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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

I fully accept that and I am grateful for the elucidation because I do not think that there is a conflict between us. In spirit, there was a revised draft—clearly, the noble Lord was there and he and his colleagues were operating it. It had not been formally approved. Thank heavens I am not a lawyer, but I suppose that because it had not been approved, if there were any judicial review or anything like that, that may have been a problem. Before I say anything further, because I do not think that there is a conflict between us, it is the sincere hope of the Government and the Secretary of State that the duty to impose a draft code will never be triggered anyway. We want the transitional Assembly. Parties have engaged in much valuable work over the summer, by the way. It is not as though they have not been talking to each other. They have been involved in the Preparation of Government Committee. I hope that noble Lords share my hope that that engagement will continue in the transitional Assembly from Friday this week and that it will agree its own code before 24 March, negating the need for the Secretary of State to impose the code. But if it comes to that, notwithstanding what the noble Lord has just said, the only code that the Secretary of State should reasonably use as a model on which to base his code is the one agreed, applied and in legal being before suspension—although versions of that were applied in spirit, if not formally agreed. I take on board what the noble Lord said. The Executive were doing their best to operate a new system under a new code, but it had not been legally promulgated. The Secretary of State could probably find himself in trouble if he went for a code that had not gone through that process. That is what we are seeking to cover, so that we are not in the courts. I understand that judicial review is frequently used in Northern Ireland. That is why I ask the Committee not to accept the amendment, although I fully accept the spirit of it and what the noble Lord said, which was important. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, on his maiden speech this week. I am sorry that I was not present. I sincerely hope that he will make good use of this place. He asked about the status of the ministerial decision. First, a decision taken in contravention of the code, and therefore without ministerial authority under new Section 28A, would expose that Minister to existing procedures under the 1998 Act. Secondly, the noble Lord is right that any ministerial decision taken without ministerial authority is open to legal challenge. That is the formal legal position. There will be a duty on the transitional Assembly—we sincerely hope there will be an Assembly after Thursday—to prepare and approve its own draft code before 24 March, as I said. It is our wish that it does so. It would be open to the Assembly to prepare and agree a code in the form of the code that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, said was operated by the Executive although not formally agreed by them. That is completely within the gift of the transitional Assembly. We do not seek to impose one on it. That is the whole point of this. We want these decisions to be taken by locally elected politicians in Northern Ireland. They should come forward with their code, and if that code is based on the shadow code that has been formally operated, that is entirely up to the transitional Assembly. That is its choice. It must do so, however, before the said date: 24 March.