Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Gentleman’s comments indicate to the House that there is perhaps not universal support for every recommendation from the Hart inquiry. That is why it is important that we have a restored Executive in Stormont that can make the decisions about those recommendations and enable justice to be delivered.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State confirmed the legal position of the Bill and what it purports to do and will do, if passed. Will she confirm that, in respect of the written ministerial statement that allocated £410 million of the confidence and supply money, Government Departments in Northern Ireland will be able to plan on spending that money as of the start of the financial year?

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The statement sets out the departmental allocations; the Bill gives parliamentary approval for Departments to start to spend that money. That is what is required to enable that spending to start at the start of the financial year, but it does not set the final allocations; it merely gives approval such that Departments can start to spend. In effect, Parliament is saying that the money can now be spent so that public services can be delivered. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the £410 million from the confidence and supply agreement that is allocated for 2018-19 is in the allocations set out in the written ministerial statement, and the Departments can work on the basis that they can start to spend that money.

The Bill provides a secure legal footing for the Northern Ireland civil service. It is on that platform that my budget statement last week sought to build. That statement will need to be the subject of formal legislation in the summer as a further Northern Ireland budget Bill. As I have already said, that is a Bill that I sincerely hope will be taken forward by a restored Executive. If required, though, that is something that we as the UK Government would be prepared to progress with, as we uphold our responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland. In the meantime, it is those allocations that provide the basis for the NICS to plan and prepare to take decisions for the year ahead.

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on bringing forward this measure. It is something that none of us wanted to see, but it is preferable to section 59 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, not least because it means that accruing resources can be used, and subsections (2), (3) and (4) make it clear that those sums of money are substantial. Clearly, this Bill requires a budget to be set at some point. We hope that that budget will be set in Stormont and not here, but it still needs to be set. It would be useful to hear what timetable the Secretary of State envisages. We have grown used to timetables that are somewhat flexible in recent months—indeed, years—but if she has to bring forward a Bill here, it will be nice to have a sense of when she intends to do so.

I thank the Secretary of State for her letter to me of 13 March, following mine of 28 February, on the Northern Ireland Office supplementary estimate. I think that she satisfied all the points that I raised on behalf of the Northern Ireland Committee. However, may I press her a little on efficiency savings? It is understood from the letter that the Northern Ireland Administration have already scored the formal efficiency review of 2017-20 against the target, but efficiency improvements are still expected. How will this be ensured, who will implement it and who will oversee it? What role does the Secretary of State see that the auditor has in this respect? I will come back to that in a few minutes, if I may.

In my letter, I drew attention to the £79 million discrepancy between the cash grant and the departmental expenditure limit at main estimate. The explanation relating to the Stormont House and Fresh Start agreements is perfectly satisfactory, but my Committee’s scrutiny work would have been greatly assisted by early notification of that apparent discrepancy. Hon. Members can be sure that we will scrutinise the figures in this Bill closely, and the budget when it appears. It is very important that any discrepancies are brought to the attention of my Committee, or indeed the House, since in the current circumstances, scrutiny in this place is vital.

Are we any further ahead in quantifying the costs of systems envisioned under option 2 at paragraph 49 of December’s joint report? If so, where and when will they appear in subsequent estimates? Those are the costs that will be involved in creating alternative solutions in order to ensure that the border in Northern Ireland is as frictionless and seamless as possible. Those costs are likely to be significant, if indeed such a solution can be created, and it would be good to know that sufficient budgetary accommodation has been made for them.

In her written ministerial statement of 8 March, the Secretary of State announced £100 million in flex from capital to resource. Capitalisation is uncommon. The Treasury dislikes it, and for very good reason. So why precisely is it felt necessary, against a relatively generous Northern Ireland settlement on this occasion, to introduce capitalisation?

The Treasury has made a rather unusual call for evidence in a piece of work that it is doing on tourism. It wants evidence on VAT and air passenger duty that may go to support an improved position for tourism in Northern Ireland. I very much welcome that. Indeed, my Select Committee took evidence on this subject recently, and the Treasury documentation refers to that. However, it does seem to be an unusual intervention. Indeed, since many of the things that will have to be done as a response to any such report that the Treasury may produce will be devolved, how does the Secretary of State see that work being carried forward? I am sure that she, like me, would not wish the Treasury to be embarked on a piece of work that was not, at the end of the day, going to result in recommendations that could be carried forward. I therefore imagine that she has worked out, in collaboration with the Treasury, a pathway between recommendations that may come out of this piece of work and how they are going to be implemented. We cannot necessarily assume—I am sure that she does not—that we will have an Executive up and running within a timeframe that will be suitable for this report.

