Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, like for many other Members, it is a matter of deep regret for me that this piece of legislation is before the House. We thought, perhaps naively, that the days when such legislation was required were over, but that is not the case and I have very little confidence that this is necessarily the last piece of legislation that we will see in the next few months.

A number of noble Lords have mentioned the actions of the PSNI at the weekend, but one should not be surprised. Whenever there is a political vacuum, these types of people will fill that vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. As a former Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, knows what I mean. This is what they do. The incident at Holy Cross, however awful, is merely one of a series of similar incidents that perhaps noble Lords have not picked up on—successive attempts to kill members of the security forces or the prison service. This is not a new tactic. It has been ongoing for quite a long time. Not only should we pay tribute to the PSNI and what they have done, but I have to say that the co-operation between the PSNI and the Garda Siochana is at one of the highest levels it has ever been. They are working very closely together and have managed to prevent a very substantial number of attacks. We must never forget that that level of co-operation is the one thing that is preventing further attacks being successful.

Turning to the Bill, as the Minister said in his opening remarks, it is the most minimalist position he can take. Noble Lords may or may not be aware that rates in Northern Ireland are still levied. We never had the council tax, which was perhaps a good thing. But one advantage with the rates is that you can collect them because properties do not tend to move overnight— although I am sure it is possible to find a way of doing that. The rates are divided into two parts: the district councils set a district council rate and Stormont sets a regional rate. They are roughly 50/50, but councils do not collect rates in Northern Ireland. It is done by an agency of the Department of Finance and they are already a month late. I suppose I am not the only person in the Room who will have to declare an interest, because there are those of us who are going to have to pay them.

The delay has already cost a lot of money, as we had to mail every property in Northern Ireland to tell them that their rates were not going to be collected on time, and so forth. So the cash flow that local councils depend upon—bearing in mind that they still raise in excess of 80% of their money out of the rates—will, I suspect, already have been interrupted. Whether that will be dealt with by borrowing or using reserves, it will be balanced out in due course. The point is that this leads to gross inefficiency in budgeting and planning, and has already added costs. If things come out late then people get into trouble or debt and their whole planning goes out of the window, so we need to take care. There is no alternative to what the Government are proposing in the Bill.

Similarly, when we turn to the clause dealing with ministerial appointments, had the Bill not been brought forward I have no doubt that somebody could have judicially reviewed the Secretary of State because, by the far side of the general election, the argument might be that his not calling a general election there within a specified time was not reasonable. We therefore had to proceed with this legislation to ensure that the Secretary of State is protected from that and that another opportunity is created for the formation of an Executive. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, put forward an alternative idea should that not be possible. Without going into the merits or demerits of that proposal, I ask the Minister to assure the House that, should he find himself in difficulty at the end of June, he and his colleagues, including his right honourable friend in the other place, will look flexibly and creatively at alternatives to direct rule and a collapse of the institutions.

Having been down the Stormont steps a few times myself, I can assure your Lordships that it is much easier to get down them than to get back up them again. We must not forget that we have North-South institutions, some of which I played some part in creating, along with the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and others. They obviously lack direction because that direction has to come from the Administration in the Republic and the Executive in Northern Ireland, and of course one half of that equation is missing. So all those bodies spending taxpayers’ money are left rudderless and without proper direction. This can be carried forward for quite some time, and those of your Lordships who have been in situations such as ministerial positions will know that you can do this only for so long, but we have to remember that Stormont has been out to lunch since before Christmas and we are now talking about the end of June. Who knows whether that will be the finish of it?

Mention has been made of the budget. There should be a properly fixed budget. I would hope that the departments would be looking at their budgets for 2018-19 and beyond now, but they do not even have a properly agreed budget for this year, other than the fact that a civil servant has taken a decision under the rules. The Secretary of State may issue a statement, but of course that statement has no legal power. It merely raises the issue, but the civil servant is setting the rates—the departmental budgets.

We know that Northern Ireland has the longest waiting lists in the health service and huge problems over education. We fought for the ability to impose our own rate of corporation tax and were ultimately granted the ability to do so, but that has gone down the drain now. It was supposed to come in in April next year, but there is no possibility of that happening now, so there is another lost opportunity.

In the last Stormont Administration, there was a high level of incompetence. We have to be honest about that and about other things. It was not a good Administration. It stayed, it was there, it served that purpose and that was good, but it was not a good Administration.

Mention was made of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. The total contribution so far from Stormont to Whitehall has been a two-page letter last August, which set out the very obvious, but we have not had any meaningful input. I join other noble Lords in asking the Minister, as I asked his colleague from the Department for Exiting the European Union, how, precisely, Northern Ireland’s views are going to be put forward. We have the most critical and difficult situation developing with the border and we are not even at the races. We are making no input of any submission. Stormont is silent. There has been one letter in the past nine months. That is most unfortunate.

All we are doing is showing contempt for ordinary people who are on long waiting lists. We have hundreds of people on protective notice in the voluntary and community sector because they do not know whether the money is going to be coming in or not.

This brings me back to a point I have made in this Chamber on a number of occasions about parliamentary oversight of the devolved institutions. There is none. That is a major mistake. We have to be continuously watching. Vast amounts of taxpayers’ money is going not only to Northern Ireland but to Scotland and Wales. The heating scandal that was ostensibly the issue that brought the Executive to their knees has been mentioned. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, that it was a passing vehicle that was used, not the main cause of the Sinn Fein decision, but the scandal is still there, the bills are still to be paid, it should never have happened, and nobody is looking at that. We are again talking about huge sums of money. I totally oppose the concept of devolve and forget. It is a rotten policy. It does not apply only to Northern Ireland. It is a mistake. There must be a level of parliamentary oversight, particularly when the vast amount of money spent by these Administrations is coming from here. I will leave that for another day. I do not expect the Minister to respond on that, but I hope he will clearly indicate that he will keep his options open.

As to Mr Adams and Sinn Fein, whatever people have to say about Martin McGuinness, and there is lots that people could say about him, he was more involved in the institutions in Stormont and more committed to them. I do not think Mr Adams is in the same position. The negotiations after the election are going to be extremely difficult, but I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will be prepared to keep an open mind and look at creative options because to close the place down and abandon the institutions with all the problems that arise is the worst option. I hope it is not necessary to restore direct rule. If it is, we will have to deal with it, but I sincerely hope that we can avoid it, and that may require a lot of creative thinking.