Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

First, I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point. This is not in itself a budgetary debate, and it is important not to turn the debate on the Bill into a budgetary debate. Secondly, what is before us does not provide an answer to the vexed question of how to provide for the devolution of justice and policing now and how to ensure that we have an enduring political arrangement. In opening the debate, the Secretary of State talked about there being an enduring political settlement, but the Bill provides for a justice Department that will not be enduring. It provides for a transitional Department that will exist until 1 May 2012 and which will then dissolve automatically unless the Assembly has agreed before that to make some other arrangement. Hon. Members should consider our experience over the past number of years and the fact that the House—despite all the promises and pretensions of various Secretaries of State as they have introduced and bum-rushed different legislation through this place, saying, "It is absolutely needed and this is the impetus we need to take us over the hill, round the corner and into nirvana,"—has constantly come back to yet more Bills. When we were considering one of the previous bits of legislation, I remember telling the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) that he had presented more vacuous models than Hugh Hefner. We still have no end to the models that will have to be presented here.