Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

I thank the Government for putting the Bill out to pre-legislative scrutiny. Analysing it was an interesting task for the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. I thank the Secretary of State and Minister of State for taking on board a number of our recommendations and for considering the other points that we made. I thank all members of the Committee, many of whom are present in the Chamber, for their hard work and for the benefit of their experience, particularly of those who are from Northern Ireland.

I do not want to single out one political party that gave evidence to the Committee, but it demonstrates the considerable extent to which things have moved on in Northern Ireland that the formal evidence session that we held in Belfast with Sinn Fein was, as I understand it, the first time that that political party had given public evidence to a Committee of the House of Commons. I think that is a significant step forward. I thank all the witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee in Belfast and in Westminster. As those on the Front Benches have said, things in Northern Ireland have moved on enormously.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

The hon. Gentleman rightly alludes to progress, with members of Sinn Fein giving evidence to the Committee. Does he agree that that is a good and significant step forward, and certainly beats impeding police officers in the course of their duty in Belfast at the weekend during an Orange Order parade?

[Mr Robertson]

I agree entirely. It is sometimes a case of two steps forward and one step back. I was in Belfast this morning and the newspapers were full of that incident in which a person was injured. Two weeks ago, members of the Committee visited Washington and spoke to a number of people. There was an overwhelming feeling that much had been sorted out in Northern Ireland, but the incident at the weekend, flag protests and the murder of Mr David Black last November do nothing to attract investment. They deter investment, and that is a tragedy. I hope we can move forward more smoothly.

We made a great deal of progress in attracting Sinn Fein to give evidence to the Committee. I would go further and say, as we did at the time, that it is time that members of that party took their seats in this Parliament so that they can come and make their case here. They claim they do the job anyway, but they do not. They do a job, but they do not do the job of parliamentarians, even though they accept the expenses and allowances that go with it. We ought to be able to move forward a little more in that respect.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman shares the concern of many of us on these Benches and in the Province that the onus is on elected representatives not only to obey the law, but to do so in public. What we saw at the weekend was a travesty of the law: two elected representatives, one of whom sits on the policing board, clearly flouted the law. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that there is an onus on elected representatives from Sinn Fein to be more observant of the law?

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[Mr Robertson]

Everybody has to observe the law. The law cannot be applied differently to different people, regardless of who they purport to represent, so I do not disagree with a word the hon. Gentleman has said.

We are in a better place than we were. As the Secretary of State said, it is a welcome change to be considering legislation relating to Northern Ireland that is not a desperately urgent response to a terrible incident. On at least a couple of occasions while I have been a Member, the House has been recalled during the recess to consider such a matter urgently. It is right to move things forward in a more measured way if possible. The Committee looked at the Bill in great detail and supports much of what it proposes. I will discuss three or four issues in my speech, which will be fairly brief.

On donations, the Committee welcomes the move towards normalisation. The objective has to be to move Northern Ireland towards being a normal society and a normal democracy. We have some way to go, but we are slowly getting there. We felt that we ought to move quickly from October 2014 to full publication of who has made donations. We understand that there is a security issue. A number of witnesses and members of the Committee said that there is a risk for people who stand for Parliament, Assembly or council; for those who support them by delivering leaflets, canvassing or putting up posters; and for those who sign nomination papers. The question was whether donating money constitutes a different risk. We were not persuaded that it does, so we want to see greater progress on the publication of donations.

We said, though, that those decisions had to be taken in the light of the security situation. We wanted the Bill to state that the Secretary of State should consult the respective security services before taking such a decision, but she has decided not to include that. I mention that because although we recognise that there are problems, in principle we want to move towards a more normal politics in Northern Ireland in which there is less suspicion, and if everything is out in the open, surely that is a better way forward than the way we have been going so far. We also insisted, however, that anyone or any organisation that made donations prior to the change or notification that those donations would become public should remain anonymous, because when they gave those donations, they depended on that anonymity.

We support the ending of dual mandates. In fact, we would go further, as has been alluded to already. We think that Members of the Assembly should not also be Members of the House of Lords, the European Parliament or the Senate in the Republic of Ireland. I understand fully the points made by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson), who has left the Chamber momentarily, about how important it was at the time for experienced politicians to take the peace process forward in Northern Ireland—that was certainly essential —but we have moved on. Before the Assembly was restarted, many decisions about Northern Ireland were taken upstairs in Committee by statutory instrument, which was a very unsatisfactory way of governing Northern Ireland.

As Conservative Front-Bench spokesperson, I attended many of those sessions. The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) was often the Minister. Because many Northern Ireland Members had the additional burden of advancing the peace process in their constituencies, many were the times when, through no fault of their own, not a single one of them could attend, and these were Committees deciding very important things for Northern Ireland. It was very unsatisfactory, but we have moved on, and people cannot be in two places at once. There is also the potential for a conflict of interest if somebody sits on two legislative bodies. We would have gone further than the Government, and we would also apply the same rules to Scotland and Wales, although I think that Wales is moving in that direction anyway.

The Select Committee welcomed the changes to the appointment and tenure of the Justice Minister—we feel that the Ministry should be more secure—and the fact that taking the position will count against the number of Ministries a party can hold, but we are a little concerned about what will happen if agreement cannot be reached. We urge the Government to seek a way forward when that happens. Could the Justice Minister be appointed another way without bringing everything down? The appointment of the Justice Minister under a d’Hondt system might be possible, although I understand the sensitivities around that. Nevertheless, we identified that as a potential problem; it has not happened, and I hope it never will, but there is a potential problem.

