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

Robin Walker Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th June 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. Colleagues, it is over to you to start the questioning.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Robin Walker)]

Q33 Sir Jonathan, it is very good to see you again. You were permanent secretary from 2014 to 2020, as we have heard, and that means you were at the heart of the Northern Ireland Office both before and during the period of the collapse of the Executive. In your view, how was the Northern Ireland civil service most hindered by the lack of ministerial accountability when the Executive was not functioning?

Sir Jonathan Stephens: Fundamentally, there were no Ministers available to give direction and take critical decisions. The Northern Ireland civil service was left in a wholly unprecedented situation, which I know from talking to many of them they found intensely challenging and was not at all what they sought. Civil servants are trained to work for and support the Government of the day and Ministers and provide their advice to Ministers, who take decisions that civil servants then implement. Our colleagues in the Northern Ireland civil service were left trying to maintain the machinery of Government and trying to provide public services in the absence of ministerial decisions, and they found that increasingly uncomfortable as time went on.

[Mr Walker]

Q How far do you feel this Bill goes to safeguard Executive stability and provide the civil service with the accountability mechanisms they require? Given some of the discussions we have had to date, both in the case of encouraging the Executive to stay together and to stay in place, but also in the case where you might have a First and Deputy First Minister step down and caretaker Ministers, as they have been described, remaining in place, how far do you feel the Bill creates the clarity needed for them to be able to carry out their role?

Sir Jonathan Stephens: I think it does a number of important things. First, it fills in what you might think of as a number of loopholes in the original design of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which simply did not contemplate the sort of situation in which we found ourselves in 2016.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it provides time and space for the Executive or for party leaders to resolve fundamental differences, if and when they arise. As you will know, the previous scheme provided only for periods of either seven or 14 days for the formation of the Executive and the appointment of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. We went through those early deadlines very quickly indeed in 2016. We were left in the unprecedented situation of having no means of restoring the Executive without fresh legislation at Westminster.

It is important to say that these changes provide a number of mechanisms that will help in the resolution of fundamental differences, if they arise again. They provide greater assurance for continuity of decision making, but, of course, nothing is perfect. I have always thought that if there is absolute determination to bring about the collapse of the institutions, or such a deep and fundamental breakdown in trust between the parties that they cannot be restored, then no amount of clever constitutional provisions will get over such a fundamental breakdown.

[Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. It is good to see you, Jonathan. I spent many long hours over that three-year period in your company, and thankfully we got there in the end.

Do you think it is fair to say that the New Decade, New Approach agreement was largely imposed by the two Governments at a very opportune moment in the political process? The three largest parties had had a difficult election. We had a nurses’ strike and then the two Governments struck, and got Stormont back up and running again. That goes to the heart of your point that if we do not have political parties willing to work the system and work together, no clever constitutional construct can stop them collapsing it. Do you think there is more that we could have done as part of those discussions? I am particularly thinking about the way in which the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister are appointed.

Sir Jonathan Stephens: I would not use the word “imposed” because, at the end of the day, it was the decision of all the main parties in Northern Ireland to re-form the Executive. Yes, it was on the basis of the proposals put forward in New Decade, New Approach, but each party was free to take its own decision on that. From my point of view, when the document was published there was no certainty as to how parties would react and whether it would provide a basis for forming the Executive. We very much hoped so, but there was no certainty.

It reflected extensive discussions, of which a number of people on the Committee will have close memories, over many years, but most recently over the period of months from the calling together of the most recent session of talks, following the tragic murder of Lyra McKee. Again, there was very strong input from the parties. Although the proposals were the proposals from the Governments, they reflected very considerably the input of the parties. They were our best judgment as to where agreement lay.

On the First and Deputy First Ministers, I am conscious that parties have a number of different views on that. There are a number of parties that think that the original arrangement under the Good Friday agreement for the election of the First and Deputy First Ministers on the basis of cross-community consent should not have been changed after the St Andrews agreement. Other parties who were critical of the St Andrews agreement formed and participated in devolved government on the basis of that.

