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Northern Ireland Assembly Members Bill [HL]

My Lords, I associate these Benches with the sentiments expressed by the Leader of the House in regard to support for the PSNI at this particularly difficult time in Northern Ireland. We urge the MLAs to earn whatever salary they are going to get by having police and justice incorporated in a full devolution so that, as I said last week, we can have a fully mature democracy in Northern Ireland. I thank the noble Baroness for introducing the Bill, which we welcome with one or two reservations. It will allow the Assembly to devolve responsibility for setting salaries and allowances to an independent body if that is what it wishes. It is good to have the reassurance today of Mr William Hay, the Speaker of the Assembly, in his stop-press epistle to the Minister of State, that it intends to do so. I have one doubt: why is it going to do this by 2011? When similar legislation was deemed necessary for the other place here in Westminster, the whole thing was done in a month. This kind of foot-dragging is not seemly. As I say, it is good to have the stop-press reassurance that it is to be done, but I urge the Assembly to spur its flanks and bring in the necessary legislation much sooner. It could certainly do it within the next year; it is absolutely absurd that it should drag on. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, raised the question of double-jobbing. I am reassured to know that this is an Ulster phrase. When I was in Northern Ireland, people would often speak more generally of "doing the double" with regard to unemployment fraud and working in the black economy. Some politicians in Northern Ireland have been adept at "doing the treble". It is particularly noticeable that among past masters are members of the Democratic Unionist Party. The practice should come to an end, and we support the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, on this issue. We may well join him in amending the Bill in Committee to ensure that it is outlawed much sooner than 2015. To wait until 2011 to get the salary body set up and to allow double-jobbing to go on until 2015 strains credulity. With that proviso, we support the Bill. Being a good devolutionist party we want the Assembly to take full responsibility for this and for its own affairs. We support the Bill at this stage, subject to the possibility of an amendment in Committee.