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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

If the hon. Gentleman reads the schedules, he will see the various permutations that are offered for joint Ministers, rotating Ministers or any other types of Minister, all of whom have to be appointed before d’Hondt can be run. Schedule 2 provides that the d’Hondt arithmetic will already count the holding of a justice ministerial office as the holding of a ministerial office. Under the M plus one formula, when d’Hondt is run, M will include a justice ministerial office already held whether under rotating junior and senior or joint ministerial offices. That means that if Sinn Fein and the DUP appoint their own party members as joint justice Ministers, they will lose their first entitlement under d’Hondt. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not know that. I remember that when he asked the Minister on Second Reading whether it would count towards d’Hondt, the Minister was unable to provide the answer, but the schedules make it clear that it does. It could well be that Sinn Fein and the DUP do not want to use up their first entitlements under d’Hondt by appointing members of their own parties to be joint or rotating justice Ministers. They may pull the stroke of trying to appoint people from other parties tothose Ministries in order to preserve their own d’Hondt entitlements and reduce the d’Hondt ranking preferences of other parties, and then, at a subsequent date, use the powers in the Bill to dismiss those Ministers from other parties and replace them with members of their own parties, thereby securing more than their own d’Hondt entitlements and denying other parties their entitlements. That abuse is wide open and available under the Bill as it stands.