Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Mark Durkan Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Yes, I have. That is why I believe that agreement is possible. The discussions that have taken place over recent weeks have shown where the space for agreement and compromise may lie. It is important that the Bill provides that space and opportunity for the parties to be able to find resolution of the outstanding issues and get back into devolved government, which is what the people of Northern Ireland voted for.

To go back to the budget, that budget does not allocate the resource and capital funding provided in the Chancellor’s March Budget. This funding was not allocated before the dissolution of the last Executive, and it is right that funding is available for parties to allocate to further priorities as they deem appropriate. Further detail on the spending plans will need to be provided through the Appropriation Act. My hope and belief is that the Act will be taken through the Northern Ireland Assembly, but that obviously relies on the Executive being formed. As I have indicated, that is where the focus should lie. If not, as I have said, we would be prepared to legislate to provide certainty, in line with our ultimate responsibility for political stability and good governance in Northern Ireland.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Will the Secretary of State clarify whether, in his mind, such legislation in that context would amount to direct rule in the sense that we have always know it, or would it be some form of downloadable legislative cover for administrative governance when it comes to further budget setting?

[James Brokenshire]

Again, I would not want to prejudge what the situation might be. That will be for an incoming Government. My point remains that that does not need to be the outcome. The outcome we want is for an Executive to be formed and a devolved Government to be in place, making decisions in Northern Ireland for the people of Northern Ireland. That is why I make these point about what the Bill provides and how it gives the space to allow that to happen. That must be the focus of us all in the time ahead.

By passing this Bill, we can provide the scope and space for a deal to be done by the parties. I will be working intensively with the parties to secure that outcome in the weeks ahead. Northern Ireland needs the restoration of an inclusive devolved Government working in Northern Ireland’s best interests. That is what the people of Northern Ireland voted for. It is what will deliver the public services that people rely upon, and it is what businesses, community groups and individuals across Northern Ireland want. The Bill will secure a framework within which that can be delivered. I commend it to the House.

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[Sammy Wilson]

And of course the point that I am making is that these people do not need an excuse, because they are committed to changing Northern Ireland’s status through violence. Whether Stormont is working at full tilt or not working, that is sufficient reason for them to continue what they are doing.

I welcome the comments that were made about the incident by Sinn Féin’s North Belfast spokesman this morning. He talked about how vile it was that a school should be used as a basis for an attack on the security forces, but let us not forget that Sinn Féin and Kelly’s comrades used schools as a means of attacking members of the security forces in the past. Indeed, they walked into classrooms and shot part-time members of the security forces. They blew up buses that were taking children to school. They killed the drivers of buses who were taking children to school. Although we welcome the fact that there now appears to be a change of heart on the part of Sinn Féin, it does us well to remember that the tactics used by the dissidents are no different from those that were used by Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA for more than 30 years in Northern Ireland.

We support the Bill—it is a necessary piece of legislation. When the Secretary of State spoke to it, he could have gone further by making it clear to Sinn Féin—I will address this further later on—that it has created the current situation and is responsible for the stalemate we face. He should have made it clear that the alternative to progress is direct rule. That possibility ought to have been spelled out in this House.

The Northern Ireland Office has made not offending Sinn Féin into an art form. The Secretary of State should pay less heed to the Northern Ireland Office and more to the political reality on the ground. I simply say to him that had he acted more quickly at the beginning of the crisis, we could have avoided this situation in Northern Ireland. Despite the pleas in this House from Democratic Unionists, the Labour party, the Scottish nationalists and some of his own Back Benchers, he did not initiate the investigation that could have taken the sting out of Sinn Féin’s accusation about the renewable heat incentive. Time and again, he said at the Dispatch Box that because there was no agreement between the political parties, he could not initiate an investigation. Cynically, as soon as Sinn Féin had got what it wanted—mainly to bring down the Executive—the first person to announce the inquiry was no less than Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, the Sinn Féin Finance Minister. The Secretary of State should have initiated an investigation.

