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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes his point. That may well be so, but the fact is that we are faced with this Bill, which is asking us to arrange the furniture in what may be castles in the air. That is the nature of the legislative exercise that we are undertaking. The Minister has indicated on several occasions that some of this goes back to previous discussions—perhaps more of that anon. Under the Bill as it stands, the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, who would clearly be fromSinn Fein and the DUP on current numbers, can appoint somebody from another party. They can vote that person into office using their own votes under parallel consent against the wishes of that party, thereby altering its d’Hondt entitlements. They can then subsequently fire that Minister or those Ministers and replace them with somebody from their own party, and the party that originally lost out under d’Hondt still loses out. It gets fewer Ministers than it is entitled to under d’Hondt by virtue of the First and Deputy First Ministers using the power that the Bill gives them. That is fundamentally unfair. The problem with the Bill is that control is given solely to the parties of the First and Deputy First Ministers, not to the Assembly or to anybody else.