---

Northern Ireland Bill

We shall support the Bill. If there is a Division this evening, it is my intention to vote with the Government on Second Reading. We can explore tomorrow, I hope, the detailed questions that we may have. The Secretary of State will know from speeches that I have made on other occasions in the House that we have had criticisms of the way the Government have handled aspects of the political process in Northern Ireland over recent years. However, I believe that this is one of those occasions when the Opposition should give the Government the benefit of the doubt, although I think—I hope that I am wrong—that they are being optimistic in setting such a tight deadline for the forthcoming negotiations between the parties and the two Governments. We very much hope that the Government’s initiative succeeds. It is the belief of my party that it is in the interests of everybody in Northern Ireland that devolution should be restored and we accept, too, that that has to be done on the basis of power sharing. We cannot go back to a time in which 45 per cent. of the population was permanently and irrevocably shut out from any say in the government of Northern Ireland.