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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I say to the hon. Gentleman that the Government’s objective is to ensure that we get devolution back. When the Bill was published, the Government’s proposals were to meet the parties, to have discussions with them and to have an outlook of reaching agreement with them to ensure that devolution came back. As part of the armoury of that machinery, an early election may well have been one of the issues that would have led to the unlocking of any impasse that might have been there. Now we have set a clear route in terms of 15 May, discussions, the potential election of an Executive, a deadline for that process and, at the end of that, no elections if an Executive is not formed. We are now in a different position, so I am in the unusual position of not voting for the clauses that we originally envisaged because circumstances have changed.