Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

It is my view there is no such thing as a good Brexit, either economically or politically, for the people of Northern Ireland. However, a no-deal Brexit threatens everything that successive British Governments worked for up until the Cameron Administration foolishly decided to revert to the hands-off policy that helped get us into this catastrophic mess in the first place. I call on the Government to redouble their efforts to restore devolution, but twice of very little is not enough. It will take much more than that but the first essential step is to stop a no-deal Brexit before it is too late. I hope that the noble Lord will confirm that he will give due credence to the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in the event of direct rule and that regulations such as this will be consulted on through that process, and that the appointments he is going to make under these regulations will also be consulted on to ensure that there is buy in and cross-community support.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the appointments being added to the list include such things as the Drainage Council for Northern Ireland. If the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is seriously saying that the Irish Government need to be consulted about that, that amounts to joint authority. It is not a requirement of any of the treaties or the 1998 Act. The two Governments can consult at a council that can meet periodically. That is fair enough but we must be well aware of the three-stranded process. Its integrity is the core of the agreement.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Hain, in expressing concern about the direction of travel. I had been given the impression that talks were going at white-hot pace during the summer. but that is not the case. If my information is correct, the last all-party meeting was on 5 July, which was before we left this place for the summer. I stand to be corrected, and if the Minister does so I will be more than happy to withdraw that point, but that is my understanding. There have been one or two relatively casual meetings of working parties on programmes for government and so on, but certainly in the last two weeks of August there was one interaction in one week and one in the other.

It is true that there have been some bilateral talks between the DUP and Sinn Féin but I repeat that there is no proper process, although I stand to be corrected on that also by the Minister. The two meetings on 5 July and 9 September are sufficient evidence that there is a lack of urgency, drive and ambition. Although I have no particular issues with any of these appointments—I do with some of the recent appointments but that will come up in a later debate—I say to colleagues that devolution will not be restored unless there is a proper process that is organised, timetabled and properly run. This ad hoc approach—we will meet now; we will meet again; maybe we will, maybe we will not—will not deliver. During our debates before the recess on the Executive restoration Bill, a number of us said that some of the proposals in that legislation would not assist the process of restoring the Executive, and so it has proved. We are now closing up shop until the middle of October but there are two other things that need to be borne in mind.

Unusually, the leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland is to be challenged for her position in November. I do not believe that Sinn Féin has the remotest intention of doing anything until Brexit is resolved, and certainly I cannot see that happening when its leader in Northern Ireland is facing a challenge from outside. Therefore, it looks as though we will arrive at the third anniversary of Stormont being closed in January, with no Government and so on.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, referred to the wider issues of direct rule. Personally, I do not have a preference for direct rule. We worked hard to get Stormont going again and to get devolution, and the fact that people have messed it up is another matter. However, there is one issue which I keep drawing to the House’s attention. I ask the Minister, with his right honourable friend the Secretary of State, to consider our health service, which is in dire straits.

There are 7,500 vacancies in the health service in Northern Ireland for 3% of the UK’s population. Noble Lords can do the maths. That goes for nurses and doctors and applies right across the whole card. Our system has been kept going by locums—people brought in by agencies at enormous expense. One person working on a ward at night will be from an agency on X amount of money and one will be from the regular health service staff on Y amount of money, which is far less. It is unfair and unreasonable. Naturally enough, nurses are going to these banks and agencies and are being brought in as locums. Some of them are flown over from Newcastle upon Tyne and other locations. They are perfectly good people but their flights, accommodation and food have to be paid for, and of course they come into a ward and do not know anybody. This is becoming a humanitarian crisis.

With a new Session of Parliament coming up, I have asked the Public Bill Office to prepare a Bill for me, which I hope to put into the ballot. I remind noble Lords that in the last three ballots I got positions one, one and five, and I am hoping to improve on that. The Bill would transfer health, social services and public safety powers from Stormont to here, and it would have a sunset clause whereby immediately upon the establishment of the Executive those powers would revert. We did that some years ago with social security when there was a disagreement at Stormont and those powers were returned. I appeal to the Minister: the waiting lists have become absolutely ridiculous. Professor Deirdre Heenan of Ulster University was part of a Nuffield Trust study that a few weeks ago produced sobering figures, to say the least. People are hurting and I think that lives are being lost while we fiddle around with this issue. If the best effort is a meeting of the leaders of all parties on 5 July when we are in the middle of all this, there is something radically wrong. If I have missed the boat and secret talks that I am unaware of have been going on somewhere, I will be glad to hear that, but I suspect that I am not very far wrong.

Therefore, I say to the Minister that I do not have any particular difficulty with the appointments that we are talking about, but if we can bring legislation—even though this is secondary legislation—before this House to appoint the chairman of the Drainage Council, why can we not do something about the suffering of people in the health service and the fact that that service is being allowed to go down the drain? The spending priorities set by the outgoing Executive are five or six years old and no longer match the current needs and requirements of our community. Therefore, I appeal to the Minister to speak to his right honourable colleague in the other place and to seriously consider this matter. I do not want to see direct rule a day earlier than the noble Lord, Lord Hain, does—I have the same reservations—but this is a humanitarian issue; it is a matter of life and death. This Parliament has a responsibility to people for their health and safety but that is not being exercised.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I have listened with great care and interest to the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Empey. If either noble Lord has any magical formula to restore Stormont, I will certainly be very glad to hear it. However, there seems to be no magical formula because Sinn Féin, with the collaboration of this House, has been handed the keys of Stormont.

Let us make no mistake: same-sex marriage and abortion, as debated and legislated for recently, were two of the key demands of Sinn Féin. This House agreed to them, and if Stormont were not returned by 21 October, the legislation would be enacted. This House and the Government were warned that, in so doing, they were keeping the doors of Stormont closed because Sinn Féin has no reason to allow them to open. If Stormont returns, these issues can be debated. I know that on abortion there is a genuine desire across the political divide to see the changes in the legislation that came before the other House and this House. Rather than blame everyone else, this House has to accept part of the blame because it handed to Sinn Féin the reason for not returning to Stormont. It is therefore not good enough for people to do a pilot Act, wash their hands and suggest that the parties in Northern Ireland are responsible for the present hiatus.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, mentioned and warned about the DUP being in cahoots with this Government, influencing and collaborating with them. I remind the noble Lord that the leader of his party collaborated with Sinn Féin—the IRA Army Council—when they were in the midst of terrorist activity, against honourable Members of this House and others in our friend and family circles who were murdered and injured. To suggest that there is somehow a great danger in the Government and the Democratic Unionist Party working together and not see the danger—what the people of Northern Ireland witnessed in their darkest days—of the then Government collaborating with Sinn Féin was certainly very hard for any democrat to take.

It certainly does not go well for some noble Lords in this House to accept what the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is saying.