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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I will raise our concerns about new clause 3 and some of the Government amendments and our support for some of the other Government amendments, but first I shall speak in favour of our amendments Nos. 24, 26, 27 and 30. Furthermore, we will lend our support to Liberal Democrat amendments Nos. 14 and 15, at least in terms of this debate. Our amendments aim to address a fundamental unfairness in the legislation. The starting point for understanding our amendments is the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which implemented the d’Hondt system in the Good Friday agreement. Under the 1998 Act, the nominating officer of each party, who is usually the party leader, appoints Ministers, and they have the power to fire those Ministers, unless, of course, the Assembly chooses to exclude Ministers from office for particular reasons. By contrast, under the system in the Bill, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister would choose the justice Ministers. If they wanted to do so, they could nominate a member of another party, perhaps even against the wishes of that party’s leader, which happens from time to time in politics. In southern Irish politics, there is the famous example of Charlie Haughey appointing a member of the Fianna Fail parliamentary party to be European Commissioner to force a by-election to convenience himself.