Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 12th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. Where there is an absence of democratic government, particularly in Northern Ireland, that gap will be filled by the men of violence. That is an interesting point on which to start this final but one speech in your Lordships’ House.

There has been a theme throughout this evening’s short debate concerning the way in which we scrutinise legislation, particularly of this sort, in Parliament. It was a theme in the other place as well. I hope the Minister will take back to his boss that constantly relying on emergency legislation for Northern Ireland, when we know the timetable in front of us, really is not good enough. When we consider that the meetings that apparently were held with the political parties in Belfast were rather perfunctory, that adds to the difficulties we face.

Northern Ireland is now the least democratic part of the United Kingdom—possibly the least democratic part of the European Union. The local authorities will be elected in a few months’ time but they have very minor powers in comparison with their British counterparts. All other decisions regarding education, health, planning and the rest are now taken by a bureaucracy. I suspect that there is nowhere else in Europe where such huge decisions, involving billions of pounds, are taken by unelected administrators and civil servants. I do not envy them because whatever they do will be criticised. But it is not their job. In a democracy, such decisions should be taken by elected politicians, which has not been the case in Northern Ireland.

A number of your Lordships mentioned the possibility of the Assembly being used for deliberative purposes. Brexit would have been an ideal subject for the Assembly to discuss, as the budget would certainly have been. I might have mentioned before in your Lordships’ House that when I was Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland before an Executive was set up, I took the budget to the new Assembly that had only just been elected. All Members of that Assembly were able to question me about that budget. Such an arrangement would not have legal standing, other than the fact that the Members have been elected legally, but the Assembly would have a deliberative function. I am sure that two of its former Speakers who are here, the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Hay, would agree that the opportunity would be enormous and that the people of Northern Ireland would regard it as a first step, particularly given that Members of the Assembly are still being paid. It is a proposal worth considering.

The Opposition will not oppose these Bills. As regards the budget, a number of your Lordships have raised different issues. I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Hain—we are all interested in this issue—in pensions for the victims of the Troubles, and the fact that a lot of those people are now old. Indeed, some have died. Around 500 would qualify. A tiny handful would be people about whom there may be controversy. We must not allow that vast majority to be affected by issues of definition of victim; rather, we must address the mental and physical problems that those people face.

The proposal regarding the rates is fair. It is on a level with those affecting my local authority in Wales. There is nothing outrageous about the amount but the point has been made by some Members here that we should consider those who still cannot afford the rates. Although non-domestic rates are smaller, in Northern Ireland, as in the rest of the United Kingdom, there are small towns in difficulty and where business rates are a burden. I ask the Minister whether the new small towns initiative will apply to Northern Ireland, by way of the Barnett formula.

A lot of Members rightly raised the RHI, and it is good that next week we will have an opportunity to look at it in detail. We await the results of the inquiry. There might be a judicial review of the issue, which the Northern Ireland Select Committee will deal with next week. Although some people benefited a lot from the RHI, everyone who applied did so in good faith. A lot of farmers and small business people in Northern Ireland will be affected adversely by the results of this legislation. It has to go through, otherwise nothing would come to them at all; but we should scrutinise this issue in greater detail. It was a scandal and I hope that we will be able to rescue some of the people who have been caught up in it. However, I still come back to the fact that none of this should be happening. There should be an Assembly, an Executive, north-south bodies and indeed the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. The east-west aspect of the Good Friday agreement should be operating.

We are 312 hours from the first deadline for legislation—which this House approved, by the way, not long ago. I very much doubt that we shall achieve what we want by that time. The involvement of both Prime Ministers has been peripheral. The Government —to put it diplomatically—were less than energetic in this matter. I cannot see a plan ahead of us. There should be a plan for talks about talks, if nothing else, and there is none. There is no hope of it. We have had over two years without an Assembly or an Executive.

A few hours ago, the Government were defeated by 149 votes on an issue about Northern Ireland, effectively. The proper argument put in the other place was that the Good Friday agreement must not be affected by a hard border. The hard border would adversely affect everything that was agreed 20 years ago. Of course that is right. But here we are today in this Chamber discussing Northern Ireland and the restoration of the Assembly and Executive, and in reality this issue is as great a threat to the Good Friday agreement as that of the existence of a hard border, which has just resulted in a vast government defeat. The two are linked. Had an Assembly and Executive been functioning, a resolution of the backstop issue between both the nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland might well have been possible. These abject failures in negotiations, in both Brussels and Belfast, have had tragic consequences not just for Northern Ireland but for the whole of our country. The crisis we are currently in is partly about Northern Ireland and, frankly, the Government should do something about it.

Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

My Lords, I said at Second Reading that this legislation is controversial and far-reaching. We all know it is regrettable that there is a lack of scrutiny. The legislation is extremely complicated and, indeed, was flawed from the outset. People genuinely entered into the scheme in good faith; they deserve to be treated fairly so that they do not suffer hardship.

