Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Cormack]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “21 October 2019” and insert “13 January 2020”

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group all stand in my name but I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Trimble and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, for adding their names to all but one of them. These are very simple amendments, which I trailed last week at Second Reading. All they do is alter dates in the Bill. They do not cause any impediment whatever if, miraculously—I think it would be miraculous—a Northern Ireland Executive were set up in the very near future. I think there is common agreement among those who follow the affairs of Northern Ireland closely that it is, sadly, very unlikely that any significant change will take place by the August date in the Bill. I regret that, just as I regret that for more than two and a half years now we have had no Northern Ireland Executive and no Assembly.

My noble friend who will respond to this debate knows full well my views on the desirability of summoning the Assembly, having its committees working and, above all, having an Executive, the absence of which has deprived the people of Northern Ireland of proper devolved government for more than two and a half years, but we must be realistic. Your Lordships’ House will be going into recess, as will the other place, at the end of next week. We come back briefly in September. By then a new Prime Minister will have been in office for some weeks, but nobody in this House or the other place imagines, much as we might regret it, that the new Prime Minister will have anything at the top of his agenda other than Brexit. All eyes will increasingly be focused not on a date in the middle of October but on a date at the end of October—31 October.

In these circumstances it seems sensible to avoid the constant coming back for a renewal, effectively, of a mandate. We have done this too often now. Therefore, in these amendments I am suggesting that we delete the October date, insert a fallback date of 13 January in its place, and that for a fallback date we have not 13 January but 10 April. I have put that date for a very deliberate reason. That will be the 22nd anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. I hope that might focus minds, particularly in Northern Ireland. It will also take off what some people might consider undue pressure.

I intervened on my noble friend’s wind-up speech last week and indicated that I was minded to table amendments to this effect. He responded very graciously. The amendments are now before us and I very much hope that the Committee will see them as non-controversial, giving more time to the parties and people of Northern Ireland to restore proper devolved government and taking away the ever-increasing threat of direct rule, which no one who cares about Northern Ireland and who was excited by what happened nearly 22 years ago wants to see happen. I trust that my noble friend will be able to give me a very satisfactory answer to these amendments. I am grateful to my noble friend and the noble Baroness for supporting them and I beg to move.

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[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Lord takes me into even deeper waters—and we are only in the first half hour of what may well be a long day. I understand the point he makes, of course; I appreciate exactly what he is saying. But that may be a discussion for another time. If he will allow me, I shall return to the amendment in hand.

With some regret, I say to my noble friend Lord Cormack that I hope he will understand that I am asking him to withdraw the amendment, not because it is not necessary to have time, but because we need to balance out that time—the carrot—with the stick of a deadline. We need to make sure that we are making progress to allow for the necessary secondary steps—an election to take place and so forth—in good time. Otherwise we will reach ever more frequent deadlines and anniversaries relating to the absence of an Executive in Northern Ireland, which the people of Northern Ireland can, unfortunately, little bear.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I always listen carefully to what my noble friend says, but on this occasion I have to say that I believe he is making a mistake. The calendar is such that, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, pointed out, we are in the holiday season already in Northern Ireland, and we are about to enter a period of recess in this Parliament. We also have the looming Brexit date. Most importantly, elements have been injected into the Bill in the other place—we will be dealing with them later today—which create a much more difficult Bill and a much more difficult situation in Northern Ireland. These are highly sensitive and difficult issues. The very future of devolution as a concept is at stake. I believe that the dates that I suggest in my amendments would create a much more realistic timetable.

I am one of those who believe in the convention—it is certainly not a rule—that one does not normally vote in Committee in this House. In moving amendments I have always honoured that convention, and I will do so again today. However, I cannot promise that I will not return to this issue on Report in 48 hours’ time, when colleagues will have had the chance perhaps to reflect on the totality of today’s debate. I think they will then realise that a part of the United Kingdom that needs handling with acute sensitivity and that does not willingly respond to the deadline philosophy perhaps ought to be given a little more time. For the moment, though, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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[Lord Anderson of Ipswich]

What happened in 1948 was a prorogation to give effect to the provision of the Parliament Act 1911 that approval of the Commons was needed in three successive Sessions. The key distinction between that situation and what is proposed now is that it was a course that the House of Commons desired and was prepared to see go through.

[Lord Cormack]

Would the noble Lord also remind the Committee that in 1948 there was, relatively speaking, a handful of Members in this House sitting on the Government Benches, and several hundred on the Conservative Benches as the Opposition?

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the point he makes. However, getting hung up on an entirely different precedent from 1948 and suggesting that it might be in some way determinative of the position which we are now asked to contemplate is, I would suggest, too ludicrous to bear.

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[Lord Cormack]

I accept the result of the referendum, as my noble friend knows only too well, but the people did not vote to leave without a deal. The amendment would make sure that if the country leaves without a deal, it leaves without one but with parliamentary approval. That is the substance of the amendment.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I turn to the use of the phrase, “leaving without a deal”. Deals have already been made on citizenship, flying planes and access to ports. There is no deal. If my noble friend is saying that we must defend parliamentary democracy by voting for a deal in the form of the withdrawal agreement, which was overwhelmingly rejected, I think that he has got himself into something of a tangle. It is totally inappropriate for this amendment to be added to a fast-track Bill about Northern Ireland. The amendment would pursue some will-o’-the wisp notion that Parliament will somehow need to be prorogued so that we can leave the European Union on 31 October. Parliament has already voted overwhelmingly for us to do that and 31 October is the deadline which has been set by the European Union.