The Good Friday agreement was now more than 20 years ago. It was designed with one situation and set of scenarios in mind. As ever, the world moves on and change comes. It is coming in Northern Ireland, and there will come a time when it will be right to look at some of the fundamental arrangements within that agreement and consider whether they still best serve the people of Northern Ireland and adequately reflect the current situation in Northern Ireland. However, that would be quite a major task to undertake, with possible renegotiation of key aspects of the agreement. It is not a task that, personally, I think is quite right for now.

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[Mr Walker]

Q Thank you very much, Sir David, for your chairmanship. Sir Jonathan, you were permanent secretary at a time when, because of the political situation and the absence of an Executive, serious thought had to be given to the possibility of direct rule. Do you agree that we are in a much better situation to be legislating for a deal, rather than agreeing and implementing policy directly for Northern Ireland, and could you expand for the Committee on some of the risks and challenges that we would have faced had we not been able to get the NDNA deal in place?

Sir Jonathan Stephens: Without the deal in place, although of course at the time we had no awareness that covid was just around the corner, it is absolutely inconceivable that Northern Ireland civil servants without ministerial direction could have responded to the covid crisis. I think it would have driven direct rule inevitably. Much of my career in the Northern Ireland Office has been about trying to find the basis on which devolution can be restored and leaders from within Northern Ireland can take decisions for Northern Ireland. I believe that that is a far better system of government for Northern Ireland, allowing Northern Ireland’s unique interests and concerns to be reflected by its own politicians and leaders.

Of course, over many years in the Northern Ireland Office I experienced direct rule, and direct rule Ministers from Westminster made the best of trying to take decisions for Northern Ireland, but I know they felt deeply uncomfortable at times taking decisions for a part of the UK from which they were not elected and where they did not reflect the local community. I do not think that I ever saw a Minister who did not believe that local politicians should be taking decisions for local matters in Northern Ireland.

The concern always was that, once direct rule were reinstituted, if it ever were, it would be enormously difficult and time-consuming to restore agreed institutions again. That would mean that there were real questions about the nature of Northern Ireland, how its society was reflected in its Government, and I think that would also be very bad for Northern Ireland. Although we did not know it at the time, it was incredibly fortunate timing that the agreement was reached just in time before covid hit, and meant that Northern Ireland was trying to respond to that crisis but with its own leaders and politicians, conscious of its own challenges and unique characteristics.

[The Chair]

Sir Jonathan, were there any final remarks you wanted to make before we finish your evidence session and wish everyone well?

Sir Jonathan Stephens: No, thank you.

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[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I will bring in the Minister again.

[Mr Walker]

Q It is good to see you, Emma. As a former Minister within the Executive, and having worked as a special adviser, could you speak to the need for a ministerial code of conduct, and how you believe that could help to strengthen public confidence in elected representatives? I recognise that, with the changes that the Bill enshrines to the ministerial code of conduct, the Northern Ireland Office is acting as agents on behalf of what was already agreed within the Executive. Can you speak a bit to the process that has been gone through in looking at the ministerial code within the First Minister’s and Deputy First Minister’s office?

Emma Little-Pengelly: Over the years, there has been some frustration about what some may perceive to be breaches of the ministerial code, and a lack of action against those. I think that the proposed changes are welcome, in that they really try to tighten up some of those provisions in relation to how they apply, but ultimately this comes down to two different issues, and I think this applies to all of the provisions in the Bill. These changes are designed to try to encourage better behaviour. For example, when you look at the move from seven days after a resignation to call an election to the rolling process of six weeks and six weeks, that is obviously something that was pushed for to try to encourage people to get around a table, with a series of deadlines to try to encourage a more structured process, I think to focus minds, and also to allow other people to come in and make their representations very clear to the parties that they want the Northern Ireland Assembly to continue, and about the issues that are important to them, as opposed to—as I have said—a tactical resignation.

However, ultimately, as some of the other witnesses have said, this will work only if there is a willingness for people to agree. We all have our issues that we feel very strongly about, and we will not always find consensus on those issues. Some of the people around the table will have been part of coalition Governments before. Coalition Government is frustrating: you will not always find agreement on the way forward, and therefore those issues cannot be progressed. Ultimately, it is about the willingness of people to compromise—to get together to try to find a solution that appeals to everybody across the community. If we try to get into a space where there are only solutions that appeal to the majority, to the exclusion of a significant minority or to the exclusion of a community in Northern Ireland, we would be in a very difficult space in terms of stability, not only of the institutions but of Northern Ireland. I think those who worked on the Belfast agreement and those who worked on the St Andrews agreement recognised that and saw the value in having those types of safeguards to ensure maximum inclusion, because once we go down the route of—for example—removing the safeguards of petition of concern and consensus decision making and moving towards majority decision making, there is the risk of exclusion, and I do not think that is good for people, certainly not on the key decisions. I think it is all about balance.

