Mark Durkan
Main Page: Mark Durkan (Social Democratic & Labour Party - Foyle)Department Debates - View all Mark Durkan's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Danny Kinahan
Thank you very much. I take those points very much on board. Rather than get buried in petty Northern Ireland politics, I will just point out that most of those collapses were actually caused by the hon. Gentleman’s party.
Those who were involved in the construction of the Good Friday agreement recognised that a simple or quick fix could never be an option. Indeed, those who were key in bringing this agreement to the people saw this as a first step towards a fair and equal society. They recognised that paramilitarism, segregated education, identity, culture and how to deal with victims and survivors were all complex issues that would need to be addressed many years beyond implementation of the 1998 framework. Sadly, in the 17 years since the signing of the agreement these issues have simply not been addressed.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Going back to the question of the suspension of the Assembly on four different occasions up to 2002, does he recall that on none of those occasions was a suspension brought about by a disagreement between the parties that held the First and Deputy First Ministerships? The suspensions were all caused by crises relating to the decommissioning issue, usually because of decisions and antics involving the British Government and certainly not involving the SDLP.
Danny Kinahan
Thank you very much. I am in a very good sandwich here, or between two thorns on a rose. I very much take those points on board.
The squabbling that has ensued, due to the mistrust of politicians, has not only made these matters even more divisive but has allowed them to taint issues such as healthcare, social justice and the economy.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
In following the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), I will respond to his challenge to my party, but I do not want to respond only to the issue of welfare reform and the challenges in the devolved budget resulting from the Treasury’s budget bullying tactics. The Treasury is imposing a fine on the block grant that is given to the Northern Ireland Executive under the Barnett formula. It adopted that tactic because it thought that creating budget stress for the Assembly would force through welfare reform, but that budget stress became a budget crisis, and that in turn is feeding a political crisis.
The Treasury needs to take a different course. I ask hon. Members to contemplate what would happen if the British Government decided to introduce a provision in the Scotland Bill that would require any disagreement between Ministers in London and Edinburgh on welfare issues in Scotland to be resolved according to the terms they are using in Northern Ireland. How would those on the Treasury Bench react if some of us proposed a new clause that would specifically forbid the Treasury ever doing in Scotland what it is now doing in Northern Ireland: using budget interference to impose a different view of welfare reform?
Although the scheme for devolution set out in the Scotland Bill is different from the notional legislative devolution that Northern Ireland has, the fact is that there is a scheme for devolution there, and it requires and presumes, by the nature of the legislation, agreement between Ministers, but there is no provision for when there is disagreement. It certainly would not work if Scotland were to be treated in the way Northern Ireland has been treated. Therefore, if the Treasury would not treat Scotland that way in relation to the future of devolution and welfare, it should not treat Northern Ireland that way now.
Sammy Wilson
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that using the word “fine” misrepresents the situation? The money that is being paid back to the Treasury is the difference between what is being spent and would have been spent had the welfare changes introduced across the rest of the United Kingdom been introduced in Northern Ireland. The fact that the Northern Ireland Assembly has made a choice means that there is a difference in the amount of money spent, and that is why the money has to be paid back.
Mark Durkan
Whether we call them fines or penalties, as the hon. Gentleman and his party have done previously, or savings forgone, which is the language the Treasury uses, they are the same thing and the result is the same: serious pressure on our budget. There are other pressures on our budget as a result of some of the choices that the Executive have made. They are not choices that I would have made when I was Finance Minister—given that my period in that office has been brought up—but they are not choices that I had to make either.
Let me return to the issues that now confront all the parties in the Stormont House talks. Serious attention is rightly being paid to the question of paramilitarism in its various manifestations and manipulations. We are glad that that issue has come to the fore, although we regret how it has come to the fore. In the scoping for the original Stormont House negotiations late last year we said that we wanted paramilitarism, organised crime and criminality on the agenda. Unfortunately we did not get support from others, because they did not seem to believe that it was a relevant issue. It clearly is. Many hon. Members have touched on some of the features of criminality that clearly derive from our troubled experience. Whether people want to pretend that some of these people are simply privateers, having been privatised from some other paramilitary group, or something else, the fact is that collectively we have to confront what that means. We have done that before in previous debates on a cross-party basis—for example, when looking at organised crime in the border areas and elsewhere.
We, as parties, must also ensure that we are not divided on the issue of paramilitarism by taking a differential approach to it depending on what side of the community it appears to come from. We should avoid making different demands on and criticisms of the police according to their response or non-response to one feature of paramilitarism, as opposed to another, because that would send out a signal that we are still divided and that the paramilitaries are somehow attached to and serve particular sides. Nor should we create difficulties for the police. Parties should be robust in using the accountability mechanisms for policing to challenge and engage policing at all levels, but we should not catch the police in the middle of our party political differences.
That is why at Stormont House my party is advocating a whole-community approach to dealing with paramilitarism. If we are to create a whole community in Northern Ireland, we need to overcome historical sectarian divisions and all the convulsive ruptures that aspects of our culture and traditions have sometimes brought about, such as parades. At Stormont House—this is often forgotten—we agreed new financial commitments on shared and integrated education, but we need to go further. We need to invest in shared housing to build more intentionally shared communities close to the new shared education estate so that one will reinforce and support the other in changing society.
When people voted for the Good Friday agreement—I am probably the only person in the Chamber who was there negotiating it, and I take my share of whatever people want to say in the way of blame or criticism—we were proved absolutely right in the way we had done it. It was about creating transformational politics in Northern Ireland, and not, at best, episodes of transactional politics where people appear to share power now and then, and turn their backs on each other and let the community down at other times. We need to use these Stormont House negotiations not just to make good the better promises of Stormont House but to go back to the original promises of the agreement.
Several hon. Members rose—
Ms Ritchie
The SDLP wants the best possible implementation of the Stormont House agreement for all the citizens of Northern Ireland. In fact, in February in the Assembly, it was the SDLP which tabled numerous amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill. The DUP and Sinn Féin refused to support the measures. They voted down amendments that would have improved the Bill. We were able to give the Minister—[Interruption.] In many instances, the amendments were cost-neutral.
Ms Ritchie
Yes, that is right.
On another aspect of the issue, Northern Ireland needs to move into a shared future that fosters tolerance and respect across the entire island. We cannot do so if we do not confront our past. The north’s past will not simply be dealt with through the passing of time. The SDLP is not happy with the proposed legislation on the past, because we believe that it is an impediment to dealing with those issues and the recovery of truth and accountability. In my constituency, six innocent men were murdered in Loughinisland in County Down on 18 June 1994. We are still waiting on information regarding the truth; we are still waiting on justice. Above all, we are waiting to find out who perpetrated those murders and why they were perpetrated. Was there state involvement and was there involvement by the Royal Ulster Constabulary? We need to find out, which is why it is crucial that the Bill dealing with the past addresses those issues.
I am in absolutely no doubt, nor is my party, that Northern Ireland has considerable economic potential. We need a rebalancing of the economy, and we need balanced regional development. There is an opportunity for reconciliation, which must deal with the past and the situation of our current citizenry, so to speak, so that we can deal with the future. We must have a prosperous future, and we must be able to unite the people of the island of Ireland in terms of a reconciled future.