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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I respect the hon. Gentleman’s viewpoint, but the Government are not making it up as they go along. They have the clear objective of restoring the Assembly so that he, if he is chosen by his party again, can do the job that I am currently doing on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland in running the Department for Social Development. My objective is to get rid of the power that I am exercising and to give it back to him. That is the clarity of the Government’s position. We have looked at several methods of trying to get that position back, one of which was discussion with the political parties to try to ensure that we reached a conclusion on the restoration of the Assembly. Given that that does not appear to be working—the discussions that we had initially showed that there were real obstacles to the political parties getting together to restore the Assembly through political dialogue—we have taken affirmative action through my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, with the support of the Irish Government and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to put definitive stakes in the ground on where we are with the restoration of devolution. I refer to 15 May, the end of November and a clear process of potential engagement to form an Executive in that window. That has changed the situation with regard to the Bill. Yes, there may well have been a U-turn and a change of policy, but the overriding objective of whatever track we took was to secure the hon. Gentleman in his place in the Assembly and to give him responsibility for issues that direct rule Ministers are currently responsible for. I would hope that he shares that objective.