Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Lord Godson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to share in the pleasure in the appointment of my noble friend Lord Caine, whom I have known for many years. It is a welcome tribute to the continuing importance of genuine expertise and institutional memory that he should be standing here tonight introducing this Bill. I pay tribute to him for that and share in the pleasure of noble Lords and the noble Baroness.

On a sadder note, I think of someone known to many noble Lords here tonight: Sir John Chilcot, who died last month. He was, of course, one of the longest-serving Permanent Secretaries in the Northern Ireland Office, with service in relation to Northern Ireland from the earliest days of the Troubles when he was in the Home Office. I mention him specifically because he once said something to me—and to many other noble Lords, no doubt. In the run-up to the Belfast agreement, as the peace progress was gaining momentum, he said, “We had a choice between good governance and peace—and we chose peace.” After that gap of time, tonight’s legislation constitutes something of an attempt to tidy this up and ensure that there is good governance. That is why I stand in support of this Second Reading along with other noble Lords.

One of the great might-have-beens of recent history in Northern Ireland is that, had this legislation been in place at the time of the collapse of the institutions back in early 2017, there would still have been a First Minister and Deputy First Minister in place later that year for the debates on the introduction of the Northern Ireland protocol. I think it is fair to say that the results might have been very different, had those institutions been working on a cross-community basis, because we would not have had a situation on the island of Ireland where only one entity there—the Government of the Irish Republic—had a say throughout the process and was able successfully to weaponise the protocol in that period against the UK Government. The Irish Government certainly were able to do that when they were able successfully to trash the UK Government’s position paper in August 2017.

There would also have been a contesting voice from the unionist community the following month, when the EU stated its position on the UK Government’s paper and on the provisions of the Belfast agreement. It was notable that this imbalance and asymmetry would not have taken place had the institutions been up and running and this legislation been in place at the time. That would have been a welcome development and we would have had greater balance in all that. In concluding, I note the words of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who spotted this at the time of the withdrawal agreement of 2018. He said

“had the Assembly been up and running and had the Executive been working, the nationalists and unionists would have had to come together to resolve the issues that currently”—[Official Report, 6/12/18; col. 1122.]

bedevil them. There is no better statement than that. It would also have been the case that the principle of equal citizenship across these islands would have had a greater level of surety had the legislation proposed tonight been in place then.