[Mr Walker]

Q We have heard evidence from various witnesses and various speeches on Second Reading about the fact that many of these issues and, indeed, some of the issues beyond the scope of this Bill were hard negotiated on all sides. I wonder if you agree with what we have heard in some of the evidence earlier: what they have described as other vetoes, but I think you might describe as some of the balance within the process of working together in the Executive, would not have been signed up to by all the parties in NDNA if it had sought to go further on that front.

Emma Little-Pengelly: Absolutely. When you look back over the 20 years of the operation of these mechanisms, they were there to build trust and confidence in all of the parties across all of the communities to be part of the institutions in Northern Ireland. That is why I highlight the difference between what has happened in more recent elections, where we now have a number of quite significant minorities, and what had happened for the majority of that period of time, which is that there was a Unionist majority. I think that those who drafted these documents and those, including myself, who have worked on this over the years recognised that this was not a majority Government situation in which Unionists, when they were in the majority, simply got everything they wanted and others got nothing.

That is why there needs to be, I suppose, better reflection about why these provisions are there, and the dangers of simply dismissing them. Rather than people jumping up and down and saying, “We are really angry because you are vetoing what we want”, they should sit back and reflect and say, “Look, there is clearly not consensus for this proposal. How do we find a consensus way forward? How do we look at getting a balance within what is happening and try to find a way forward that includes the maximum number of people?” You will never get absolutely everybody on board, and we recognise that, but we have been through really difficult situations before, such as the devolution of policing and justice and trying to work through a programme for government. We have to remember that the parties in Northern Ireland are not just very different constitutionally speaking, but they are very different in that they come from across the political spectrum, from left to right and all things in between. Any coalition Government with parties that are quite diametrically different in political ideologies will always be challenging. That is the challenge that we have; we have got through it in previous years. But we only get through it by getting round a table and finding the consensus way forward, not by majoritarily forcing other people, through the removal of the veto’s protections and safeguards.

[Stephen Farry]

Q A very warm welcome to Emma. I will ask a two-part question. The first part is this: would Emma recognise that the effect of a petition of concern, or the veto as such, is that in effect it works for those parties or that part of the community that are perhaps most comfortable with the status quo, and it probably frustrates those parties that have a desire to see change in society?

Perhaps as an example of that, could Emma just reflect on the fact that, to my knowledge, since the Assembly was created in 1999 there has been no instance whatever of it legislating successfully at all in the human rights or equalities sphere? That has never happened and it has always fallen to Westminster to address those issues.

Emma Little-Pengelly: In terms of the provisions, I am not sure that if you look back at how the petition of concern operated from the Belfast/Good Friday agreement onwards—so, from 1998—what you will see would back up your analysis that the petition of concern is used mainly by one particular side of the community.

I say that for this reason. If you look at the bare figures, it does look as if it has been used much more, of course, by the Unionist-designated bloc than by the nationalist-designated bloc. However, that really only changed quite recently, in terms of the Democratic Unionist party obtaining 30 seats, which was the threshold in terms of signing the petition of concern. Prior to that, by default no party had over 30 seats. Therefore, despite the fact that it was not explicit within the petition of concern, the way that the petition of concern practically operated was that you required more than one party to agree with it, and that was including within designations.

I think that what you see, for example within the nationalist designation, is that you do not have and you never had the ability of one party to sign a petition of concern. Therefore, I would suggest that to try to get 30 signatures within that designation on policy issues is much more challenging, because of course you will have significant policy differences between those two parties. However, when the DUP obtained 30 seats or votes in the election, that of course made it much easier to use the petition of concern, and I think that is when some of the issues and concerns arose.

