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Northern Ireland Assembly Members Bill [Lords]

Opposition Front Benchers have rightly paid tribute to the Minister and his officials for their work on this necessary Bill, and I want to associate myself with those remarks. It is also appropriate to acknowledge the work of the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly, William Hay—a constituent of mine who will not be voting for me, of course, in the election. The Speaker and the senior officials of the Assembly have worked on the need to provide independent determination in relation to Assembly salaries and pensions. They have engaged cross-party discussions to that end, which is why the Bill has the consensus across the parties in Northern Ireland that it has. I am sure that that was a very welcome point of persuasion for the Minister in taking this Bill forward. It is right for the record here and elsewhere to pay tribute to the Speaker and to officials in that regard. The Bill does not resolve the issue of dual mandates—or double-jobbing or whatever anyone might call it—but it does at least reduce some of the contention and misrepresentation around that issue for those who continue to hold dual mandates for as long as they do. However, that issue needs to be dealt with. I have made my own decision. This Chamber is not where I want to be, as an Irish nationalist and someone who was personally and deeply involved in the negotiation, establishment and implementation of the Good Friday agreement. I really want to pursue my involvement in democratic politics elsewhere, but I have decided that for the next term, because of issues affecting my constituents and because of wider concerns, this is where I need to be, and that is the offer that the electorate will have to make a decision on. However, I believe that we need to get to the point where all elected representatives in Northern Ireland are able to make and offer a clear choice with regard to the mandate that they will pursue. In the main, we stand on party tickets. We will not be divorced from parties, so the issues on which there is some overlap between the business of this House and the Assembly—they will sometimes compete with each other and at other times complement each other—can be properly and competently discharged. People can be confident that we now have a settled process in Northern Ireland, with north-south institutions. There is one issue that the Minister did not address when we looked at this Bill on previous occasions, which is the question of people getting salaries for sitting in the Assembly and in another chamber. We have dealt with that in respect of this place, but the outstanding issue has to do with the legislation allowing a person to sit in both the Assembly and the Oireachtas. There does not seem to be any bar on that person receiving salaries from both institutions so, for reasons of parity of esteem, equity of treatment and so on, some further adjustment may need to be made.