The Labour spokesman talked about the need to get away from this particular part of the impasse, but Arlene Foster never refused to take part in a public inquiry. She never refused to give her account to or to be questioned at a public inquiry. The problem was that there was not an inquiry. Had the Secretary of State been prepared to grasp that nettle, we could have avoided a situation in which Sinn Féin was able to use the excuse that until it had clarity on the issue, it could not possibly work with Arlene Foster. The lesson for the Secretary of State to learn from what happened is this: despite the threats that might come from Sinn Féin, sometimes it is important not to listen to the wets in the Northern Ireland Office, but to act on political instincts.

[Mark Durkan]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the Government here should have acted more quickly as the RHI scandal emerged, but he is painting a complete fiction by trying to say that the DUP wanted a public inquiry—it entirely opposed a public inquiry. It was on the same page as Sinn Féin in opposing a public inquiry. It said that an inquiry by the Public Accounts Committee in the Assembly would be sufficient, and it was on that cue that the Secretary of State ensured that he and Treasury colleagues stayed out of the issue.

[Sammy Wilson]

I do not want to bore the House with the details of what happened last December, but the First Minister made it quite clear at that stage that she believed that she had nothing to hide. She was prepared to face an inquiry of whatever status was required to get to the truth, and that is still her position. In fact, she is co-operating on this.

The Bill is also necessary because of the way in which the finances in Northern Ireland have been left. Again, there are lessons to be learned from this. I suspect that the Secretary of State will have to come back at the end of June with another Bill to implement the budget in Northern Ireland. It will not be a satisfactory budget, because it will probably be based on last year’s distribution of finances to ensure that 100% of the budget is spent, and no new priorities will be set. As the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), stated, one of the central planks of the Executive’s economic policy cannot to be contained in that budget, because it will not be possible for this House, while we remain in the EU, to legislate for the reduction of corporation tax and, of course, to allocate funds for that. That will be a missed opportunity for many firms and prospective investors in Northern Ireland.

Let us look at why we have no budget, because this gives an indication of where Sinn Féin is and the prospects for an agreement. We do not have a budget in Northern Ireland not because the Executive could not agree one, and not because it was rejected by the coalition partners, but because there was never a budget brought forward to the Executive. Why was that the case? I think that Sinn Féin could not face the reality of having to introduce a budget in which hard decisions needed to be made. Of course, that was true about the restructuring of the health service. There was a report on restructuring the health service that set out how money could be saved and how some of the problems it faces could be addressed, but Sinn Féin did not act on it. Why? Because that involved hard decisions. When it came to welfare reform more than a year and a half ago, Sinn Féin did not act either. It was quite happy for that to be dealt with by the Government here.

There is a question that must be asked by those of us who are involved politically in Northern Ireland: is Sinn Féin serious about getting out of the impasse, or is it quite content? Those in Sinn Féin will never answer this, but are they quite content for the process to roll on and on, to have direct rule, and to have difficult decisions about the budget, the allocation of resources, Brexit and all the other things that concern them decided here? They can then blame the big bad Brits, but keep their hands clean and maintain the myth in the Irish Republic, perpetuated by the bearded guru, Gerry Adams, that somehow they have an economic policy that can avoid any austerity measures. The one thing they do not want is to have to introduce austerity measures or cuts in Northern Ireland while they are promising people in the Irish Republic that they have some kind of economic magic wand they could wave if they were only in coalition down there.

This is the question that the Secretary of State has to ask. It is the question that we as a party have to ask, too, as well as the other parties in Northern Ireland. What concessions does Sinn Féin really want, or might direct rule suit its purposes until the election takes place in the Republic? Why did those in Sinn Féin not bring forward a budget? Why did they not make hard decisions when they could in the Northern Ireland Assembly? They consistently—this has always been their position—run away from these decisions. If that is the case, we will have an impasse after the election on 8 June.

