---

Northern Ireland Bill

I intend to be brief. I am not quite as vociferous, or windy, as some of my colleagues and hon. Members on the other side of the Chamber. Clause 2 provides that if three conditions are met the Secretary of State will make an order of restoration. The conditions are that a First Minister and Deputy First Minister are elected, that persons are nominated as Ministers, and that each of them takes a pledge of office. I am deeply worried about amendment No. 10, because it would make the Assembly open-ended. The Assembly should not be open-ended because that would undermine the concentrated effort that is required to get devolution back in place. I note that DUP colleagues have claimed that the Bill means that the 1998 agreement is dead. That is an exaggerated notion of their mandate. We all have mandates and we can all count numbers, but the place to exercise the mandate and count the numbers is on the Floor of the Assembly when it is reconvened. We oppose any aspect or concept of a shadow powerless Assembly, because that could last for ever. The deadline is an essential backstop position, which concentrates minds and gets things done. I fear that amendment No. 1 would set the precondition for restoration whereby Westminster has to legislate for changes to get the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister elected and an Executive formed. There is nothing wrong with the terms and the details that we worked out in 1998; nor was there anything wrong with the agreement reached in 1998. What was wrong was that a number of the parties failed to honour and implement their responsibilities in 1998 and subsequently. I shall not point fingers. Everyone knows who the wrecking parties were, and it was not the SDLP or the Ulster Unionists. Frankly, the problem had nothing to do with the institutions, the regulations, the Standing Orders and the concepts. Rather, it was the outright refusal by the provos to destroy their weapons. To some extent, that was supplemented, aided and abetted by the refusal by some Unionist politicians to share power. It would be a profound mistake to make changes to the agreement, or the 1998 Act that flowed from the agreement, a precondition for restoration. Of course, improvements can be made to the working institutions. Improvements can always be made and development can always take place. We gave a long list of improvements that we wanted to see at the conference at Leeds castle two years ago. All of them were consistent with the Good Friday agreement. However, such matters need to be worked out on the Floor of the Assembly or on the margins of Assembly meetings, and between the parties involved. I am worried that my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), who has always been a good friend and a good supporter of peace and progress in Northern Ireland, has taken up the position set out in amendment No. 1. However, we will have a chance to discuss that later. I am also deeply concerned about amendment No. 14. Frankly, for the reasons that I outlined, it is unnecessary and irrelevant. The terms will not have been met if we are depending on the IMC. We do not need to hang ourselves on the amendment. I outlined the terms for electing a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister, and for each of them taking the pledge. It appears that the DUP cannot trust itself and will not participate, but we cannot meet the primary conditions of clause 2 without its support. So why do we need an amendment, as a belt-and-braces operation, to ensure that if one of them strays a wee bit, he is pulled back? It is a sort of choke lead. The DUP is trying to pass the buck for taking up its position. If it has issues with which it wants to deal, let us do that face on, eyeball to eyeball, and, in a gentlemanly fashion, sort them out. We do not need the amendment. Again, the substance of it should be dealt with on the Floor of the Assembly. The amendment makes unreasonable demands and tries to remove the independence of the IMC, an independent body, and suck it in as a partisan political player. We are the political players. Let us sort out the issues. The amendment also places a loaded gun, so to speak, in the hands of a handful of rogue provos in various places around the country, with the result that half a dozen people can prevent any progress from being made by carrying out systematic disruption that causes the IMC to report negatively on one small case. I do not wish to delay the Committee further. My colleagues and I are opposed to the amendments for the reasons that I have outlined.