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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I am tempted to express the hope that the Minister’s speech is the first of many occasions on which, on many different subjects across the span of Government, Ministers will come to the Dispatch Box to withdraw legislation that they have, until very recently, proposed. However, I have some sympathy for the plight in which the Minister finds himself. Several things are clear about the clauses. The power to bring forward the election of the Northern Ireland Assembly would have to be initiated by the Secretary of State and that would have to be taken forward by means of an order in both Houses of Parliament. If the Government have concluded that the Secretary of State is not, under any circumstances, going to want to exercise that power in the time frame that they had previously envisaged, such a power clearly becomes otiose and so there is no point in keeping it in the Bill. The political explanation seems to be that, when the Government started off their current political initiative in Northern Ireland at the beginning of this calendar year, they were over-optimistic in their hopes about what could be achieved within a short space of time. They hoped that, perhaps by now, they would have had agreement between the various Northern Ireland parties on the restoration of the devolved institutions. After all, there was open speculation in the media both in Northern Ireland and in the Republic—and I think that it is fair to say that there were suggestions by Ministers themselves—that either in Committee or on Report, we might be presented with proposals to change the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to accommodate changes that might by then have been agreed between the two Governments and the various political parties in Northern Ireland. Such a deal has clearly not taken place. We could debate today, albeit somewhat fruitlessly, the precise circumstances in which the power in clause 10 could have been used. We can reflect on the reasons why no agreement has been possible up until now. Some of the problems were of the Government’s own making due to the proposals on terrorists on the run. The Independent Monitoring Commission report that was published earlier this year, which clearly showed that although republicanism was changing, it had not broken with criminality, made things more difficult for the Government. Ministers, and perhaps the Prime Minister especially, finally realised that the underlying mistrust was still deep and could not be overcome in a few weeks, which had perhaps been hoped for at the turn of the year. I remain of the view that the Government’s initiative looking forward to November deserves support. I wish it well, and although I still think that the Government incline towards over-optimism, I hope that the optimism proves to be justified and that we will see the restoration of devolution later this year. In the meantime, my party and I will support the Minister in his recommendation that the clauses be dropped from the Bill.