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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

My Lords, I take the noble Lord’s chastisement. I do not want to speak on the basis that executive Government know all; I am not saying that. I am with noble Lords on this; so is the Northern Ireland team—Peter Hain and the rest of them. The present arrangements for degrees of scrutiny under direct rule are unsatisfactory, and we must find another solution. However, we are not in an isolated area; we are a few months away—and the House has passed the legislation—from trying to get up and running an Assembly that would carry out that legislation,. It is not a question of simply saying that we are in a period where nothing is going to happen. We want to focus on getting the Assembly up, not by threats or blackmail but, if you like, by a bit of cajoling and some encouragement, and not too much slagging them off; they do not like that. Northern Ireland people deserve better from Northern Ireland politicians than what they have been getting, and they know that. The money for the Assembly Members is a token, but the Assembly will disappear on the 25th; the Assembly will be gone. The status quo will not simply carry on. There is the Review of Public Administration, and the changes to local government do affect central government in Northern Ireland; they are bound to. The idea is to move powers from the Government of Northern Ireland in Belfast to local councils. That means that we will be looking at the ministries and the way in which they are structured. If anyone is thinking, ““Oh, in a few months’ time we will pop back and all the d’Hondt ministries will still be there””—as one noble Lord said to me earlier in the week—they may not be there. We are pushing forward changes in the health service and in local government. We have said that we will push the reform programme forward, and we are not going to ease off on that. Indeed, the Secretary of State has said that he will speed it up if the Assembly is not there. That is our position, and that is why we concentrate and focus exclusively on getting plan A, which is the best option, of a devolved Administration back in Northern Ireland, and at the same time admitting that we are mindful of the deficiencies of the present system and admitting that if the Assembly is not back we cannot carry on as we have been for the past eight—or indeed the past 30-odd—years in direct rule.