We disagreed with the Government over delaying the next Assembly elections to 2016. We think that people in Northern Ireland are perfectly capable of voting in two or even three elections, where necessary, and who is to say that the general election will be held in May 2015? We have legislated for it—although I voted against it—but who is to say that the coalition will last that long? It might do, but who is to say that elections will come in neat five-year terms after that? It might be the case, but it might not, so we did not see the need to change that arrangement, although we accepted that it was not necessarily the main part of the Bill.

We held many discussions about government and opposition, and a number of witnesses said that they wanted to see an opposition developing in Northern Ireland. I think I am representing the Committee’s views accurately here, but it is certainly my own view that we have to allow the politicians and the people of Northern Ireland to come forward with their own proposals and solutions to the situation. The Assembly was created in the way it was for a reason, and we all know what that reason was. We must bear in mind the Good Friday agreement requirements for a shared future, and it is difficult to come up with a solution to the problem. We recognise that there is an issue, but we feel that the solution ought to be home grown and brought to this House in the form of a proposal.

We hold a similar view on the size of the Assembly. This is not so much about the fact that 108 Assembly Members represent 1.8 million people; it is more about the fact that there are six Members of the Assembly for every Westminster constituency. Again, we know why that was done—it made the maths easier at the time—but things can move on. We should not throw away the principles of the Belfast agreement, but I do not see why we cannot, with consent, move forward on certain aspects of it.

That is a collection of some of the Select Committee’s thoughts. I should like to thank all the members of the Committee for their work and for their proposals, and to thank the Government for listening to what we have had to say. I wish the Bill well.

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[Mr Dodds]

I am grateful for that undertaking. In Committee, we may return to the question of how the Bill might reflect it more clearly.

Let me now turn to the issue of donations made by individuals and bodies outside the United Kingdom. The Select Committee made the welcome recommendation that the loophole represented by an anomaly, or special provision, should be closed. We will, of course, examine the issue in more detail during the Bill’s Committee stage.

Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, political parties registered in Great Britain are permitted to accept donations only from UK residents and bodies. The Act extends to parties in Northern Ireland, but parties registered there may accept donations from citizens and bodies in the Irish Republic. Why was the Act brought into being? It was brought into being so that the public—the people who send us to this place—could have some degree of certainty that those who gave money to political parties had a stake in this country, and in affairs of state here. They did not want political parties to be flooded with money from people in the United States, Europe and elsewhere who had interests in the making of certain decisions, but who did not vote here, represent anyone here, or have any stake in this country other than, for instance, a commercial stake. The Act was introduced for very good reasons, yet an exception was made in the case of Northern Ireland.

Individuals and bodies in the Republic of Ireland can donate to parties in Northern Ireland in a way that contravenes the law of that country. Worse still, however, owing to our inability to regulate donations of this kind, those individuals and bodies can be used as a front for donations from other foreign or overseas countries. The Select Committee’s recognition of that problem led it rightly to recommend that the anomaly be removed.

Here we all are, saying that Northern Ireland should be subject to the same level of transparency in respect of donations and identity as every other part of the United Kingdom. We ask “Why should Northern Ireland be any different?” But why should Northern Ireland be any different when it comes to who can donate to political parties? There is no reason at all why it should. I hope that, as we consider the Bill further in the House and in Committee, Members and, in particular, the Government will look afresh at the issue. If the Government fail to close this loophole, they may rightly stand accused of giving preferential treatment to certain political parties for political reasons.

Whatever the causes for the arguments of the past, those reasons certainly do not exist today. There should be a level playing field for all political parties in Northern Ireland. There should be the same rules for all of them, and there should be the same benefits, if possible, in terms of donations for all political parties. This anomaly was introduced for one reason: to allow Sinn Fein, and other nationalists, to get money from America, channelled into Northern Ireland via the Irish Republic. That is why this was implemented. That is the reason it was allowed, and if it is allowed to continue, that will be an indictment of this House, particularly at a time when people are so concerned about the funding of political parties.

We support the provision to extend the term of the Assembly to 2016. We disagree with the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), on that point, but not because we think people in Northern Ireland will not be able to understand voting in different elections on the same day. Northern Ireland’s citizens have a long and admirable track record of being able not only to vote in different elections on the same day, but to use different electoral systems, and to do so very successfully. The terrible outcome in Scotland recently, when there was a dual election that led to thousands of spoiled ballot papers, has never happened to the same degree in Northern Ireland.

We wanted the extension of the Northern Ireland Assembly term because it has been extended in Scotland and in Wales. In both those jurisdictions, there is now a five-year fixed term. I welcome the fact that today, in this Bill, Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, is being treated like Scotland, Wales and the other parts of the United Kingdom—and quite right too, as there is no logic whatever in saying we should be treated differently. It means that, as the Secretary of State has said, when there is an Assembly election, Assembly issues will be to the fore, and when there is a Westminster election, the issues affecting this House and Westminster representation will be debated, and there will be no confusion of the two sets of issues. That is very important.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

There are, of course, two issues here: one is whether this particular Assembly term should be extended, and then whether we should move to five-year terms. The right hon. Gentleman puts a logical case for having five-year terms, but surely the Assembly did not need to be extended in this term. I think that was probably the more important point we were making.

[Mr Dodds]

Actually, the reason for that is the fact that, given the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2012, we will have a clash in May 2015. That is what makes it imperative that action is taken in this Parliament. The dates of the Scottish parliamentary and Welsh Assembly elections were moved for precisely that reason. If we do not take action, in two years’ time there will be elections on the same day for Parliament and in Northern Ireland. That is why this measure has been brought forward.