Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his kind remarks. I watched very briefly the beginning of the debate in the other place, and I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, on the opening contribution from his right honourable friend in the other place. Indeed, I thought the shadow Secretary of State stole the show with at least some attempt to put some kind of gloss on what was before us in a very threadbare Bill.

I am entirely unconvinced as to the rationale for even having this Bill at this point, because I cannot imagine that there is any case at this stage, a few days after the last deadline ran out, for anybody to stand over a judicial review against the Secretary of State for not calling an Assembly election. For the sake of a few days, I do not think that that would survive. I hope that it is not a piece of political theatre that we are witnessing here.

Before dealing with the substance, I will follow on on the point about public sector pay. If ever there was any ambiguity over whether there was cross-party support for the Secretary of State’s actions in withholding this money, that was set aside in the Commons by the shadow Secretary of State earlier today. He made it very clear where he stood, saying that this tactic—because that is what it is—was fundamentally flawed and morally and politically wrong, and will not sustain itself even if we are forced through the fortnight this Bill provides for. I note the strikes that have occurred and the stresses that the withdrawal of significant parts of public services are putting on people. Let us imagine the parents of, say, children with severe disabilities, who are depending on a bus to arrive to take them to a day centre. Those parents do not know whether it will be coming this day or not. Do they have to make alternative arrangements? Do they have to get a relative to come in? Do they have to stay off work?

What are we putting these people through this for? We know the money is there; the Government are boasting about it. So let us sort that out; I think it would almost improve the atmosphere if it were done that way, because all we are doing is adding more stress to people who are already highly stressed. I hope that my noble friend can take that back to his right honourable friend in the other place, making it absolutely clear that there is no cross-party support for this policy. It is entirely counterproductive.

I also have to say that I feel that, when these one-day wonders come through—as they do from time to time on Northern Ireland affairs—one almost feels that this Parliament is like a legislative takeaway. You send out for a piece of legislation and ram it through both Houses in one day. People are fighting for pieces of legislation for a lifetime and yet we can stuff them through in one day. It is a terrible way to do business. I know that is not my noble friend’s choice, but it is almost always Northern Ireland stuff that is treated in this way.

The Secretary of State tells us that great progress is being made on restoring devolution. I hope that is true. In his opening remarks my noble friend talked about the Government’s commitment to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. I point out to him that that was an all-party agreement, yet talks have been going on for two years in secrecy and none of the rest of the parties has been engaged except in a peripheral way. We all have talks with government and always have done, but this has gone on far too long. In fact, the best solutions always come when all the participants are at the table and accept the outcomes of the negotiations—otherwise we would have had no agreement. Trying to do it in a hole-in-the-corner way, with nods and winks here and nods and winks there, does not work. It does not stick. What happens if the DUP and the Government agree and come together? What about the rest of us? Maybe some of us will not agree with it when we see it: what happens then? It is a bad way to do business. Yes, people have to have their concerns addressed—I totally support that—but I think we have taken it far too far.

I do not want to rehearse the arguments that went on in this Chamber for so long over the departure from the European Union. I am no Europhile fan of the European Union. I am against the principle of a federal state: I never agreed with that. But the sort of problems that have arisen over our departure from the European Union were foreseeable, and they were foreseen in this House time and time again. A party delegation went to meet Prime Minister Cameron in February 2016 and, after that meeting, it was perfectly clear that there was no adequate plan to deal with our departure from the European Union should the people so wish.

We pointed out that a referendum has two outcomes and asked what the plans were if the people decided to leave. The answer we got was entirely unsatisfactory. Consequently, we recommended that people did not support leaving at that point under those terms and conditions. I would have to say that things are actually worse than I expected and that what we are dealing with now is the latest version of an attempt to bridge the virtually unbridgeable—which, of course, is the Windsor Framework, which is heralded as one of the Prime Minister’s most significant achievements since he has been in office.

I am quite sure that my noble friend will want to share with the rest of us what changes have been made to this agreement since February last year, and to show us the pages and the paragraphs where improvements have been made and some of the constitutional absurdities referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, dealt with. How are the seven tests that my noble friend behind me alluded to earlier today getting on? Is it going to be the case that this framework mark 2 is going to come up and we will have solutions? Perhaps the Minister can tell us what negotiations have taken place with the European Union, whether they have been successful and what mechanisms are going to be adopted and changes made to make these arrangements more palatable and more constitutionally correct—because, at the end of the day, that is what a two-year boycott has been about.

I listen to people talk about the Act of Union. We hear that some keyboard warriors have suddenly discovered that they have great skills in this area. It is a pity they were not exercising those skills when we had to deal with the Provisional IRA’s campaign against Northern Ireland over the years. Anyway, they have suddenly discovered the word “subjugation”, and I know my noble friend thinks of little else. However, can he explain to me why, if the Act of Union is the be-all and end-all and such a great thing—given that it was introduced in 1801 and it covered all of Ireland and Great Britain—there is an Irish Republic?

The truth is that this Parliament can legislate to say that apples are oranges. Important though it is, the Act of Union with Scotland would have been worthless if one more person had voted to leave than to stay. The same principle applies here. The best way to maintain the union is to maximise the amount of support on the ground so that more people want to stay in it than want to leave, and no Act of Parliament can substitute for that. In my view, we are fighting a sham fight while the people of Northern Ireland are suffering. We have heard about all the problems over health, education and industrial relations, which used to be the best in the UK. Now we are in a parlous situation.

Whatever comes out of this measure over the next couple of weeks, there at least has to be honesty, not a spin that something is something that it is not. People are sick of that. They want to know. If there are changes of substance, let us see what they are. If there are no changes of substance, people can say, “Look, we tried our best. It hasn’t worked out. We can’t go on like this. We’ve got to try another way”. Fair enough; we do not always get what we want, and not everything is successful the first time round. But the one thing I do not think people will tolerate is being led up the garden path and told something that is fundamentally untrue, so we will be watching very closely.

Lastly, I heard Sir Jeffrey in the other place saying that threats have been made against him. I totally deplore that. I can well understand it, because I know the threats that were made 25 years ago against our colleague Lord Trimble. He was tormented for years, I suspect by many of the same people who are tormenting Jeffrey today. The question is: what did they ever achieve? What did they ever get us? More misery, more deaths and destruction, and no progress. If anything is to come out of this, it is that that is not the way to go forward.