[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman is right in respect of some of the recommendations that may come out of that report. As for whether Ministers responsible to this House or Ministers responsible to the Assembly take these decisions, we will have to wait and see what happens. Air passenger duty and value added tax are matters for this House—for the Chancellor and the Treasury—and therefore the main object of the report will be a matter for this House.

[Dr Murrison]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. However, the call for evidence goes much further than that. That is what I am chiefly concerned about, since it implies that competences will be available in the event that there is no Executive in place that will carry this forward. Otherwise, it would be a fairly tight and narrow call for evidence.

The Northern Ireland Audit Office this year will report on a number of things. It is a very busy office, and my Select Committee was very pleased indeed to be able to meet Kieran Donnelly recently in Belfast to take evidence on the work of his department. It will be reporting on digital transformation in Northern Ireland, welfare reform in Northern Ireland, speeding up avoidable delays in the criminal justice system, financial health of schools and the social investment fund.

A lot of that has to do with increasing productivity in Northern Ireland and rebalancing the economy. It is not discretionary work; it is vital. It has to do with achieving value for money. My question is: where is all that work leading? If there is no body to scrutinise the auditor, let alone an organisation to take forward his recommendations, he may be crying in the wilderness. It is a bit of an irony that his work is geared towards value for money, since in those circumstances—that is to say, those recommendations not being taken forward—some question would be revolving around the value for money posed by the auditor himself.

It would be useful to know what thoughts the Secretary of State has about how the auditor’s reports can be properly examined—perhaps by a shadow Public Accounts Committee made up of Members of the Legislative Assembly—so that some comment can be made upon them. There would then be at least some chance of that work being carried forward by perhaps a newly emboldened Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who may need to have powers if the current impasse continues for any length of time.

I would like to ask the Secretary of State about the guidance that she has recently offered permanent secretaries and the status of it. On 12 March, at column 646 of the Official Report, the Secretary of State said in answer to my question about budgetary granularity that she had written to permanent secretaries about her guidance on how money should be spent. She cited health transformation money as an example and said that she was taking legal advice on the powers that might be available to her. I sympathise with her. Dealing with lawyers is a tricky business at the best of times, and this, I assume, is a legal minefield.

The Secretary of State will want to ensure that this is got right, not least because, if she gets it wrong, there is every prospect of judicial review. I know very well that she is not going to publish the legal advice—I know better than to ask her to do that—but I wonder whether she could publish the guidance that she has issued to permanent secretaries. My Select Committee and this House will want to know what guidance she has issued, the status of that guidance and the extent to which permanent secretaries will be acting upon it.

In the schedules to the Bill, a whole raft of things are listed, with very big sums of money attached to them. It is important to understand whether we are dealing with governance by guidance or whether these are simply helpful suggestions that the permanent secretary may be guided by because, if he is judicially reviewed at some point for decisions made, the courts will want to determine what status that guidance has. At the moment, that appears obscure.

It becomes important in areas such as infrastructure. In the schedules, very large sums of money are attached to the Department for Infrastructure. We know that the Secretary of State wishes to pass £400 million for particular infrastructure projects in connection with the confidence and supply agreement, in two parts—£200 million in one financial year and £200 million in another. It is not clear to me what happens if that money is not spent within the timeframe of the agreement.

I ask that because, like right hon. and hon. Members who have observed large infrastructure projects in their constituencies, the natural tendency is for these things to run and run. In the event that the money is not spent, does it accrue to the Treasury? Is it spent on other things? Does it sit at Stormont, waiting for the glorious day of the restoration of the Executive? What happens to those unspent funds?

Can we also know a little more about what big-ticket items the Secretary of State has in mind? The wish list published by the Executive before their collapse contained a great deal more than the York Street interchange, which the Secretary of State has mentioned recently. Does the guidance issued for the permanent secretary at the Department for Infrastructure cite what things the Secretary of State thinks are important, in priority order? That, she will be aware, is difficult because some of the political parties in Northern Ireland—one of them in particular—are not at all keen on one or two of the projects and would rather see other things. It is politically quite sensitive, and it would be good to know what guidance the Secretary of State has issued to the Department for Infrastructure on that important item of public expenditure.