However, we have to pay attention to the legalities of all this. The tariffs in the Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) Act 2018 are sunsetted. Therefore, if this Bill does not pass today, the department will have no legal authority to make payments in respect of boilers accredited under the scheme before 18 November 2015—some 1,800 boilers are, I believe, involved. So there are legal aspects to this that we must pay attention to. The other thing is that an independent review—the Ricardo report—said quite clearly that, under European Commission state aid rules, we had to stick to a rate of return of 12%. Can the Minister confirm that the base case tariffs or a compulsory buy-out have to be compliant with European state aid rules?

I can be brief—I think my other points have been made—but I hope that noble Lords will pay attention to the legalities involved in this scheme. We do not want anyone to suffer hardship, but we have to be very careful that these payments can be made. If we stop them there will be more suffering.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lord Empey and Lord Rogan. I call them both my noble friends of over 20 years, despite the eccentric seating in place today.

This is a sorry business, all of it—a terrible mess. The whole situation in Northern Ireland for the last two years started with the collapse of this appallingly planned scheme. We cannot get away from that. Sir Patrick Coughlin is currently conducting an inquiry into the scheme, the courts are ready to pounce and the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee has been asked to look at it as well. The difficulties go back to the way the legislation first came to us. There should not have been a Bill that, on the one hand, decided the regional rate in Northern Ireland and, on the other, decided the details of the RHI.

Equally wrong was the length of time taken by the department in Northern Ireland to deal with its consultation process. As a result, apparently, all the details that we need to consider for the Bill did not arrive until January, even though it was known full well that the previous Bill put forward was sunsetted to end at the end of March. This meant there would be totally inadequate scrutiny of the Bill by Parliament. What is done is done, but it means that we are in a mess. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, referred quite rightly to the fact that some of the people who, in good faith and on the advice of the Government, went to their banks and decided to take out loans to deal with this issue are now in a terrible mess. What happens to them? The Government are in a dilemma—partly one of their own making, because of what I have just referred to with respect to process.

If we do not pass the Bill, there will be no regional rate in Northern Ireland and the scheme will collapse, so people who are currently benefiting from it, in whatever sense, will not have any money to deal with it. At the same time, in the other place, the Secretary of State welcomed the Select Committee on Northern Ireland looking at it. Perhaps she did not realise that, under the circumstances of the Bill, it would have just under two weeks to consider it, which of course is impossible.

The Government and the Minister in particular, who has been rightly praised by all sides of the House on this and other issues, have to come up with a solution that will satisfy my noble friends Lord Empey and Lord Rogan, and the rest of us, about what can be done. They to ensure that the rates are collected and that the scheme does not collapse but, at the same time, looks after the people who took part in this scheme in good faith. There may well be ways the department could look sympathetically at cases in Northern Ireland. There may also be a way, although I cannot see what it would be at the moment, for the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee’s recommendations to be taken into account after the legislation has been improved, unless further primary legislation could be brought before this House to amend the Bill we are considering—it may come to that.

A general point has to be made: so long as there is no devolution in Northern Ireland, with no Assembly or Executive, we cannot have Northern Ireland legislation coming to us in bits or as emergency legislation that denies proper scrutiny. The dilemma that all of us, and the Government in particular, are in today results from the fact that the business managers have not taken Northern Ireland legislation seriously. That has to change, until such time when the institutions are revived in Northern Ireland, which I hope will not be that long away.

These Benches will support a Division, if my noble friend Lord Empey calls one. I hope that can be avoided with what the Minister is about to tell us, because we want to ensure that the legislation goes ahead. However, we also want to ensure that the hundreds of people in Northern Ireland who are now in a sorry state because of this RHI can be dealt with in a proper, decent, humane manner.

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

My Lords, I will begin in a slightly eccentric way. I have to make a correction of one of my earlier statements. In the debate last week, I stated that,

“the scheme in Great Britain is a 20-year scheme, whereas that anticipated in Northern Ireland is a 15-year scheme”.—[Official Report, 12/3/19; col. 1009.]

Noble Lords will no doubt realise that I meant to say that the anticipated scheme in the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland, is a 15-year scheme.

That was the easy bit. I will see what I can do to take us forward. Let me begin at the beginning. All the points made by noble Lords this evening on the amount of time and the manner in which scrutiny has been facilitated in this House have landed, and landed well. It is not acceptable that this House is treated like a rubber ball to be bounced gently into some sort of decision. I accept that. It should not happen. There needs to be proper scrutiny in this House and in the other place—now more than ever, in the absence of an Executive.

On combining the two elements of the Bill—namely, the regional rates and the heating incentive—there is no doubt that they do not fit comfortably together. There is also no doubt that, depending on your Lordships’ will this evening, the situation regarding the heating incentive will have an impact on the regional rates. These rates remain an important element of the overriding Northern Ireland budget. That combination was a mistake and I do not think we should ever find ourselves in a situation with two elements which clearly do not fit comfortably together. I need to reflect on that. There should be opportunities for this House to look at them separately and, where appropriate, give endorsement to that which it seeks to endorse, and criticism and understanding to that which requires further work.