Also, when you look, Dr Farry, at the types of issues for which the petition of concern has been used, you will see that a significant number of those petitions of concern were used, for example, in relation to welfare reform legislation. Again, I think it is important to look at the nature of this issue. For example, it was not the case that the Unionist bloc were not sympathetic to the arguments around welfare reform and that we are not sympathetic to, for example, the proposed welfare mitigations; in fact, I think the opposite is true and that people were very sympathetic. But the concern around that issue lay fundamentally with financial aspects of it.

As we know, with welfare reform happening in Westminster, that had a direct impact in relation to what was happening in Northern Ireland. We were not going to get the hundreds of millions of pounds that would have been required to do the mitigations put forward by a series of amendments by other parties. So, the consideration there in terms of the use of the petition of concern was around this argument: “Look, if this passed in the Assembly, or if these legislative changes are proposed without consensus”—and there was no consensus on those amendments—“there would be a cost to the Northern Ireland Executive of hundreds of millions of pounds of additional money, which would have to be found from the block grant”.

Now, if you look back at that time, you had a DUP Finance Minister, so of course they would have been very attuned to what the concerns were then. But that is a decision that is often used to say that this is a misuse of the petition of concern. In fact, if it had not been used, those hundreds of millions of pounds would have had to be found from across other Departments. Of course, it did include human rights and equality issues because it would have meant, for example, top-slicing or taking funding away from the health service at that time, before it had been reformed, when it required even more money, never mind a top-slicing. It would undoubtedly have required other programmes to stop completely, but without any analysis by the Assembly of what the impact of those changes would have been.

In my view, a decision was taken that it was the responsible thing to do to use the petition of concern in that way to prevent the Assembly from voting on something that was going to cost hundreds of millions of pounds across Departments and have a massive impact on the everyday lives of individuals. Of course, as you know, having been a Minister in the Government, these things are all about balance, but they are also about responsibility and trying to assess the best way to do those things by talking them through and by consensus, not by forcing amendments through where there is clearly no consensus behind them, for example.

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[The Chair]

If there are no other questions from colleagues, I call the Minister.

[Mr Walker]

Q Thank you, Sir David. It is a pleasure to see you again, Mark, as a much-valued former colleague in the Commons whom I enjoyed engaging with over many years. It is good to see you back.

You have talked about the importance of the Good Friday agreement institutions. I absolutely recognise that. Do you accept that, since the NDNA deal was reached, we have seen the restoration of devolution? We have seen meetings of the British Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. We have seen those institutions functioning. It required an agreement, as you say, with the input of both the British and the Irish Governments and all five parties to reach it.

I appreciate there are aspects of the Bill that you and your party might feel ought to be different, and aspects of the St Andrews agreement architecture that you may not like. Do you accept, however, that in order to get the devolved institutions restored and the institutions of the Good Friday agreement itself properly functioning, we needed to get the buy-in of all five parties and therefore reach a deal that was acceptable to all of them?

Mark Durkan: Yes, I do. I said that I recognised that NDNA was an agreement by all the parties and it was the price that had to be paid for getting the institutions restored. I am glad that it is the case, too, as you say, Minister, that it is not just the Assembly and the Executive who have been operating; obviously, this week we had the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and other things, and I am very glad of that.

I am at a loss to understand why there was a decade when the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference did not meet. I think that the two Governments gave a very bad example as the supposed co-guarantors of the agreement. The one bit of the agreement that falls particularly to them was not being honoured. The Governments were not always in the strongest place by appearing to criticise either or both Sinn Féin and the DUP for the failure to restore the Assembly for three years, in circumstances where the two Governments had failed in their responsibilities.

Yes, I recognise the limitations in the NDNA. The problem is that some of those limitations are being translated into statute here. The promise is that this legislation is there to give stability and sustainability, but rather than blocking instability, there is a danger that it locks in a sort of zombie Executive and creates difficulties between parties, as well as creating difficulties in which the Secretary of State can be implicated. I think that the more we get into those sorts of difficulties, the harder things are.

This Bill does not rescue us from the sorts of absurdities that might emerge with possible election results at the next Assembly election. With a bit of speculation as to the different strengths of different parties, you could have very serious difficulties trying to appoint the First Minster and Deputy First Minister, as provided for in the St Andrews agreement, due to the random nature of the electoral results in terms of the number of Assembly seats. Those seats determine who has the prescribed right to nominate the First Minister and who has the prescribed right to nominate the Deputy First Minister. It becomes a real problem, and that will be a problem that discolours a lot of the election debate. It is going to bring people into all sorts of difficulties due to technical voting, tribalistic voting and all sorts of other things. We should be free of that. We should be trying to correct the St Andrews damage there, and I make no apology for that.

