Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

I do not accept that there should be the two positions, as I think that the Assembly should be free to choose any Assembly Member whom it believes can command the necessary degree of support in order to have policing and justice powers devolved. The provision unnecessarily limits the scope of the choice available and discriminates against the Alliance party—a party that believes in freedom and does not believe in discrimination. The Government, who so often lecture us about those matters, should be ashamed of themselves. Indeed, I have to say that my party argued that the Alliance party should have membership even of the Sub-group on programme for government. We may not have been as expectant as the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire about the number of Alliance party members that would be returned in an election, but we believe that the potential is still there, so we should not take the electorate for granted on any of these matters. The Alliance party should have been included in the Sub-group—and we said so. In order to move on to debate other matters, I would like to conclude my remarks by saying that we are not getting excited about this piece of legislation because we all recognise that even though it is deficient, it will not be the last word on the issue. The safeguards that my community needs are in place. I believe that the House will be asked to return to this matter and will no doubt be required to legislate further on it in future, but we make it clear now that we want policing and justice powers devolved at the right time and in the right circumstances.