Report Pursuant to Sections 3(1), 3(6), 3(7), 3(8), 3(9) and 3(10) the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that we all delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, has got the message and we hope to see the results of this in due course.

I add my brief congratulations to my noble friend Lord Caine for a wise, perceptive and thoughtful speech, indicative, I am sure, of many that he will give in your Lordships’ House—not just on Northern Ireland—in the years to come. My only regret is that he had three years of, I think, unnecessary purdah. He has been—the noble Lord, Lord Empey, referred to this—a wonderful demonstration of a prudent adviser. I sometimes wish that I could whip up the money to buy two tickets on Richard Branson’s spaceship and give one to Mr Cummings and one to Mr Seamus Milne.

We are talking about a very serious subject tonight and I am delighted and grateful that my noble friend Lord Duncan has introduced these reports. Every word of them underlines the shameful situation of not having an operating Assembly and Executive. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is obviously a mind reader because I wish to stress this yet again. As I indicated in an earlier debate, I am ashamed of the fact that we are going into Prorogation later today. I think it is shameful. However, even out of the most shameful situations, good can be rescued, and I say to my noble friend Lord Duncan that he will not be required to come to Parliament. I ask him, please, with his colleagues, to devote all his time over the next four or five weeks to trying to bring people in Northern Ireland together; to set up a scheme whereby the Assembly can be summoned; to create a system in which committees can meet; and, above all, with the Secretary of State to choose a moderator and mediator who can bring the parties together.

However honest and good the intentions of the Government—in respect of my noble friend Lord Duncan they are exemplary—the fact is that it is perceived that the Government are on the side of one particular party in Northern Ireland. I do not believe that they are behaving in a partisan way but that is the perception, and perceptions are important. Therefore, it is crucial that during these coming weeks we do not waste time but get on with trying to ensure that the parties are brought together so that by the end of the year at the latest, and before the third anniversary, we have an operating Executive and an Assembly that meets.

In the preceding debate, the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, talked about the inexorable drift towards direct rule. It would be a condemnation of us all if that were the result. I was in Northern Ireland at the start of the remarkable partnership of Ian Paisley—the late Lord Bannside—and the late Martin McGuinness. That was the stuff of which political miracles are made. I well remember many conversations with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, who is justifiably held in the highest repute in Northern Ireland. He and Denis Bradley conducted their inquiries and we discussed them, and many of us felt that we really were on the way to the consummation of a remarkable transformation.

Then, we had the sad and unfortunate events at the beginning of 2016, since when there has been no real progress at all. My noble friend Lord Duncan has had to come to the House time and again, going through the mantra, “The parties are going to come together” and “We’re doing our best”. Of course he has done his best, but it has not yet worked and it is crucial that it does work.

We are in the middle of a great national crisis—one in which Northern Ireland is the most vulnerable part of our United Kingdom. I had thought that the whole Brexit scene would be transformed had we had an operating Assembly and Executive. Therefore, I say to my noble friend: please try to get people together during the next few weeks so that, as we move towards what I hope is a deal—no deal would be particularly catastrophic for Northern Ireland—we have an operating Assembly and Executive that are ready to come in from the wings to play their part in the crucial governance of a beautiful part of our United Kingdom but one that could so easily be lost, as could Scotland, from the country that we all love.