The difficulty in the talks is that we have seen the reason why Sinn Féin cannot or will not go into government change almost weekly. First of all it was the RHI, but RHI is hardly mentioned now. The Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was right—was the RHI such a big scandal that it should have resulted in a constitutional crisis? At the risk of causing some anger among Government Members, let us look at the RHI throughout the United Kingdom, and at Drax power station, where a coal mine down the road was closed while wood pellets were brought from halfway around the world. There is no cap on the subsidy—it started at £400 million, it is now £600 million, and by 2020 it will be £1 billion. Did any Minister resign? Did the Government fall? No, yet a £25 million overspend that has now been corrected in Northern Ireland caused a constitutional crisis.

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[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In following the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), I should say that I was struck by the number of times he condemned Sinn Féin for using a veto—that from the DUP, the most veto-holic of all the parties, not least in relation to the abuse of the petition of concern, which other hon. Members referred to earlier.

Let me join others in referring to the grave attack at the weekend—the attempt to murder police officers and to use the precincts of a school to create disruption in a community and set up a situation where, yet again, officers of the PSNI, who serve and represent our whole community, would be under threat. However, I cannot join the attack by the hon. Member for East Antrim on the BBC for somehow making an untoward reference to that incident. He seemed to omit the fact that, in a debate I was part of on the BBC yesterday, his own colleague, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), referred to the attack in the context of the political vacuum that exists and that could continue to exist. That linkage was made by one of his own parliamentary colleagues, so for him to turn round and use it as an excuse to have yet another go at the BBC just seems bizarre and out of place.

[Ian Paisley]

In his opening comments, the hon. Gentleman said there was abuse of the petition of concern. Does he agree that the biggest abuse came when the SDLP and Sinn Féin joined together to stop Gerry Kelly from being suspended from the Assembly for five days in line with the recommendations of the Commissioner for Standards?

[Mark Durkan]

No. The biggest abuse of the petition of concern comes whenever it is used to prevent motions in the Assembly—even non-binding motions and valid and credible motions of censure—from having any standing whatever. If people are going to use the petition of concern in relation to motions of censure in one way, they should recognise that others are going to say, “If you are going to veto things in one way, you are creating the rules, and you are going to have to live by them.”

As on so many things, we need to return to what was originally provided for in the Good Friday agreement. The petition of concern was not included in the agreement as a veto; it was provided as a trigger mechanism for an additional form of proofing by a special committee in relation to concerns about rights or equality—that is all it was provided for. Unfortunately, the legislation did not properly reflect that, and it left things up to the Standing Orders in the Assembly, but those Standing Orders have never been right. Sinn Féin and the DUP have always been happy to leave the petition of concern as a dead-end veto under the Standing Orders of the Assembly. That was never in the agreement, as people will see if they care to look at the relevant paragraphs. Let us return to the petition of concern as an additional proofing mechanism for rights and equality, not as a prevention mechanism against the advancement of rights and equality in areas such as equal marriage.

The hon. Member for East Antrim excoriated the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and told him that devolution is the opportunity to best make the laws that reflect the views of society. I absolutely agree with that. I am quite happy for the Assembly to make the laws that apply to abortion and to equal marriage. The Assembly is showing a clear wish and a clear intent there, and there have been clear indications of where the support of the people of Northern Ireland lies—it is similar to that in the south, as shown by referendum. The problem is that the DUP is vetoing and stopping the devolved Assembly having that legislative power. The DUP is criticising Sinn Féin for not allowing the government function to be created in circumstances where the DUP itself is regularly using a veto to prevent the legislative function of the Assembly. It is a “Whose veto trumps whose?” situation.

[Sammy Wilson]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman, who argued for power sharing and safeguards within a power-sharing Executive and Assembly, is now happy with majority rule. I am sure that will go down dead well with his constituents.

[Mark Durkan]

I am entirely happy with operating the Good Friday agreement as the people voted for it—people of Ireland north and south. A petition of concern would mean that a mechanism could be checked and proofed. If there were not concerns in relation to rights and equality, it could proceed in the normal way through the Assembly; if there were, it would require cross-community support. I make no apology for my part in negotiating and drafting the Good Friday agreement and in helping to establish the institutions. I regret the fact that we have departed from the Good Friday agreement in so many ways.

