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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

The majority of the contents of the list that I outlined earlier has in my judgment been determined by talks between Sinn Fein, the DUP and the Government. I fully accept that the DUP may claim to see things differently, but I can only say as I see. I have repeatedly made the point in this Chamber and elsewhere that the Government need to be inclusive on a cross-party basis. Other interest groups and parties have been frustrated at the Government’s tendency to fixate on the two parties that they are most desperate to bring together. That tendency is understandable, but the Government run the gauntlet of turning off allies who, in my judgment, are very important to the Assembly’s successful restoration. Let us consider the example of languages. Although the Irish and Ulster-Scots languages are important, it is not at all obvious that they are the most important languages in Northern Ireland, given that a very significant proportion of people there speak Chinese. But obviously, because the Chinese lobby is not salient to the peace process, it has been excluded in the legislation. We are also concerned that the process is aimed primarily at producing a quick fix—at doing little more than what is perceived as necessary to achieve the restoration of the suspended institutions in a tactical way, without addressing the deeper and wider problems that have been identified in the agreement, or neglected in the past eight years. One of my main concerns is power sharing, which was already weak under the Good Friday agreement, as evidenced by the poor relationship between the Ulster Unionist party and the Social Democratic and Labour party when they were in charge. Although some minor improvements have been made, they are insufficient to take into account the increased political polarisation and the ascendancy of the DUP and Sinn Fein into what is necessarily likely to be a fractious environment. The removal of the need for any vote for either the joint election of First Minister and Deputy First Minister, or for the Executive as a whole, is a major flaw. The need for governing parties formally to recognise each other’s mandates and the legitimacy of their share of power and responsibility has been undermined. That simply entrenches the divisions, rather than reducing them. There is also a danger that the only way that the DUP and Sinn Fein will be able to operate or co-exist within the same Government is through creating more and more separation. That seems to be the subtext. At present, the DUP and Sinn Fein are not really talking to each other in any formal way, so it is a big leap to see them effectively running a regional Government in partnership. It might be possible for parties to co-exist within the same Government, but it appears that this legislation will achieve that by ensuring that they can co-exist without having to deal directly with each other. Rather than Ministers working together, Northern Ireland could end up with government by memorandum, with civil servants acting as messengers between various Ministers who are not prepared to talk to one another, and who are not required to do so by the system.