I give way to my noble friend. We have all the usual suspects in this debate.

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[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness almost got me on that one, but she will not be surprised to know that I, too, will not be drawn on those matters. It is important, as we circle back to where we began—

[Lord Cormack]

Does my noble friend the Minister agree that it is always right that the Government should be accountable to Parliament and not the other way around, and that Parliament should never be the creature of government?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

It would be easy to answer that in a simple way, but I suspect that tucked inside the question is a matter for greater constitutional scholars than I. I stand before noble Lords not, I am afraid, as a lawyer but as a humble geologist. I therefore feel ill-equipped to answer a question of that august nature.

In returning to the point before us, I say that this is not the right way to achieve these ends. The other place has spoken on these matters. It has spoken in a voice which we have heard on other issues and should hear today. I would ask that these amendments should not be pressed. I do not believe that they give comfort to the ongoing talks in Northern Ireland, and nor do they progress the important aspects for which those talks have been set up.

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Moved by

[Lord Cormack]

10: Clause 3, page 2, line 38, leave out from “Parliament” to end of line 40 and insert “offering a consultation with the people of Northern Ireland if no Executive has been established by 10 April 2020.”

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, Amendment 10 and Amendment 18, which immediately follows it in the grouping, stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Trimble and, in the case of Amendment 10, that of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan.

When we debated the Second Reading of this Bill last week, I made the point that we are now entering extremely sensitive, delicate territory. I quoted the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, when I said that in the House of Commons this had,

“become a Christmas tree Bill”.—[Official Report, 10/7/19; col. 1843.]

Two particularly large baubles were hung on it last week when those votes returned significant majorities on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage. I completely understand why those amendments were passed in another place, but if we are really concerned about devolution and have a real regard for the sensitivities of these issues and the feelings of the people of Northern Ireland, we have to tread exceptionally carefully here. That is why these two amendments stand on the Order Paper this evening.

Nothing should be done in the field of abortion unless there has been extensive consultation with Northern Ireland—if, sadly, no Executive has been recreated and no Assembly is sitting—because these are devolved matters. As we were reminded forcefully and cogently when we debated Second Reading, as recently as in 2016 the then Northern Ireland Assembly made its views on abortion very plain. If we really want to see—and I certainly do—devolution and power-sharing restored in Northern Ireland, it would be rash of the Westminster Parliament at this stage, when my noble friend has assured us that he is confident that the talks are going well and the parties close together, to make a precipitate move on this subject. That is the last thing we want to do.

This amendment provides for consultation in Northern Ireland if no Executive has been established by 10 April next year. I have chosen that date, as I chose it in earlier amendments today, because that is the 22nd anniversary of power-sharing. My noble friend, replying to my earlier amendments, in effect said he wanted to hold their hands to the fire and keep the pressure on. There is no better way of keeping pressure than using that date, the anniversary of the Good Friday agreement and the establishment of a power-sharing Executive that followed some years later.

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[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I am loath to use the term “ruling” on this one, if I may be frank. I understand the noble Lord to be correct; the Sewel convention allows for not acting under normal circumstances, but by any definition the situation that Northern Ireland finds itself in today is not normal. However, I would not like that to carry with it the weight of greater minds than I. I may have to put a very formal note to your Lordships later to confirm that, just in case I am in any way in error.

On that basis, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, this has been a long and, at times, a difficult debate. When I introduced the amendments, with the support of my noble friend Lord Trimble—who has had to go to another engagement —and, in the case of the abortion amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, I said that this was an extremely sensitive and delicate subject, and the Leader of the Opposition the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, referred to that. I think that every word that has been uttered has at least underlined that I was correct on that.

The only thing I regret is that some people, perhaps because they felt hurt, have reacted in a slightly unfair way. Noble Lords must remember that my noble friend Lord Trimble, who supported both these amendments, is a man who perhaps has done more than any other individual in Northern Ireland to bring about the Good Friday agreement and serve his part of our great United Kingdom and his country with diligence and honour, and he is the last man who would be insensitive in these issues. Indeed, at Second Reading, he referred in a slightly jocular way to his own family experience of a daughter marrying another woman. When I was chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the other place, I had a great deal to do with the noble Baroness, Lady O’ Loan, who was then the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. She is a great public servant, and it was an honour to deal with her. I met nobody at any stage in Northern Ireland who was more fair, more dispassionate or more concerned about the fate of those who had suffered in the Troubles. She was even-handed, almost to a fault. I was sad when I heard what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said. It would be sad to believe that anyone who has spoken in this debate has done so with anything other than a passionate sincerity and belief.

When I introduced the two amendments, I began by saying that I was doing so for one reason only. It is nothing to do with my views on either of these subjects but because I have a very passionate view about Northern Ireland and the need to restore devolution. It was because of that that I tabled these amendments, which have received some support and some opposition. I am grateful to those who supported and I completely understand the deep feelings of those who have opposed them but, I repeat, the only reason I introduced these amendments is that I see devolution slipping away. I made the point at Second Reading that I see that we are moving inexorably towards direct rule, and I deeply regret that. I hope that, when those in Northern Ireland read this debate, they will realise—to quote again a current catchphrase—it is time for them to take back control. We need a Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. I hope that what has been said collectively in this debate, from all sides of the argument, will convince people in all parties in Northern Ireland that they will be guilty of a dereliction of duty if they do not take back control.