Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) Regulations 2019

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

My Lords, this Government are committed to the Belfast agreement. At the heart of that agreement is devolved power-sharing executive government. Restoring the Executive remains our priority. Northern Ireland needs the political institutions of the Belfast agreement and its successors to be fully functioning. However, in the absence of devolved government, the UK Government must ensure the maintenance of good governance and public confidence in Northern Ireland.

In November last year, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland brought forward legislation which, among other things, addressed the need for urgent appointments to be made to a number of public bodies. The initial phase of appointments under the Act has enabled the reconstitution of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which recently met for the first time in its fully constituted form. This has also allowed: the recruitment of a new chief constable for Northern Ireland to be initiated; the replacement of the outgoing chair and board members of the Probation Board; appointments to the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission; and the initiation of a recruitment process to appoint a new Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.

Under the 2018 Act, the Secretary of State also committed to make further appointments that are required in the absence of an Executive. The purpose of this instrument is to specify which further offices require appointment. In preparing this instrument, my officials have worked closely with the Northern Ireland Civil Service to identify those critical appointments that will arise soon. This instrument would add to the list in Section 5 of the Act, enabling the Secretary of State, as the relevant UK Minister, to exercise Northern Ireland Ministers’ appointment functions in relation to the following offices: the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People; the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee; the Northern Ireland Housing Executive; the Attorney-General for Northern Ireland; the Livestock and Meat Commission for Northern Ireland; and, finally, the Commissioner for Victims and Survivors. These are important offices for which the exercise of appointment functions in the coming months is vital for the continued good governance of Northern Ireland. I beg to move.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the Minister has brought forward a further list of appointments to public bodies. Although I have no objection to those in principle, I want to put on the record the difference between the Government’s approach to, say, the appointment of a member of the Livestock and Meat Commission and to an issue which I have raised in this House many times: the mess and crisis in our health service. Is the Minister aware that, against a target of 95%, only 62% of patients are being dealt with in emergency departments? The comparable figure in England and Scotland is 89%. English doctors recently put out a statement saying that they believed people were dying as a direct result of those figures. Yet our figures are infinitely worse and are getting worse every quarter. Time and again I have raised the more than 280,000 patients waiting for consultant-led appointments. Nearly 100,000 of those are waiting for longer than 12 months.

The Minister has said that his right honourable friend in the other place is taking the initiative and that meetings with the parties have been called. I welcome that, although it does seem somewhat ill prepared. We are a few weeks before a set of elections, so whether we can expect a positive outcome is open to question. The Minister will also shortly be returning to this House with further pieces of legislation, including a budget for Northern Ireland—the third one that the Minister has proposed—even though there is now no prospect of using the former Executive’s spending plans as a template because they are so out of date. He will also be coming forward with the second portion of the legislation under which this set of appointments has been made, because it has to be looked at again after five months.

There is a set of priorities here, but the priorities coming from the Government seem to be the wrong ones. I would have thought that people’s lives and welfare were a higher priority than some of the things in these regulations, albeit that I am for them. I have no objection to them, but they are being done against a background of hoping that if we pull the blankets over our heads the problem will go away. It will not. The Minister may find that in the talks that are being initiated next week, I believe, we will all be proved wrong, a massive amount of good will will flow and we will get devolution back—I hope that that takes place. If I am not surprised and pleased by that—if we find that it is not the case and things drift on—what will the Minister and his colleagues do? Are they just going to leave these health figures to get worse and worse, or are we actually going to do something?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I will.

“After all it’s a step in the right direction


It’s a step in the right direction after all”.

The rest of the song, I will not sing. I merely note it is a reminder that even small steps, as long as they are taken in the right direction, can make us go forward. I hope that the step taken on Friday is a small step in the right direction and will lead to some serious movement.

I must return to the matter at hand: the regulations. I have a form of words that I have to say—I have it in a bundle somewhere.

[Lord Empey]

While the noble Lord is looking for his music score, I will say that it is good that we can have a moment of humour on an issue like this. But the question was asked about the backstop and the role that Northern Ireland could play. When we asked what input people from Northern Ireland would have into the whole Brexit debate, we were told repeatedly that there would be consultations and so on. It did not happen that way.

In my view, instead of the Belfast agreement being used as an obstacle, parts of it could be the solution. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, referred to the other parts of the agreement. We are forgetting that the agreement is a complicated mixture. Even at this late stage in the process, I ask the Minister: what alternative thinking is going on in the NIO as to how we might replace Stormont? I have not had an answer to that, either today or on other occasions when it was raised. The bits and pieces of the jigsaw are all on the table, but nobody is putting them together in the right way.

Trade flows across the Irish border represent 0.1% of European trade flows. How is it that, as a nation and as a continent, we are in such a state over that when we are ignoring the very institutions that are a part of the solution? Will the Minister reflect on this and consult with his right honourable friend in the other place? Perhaps he should serenade her, as he has a talent for it.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I thank the noble Lord for giving me a moment or two to find my place in my notes and for the reminder that these are serious issues. He is correct, I did not give him an answer to his question. He will be aware that I was not able to find the right answer to give—and that is part of the challenge, to be frank.

I am also aware that I have not appropriately answered the question of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. I will reflect upon that, come back to him on it and share the answer more widely with other Members of the House. I am conscious that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, made the point about seeing this not simply through the lens of Northern Ireland but through a broader sense of the devolution settlements. He is absolutely right. We cannot lose sight of that fact, either.

However, I have found my form of words, which are: I beg to move.