The £100 million for health transformation in the confidence and supply agreement is most welcome, but we have to understand what transformation means. It is not simply about opening clinics or hospitals; it is also about closing them. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) was right to make the point last week that there is nothing more political in what we do than the opening and closing of healthcare institutions. I know that very well from my own constituency experience.

Is it really reasonable to expect permanent secretaries to make decisions of that sort? Indeed, would they make decisions of that sort? If they will not, the risk is that Bengoa will simply be put on ice. Under those circumstances, everybody loses. One way forward would be a legal avenue by which the Secretary of State can offer guidance that is perhaps a little more prescriptive than might otherwise be the case. We will not know that in this place unless we have sight of the guidance that has been issued and are able to examine it.

Does the Secretary of State share my concerns on policy drift and “do nothing” becoming the default option? The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who is not in her place, gave the great example last week of the decisions needed to secure the Commonwealth youth games in 2021. I know that the Secretary of State, because of her previous portfolio experience in this matter, is acutely aware of the difficulties. A number of decisions have to be made around that yet, at the moment, there is nobody to make those decisions. It may be small, but it is a poignant example of why it is so necessary for somebody somewhere to be able to make those sorts of decisions.

I know that the Secretary of State was recently in Derry/Londonderry. It just happened that she was visiting at the same time as my Select Committee. She will have heard from people in that fine city how frustrated they are that nobody appears to be making any decisions right now. This goes right across communities. Regardless of community almost, people just want things to happen, because they see society being pulled back and a Province that has made so much progress in recent years—economically, socially, in every conceivable way—essentially marking time while the Executive get their act together.

There will come a point when, with a heavy heart and the greatest of reluctance, Ministers here will have to start to make decisions. We can all hope for a restoration of the Executive, but we might be hoping for a restoration of the Executive in three years’ time. In three years’ time, the world will look a very different place. Bengoa will probably have been forgotten. Some of the big infrastructure projects that we want to see in Northern Ireland may well have fallen by the wayside. All that good stuff will not have happened, and Northern Ireland will have slipped further behind economically, socially, in every way imaginable. That would be a huge failure, and I know the Secretary of State feels the same way.

[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman is 100% correct in what he just said. He is right to point out that of course we want devolution, and efforts must continue to ensure there is devolution in Northern Ireland but, in the meantime, there are communities and people suffering as a result of the lack of decision making. As he rightly says, in the meantime we must ensure that decisions are made for the good of everyone. That is an extremely important point, which I am sure the Secretary of State heard very clearly.

[Dr Murrison]

The right hon. Gentleman is, as ever, absolutely correct.

I will finish my remarks on the Hart inquiry, which Members are right to mention in connection with the business before us. The programme for government offers a helpful pointer to Ministers, who may otherwise not feel on particularly safe ground in relation to making decisions. The Secretary of State and other Ministers have said that it provides some basis on which they can take note of the last expressed democratic view on a number of issues. However, on 12 March—at column 653, on the Hart inquiry—the Secretary of State suggested that it is not the business of UK Ministers or this place to consider recommendations of bodies set up by the Executive, let alone implement them, and she repeated those sentiments today.

It would be helpful to have a bit of clarification, because I fear that we cannot have it both ways. We either observe what democratically elected bodies determined before they crumbled, and that extends to any bodies that they may have established, or we do not. It is an important principle because it seems to me that it is legitimate to take note of decisions that have previously been made and of the clear will of those bodies, particularly if there was no great controversy about them. It would be useful if the Secretary of State clarified this point, so that we are a bit clearer about what we can rely on and, indeed, what she will rely on in making any decisions or issuing any guidance on which she may wish to reflect.

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[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who spoke with great authority and eloquence. Of course, as he said, he speaks with authority as a former Minister for Finance in Northern Ireland. He and I both have experience of serving in that office in the Northern Ireland Executive, so I totally empathise with his frustration when it comes to replying to some of these kinds of debates. I well remember civil servants preparing a whole host of possible answers to questions that might arise in such a debate. After a year or two of experience, I remember being able to tell them that they could discard all their preparations, because the same issues would arise that had arisen in every previous debate of this type—the issues would be totally irrelevant to the debate, so they should just get on and prepare the press release. Thankfully, there has not been as much of that in this debate so far, and I think my right hon. Friend set out very clearly what the Bill does.

