Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill (Allocation of Time)

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

I beg to move amendment (a), after sub-paragraph (6)(b), at end, insert—

“(ba) the Question on any amendment, new clause or new schedule selected by the Chair for separate decision;”

I am glad to move this amendment, which stands in the names of my hon. Friends the Members for South Down (Ms Ritchie) and for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) as well as mine.

The Secretary of State has tried to explain the circumstances in which we face this programme motion. The amendment does not alter the time taken by the House in respect of that motion—I wish it did. We would have liked to have more time, just as our colleagues in the Assembly—not just SDLP Members, but Members of other parties—wanted more time to debate the issue last week. The original vote in the Assembly—on whether the business should be taken there this week to give the Assembly parties time to digest things—was 58 to 33. That meant that the legislation would have come here following what happened in the Assembly.

The Secretary of State suggested that the legislative consent motion followed standard practice. It does not. Paragraph (6) of the timetable motion makes it clear that at the conclusion of the Committee stage, no amendment or new clause tabled by anyone other than the Government can be put to a vote. The right of the House to vote, properly, on an amendment has been completely circumscribed by the timetable motion as it stands.

The Secretary of State actually had the neck to say that if the amendment were withdrawn, that would allow more time for debates on crucial amendments and new clauses. By providing only two hours for the Committee stage and Third Reading, the Government have ensured that there will not be any significant time in which to debate any amendments or new clauses, and also—in paragraph (6)—that no new clause, and no amendment other than a Government amendment, can be put to a vote. That is a very unusual procedure, which Members should not tolerate. If they do, they will risk creating a precedent that they will regret.

[Sammy Wilson]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman is advancing this argument. Does he not accept that the legislative consent motion sent legislation back to this House for this House to pass on behalf of the Northern Ireland Assembly? Is he saying that he would prefer this House to override the wishes of the people who are elected in Northern Ireland? That is what his argument amounts to.

[Mark Durkan]

It is not what my argument amounts to. If the Assembly is saying in the legislative consent motion tabled by Sinn Féin and the DUP that it wants the legislation to come here, we should do our legislative business in proper order. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that there should not be any debate at all, and that we are lucky to have the right even to table amendments.

Let us look at what the legislative consent motion says. Members of other parties might like to know what they are being asked to support. If they are being told, “Take this on foot of the legislative consent motion”—if they are being told that the legislative consent motion is holy writ—they should bear in mind the fact that it says:

“That this Assembly consents to the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill 2015 being taken forward by the Westminster Parliament”—

that is a reference to the Bill with which we are dealing today—and

“approves the welfare clauses of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill as initially introduced at Westminster”.

Many of us in this House did not approve those clauses as initially introduced. Many of us, in a number of parties, voted against aspects of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Is the idea that we must now, on foot of the legislative consent motion, turn ourselves inside out—members of the Labour party, the SDLP, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, and the Green party Member—and say, “We opposed the Bill when it was debated in this House, but we no longer oppose it? We now approve the welfare clauses that were in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill as initially introduced at Westminster.” Well, my position on those clauses has not changed, the position of my hon. Friends in the SDLP has not changed, and I should be very surprised if the position of members of the other parties had changed.

The legislative consent motion goes on to approve

“the draft Welfare Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 2015; and the Executive’s proposals to enhance payments flowing from the agreement announced on 17 November 2015.”

Members might want to take a careful look at just what is in the legislative consent motion, and note that they are being asked to contradict their position in relation to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill as initially introduced here.

Some of us are trying to use the Committee stage to table due amendments which would be relevant to the Bill. The Secretary of State again tried to confuse things by referring to the amount of scrutiny that had been given to the Bill that was before the Assembly, which has now been largely transposed into a draft Order in Council running to 126 pages. What we are being asked to consider today is not that draft Order in Council, but the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill, all 58 lines of it. Meanwhile, we are being asked to nod through 237 lines of a timetable motion so that we will not have the right to table amendments and put them to the vote. If the Secretary of State really meant what she said about time for debate on crucial amendments and new clauses, she would not be resisting this amendment; she would be agreeing to it so that paragraph (6) would be amended and the Chair could put other matters to the vote if that is what Members and the House so wished. This is about good parliamentary procedure.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying he would have been happy enough for the situation to continue as it was, with massive fines being paid back to the Government? Surely that is not his argument.

[Mark Durkan]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not sure how far you are treating some of these arguments as relating to the matters of substance as opposed to procedure, but the Secretary of State talked long on those points, as did others.