The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) referred to the appointment of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. Like her, I listened to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) saying that we need to change things and get to a different way, and that there should not be a situation where one party can veto. Let us remember that the St Andrews agreement limited the appointment of the offices of First Minister and Deputy First Minister to two parties and two parties only. It specified that the biggest party of one designation would appoint the First Minister, and then the biggest party of another designation would appoint the Deputy First Minister. There was to be no role for the Assembly any more in electing and having a free choice in the joint election of First Minister and Deputy First Minister, as the Good Friday agreement provided. If the right hon. Gentleman is in any way serious about what he is saying, then next time we are tabling amendments in respect of changing how the First Minister and Deputy First Minister are appointed, he should join us in supporting those amendments, not oppose them. I checked with the Clerks as to whether the Bill’s reference to ministerial appointments would have allowed me to table such an amendment. I was advised that the narrow terms of the Bill would not have allowed me again to table the amendment that I have tabled in the past.

Given the way in which acronyms are used in this place, no doubt this Bill, which we might call the ministerial appointments and regional rates Bill, will be referred to as the MARR Bill. However, there is nothing memorable about it. It is purely ephemeral in the sense of making exigent provisions in relation to the striking of a regional rate so that rates bills can be issued and councils can get their take of the district rate. I regret that it has been necessary to bring the Bill forward in this House, but I support it in terms of allowing the revenue to come in to support public services, both those run by councils and those provided by regional government departments.

The Bill is also ephemeral in the sense of resetting the meter on the appointment of Ministers. I note that the Secretary of State has chosen a timeline that would broadly equate to what the timeline under the current legislation would be if there was an Assembly election on the same day as the general election. Therefore, those who have argued for an election on the same day can have no objection to that timeline. As we heard from other hon. Members, there is another coincidence in relation to the timeline with regard to the budgetary pressures and the fact that the civil service is now having to assign a percentage of the budget in the absence of an elected Government in the Assembly. All sorts of groups and budget holders, including in the community and voluntary sector, but not only there, have been given the indication that their funding is guaranteed, as was, for the first 13 weeks of the financial year. Those 13 weeks will bring us to within a calendar week of the same deadline that we have. That should concentrate minds—I hope that it does—about what the consequences of an absence of the institutions would be.

[Tom Elliott]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if there is no progress within the timescale set in the Bill, the Secretary of State needs to bring forward further legislation to resolve the budgetary issues, because we cannot keep going through the financial crisis that departments are currently in?

[Mark Durkan]

We have to use the timeline that is created here and now. We also have to use such good will as any of us were able to detect in the talks in Stormont Castle over the past number of weeks.

I personally would not come to the conclusion that one party is determined to prevent the formation of a Government altogether. I wish I had more evidence that I could point to so as to support my hunch that Sinn Féin would want to see the formation of a Government. It would be better if Sinn Féin would say more in public that gave people reason to believe that. In the debate I took part in on the BBC yesterday, I was struck by the fact that Chris Hazzard of Sinn Féin said that Sinn Féin would have a powerful position in relation to Brexit because of having four MEPs and because Dublin was going to have a decisive role as a member state. He put no premium whatsoever on the institutions of the agreement. At no point did he say, “The important thing that will help us to offset some of the challenges and threats of Brexit is having our own devolved Government who are part of using and activating the strand 2 structures that are the best way of doing things on an all-Ireland basis, with relevant sectors being treated as an Ireland market, and that being reflected and respected with regard to EU construction programmes and potential funding, as Michel Barnier has indicated.” There was none of that whatsoever from Sinn Féin. I can therefore see why people are worried about what it is saying about Brexit and asking, “Where are the institutions of the Good Friday agreement?”

