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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

My Lords, that is unreasonable. The noble Lord has not acknowledged that the legislation is a big step forward. It is in the style of enabling legislation. We need to get this on to the statute book to get to the detail. We could not put that kind of detail into the legislation. We need to come forward with proposals that will be introduced to Parliament. The parties concerned will need to be consulted on them and there will need to be some agreement between the two Governments in any event. There will be an opportunity to debate the detail when we have it ready. In other words, if we pass this legislation today, nothing can happen about donations for political parties until we have the other legislation in place. It is not as though the House is being asked to approve this legislation which then sets up a brand new system of transparency, fairness, enforceability and a tightening of the rules. We need the other legislation. There will be another opportunity—probably more than one—for the House to debate these matters in detail. It would be fair to treat this as enabling legislation to take us forward. Implicit in this legislation is a large degree of narrowing of the sources of funds that can come to the political parties in Northern Ireland.