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Northern Ireland Bill

If the hon. Gentleman looks at amendment No. 7, he will see that it would allow people to consider and argue about other such proposals, to test one another and to press one another on them. However, the fact is that we could face a dangerous situation after 25 November if we have failed by that stage and if the language used is that of closing the book on devolution and therefore closing the book on the agreement for the foreseeable future. We could end up in circumstances that no one has advocated, no one has argued for and certainly no one has voted for in voting for any party. That is why I believe that, in the period that we have, if it looks as though we are not making progress to form the inclusive Executive and getting the First Minister and Deputy First Minister elected in the due way, it might well be appropriate, if the parties agree, to look at some options that still allow us to make progress that is consistent with the Good Friday agreement and that allows suspension to end—not to continue and prolong this kind of half-baked, twilight zone Assembly, but to create one that allows us to end direct rule and to restore the Assembly with its powers, the North/South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council. The hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) refers to our proposals in the past. Our proposals were made more than two years ago. They did not require IRA decommissioning or anything else—it would have been restoration there and then, or restoration here and now—and if the Assembly were to discuss options such as ours, other parties would be free to propose other options. I urge the Secretary of State to make it clear that the Assembly will have the potential to maximise the agreement’s implementation. That is made clear in amendment No. 7, and we would like to hear that the Government will consider that, rather than pushing to a position that would simply allow others to declare the agreement dead. We recognise in that context not only that we will be trying to test others with alternatives and better ways to find a more definite approach to implementing the agreement, but that other parties will be testing us with their proposals, some of which, of course, would involve departing from the agreement. However, if the purpose of the Assembly is, as we have been told over the past few weeks, to provide a forum where all the parties can discuss things and where side deals are not going on and if the Assembly is the locus for political discussions, it seems to me that, given such political discussions as the Government know they will have with the parties, the parties should be able to have discussions with one another in public view in the context of the Assembly created by the Bill. I will not speak to the amendments tabled by other hon. Members. We have also tabled amendments Nos. 8 and 6 in this group. The purpose of amendment No. 8 is simple: to make it clear that the purpose of the Assembly created by the Bill is to give effect to the Good Friday agreement. The House should have no problem with that because, after all, section 1 of the Northern Ireland (Elections) Act 1998, which set up the original shadow Assembly, contained similar wording, and the Secretary of State has told us that much of the Bill has been drawn from that original 1998 Act. If it was okay then, and the purpose of the Bill is to get us to implement the agreement, we see no reason why that cannot be made clear upfront in the legislation now. I will now address amendment No. 6—and as I said yesterday, the key to our approach is whether the Bill offers a path to restoration or whether it offers the sort of talking shop that the DUP have advocated. We recognise from what we have seen to date that the Bill may offer both. It could be a path to restoration in that, if we elect a First Minister and Deputy First Minister and run the d’Hondt system and everyone takes the pledge of office, the Secretary of State will restore the institutions. Certainly, we would welcome that—we want to see those things happen—and we will be there, taking our place in the Assembly, to try to make them happen.