Strand 1 of the Good Friday agreement would be pretty central to making those institutions work because, as we know from what happened before, strand 2 cannot be activated—we cannot have a North South Ministerial Council—unless we have northern Ministers in a northern Executive. It is therefore imperative that we get our institutions up and running. A failure to do so means that we are sentenced to the hard Brexit that people are complaining about and worried about, but also a hard Brexit in the absence of any devolved mitigation—any north-south axis that can be used, including by the Irish Government. Strand 2 provides that the views of the North South Ministerial Council will be reflected and represented in various EU meetings, so it gives the Irish Government a potentially powerful role. However, whenever Chris Hazzard referred to the Irish Government’s role yesterday, none of that related to the fact that they would be reflecting the views of the North South Ministerial Council in EU meetings. We need to get the institutions up and running, although I recognise that there are issues in the way.

I do not accept the rewriting of recent history by the hon. Member for East Antrim in relation to the renewable heat incentive. When questions were put to Treasury Ministers and to NIO Ministers about a Westminster and Whitehall interest in RHI, the DUP was seething at any such suggestion by me, by my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), or by the two Ulster Unionist party Members. The DUP was completely opposed to a public inquiry. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley made it very clear on TV on several occasions that consideration by the Public Accounts Committee in the Assembly was sufficient and there was no need for any other inquiry. It had Sinn Féin on board with that position for quite a while, and then things fell apart between them.

Like the hon. Member for East Antrim, I ask why the Northern Ireland Executive did not produce a draft budget. Why are we in this position at all, with no hint or sign of what the devolved budget would have been? Let us remember that back on 21 November the DUP and Sinn Féin issued a joint article, stating:

“This is what delivery looks like. No gimmicks. No grandstanding.”

And that was when there was no sign of a draft budget. The DUP was quite happy to say that it was good government not to have a draft budget at that stage. We are now at a point when we should have long had the revised budget. That is what the joint article by Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness said and it was accompanied by a lovely photograph: back in November, Sinn Féin and the DUP gave us the Mills & Boon version of lovely government. Then the wheels started to come off after the pressure created by the RHI issues in December.

What was the root cause of the arrogance that manifested itself in the RHI scandal? It was the fact that the DUP felt that it was not accountable to the Assembly and that it had been appointed entirely according to its own mandate. We heard Arlene Foster say that she had a mandate from the people of Northern Ireland. The DUP’s mandate in last year’s Assembly election was no greater than that which the Labour party got in Great Britain, and yet we were told by Arlene Foster that her mandate from the people of Northern Ireland meant that she could ignore the mandate received by everybody else in the Assembly. Given that she was not appointed by the Assembly, contrary to the provisions of the Good Friday agreement, she had no sense of accountability to it, which is why the DUP made it clear that it would veto any motion passed by the Assembly on the RHI. Of course, that is what it did, and in so doing it not only ignored the proper authority and its debt of accountability to the Assembly at large, but broke the ethic of mutuality and jointery in the offices of the First and Deputy First Ministers. That made it very difficult, if not impossible, for Martin McGuiness to continue as though there were no other strains present.

Those are not the only challenges that we need to resolve. Other hon. Members have touched on legacy issues, but unfortunately, given Madam Deputy Speaker’s advice on time, I will not be able to go fully into them. The hon. Member for Blaydon has referred to the Sammy Devenney case, which happened in my constituency. Conservative Members have also raised concerns about former officers being pursued and questioned about previous cases. However, although those cases have been presented here as examples of people being pursued for prosecution, they have actually come about as a result of new inquests about controversial deaths that have shown that some of those who were killed were not terrorists or gunmen as had previously been reported, and that therefore their killing was wrongful. It is entirely legitimate that legacy issues should be pursued and questions asked. Officers gave various accounts—and Ministers in turn, down the years, have in this House given false accounts—of those deaths and incidents. It is entirely proper that those cases should be well pursued.