I too welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has brought the Bill to the House today. It is very timely; it is the start of decision making for Northern Ireland, ending the drift, and is an important milestone in that regard. I fully empathise with the point that the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) made earlier about the empty Benches. I suppose in one way that is actually quite a good sign, in that it seems that taking decisions at Westminster is not that controversial after all. At the end of the day, there seems to be a broad consensus. Nobody I have heard railing about how terrible it would all be is actually even here to make those points. That is a very significant development.

The hon. Lady rightly alluded to those who speak so much about Northern Ireland—about their concern for the economy and the future and about having no hard border—but who, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of financial management and decision making for Northern Ireland, are not here. These are people who speak a lot about Northern Ireland in terms of Brexit but who never show any interest at any other time. It raises questions in our minds about the extent to which Northern Ireland—the Belfast agreement, the peace process, our political situation—is being used by some people to thwart Brexit or to shape a Brexit they would like for the whole of the UK. That is what is actually going on. I therefore commend Members on both sides of the House who are here and making a contribution today on this important matter.

I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim said about how we do not wish to be in this situation. We would far rather these matters were decided in the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont. Indeed, it is ironic that in late December 2016, when the then Finance Minister, a Sinn Féin Member, had the ability to bring forward measures in the budget, he refused consistently to do so—refused even to bring matters to the Northern Ireland Executive—in the full and certain knowledge that Sinn Féin was going to crash the institutions early in January over matters totally extraneous to the programme for government or anything it had previously raised in discussions with us.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that had that Member, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, still been Finance Minister when this situation arose, he would probably have breathed a sigh of relief, because he had not the courage to take the political decisions to bring forward a budget—the only Finance Minister never to do so—but would rather whinge and gurn and point the finger at the Conservative party?

[Nigel Dodds]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. A very good illustration that proves his point concerns welfare reform. We were faced with a difficult situation in Northern Ireland following welfare cuts and changes to welfare benefits. The then Minister, Nelson McCausland, negotiated mitigations that helped the situation in Northern Ireland, but generally it presented a difficult position for all the parties in Northern Ireland. The parties, including ours, took the hard decisions and brought them to the Assembly, but Sinn Féin refused to go along with it, and because of the make-up of the Assembly and the veto principle, it was able to block those decisions, and the institutions almost collapsed as a result. We had to have the Stormont House and fresh start negotiations to prevent the collapse of the Assembly.

As my right hon. Friend points out, Sinn Féin, in particular, refuses to take hard decisions and work within the parameters of a devolved legislature that has to set budgets and work within the block grant. That is part of the problem and one of the reasons we are now in this situation. Our party stands ready, as it did in December 2016 and at the time of the elections in March 2017, and as it has done every day since, to get back into government immediately, without any preconditions or red lines, to tackle the issues that matter to the people of Northern Ireland.

In any survey or poll conducted right across both communities, the issues that matter to people are those that matter to people everywhere: health spending, education, infrastructure, housing, the environment. These are the things people care about, and they want their politicians to be delivering on and dealing with them—and so do we—which is why we are mystified, and why most people in Northern Ireland are bewildered, that Sinn Féin put narrow partisan political issues above dealing with these issues. When we proposed dealing with issues of concern to Sinn Féin in parallel with getting the institutions up and running and dealing with the big issues affecting all of us, and even suggested time limiting the Assembly to ensure there was no bad faith on our part, it was rejected out of hand.

Let us be very clear: devolution is our first option and our clear preference. We are not the barriers to devolution in Northern Ireland; nor, I believe, are other smaller parties such as the Ulster Unionists, the Social Democratic and Labour party and the Alliance party. It is very clear what is blocking devolution.

There is another point that we make over and over again, and it was strongly emphasised by the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), and he was absolutely right. Without prejudice to efforts to get devolution up and running, we do need decisions to be made. The same point was made by the hon. Member for Lewes.