Let us be clear: a couple of different arguments have been used as to why everybody should just pass this through today as a matter of urgency. One has been that if we do not scramble this through fast, the institutions are in danger of collapse. Who was bringing the institutions to the brink of collapse? It was the very people who are being celebrated as heroes. The SDLP never threatened to bring the institutions down; we never once on any of these issues in the last number of years have used the word “crisis” or threatened the existence of the institutions. We have never said we would make this a make-or-break issue and the institutions would crash if we did not get our way. Sinn Féin and the DUP have variably and respectively, and sometimes collectively, said that at different times over the past couple of years, but it was never the position of the SDLP. We have adhered to our position on welfare reform without at any stage threatening the institutions. The position of Sinn Féin and the DUP came to threaten the institutions—because, after all, who else can threaten the institutions or bring them to the point of collapse but those two parties?

The second argument in relation to the exigency is the money argument. We heard it repeated again in the last intervention. Let us remember: the money argument arose because the Treasury chose to respond to the Assembly’s failure to pass the legislation by imposing what it at one stage called fines and also called penalties—indeed, DUP Finance Ministers used those words as well—but later we were told, “No, you can’t call them fines or penalties; they are savings forgone.” The fact is that it was a Treasury tactic: “Unless you pass this legislation—this karaoke Bill—through the Assembly on the same terms as we had it in Westminster, we will fine the block grant.”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We will have these debates later. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, he is moving an amendment to the allocation of time motion, but we are in danger of opening up the entire debate at this stage, which I do not want to do, as I want to save something for the next part.

[Mark Durkan]

Yes, but I am partly answering points that the Secretary of State spent some time on and others made interventions on.

We must remember this point about the fines and the pressure that puts on the budget. It was the Treasury that chose to create a budget stress in the hope it would induce the Assembly to pass the legislation. That budget stress became a budget crisis, and that budget crisis in turn contributed to the political crisis which the Secretary of State now tells us will be resolved by this Bill and this programme motion.

I will not stray into the areas where we are seeking to amend the Bill through the amendments tabled for later—I hope we can discuss those in Committee—but I want to make the point that Members of this House should not be under the illusion that they have to adopt a procedure with a timetable motion in relation to this Bill that they would not adopt for anything else because it is safe to do so as it is in the name of taking forward the peace process or the “Fresh Start” agreement.

There are parties that support some parts of the “Fresh Start” agreement but not other parts, and there are parties that support the welfare reform changes but do not endorse the whole of the “Fresh Start” agreement. Other Members in this House from parties outside Northern Ireland should not think they have to turn their own position on welfare reform and the current Welfare Reform and Work Bill currently going through Westminster inside out as a way of supporting progress and stability in Northern Ireland. Progress and stability in Northern Ireland can easily be supported in the context of this House following its due procedures and not accepting the almost unprecedented provision that means in Committee nothing other than clauses stand part or Government amendments can be voted on.

It is wrong that we are circumscribed by time, and it is wrong that we are being muzzled. This is all courtesy of Sinn Féin. It is to make sure we cannot table amendments that capture some of the amendments we tabled when the Assembly Bill came forward earlier this year. They were rejected by a petition of concern tabled by the DUP, and they were rejected by the votes of Sinn Féin as well. [Interruption.] Yes, and Sinn Féin and the DUP voted down SDLP amendments to the Assembly Bill that—[Interruption.] Yes, they voted down amendments that were in the same spirit as the amendments the Conservatives had voted down in this House to the original Bill on welfare reform. The DUP voted down amendments and petitions of concern against amendments that were in the spirit of amendments it had supported in the original legislation, so it has turned it inside out, and that is up to it to do, and Sinn Féin.

No parties in this House need abandon their own positions. We should be able to take amendments in this House and vote on those amendments. The Government are in a compact with Sinn Féin and the DUP to make sure the amendments cannot be voted on. They do not want the embarrassment of the Tories having to vote down these same amendments that Sinn Féin voted down in the Assembly earlier this year: the picture of the Sinn Féin -Tory-DUP axis would then be complete because we would be able to show who had voted down which amendments consistently. The case would be that the Tories voted them down originally, then Sinn Féin and the DUP voted them down, and then the Tories voted them down again now. It is to avoid that picture. That is why we have this kangaroo parliamentary procedure that is being used.

From Sinn Féin, a party that in the past supported kangaroo courts, we now have a kangaroo parliamentary procedure whereby things were rushed through in the Assembly the other day by the legislative consent motion; and now, not only are measures being put through on a timetable motion here, but the rights to table amendments with a view to their being voted on are being supressed by this programme motion. Members should resist that by supporting the amendment.

The amendment to the programme motion will, if passed, not cost any time or add any delay, so it does not relate to any of the concerns that the Secretary of State raised. The programme motion could be passed with the amendment and there would be absolutely no jeopardy to the timetable that the Secretary of State has tried to impress upon the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Villiers]

No, I am not giving way. I welcome the opportunity to debate the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) at the Committee stage, and I am sure he will have sufficient time to put on the record these points as he so wishes. Obviously, he has also had considerable time during this discussion to make a number of useful points.

[Mark Durkan]

I still wish to press the amendment to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made.