Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

I thank the Minister for committing to come back to me on the difference between—or similarity between—the definitions of ““junior Minister”” and ““deputy Minister””. It would be acceptable for the Minister to admit that the use of such terms is simply a matter of random variation, and that there is no difference between them. This might not seem important now but, as with so many aspects of Northern Ireland legislation, if the matter is not clarified, it could lead to problems in the future. New clause 5 could be useful, if the intention is to allow the Assembly as much flexibility as possible in regard to the structure of the Department. However, proposed new subsection (7A) is a bit worrying because it seems to allow the Secretary of State to lay an Order in Council to provide for a new Northern Ireland Department exercising justice and policing functions"““if there is no reasonable prospect that the Assembly will pass an Act””" to establish such a Department itself. I heard what the Minister said about this; he got himself into rather deep water. This brings us back to an issue that we raised during the passage of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2006. We are a devolutionist party, and we are on record as having long supported the aim of devolving policing and justice functions to the Assembly. Given the importance of policing to society, however, we must be very careful about when those functions are devolved. That is what lies behind hon. Members’ questioning of the Minister a few minutes ago. The Assembly has been suspended for four years. From the Assembly elections in 1998 until the beginning of this suspension in October 2002, the Assembly went through a series of stop-start iterations in a process involving various periods of suspension. Even when it was functioning, there were several crises and resignations of First and Deputy First Ministers. In such an unstable situation, would it be wise to devolve policing and justice functions to the Assembly by imposing that kind of a solution unilaterally? We cannot allow a function as important as policing to be devolved to an Administration that does not appear to have the necessary stability to apply such functions sensibly.