself?

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[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Actually, that is not what the former DAERA Minister said. He recognised that the protocol is not working and is harming agriculture. Our farmers cannot bring seed potatoes from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, and there are many other restrictions on the movement of livestock and so on. The point he was making was that there should be no restriction on state aid support for farmers in Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol Bill—not as a result of the protocol.

We can go around in circles on all this. We can train-spot on MLA pay all day long, but the reality is that we are missing the train coming down the track. And the train coming down the track is the lack of consensus enabling the political institutions to function properly. That is what we need to resolve. The Bill allows more time for the solution to be found, and that is what we need to happen. We need the solution.

[Stephen Farry]

Members will be pleased to know that I will be extremely brief. I will touch on a few points.

First, I will not repeat the arguments for amendment 10 given that I mentioned them on Second Reading, but I invite the Secretary of State or the Minister to respond to the substance of it when they wind up. I hope they will reflect on what I and the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) have said about not boxing themselves in for what lies ahead.

Beyond that, I stress that there is a need for some degree of ad hoc scrutiny in what happens over the coming weeks and months. With respect to my DUP colleagues, amendment 13, taken literally, is somewhat onerous, but there is also an elephant in the room: our best means to scrutinise decision making in Northern Ireland is to have a fully functioning Assembly.