Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Lord Eames Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I add my voice to those who have welcomed the Minister to the Front Bench. I always felt hope in any situation when talking to a fellow Celt, and I have that hope tonight.

It is essential that this Bill be passed as a matter of urgency. It comes before your Lordships’ House because of a situation that demands that Parliament provide Northern Ireland with the legislative authority it cannot provide for itself. The failure to achieve a devolved Administration despite months of negotiation is a failure of the body politic but also a sad reality for any post-conflict society. The Bill seeks to provide the Northern Ireland Civil Service with the means to address urgent need for hospitals, schools and departments of government that we ought to be able to take for granted. I too pay tribute to the Northern Ireland Civil Service for the manner in which its staff have performed their duty in the most trying of circumstances. This is, in the truest meaning of the phrase, “enabling legislation”.

Beyond our discussion of the technicalities of this Bill is a community crying out for political activity which is truly the act of the possible. Instead, there is a rapidly growing disenchantment among ordinary people with the inactivity of the devolved Administration in meeting the needs of their people. Those people are exasperated by months of impasse and that exasperation is quickly moving to a point where many ask, “What is the point of a local administration which does not work”? Indeed, serious questions are being asked about the nature of devolved government.

Thirty years ago last Sunday the poppy day bomb exploded and threw Enniskillen into the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Thirty years ago I was there. What I saw and experienced cried out for democratic local government to provide the basis for a peace process, where real politics could provide equality and justice for all. Thirty years later, we still wait. The Enniskillens of this world, the victims and the memories of the past, make it all the more important that this Bill passes quickly into law, for our politics have failed in that task.

We are assured by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that what is before your Lordships’ House is not direct rule. It is, rather, a necessary means of meeting urgent need. But tell us, what follows this Bill? What if there is no local agreement? Where do we go from here—direct rule; local elections; more stalemate?

There are other questions that this Bill poses, such as the nature of accountability, for there are certain boundaries and limits to the powers of the Secretary of State in this situation. What have we to offer the victims of the past? What have we to offer new generations in our schools? What have we to offer the hard-pressed hospitals? What have we to offer the long queues of people waiting for surgery?

The Bill is necessary but it cannot answer all the needs. At most it can buy more time—but is there the political will to make full use of what it provides? Last Sunday I had the privilege of speaking of that event 30 years ago on Radio 4. Among the reactions, let me share some words which show that this Bill can be an opportunity for yet more effort to break the political impasse. They are the words given to me by a widow of the Enniskillen bomb. She said:

“Is there no way politics can meet the challenge of what we have come through? Is there no hope it can offer the likes of me”?


Those words should haunt every one of us tonight.

I say to this House: pass the Bill as a necessity. I say to the politicians of Northern Ireland: my fellow countrymen, try again. Nothing less will meet the legacy of the past—and I, for one, have lived through that legacy. I say, with respect, to the Prime Minister: please get involved, not only because of the activity but because of the symbolism that such involvement would mean, and symbolism has always mattered in Northern Ireland.

May this legislation of opportunity be a spur to even greater effort to make local politicians work for all the people of Northern Ireland, for those people deserve no less and no more.