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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I thank the Secretary of State for his intervention, but we have engaged very positively with all the detail. Like many other parties, we were engaged positively and constructively in the detail of such things in the review of the Good Friday agreement and then we found it aborted by the two Governments. We had put forward all sorts of proposals to improve the workings of the institutions, and effectiveness, efficiency, transparency and accountability, because people said that they were worried about those issues. All sorts of ideas were put forward, but the Government were not interested in that. They were interested simply in concentrating on the positions of Sinn Fein and the DUP, at the expense of the agreement. Again contrary to what the Secretary of State has said, the comprehensive agreement does not provide for mere tweakings of parts of the Good Friday agreement. Central to the Good Friday agreement was the principle of democratic inclusion and key to the concept of inclusion in the agreement was respect for difference and for parties’ mandates. Parties would go into Government according to the strength of their mandate, if they so chose. Nobody could vet or veto each other’s appointments to Government. That principle of inclusion is torn up by the comprehensive agreement. Not only is there a possibility of people being able to prevent the appointment of Ministers, under the comprehensive agreement the Social Democratic and Labour party and the UUP are effectively threatened with automatic exclusion from ministerial office if we do not bend a knee to Sinn Fein and the DUP and vote confidence in them as First and Deputy First Minister. Annex B, strand one, paragraph 9 of the comprehensive agreement states that we will be automatically excluded from office if we abstain on a vote of which the only legal effect would be to elect the First and Deputy First Minister. Someone cannot be automatically excluded from office for committing a crime, misconduct in office or all sorts of other misdemeanours, but they would be automatically excluded under the comprehensive agreement for exercising a legitimate democratic right and expressing a legitimate democratic difference. That cannot be right and that is no mere tweaking.