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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

It may seem unusual to those who have been listening to the Queen’s Speech debates that we have interrupted them for this important debate, but as others, including the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, have said, we agree that the importance of what we are trying to do justifies the change in programming from what would be regular at this stage in our parliamentary proceedings. Some may regard Northern Ireland politics as dreary, but I prefer to regard our machinations today as a light and refreshing sorbet between the heavy courses of the Queen’s Speech debates. I start with the debate about deadlines, which is rather important. It is clear that once again the Secretary of State wants to underline the fact that the deadlines in the legislation are cast in stone. He also made it clear that Northern Ireland’s political parties should not assume that they can do a deal ““five minutes after midnight””. However, everything that we have seen before suggests otherwise; almost every deadline in the Northern Ireland peace process has been broken, moved or abandoned. I take the Secretary of State back to 26 April 2006 and the Second Reading of the Northern Ireland Act 2006—the measure that we are seeking to alter today. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) said"““he is not telling the House that, were the parties in sight of an agreement on 24 November, he would bring down the guillotine, is he? Presumably we are considering not a final and ultimate but a flexible date.””" The Secretary of State responded:"““I am afraid that I cannot reassure the hon. Gentleman about that. The Bill sets the date in statute. As I said earlier, the Government will not blink. If eleventh-hour attempts are made on 24 November to force us to blink, people will be disappointed.””" I asked the Secretary of State:"““Will he assure us that they are genuinely not flexible? I ask that because, as he knows, my great anxiety is that the Government’s credibility has been somewhat tarnished by allowing deadlines to be flexible and, indeed, by occasionally ignoring them. If he wants the Bill to work, he must impress on everybody that the deadlines are not negotiable.””" The Secretary of State replied:"““I have already done that but I am happy to accept the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to emphasise and underline as much as necessary—in flashing neon lights, if he wishes and if that is not ""a mixed metaphor—that the deadline is for real. The salaries and allowances will stop at midnight on 24 November. The Assembly will no longer sit, which it will be entitled to do after 15 May, and that will be that.””—[Official Report, 26 April 2006; Vol. 445, c. 597-98.]" The truth tells a different story. With the best intentions, the Secretary of State has blinked and altered the goal posts yet again. I do not condemn the Government for that change, but in response to the question that the Secretary of State implicitly asked me, it matters because he has to recognise an alternative outcome from today’s legislation: a new precedent for peace in Northern Ireland, whereby we persistently re-establish deadlines—perhaps on a six-monthly or annual basis, as we do with the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005—so that we ensure a peace of sorts, but not the re-establishment of devolution. What would I do if I were in the Secretary of State’s position? It is possible that I would find myself in the same situation, but the reason that this point is salient to the debate is that for the Bill to have credibility the deadlines, too, must have credibility. When the Secretary of State—or the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson)—sums up the debate, I hope that we will be given some new assurance that the March deadlines are not as flexible as all the others. The Secretary of State’s claims that the Government have not shifted the goal posts, or shifted the deadlines again, may seem credible to him, but everybody knows that the Government have renegotiated the deadlines because they think that is right for the peace process. I stress again that I do not condemn the Secretary of State for that decision—the shadow Secretary of State made the point that he, too, might have found himself in the same position—but the Government must have a strategy to ensure that the provisions we pass today will not be subject to further modification next year.