European Communities (Employment in the Civil Service) Order 2007

My Lords, I regret that I cannot give the order the same welcome as others have done so far. There are a number of reasons for that. I want to make it very clear that I do not have a prejudice against the other folk who live on the south of the island where I reside, nor am I anti-European to the extent that I would distrust individual European neighbours. In another place, I represented a constituency with a large population of Portuguese—East Timorese, in fact—Lithuanians and Poles. Both individually and through my party, we have managed, I think quite successfully, to integrate these people into our community. I say that in case, looking at an Ulster Unionist, the Minister may be inclined to think, ““That guy is somewhat xenophobic””; I am not. I know that the Minister would never suggest such a thing. The order would have a serious impact on Northern Ireland, which is emerging from the fog of distrust, from years of violence and years of looking across a land frontier—this leaves Northern Ireland unique in the United Kingdom—at those near neighbours whose first loyalty must be to the Irish Republic. I am even more concerned in so far as my noble friend Lord Trimble asked the Minister about this very issue on 30 January. He was assured by the Minister that permanent secretary posts, for one, would be reserved posts, so there would be no question of ““parachuting in”” people from the Irish Republic. He recognised the implications for Northern Ireland; he knew what was at stake for the civil servant; but he recognised that, "““certain posts and functions, such as the Security Service, will necessarily be reserved for British nationals””.—[Official Report, 30/1/07; col. 121.]" That answer appeared reassuring until 14 February. The Minister had obviously done his homework and had second thoughts because he then wrote to my noble friend Lord Trimble saying: "““However, the draft Order in Council sets out categories of posts which are capable of being reserved. It would therefore be a matter for the Secretary of State to take the decision as to whether a particular post should be reserved””." I am sure that the Minister knows the letter to which I refer. I will not read more of it, but he will understand my concern at this apparent indecision. Nobody has initially been clear whether there is a protection that we would require and hope for in Northern Ireland. When we last had the Assembly, somewhere around 1999 or 2000—I am not sure of the exact date—on the recommendation of the then head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Permanent Secretaries were reclassified, as were other senior posts, and defined as reserved posts. It was very clear. The head of the Civil Service was not an old dyed-in-the-wool unionist like Ken Maginnis. He was a member of what we used politely to refer to as the minority community. He was a very fine servant of Northern Ireland, and he was from the Catholic community—from those whom one might expect automatically to have some sympathy with Irish republicanism. He realised the implications of complicating life in a place emerging from violence and distrust by, as my noble friend Lord Trimble described it, parachuting in senior civil servants from the Irish Republic. It is all very well to say that we will leave it in the hands of the Secretary of State. I would prefer not to personalise this, but I am afraid that to some extent I must. On what basis would the Secretary of State—or any successor Secretaries of State, if it came to that—make the judgment? I have just seen my Secretary of State apologise for the slave trade in Northern Ireland. Perhaps somebody should have told him before he apologised on my behalf that Northern Ireland was never engaged in that trade. In fact, in 1786 or thereabouts, before there was repealing legislation, the businessmen of Belfast came together—somebody had raised the prospect of a profit to be made—and were united across political and religious divides, and stipulated that the slave trade would not be brought to Belfast. So who makes a judgment that the Secretary of State apologises on my behalf? Who makes a judgment that, not content with that, he should go where I hope to go on Saturday, to Croke Park, to the English-Irish rugby match? As I look around the Chamber I know that I will be shouting for a different side from the noble Lords here present. Why should I go under the cloud that my Secretary of State is going to make a judgment that he will apologise for an event that happened in a war situation 87 years ago? Nobody has apologised to me for the pupils I taught in primary school who were murdered. Nobody has apologised to me for my teacher colleagues who were murdered. Nobody has apologised to me for my rugby mates who were murdered or for my neighbours. I do not want to personalise this any further, but, with that sort of presumption, I have to ask, ““What is the motivation of my Secretary of State? Is it Northern Ireland or is it some future ambition?””. I will leave it at that. I cannot hope to have confidence, nor will any of my colleagues, nor will people from the other tradition in Northern Ireland, that we will be properly represented when it comes to making a decision on this issue. I hope that the Minister will give me some greater reassurance than that the decision will be left in the hands of a single individual. National interest is not just about my police, my security or criminality and those things that we have had to endure in Northern Ireland for a number of years. National security is about jobs, inward investment and about how we attract inward investment. That does not fall within the scope of security or intelligence, although I suppose how we attract the packages that we put together is a form of intelligence. We all know that our current Secretary of State has been ensuring that the integrity of Northern Ireland investment packages is compromised by the way in which way we have to act. Let me put it clearly: we cannot send an economic trade delegation abroad on its own; it has to be accompanied by someone from the Irish Republic. That would be fine if we were fighting on a level playing field, but we are not doing that. We have a much higher level of corporation tax than in the Irish Republic. There are other aspects of economic life that are totally different, hence it is impossible to have duplication of interest—it is conflict of interest, if one is to be honest. I do not want to detain the House any longer. I hope that the Minister will reassure me that the interests of the people of Northern Ireland will not be sold short because we are bound to have people parachuted in who will, however honourable, still have that conflict of interest that will affect our community.