Although there has been a measure of agreement among Sinn Féin, the DUP and the British Government—notwithstanding disagreements on questions of national security—on limited approaches by the historical investigations unit, the Social Democratic and Labour party wants more architecture on legacy issues, not least with regard to thematic approaches. The HIU is able only to produce individual reports on individual cases, and not to join the dots, show the patterns or draw on the wider lessons. It is also confined to looking at killings, but the troubles have many other dimensions and legacies of victimhood that are not just in relation to killings. People have many questions about the pattern, motives and character of the violence carried out by paramilitaries as well as, possibly, by the security forces, and they want those questions to be examined and tested. I think that that would give a more equal assessment of the past.

We considered those proposals in the Haass talks. Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan had particular ideas about a strong approach to thematics, which would have reflected the interest right across the community. It would not only have addressed issues of state breaches and allegations against state forces; it would have been very wide, open, thorough and responsive. We need to return to those sorts of arrangements in respect of the past.

We need to make progress on the Irish language Act, but let us be clear that part of the problem is that people are selling riddles, because in the St Andrews agreement there was a pledge from the British Government that they would legislate for a language Act, whereas the only commitment on the part of the parties was for a language strategy. Ambiguities and contradictions were built into it and some of us sought clarity at the time. Sinn Féin was spinning it that there would be an Irish language Act in the Assembly, but we pointed out our honest interpretation of the literal language. Of course, we were decried simply for pointing out the truth.

Whatever the problems in relation to the Irish language Act and the RHI issue, we need to remember that Brexit is the biggest issue facing us all. What helped bring about the discolouration in the politics around our institutions? The fact is that it was Brexit, which has made a much bigger difference to the political atmosphere in Northern Ireland than certain Members care to admit.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

The hon. Gentleman says that Brexit is the fundamental issue. Given his position on Brexit, does he take any comfort from the fact that the British and Irish Governments and the EU have ruled out a hard border? Does he accept that there will not be one?

[Mark Durkan]

I accept that those bodies have given that indication, but they have not said how it will be done. The Prime Minister has been careful to say that she wants the border to be as frictionless and seamless as possible and that there would be

“no return to the hard borders of the past”,

but there has been no full commitment that there will be no possible borders of the future. Sector after sector in Northern Ireland worries about such borders, and the best way to prevent them is to properly use the machinery of the Good Friday agreement, which allows for areas of co-operation and joint implementation. It also allows us to take concerted action on a north-south basis and say that different sectors want to be treated as an island market. Given the EU’s historical position, that should be fully respected and reflected. If the British Government are serious about wanting to continue to honour the Good Friday agreement in the context of Brexit, they should allow that to happen.

That is what special status would look like. We do not have to negotiate a new special status for Northern Ireland. We have to have the full optimisation of the Good Friday agreement in the context of any Brexit, so that we can have the strongest regional say in our own interest and a strong north-south axis. We also need to use the east-west structures of the agreement, not least the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which can deal with all of the non-devolved issues that the two Governments have in common, as well as allow devolved Ministers to be part of those meetings, particularly when they touch on devolved matters. I believe that that would be a much more attractive facility for devolved Ministers than even the Joint Ministerial Committee on European Negotiation, because the common experience of all the devolved Administrations is that they find it pretty confusing and belittling.

Using the structures and mechanisms of the Good Friday agreement would give us the best answer to Brexit, but we will not do that unless we use the additional time given by this Bill to make sure that we form an Executive in the Assembly that was elected on 2 March.

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[Dr McDonnell]

I am being heckled here.

[Mark Durkan]

I remind my hon. Friend that when it came to the Stormont House talks, it was the SDLP who submitted the papers on a whole community approach to tackling paramilitarism, it was the SDLP who put in a whole enforcement approach to tackling paramilitarism, and, in fact, it was the SDLP who wanted paramilitarism and criminality on the agenda of those all-party talks. It was the DUP who helped to veto that originally. [Interruption.]

[Dr McDonnell]

We risk getting into whataboutery. In fact, we are probably deeply into whataboutery. I just want to put on the record that at the time I was very critical, publicly and aggressively, of the murder of Robert—