It is the fact that there are no Ministers in place that is causing drift and putting Northern Ireland into limbo. That is why some decisions are not being made in the Department for the Economy, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim referred. The problem is not the absence of an Executive per se, but the absence of Ministers. As the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire said, the situation cannot continue for much longer. The various decisions that need to be made by Ministers are basically about allocation and prioritisation. Civil servants cannot make those decisions, because they would just be making personal decisions. They are not accountable. We need to ensure that something is done, and that it is done in a relatively short space of time.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

Does not part of the problem lie with the wider community in Northern Ireland? They are disillusioned with politics for the obvious reason—Sinn Féin’s reluctance to return to the Government—but they are also disillusioned by the lack of what my right hon. Friend has identified: ministerial decision making and ministerial directions to address issues that affect everyone, not just a small part of the community.

[Nigel Dodds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I have constituency surgeries and meet people and, like all Members of Parliament, discuss with them matters of individual concern and wider issues, what they all lament—whether they are from a nationalist or a Unionist background—is the fact that decisions are not being made.

The recent lobby of this place by a large group of people interested in and affected by mental health issues was a glaring example of that. Those people made a cross-party, cross-community plea. They said, “Please give us someone we can lobby, someone who can make decisions”—on, for example, the trauma centre in Northern Ireland. As my constituency has the highest rate of suicide in Northern Ireland—indeed, the United Kingdom—I feel very strongly about that issue. Something needs to be done about it, in terms of decision making. As a result of the confidence and supply agreement, we have secured extra money to be spent on mental health specifically in Northern Ireland, but civil servants, in the Department of Health and elsewhere, are unable to say how they will spend it, because they have no ministerial direction. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim, money can be allocated, but decisions within the Department need to be made by a Minister.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) for his contribution.

I do not quite understand why a Minister could not come to make such decisions relatively shortly, although, as far as I can ascertain, we are not at that stage yet. We are not returning to direct rule, but we might be moving towards pragmatic, and also legal, decisions that are required for us to look after the community of Northern Ireland.

[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman has made a very sensible, reasonable, pragmatic point, and, as always, he has demonstrated his strong interest in Northern Ireland affairs. I know that he speaks from the heart and wants to ensure that Northern Ireland keeps moving forward, and that is our only concern. We want to make sure that nobody across the board is detrimentally affected by the lack of Ministers. Likewise, it was because of that concern to ensure that people across the board in both communities had their lives improved that we argued that the confidence and supply arrangements should include an extra £1 billion in cash resources for Northern Ireland to be spent across a range of subjects which would benefit everybody. That is in addition to the extra half a billion pounds in flexibilities in terms of previous moneys allocated.

I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State announced in recent days the budget for Northern Ireland, to include the £410 million first tranche, or substantial part, of those confidence and supply arrangements. Some in the media and elsewhere said over and over again that that money would never come to Northern Ireland and that it was a pipe dream, yet it has now been delivered. They also said it would not come in the absence of an Executive, and that too has been proved wrong, although I do not hear them saying much about it despite being very vocal previously. They also said it could not come because there was no parliamentary authority for it. Well, we are now getting parliamentary authority through this Bill for the money to be expended in this financial year and proper parliamentary authority will be given to all the rest of it, as is to be expected and is the normal process.

[Lady Hermon]

I always listen very carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman has to say, and he has made it clear on behalf of his party that there are no red lines. He has also made it clear that his constituents—indeed, my constituents and people right across Northern Ireland from all communities—are anxious to see their Assembly back again and Ministers taking decisions, so what exactly is holding up the DUP getting back into talks with Sinn Féin and successfully seeing the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland, for the benefit of everybody?

[Nigel Dodds]

I could repeat everything that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim said in response to exactly the same question. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady has said, “Please don’t,” so I won’t, and if she did not understand it the first time I doubt she will understand it now if I repeat it. The fact of the matter is that we are no barrier to devolution, and neither are the Ulster Unionists, the Alliance party or the SDLP, and perhaps more pressure exerted on those who are the barrier would be more productive and sensible.

The fact of the matter is that this is a very positive move in terms of breaking the logjam and stopping the drift that has continued for too long in Northern Ireland. It sends a strong message to everyone, including the parties that have been reluctant and recalcitrant so far in terms of forming the Executive, that decisions will be taken, for the good of Northern Ireland.

