Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Lord Bew Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 7th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I support this Second Reading and thank the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Caine—for his careful and detailed introduction. He delivered it with such calmness of tone that, once or twice, I wanted to say something that I am sure he is well aware of: that the crisis in the public finances in Northern Ireland is acute. I fully respect his observation that the Government intend to look after education and health in particular but, at the moment, the shortfalls look remarkable in those areas, and we may have to look at other ways of raising funds. But that explanation of how we have got here was totally fair.

We have two regret amendments. Although that of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, does not directly do so, it implicitly follows a line of argument that has been increasingly common in the last few weeks: that the behaviour of the DUP means that we should call into question the whole structure of the Good Friday agreement. That is exceptionally dangerous, and I am very glad that Rory Montgomery—one of the key Dublin officials at the time of the negotiation of the agreement, and recently its lead official in negotiations with Europe—has pointed out that this would be extremely dangerous and risky. The DUP has a mandate for its action, which is legitimate within the terms of the Good Friday agreement and the way it operates. This is very frustrating, and I fully respect the frustration with it of the noble Lord, Lord Hain—but it is legitimate. Any attempt to move away from the agreement would be remarkably destabilising.

I very much agree with the argument of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, that the EU has to come to terms with its commitments to maintain the Good Friday agreement. In recent days, the EU has acknowledged that there were unforeseen consequences. The big and obvious elephant in the room in that respect is that the institutions of devolution and the Good Friday agreement are down. As Rory Montgomery said, a particularly narrow Irish version of the Good Friday agreement was unfortunately internalised by the EU in the early stage of these negotiations, and in some ways we are still trying to unpeel all that.

The Bill depends on a functioning democratic deficit, if I can put it like that. This is very hard for the departments and the Permanent Secretaries in Northern Irish departments: they have been drawn into making decisions that they should not have to make, especially in very difficult circumstances—there is no doubt about that or that you can just about get away with it in the short term. But it is a functioning democratic deficit. I absolutely accept that the EU has to come to terms with the democratic deficit, and increasingly the signs are that people now acknowledge this in a way that they did not when, for example, the first iteration of the withdrawal agreement—the Theresa May document —made no mention of the Northern Ireland Assembly at all. Now the question changes: the Northern Ireland Assembly must be part of the resolution of this democratic deficit question, but it is very difficult to do this. But at least it is acknowledged on all sides that, in this area, something has to be attempted that was not even attempted in the first phase of this negotiation.

In that sense, the democratic deficit cuts both ways. There is a point at which there will have to be consideration. It is absolutely true that there is democratic deficit regarding the function of the protocol at present in Northern Ireland, but it is also true—and it probably cuts into more serious areas of public life for ordinary individuals—that there is a democratic deficit as regards how the Assembly is not operating. That is a political choice of the DUP, and what it has attempted to do so far is entirely legitimate within the framework of the Good Friday agreement. None the less, the democratic deficit question cuts two ways, and that is a responsibility of moderate politicians; we can no longer throw that question away.

Briefly, in defence of the Permanent Secretaries, the red and green scheme was not the EU’s idea—as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, suggested in his important speech, most of which I agreed with—but came from the Northern Ireland Permanent Secretaries. The idea of the red and green lanes, if we get them back, was originally broached in 2017 from the higher reaches of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Clever as its members are, they should not be asked to make decisions which should be made by the Assembly—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is right on that point. It will not be magical, and everything that has been said tonight about the inadequacies of the Assembly’s previous functioning is true—I say that while looking at four former Ministers of the Assembly. None the less, we ought to have a proper, functioning and democratic Assembly. To get that, we need the United Kingdom Government to live up to their commitment under the Good Friday agreement, the very beginning of the international agreements, to deliver equality of esteem, which they have done for the nationalist community with the recent Irish language legislation in this House. However, the long-term aspirations of the unionist community on the protocol also require a response from the United Kingdom Government.