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Northern Ireland Assembly Members Bill [HL]

My Lords, I did not follow the gnomic utterances of the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, in his last sentence or two. I thank the Leader of the House for her introduction. She mentioned the contemporary political context of the Hillsborough negotiations. The Bill may be of only academic interest if there is no agreement at those talks between the DUP and Sinn Fein. It is also ironic that we are discussing double-jobbing when the MLAs are performing so badly at single-jobbing and are not getting on with settling their outstanding differences. According to today's Irish Times, Peter Robinson is finding extreme difficulty in getting enough support from within his own party. These intra-party differences are a microcosm of the wider splits in the ranks of unionism, and all seriously obstruct the proper workings of the devolutionary settlement, which is now in extreme jeopardy. I hope that I am proved wrong about that. When the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, suspended Stormont some years ago and everybody thought it was for a short time, I said that it would be for a very long time. It was for five years. I hope that my prognostications now will not prove as accurate as they were then. The Government have attempted to address the problem of double-jobbing. As the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said, they have not gone as far as we would like, or as the Kelly report advised when it said that two or more mandates were not advisable. We have seen that starkly today. So many MLAs are also MPs and they cannot concentrate their minds on the real business at hand, but one must accept it. If an electorate wants to have a representative in more than one forum, that should be its right; but it should not be encouraged. We went along with the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, at Second Reading and in Committee, and I added my name to his amendment. We demonstrated to the Leader of the House how strongly we felt on that issue. I am extremely grateful that the Minister has gone as far as she has in proposing her amendment. I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, and would not seek to divide the House; we will accept the government amendment.