[Lady Hermon]

The right hon. Gentleman is being exceedingly generous in giving way again. I just want to ask him to reflect for a few moments on the fact that tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the death of Martin McGuinness. Martin McGuinness sat as Deputy First Minister in a very successful period of devolved Government with the right hon. Gentleman’s then party leader, Ian Paisley senior. Sadly, they are both no longer with us, but remarkable generosity of spirit was shown by both of those gentlemen at the time. Could the DUP indicate a generosity of spirit to get back into talks without any hesitation or red lines?

[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Lady is right to refer to the efforts made by the previous leader in Northern Ireland of Sinn Féin and my former leader as well and to the great efforts that were made, and there have also been their successors Peter Robinson, who led the Executive for seven years, and Arlene Foster, and Martin McGuinness during that period as well. I served in the Executive under both Dr Paisley and Peter Robinson, so I am fully aware of the efforts the DUP has made to reach out across the communities and to serve with people who for many, many years attacked our communities, and indeed attacked us personally by trying to assassinate members of our party—myself and others—so that was no easy task.

Generosity of spirit is something that we have exhibited over many, many years. Despite the toxicity of the atmosphere that Sinn Féin has created, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim alluded, we are still prepared to go into government and to work in devolved government. That shows a pretty generous spirit. There are no red lines for us because we believe in going about the people’s business and getting the Government up and running. That is what matters.

Just as an aside—although it is more than an aside—I should like to say this. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) referred to an anniversary tomorrow, but we have already rightly referred to the anniversary today of the Warrington bombing and the anniversary yesterday of the savage murder of two Army corporals. Everybody who was alive at the time remembers seeing the footage of the two young British soldiers who stumbled into a funeral and who were almost literally torn to death. We should remember, as we hear the eulogies to Martin McGuinness, that it was the movement he led that carried out those atrocities.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend refers to one of the darkest days for the British Army during the troubles, but will he join me in contrasting that day with the scenes that we saw in Lisburn last week when my former battalion, 2 Rifles, was welcomed back with great enthusiasm by the whole community? Is that not a great example of the way which Northern Ireland has changed?

[Nigel Dodds]

Yes, and I am sure that even 30 years ago the good people of Lisburn would have extended that same welcome to the soldiers to whom my hon. Friend refers. The fact is that when we praise the peace process and the political process in Northern Ireland, far too little praise and respect are given to the members of the Army, the other services, the police or the Ulster Defence Regiment, who over many decades held the ring and protected innocent life, both Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and nationalist. They were courageous in their efforts and, were it not for them, we would not enjoy the peace that we enjoy today. There are individuals in the political sphere and elsewhere who are rightly praised and given plaudits, but the real heroes are the people of our emergency services and security forces who put on their uniforms and went out to defend the people at great cost to themselves. Some of them still bear the cost in mental and physical trauma.

[Jim Shannon]

I think it might be appropriate to point out, given that my right hon. Friend feels as we all do on this side of the Chamber, that Gillian Johnston was brutally murdered by the IRA as well. Perhaps her family feel that she is one of the forgotten victims, but we should remember them. There are many forgotten victims, but their families never forget.

[Nigel Dodds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw our attention to that particularly brutal slaying. It is right to remember all the victims of the troubles in Northern Ireland; it is all too easy to gloss over these events. We remember them not because we want to indulge in talking about the past but because it is important to remember the victims and to remember that their sacrifice is never forgotten.

It is also important that we redouble our efforts to keep moving Northern Ireland forwards. We want devolution to be restored and we want to get the institutions back up and running. Sometimes, when people say that we should just get it done, I say to them, “Well, let’s call a meeting of the Assembly on Monday. Let’s go through the process of forming the Executive. Let’s see who steps forward to form the Executive, and let’s see who refuses to step forward.” Then all those who say, “Why can’t you all just get together?” and who lump all the politicians into one group and say, “You’re all to blame” would be able to see for themselves who was refusing to form the Government.

Let us get this process passed today, and let us get the legislation passed tomorrow. Let us start getting decisions made and let us keep on with the efforts to get devolution. Then perhaps the Secretary of State, encouraged by her efforts in getting this legislation through, will come forward with the proposal to call the Assembly together, to re-establish the Executive, to invite those who wish to do so to form a coalition of the willing, and to invite those who refuse to do so to say why they are not prepared to take on the responsibility of the government of Northern Ireland.