I think that proposed new paragraphs (e), (f) and (l), set out in clause 4(1), provide useful additions to the ministerial code in relation to good community relations and equality of opportunity, and also in relation to public appointments, civil service appointments and the code of conduct for special advisers. Those are useful additions, although I do not know whether there is a particular reason why some of the original terms of the code of conduct are now being omitted. For instance, one requires Ministers at all times to

“ensure all reasonable requests for information from the Assembly, users of services and individual citizens are complied with; and that Departments and their staff conduct their dealings with the public in an open and responsible way”.

That seems to have been omitted for the first time, and I do not know why.

Similarly, there are references elsewhere in the original version to users of services, but there is now no reference to users of services in the ministerial code of conduct. Even some of the opening language in the original version has been changed. It had required Ministers

“to observe the highest standards of propriety and regularity involving impartiality, integrity and objectivity in relationship to the stewardship of public funds”.

The opening language in the new version is arguably weaker. I am not aware of which parties either argued for or agreed that weakening of language.

[Mr Walker]

Q I must say that most of the evidence we have heard to date—this is certainly true of the submissions I have received from the parties individually—sees this as a strengthening of the ministerial code. It is the case that some aspects of the Spad code and the ministerial code would sit with the Assembly to manage. What we are seeking to do here is correct those bits of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 in relation to the ministerial code, in line with the agreement that was reached by the Executive and signed off by the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister.

Overall, this should be a strengthening of the ministerial code, alongside some of the other mechanisms to enhance the stability of the Executive. This is about trying to support them. I would agree with your evidence and that of the former permanent secretary, but what we all want to see is good will from all parties to keep the Executive fully functioning and to avoid a situation in which these mechanisms are required. It is very important that we see that.

With regard to the possibility of what you called a zombie Executive—the Opposition talked about caretaker Ministers—do you accept, given the experience that we had during the long period of the absence of the Executive, with civil servants really being put in an impossible position, that it is useful during any potential period of interregnum to have a Minister in place who is able to take decisions within their departmental remit, to allow for some accountability within that, on the basis of the programme for government on which they were originally put in place? That would allow for continuity of departmental decisions and give some cover to their civil servants in a future period in which we might be without a First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

Mark Durkan: I take that point, Minister, but you said “some cover”. Given that the decisions are not meant to be on matters that are significant or controversial, some cover might be quite limited. Some of the difficulties and frustrations that the civil servants had in the previous period of abeyance could equally apply, but they would have Ministers who are not at full power or status and who may not have the benefit of actually operating inside an actual Executive, in those terms. It will be a pretty limp-along situation. It will be a sort of twilight zone, both politically and administratively.

I know you will say that, with the roll-over periods and things like that, there are options for the Assembly, and that if the position becomes completely unsustainable, in terms of cross-community support, there is the power for the Secretary of State to intervene to call an election. However, I think we need to recognise that we are providing for a series of episodic crises and anomalies that can happen under this legislation. In Northern Ireland, people have a habit of being able to conjure up all sorts of problems and interpretive misapplications of provisions to create particular problems. We have seen that previously in relation to provisions of the agreement or in subsequent legislation. As I say, I do not expect that there could ever be perfection in a Bill like this, because there is a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, and people keep coming up against some of the same problems, no matter how many patches or solutions we come up with.

However, I think we need to recognise that this imperfection means that it probably will not be very long after the next Assembly election until you will be looking at possibly more remedial legislation to deal with the probably untenable situation that might exist around the St Andrews provisions for the appointment of First Ministers. I think it would be better to correct that now. I think it is in all parties’ interests that that is corrected, in terms of equalising the title of the offices of First and Deputy First Ministers, and also restoring the joint election by the Assembly, and maybe relying not only on parallel consent but on other measures of cross-community support. I think that would safeguard the atmosphere around the election debate and would safeguard the choices of the public from being pulled into all sorts of tactical voting considerations owing to a pretty tribalistic agenda around the totemic significance, supposedly, of the title of First Minister, which should not be a singular title.

