Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Lord Bew Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I first thank the Minister for giving us the statement today. I know how reluctant he was to do that, and he has done the best that can be done with what is essentially an impossible and depressing task. My remarks are designed to help ensure that a year from now he does not have to do it again, and I hope that he will accept them in that context, and that spirit.

The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, mentioned the retirement of David Ford. May I say how strongly I echo those remarks? I, and other Members of your Lordships’ House who sit on the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, will greatly miss him. I am glad that the noble Baroness paid him that tribute, because she was absolutely right. The devolution of policing and justice was a difficult, complex, dangerous task, and he played a major role in getting it right.

I support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, about health, and I add one footnote, which is a comment on devolution as well as on the period of direct rule. Everybody in the United Kingdom knows that we are told that we have such major problems with our health service because of our ageing population. But that does not apply in Northern Ireland. Ours is a relatively youthful population, so there is a question mark over why the figures are as dire as the noble Lord said—and they are dire. This is as difficult and sensitive an issue as the noble Lord said, and the need for a policy is pressing. His analogy with how welfare reform was handled not long ago was interesting and powerful.

As is openly stated in paragraph 43 of the helpful Explanatory Notes to the Bill, we are meeting on the wilder shores of the Sewel principle. This has been made an even more difficult moment by the recent judgment of the judiciary in the Buick case, which basically means that, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has just said, civil servants can no longer make decisions. The judgment was provoked by a relatively small case involving an incinerator in County Antrim, but the implications are massive.

On 9 July in the other place the Secretary of State, when questioned by Lady Hermon, the Member for North Down, seemed to be saying that the Government were considering an appeal—or at least that they were not ruling one out—in the context of that ruling. It is now 18 July, and I have not heard that the Government have changed their mind on that; as I understand it, it is still under consideration. I tried to check with the Northern Ireland Office today. I strongly support the case for an appeal. I do not mean this as a criticism of the Northern Ireland judiciary. I have sometimes heard some dry and droll comments in this House about that judiciary, but I do not say this for that reason. I just think that the principle is so important. If we are stuck with a period of direct rule, although it is a bad thing in principle for civil servants to make decisions, it is simply not practical for a modern Government to be in a place in which some basic moves and decisions cannot be made. I know there are issues of expense, but I hope that the consideration that is apparently still going on in the NIO leads to another appeal because it is a ridiculous place for us all to be in.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, also mentioned Brexit. It is the big problem about the restoration of devolution, which we all wish to see. Everybody knows there are a number of other issues. In recent times, the Irish language Act has possibly been the most difficult, but there is also equal marriage, abortion law reform, legacy issues and, in my opinion, libel law reform. They could technically all be dealt with by this House at this time. It would be better if they were dealt with locally as a means of moving this forward, but difficult as all those issues are, the thing that is really causing the blockage is the mood of politics as it is affected by Brexit. It has been polarising in Northern Ireland, not so much, as some speculate, because the unionist middle classes have suddenly decided that they would rather be in the European Union and in Ireland, but the stunning rise in the DUP vote in some of the most prosperous areas of Northern Ireland in the general election makes one realise that there has not been a great mental shift among that class of people, but that Brexit has inflamed and aggravated large sections of even the moderate Catholic and nationalist community. That creates an opportunity for Sinn Féin and therefore it is quite likely that we will not see a return to devolution until this question is moved to a safer place.

I want to put it on record to see whether the Minister agrees that the Chequers White Paper has many problems. People hate it and love it from different angles, but I do not want to engage in that line of debate. I simply want to make the point that the section on Ireland has been taken by many serious commentators north and south, unionist and nationalist, as moving the question of the Irish border towards a saner and better place. Until that is done, we are unlikely to get progress in the talks. I really hope I am wrong, but it is a merit of that paper that many people of different views in Dublin and Belfast seem to be saying that it is going to make handling the Northern Ireland border easier. I say that as somebody who believes that it is a serious question but that it has been exaggerated.

I groaned when I had to listen to the Irish Foreign Minister saying on “The Andrew Marr Show” a few weeks ago that there could be no checks on the island of Ireland. Anybody who knows anything about travelling in Ireland knows that at this moment, before Brexit, there are significant checks on the Irish side of the border. I am quite certain that many millions of people listening to Marr simply did not realise how inflated that rhetoric was. I can see that the debate around the border has been inflated, but that does not mean it is not a real problem. A lot of people previously alarmed by it believe that the proposals in the White Paper help shift us towards a better, safer place in terms of the Irish debate on the border. This may be helpful. I will be interested in the Minister’s views.

Finally, the Government have decided, quite correctly, to hold a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference with the Irish Government later this month. It is in the Good Friday agreement, and for that reason, among others, this meeting should be held. It is perfectly clear—I will be interested in the Minister’s views—that fundamentally in the agreement that body is designed to focus on east-west issues rather than on the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. Let me remind the House, as this document does with its talk of £8 billion or £9 billion, that without the UK subvention, which is probably somewhat more than that, Northern Ireland just does not function. It is paid by the United Kingdom taxpayer, not by taxpayers of any other country. It is true that the Irish Republic could take up this slack but, as Irish papers have said in recent days, that would require paying no pensions to anybody in the island of Ireland, and no Irish Government are going to decide to take up the slack from the UK taxpayer and not pay any pensions to anybody in the island of Ireland. For economic reasons alone, it is appropriate that the focus of this meeting should primarily be on east-west grounds. That would be entirely right and within the context of the Good Friday agreement.