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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) spoke about many of the Bill’s successes, our hopes for the next couple of months, and the Bill’s failings. I want to address two of those failings, which will have a considerable impact on the community in Northern Ireland. It is pretty obvious from all that we have heard that there are still many problems to be overcome if there is to be a restoration of the institutions under the agreement. I hope that we can overcome those problems and rein in the vetoes that are allowing people to hold back progress. At a time when direct rule has never looked more high-handed and shady, people need proper accountability. A devolved Government must be restored as soon as possible, and it must be a Government who respond to people’s needs, instead of riding roughshod over their interests, even when those interests are unanimously expressed. It be wrong, however, for people to regard the last five years purely as a time of deadlocked politics, because there have been great changes—nowhere more so than in policing, which has been raised many times today. As the oversight commissioner reported, in just five years, 84 per cent. of Patten’s 10-year programme of change has been completed or substantively implemented. That did not happen by accident—it was a huge endeavour by the people of Northern Ireland—and it happened mainly because, in 2001, brave people decided to get on board and support law and order, taking risks to deliver a new beginning in policing. Without them, it simply would not have happened. Chief among those people were the independent members of the district policing partnerships, which perform the job of holding the police to account on local issues. They are composed of a majority of political members drawn from Northern Ireland’s councils, as well as a minority of independent members. Schedule 8 rightly provides that if Sinn Fein is entitled to political membership of a DPP, all political members of that DPP automatically stand down so that space can be made for Sinn Fein councillors to join. That is fair—we do not want to keep Sinn Fein members out of the DPPs for a moment longer than they keep themselves out—but they must join DPPs only if they are committed to membership of the Policing Board.