[The Chair]

Mark, even though I dare say that the Minister wants to continue the questioning, we cannot; you have, in fact, used up the 15 minutes we gained, and we are due to finish hearing your evidence at 4 o’clock. We thank you very much indeed for the time you spent with us this afternoon. I know I speak for everyone when I say that I wish you well.

Mark Durkan: Thank you, Sir David.

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[Gavin Robinson]

Q Alex, I hope you do not mind, but the hon. Member for Belfast South asked you about the petition of concern and some of the equality and human rights aspects. Leaving aside the petition of concern, if legislation was passing through the Assembly, and somebody raised an issue to do with the declaration that it is compatible with human rights and equality legislation, how would you deal with that, procedurally? If someone raises the concern that the declaration on the face of the Bill is erroneous, do you have a process that you can use, or can the Office of the Legislative Counsel look at it?

Alex Maskey: First of all, as you know, the Speaker has the role of verifying or confirming whether a Bill is competent in the first instance, before it is introduced. Once it is introduced, I would refer that to the Human Rights Commission. The Assembly also has the right, which was exercised recently, to vote to make sure we do refer something; it is a bit of an additional belt-and-braces provision. The Assembly can vote to refer a Bill or a measure to the Human Rights Commission at the outset, so it would always be referred in the first instance to the legal team, who would look at it from a perspective of rights, as well as considering all other matters of competence. Of course, additionally, we then refer it to the Human Rights Commission. The provisions are there, and they are acted on in each and every case.

[Mr Walker]

Q It is good to see you and your team again, Mr Speaker. As Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, you will be better placed than most to appreciate the importance of having the Assembly up and running and legislating again after three years of absence. In your opinion, overall, does the Bill safeguard the institutions in Northern Ireland, and support them in working collectively for the benefit of the people whom they are there to represent?

Alex Maskey: I certainly hope that anything that we do would lead to that outcome. As I said at our meeting, Minister, with the political will, we can resolve most of the matters, if not all of them. Unfortunately, occasionally we have not been able to resolve matters, including, as I said, when it came to an Opposition Bill passed a number of years ago; it was put forward by John McCallister. There was no cross-community agreement to enact a Standing Order to apply that. That might seem odd or unusual, and it probably is, but the fact of the matter is that we did not get an agreement.

At our meeting and in correspondence, we addressed the fact that the first item of business of an Assembly is electing the Speakers. With the six-week ruling, and the six-week period of delay envisaged in the Bill, theoretically, the Assembly could meet after six weeks, and if it could not be formed at that time or could not fill the offices, then it could close down for the next six weeks, but if we do not get a Speaker in place—if we do not have that agreement—we cannot even move to that point. With political agreement and common sense, you would imagine we could resolve these matters. We have only drawn attention to these matters on a cautionary basis because of our experiences; in the past, we have not even been able to pass a number of important matters on the basis of cross-community support.

Since taking up my post, I have routinely been on record reminding Members that we have a very important job to do, as guardians of the legislature, in holding the Executive to account. However, it is also by way of being our business to secure and try to maintain public confidence in the institutions. If we can do anything to maintain the sustainability of the institutions on the basis of the integrity of NDNA and previous agreements reached, I think we will be doing a good job. Anything that helps us to perform our duties in a way that maintains and builds public confidence, we need to embrace.

[Mr Walker]

Q I wholly agree. Are you not concerned, though, that if we were to try to deal with matters relating to the Standing Orders of the Assembly in Westminster legislation, that would risk overriding some of the provisions made in the Good Friday agreement for Standing Orders to be agreed on a cross-community basis? I appreciate that there have been times when it has not been possible to agree Standing Orders, but is it not better for any changes required to be agreed within the committees of the Assembly, so that it shows that maturity and control over its own processes?



