Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, first I say a word of thanks to the Minister for his explication of things at the start of this Second Reading. I also offer him an element of sympathy: there are many people looking in from outside who, regarding his carriage of the Second Reading of the Scotland Bill for some seven hours and his then being condemned to the Irish legislation, would properly define that as cruel and unusual punishment. We should be informed by the Chief Whip what on earth the poor Minister has done to deserve this. We will, however, proceed with what is of course a matter of great seriousness and concern.

The Minister said some things about the speed with which all the stages of the Bill are—we hope—being carried through the House this evening and the context in which it is being brought here. I am sure all parliamentarians would like more time and consideration to deal with this matter, but we have to reflect that this time last year we were coming up to the Stormont House agreement. At that stage, we were not at all sure that there would be an agreement. It was, apparently, signed off before Christmas but it all began to unravel in the early part of the new year, after a Sinn Fein ard fheis. All of us can wholly understand the Government’s concern to make sure that this legislation gets through and is put in place before any similar mishap can occur.

Unfortunately, we might say that it is unusual for legislation in regard to Northern Ireland—and particularly in regard to the peace process—to be carried through in such an urgent fashion, but I am afraid that is not the history of things. It has regularly been the case that unusual arrangements have had to be made for the timing or speed of Northern Ireland legislation. Your Lordships’ House, and the other place too, has often felt that the legislation came somewhat pre-cooked, in terms of agreements reached with the Northern Ireland parties. That is not an entirely satisfactory situation, because they themselves do not always consider the consequences of their actions, and inaction, terribly well. It is therefore important that others can help them on it.

If we take, for example, the so-called A Fresh Start agreement of which this piece of legislation is a part, in truth it is much less satisfactory, appropriate and complete than the Stormont House agreement a year ago. In almost all aspects it is less satisfactory. The First Minister and Deputy First Minister, in their introduction to A Fresh Start, talk about it being,

“a far-reaching and comprehensive framework”.

The framework bit is right, but it is hard to be persuaded that it is “far-reaching and comprehensive”, since it almost completely excludes any substantial dealing with the past, and things such as flags, parades and strategies to deal with paramilitarism are very much a framework rather than evidenced delivery.

In fact, one has the sense, not just in this agreement but in the way in which the Assembly and Executive have operated, that while there may be a commitment to the institutional architecture of power-sharing there does not seem to be much commitment to the relational sharing of power, which is actually what the whole thing was about. In many ways we find this legislation coming before us as an admission of failure.

It is also a little puzzling why it has taken so long to get here. The noble Lord will know that, when the issue arose at the start, I advised him and his right honourable friend in the other place that the best solution was to take the matter back to Westminster. Why did I say that? First, I did not believe that Sinn Fein would bring down the whole edifice of devolution on the basis of this being taken back to Westminster. It would know that, if it was taken back to Westminster because devolution had collapsed, the Government would simply implement the matter in full, so it would have saved nothing but lost all the benefits of the devolved Administration and Assembly. I did not believe it was going to do that.

Secondly, all through the period of the Assembly, right from early times, unionists were coming to me with a great deal of frustration about legislation in this area. They would say, and the noble Lord has indicated this, “We are expected to deal with this so-called devolved matter, but we know perfectly well we have no real freedom in what we do because maintaining parity with the rest of the United Kingdom is critical”. Indeed, those who have a long memory—and in Northern Ireland quite a few people do—recall that the first Stormont Parliament was unable to sustain itself financially, unable to use the devolved powers it had to sustain itself, and came to the UK Government and said, “Please take these matters back from us because we cannot survive financially”. Unionists frequently said to me, “It would be far better for the matter to be taken back, because we debate things and have to agree to things we do not like and do not agree with, because we have no power to make any difference”. I never thought there would be an enormous problem in taking this back, and it would have been better if it could have been taken back at an earlier stage when there could have been proper debate and discussion and fewer financial problems created for the Northern Ireland Assembly.

While this comes to us, albeit belatedly and with not very much time, many other issues are not coming to us at all. Perhaps the most notable and distressing is the whole question of the legacy of the past and the impact that failure to reach agreement on this has had on victims. On Monday in Belfast, I spoke at a conference, which continued for a couple of days, looking at post-traumatic stress disorder and the impact on individuals and groups of people in the community because of the Troubles in the past. There was a great sense of anger, from victims and from those working with them and dealing with them, that any agreements that they thought had been reached a year ago seemed to have fallen to pieces. Although both Her Majesty’s Government and the Irish Government, in their comments in the foreword to A Fresh Start, point out that they are going to continue to discuss and try to reach understandings and agreements, there is a sense of betrayal on the part of victims and people who have worked with them that we are now back further than ever.

Can the Minister indicate whether he seriously believes that progress is going to be made on this, or is it the case that those outside the political process—outside the Government, the Assembly and the Executive—are going to have to find a way of taking responsibility for addressing these issues? Repeatedly, there has been disappointment, and there does not really seem to be much evidence on the hard issues that created the failure that much progress is going to be made over the next number of months.

As the Minister will probably realise, I also look with some scepticism at the monitoring device that is being proposed. I expressed some scepticism about the one that was proposed on the last occasion when we addressed this matter in the House, and I have every reason to believe that I was right, because it produced more problems than it resolved. It is not clear to me how what is proposed in the terms of reference for the upcoming monitoring commission will resolve any problems. It has much less power than the Independent Monitoring Commission, on which I sat. It has power only to produce a few proposals for the Executive, which will then fall into disagreement about how they should be implemented. That does not seem a satisfactory arrangement at all.

There is financial support, which one is glad to see. However, problems remain for the Police Service of Northern Ireland in dealing with the many issues of the past. Without sufficient resources, dealing with the legacy of the past will take away from the normal policing of the here and now.

Isolating this Bill from the rest of the issues, at best we will get it through quickly so that these matters can be addressed for the people of Northern Ireland. I hope that, frankly, the matter will continue to be dealt with in this Parliament. I know that there is a sunset clause that will end this legislation in 2016, but I see very little likelihood that there will be agreement by the parties to accept the real responsibility, which ought to be theirs, of dealing with social security matters. We may well have to deal with these things in the future but, if that is the only cost of reaching agreement and continuing with devolution, frankly, it will be a small price to pay.

Although the noble Lord talked about the legislative load that would come to us if devolution were to collapse, that is the least important thing. If devolution were to collapse, it would mean that the whole peace process collapsed, and the implications of that would be absolutely enormous. If the cost of keeping the show on the road is that we continue to address welfare questions through a follow-up to this legislation, I say to the noble Lord that it will be a small price to pay for the continuation of the other, more important parts. However, if the cost is a refusal to address the needs of the victims and the legacy of the past, that will gnaw away at devolution and at the credibility of the devolved institutions.