Alex Maskey: That is the conundrum that we have to face. I am absolutely certain that the very best way of conducting our business is by doing it ourselves and by the Assembly performing its duties on a mature basis. Unfortunately, on more than one occasion, that has not been able to happen on the basis that we would have liked, but that is politics. As you know, there are many issues that are quite divisive and polarising in our politics at times. I still would say that I have been very pleased, notwithstanding the very challenging difficulties that we have had to face in the past year and more, that the Assembly, for the most part, has performed its duties well and professionally and the level of debate and so on has been mature enough. There have been one or two breaches of good order and all the rest of that, but I think that, for the most part, the Assembly has come through the difficulties and trials pretty well. We have still a lot of work to do. Yes, I agree with that entirely, and I certainly want to work through the rest of this mandate on the basis that the Assembly parties are fully understanding of the need to build confidence among the general public by doing our work professionally and maturely.

[Mr Walker]

Q On the issue of the Deputy Speakers, the NDNA deal states clearly:

“The Speaker and the three Deputy Speakers shall not sign a Petition.”

How do you interpret that? You expressed concern about being able to recruit Deputy Speakers. Can you give the Committee any further evidence as to that? Has that been a challenge? To what extent has the willingness of parties to put forward their Members as a Deputy Speaker been a challenge to date?

Alex Maskey: As I have said, no party at this moment in time can trigger a POC itself, because it does not have the 30 Members. Therefore, parties may be reluctant and there would be some little amount of chit-chat around the corridors—not that I have heard it recently. But when I was in the business of being involved in chit-chat around the corridors as a party activist—I do not operate on that basis now, of course—there would have been people thinking, “God, would you want to lose a Member”—people would describe it in those terms—“by putting them in as a Speaker if they are not able to sign a POC?” You also have some Members who would feel very passionate about particular issues and who might want to support a POC if one were to be deployed at some point in the future.

We are merely drawing attention to the fact that the Deputy Speakers in our Assembly function differently from how the Speakers in Westminster, for example, do, as I understand it. Our Deputy Speakers function as a Deputy Speaker when they are chairing a session; for the rest of the time, they actually operate as party political activists. It is only the Speaker in this case—in the Assembly—who would be prohibited, throughout the entire mandate, from signing any petition of concern; and that is as it should be, of course. I am just drawing that to your attention and that of the Committee today. It is just because we do not want to cause chill factors; we want to make sure we can draw on as wide a range of Members across the Assembly as possible, to make sure we have inclusive arrangements made, from the Speaker through to the Principal Deputy Speaker and the two Deputy Speakers.

[Mr Walker]

Q Thank you. May I turn to Gareth McGrath and the contents of clause 5? The Bill will require petitions of concern to be signed and confirmed by at least 30 MLAs from two or more political parties. Do you agree that this will better ensure that the mechanism is used on a cross-party basis, reflecting concerns across the community?

Dr McGrath: I think that that self-evidently would be the case. It is also the case that uniquely in this mandate, and partially because of the reduction in the number of Members, no political party has the number of signatures required to table a petition of concern, so by definition, at the moment, a party requires the support of either independent Members or Members from another party to do that. It is the practice now—there have been no petitions of concern in the current mandate. I am not saying that the two are related, but I am saying that it is more difficult to see a scenario in future—obviously, without trying to forecast electoral outcomes—in which a party would have the required number of Members.

[Mr Walker]

Q We have heard some evidence today from witnesses that the 14-day consideration period is welcomed in terms of the opportunities it could provide for people to rethink a petition of concern or find other ways of resolving concern. To come back to the issue of how we ensure that it is not in any way misused, do you think that is something that could be resolved through changes to Standing Orders in the Assembly?

Dr McGrath: To revert to the issue that was originally raised by the Speaker, clearly the intention of the consideration period, as I understand it, is to allow a cooling-off period and room for manoeuvre among the political parties. It may well start off with that intention. However, there would be scenarios in which it could evidently be used to stymie progress on issues for which the petition of concern was not intended.

It is one thing to have the provision in the Act, but trying to implement it in Standing Orders is a different matter. Standing Orders have to be passed on a cross-community basis so there is no guarantee that just because this Bill requires Standing Orders to make provision for that, it will happen. That is a statement of fact on the basis of legislation, as Mr Speaker said previously, that the Assembly has passed requiring Standing Orders to make provision for, and that has not happened. In that situation, the Speaker will be required to rule on whatever is referred to as interim procedures. That will inevitably put the Speaker in a difficult position.

[Mr Walker]

Q I am certainly happy for our officials to follow up with you on this and continue this conversation. It is important that we get the detail of this right. I am very grateful to all three of you for your input.