Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

I am very much on the subject of the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, because the Bill provides for a ninth model. Indeed, the Secretary of State told us that the Bill with neither impose devolution—nor can it, because the triple lock is still there—nor make this the only model. He said that it adds only one more model to the menu. Of course, people are free to come up with other models if they want to. That is the compelling urgency that we have for this legislation and that is what the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) says convinces him that it is a good answer to the problem that we have. It is not. We should consider the arrangement that the Bill provides for the appointment of a Minister. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) talked about the Alliance party being the elephant in the room—not in the room, hovering above the room or whatever—and it is clearly no secret that Sinn Fein and the DUP have agreed that, for the purposes of the first Minister with responsibility for justice and policing in the devolved context, the d’Hondt provisions—the provisions of inclusion in the Good Friday agreement—are to be bypassed, abandoned and subverted. The agreement deliberately made those provisions, and when we were negotiating it was agreed—I include myself and the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) here—that we should not have a situation in which parties could vet and veto each other’s ministerial appointments as that would be a recipe for instability and game playing. Yet that is exactly what has been agreed between Sinn Fein and the DUP, and it is exactly what this legislative model provides for. I fully understand that the DUP does not want an additional nationalist Minister, which would happen if this were to be done through an additional Minister being appointed under d’Hondt. The DUP does not want a second SDLP Minister, because we might be better up to what it is at in government and elsewhere than Sinn Fein apparently is. Sinn Fein does not want a second SDLP Minister either, but what we have here is legislation that allows for gerrymandering in Northern Ireland 2009. The old Stormont regime began in the 1920s by removing the guarantee that was laid down for proportional representation in local government. Then it moved on to remove the guarantee for proportional representation laid down for the Stormont Parliament. This Stormont regime is beginning, with the connivance of the Government, by removing the provisions for proportional representation that the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 laid down for the Executive in Northern Ireland and for ministerial appointments. That is why this is a serious matter. It cannot be a matter of indifference to us, and not just because the SDLP would directly lose out. We would defend this principle if it affected any other party as well, and our record shows that. Indeed, I point out to Members the fact that whenever we were debating the Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007—when the right hon. Member for Neath, as Secretary of State, produced the eighth model, which said that there could be a Minister and a Deputy Minister elected by the Assembly on a cross-community vote, but specified that those Ministers could come only from the two largest designations—we protested at that exclusion of the Alliance party. We said, "If you are going to depart from the agreement and remove the principle of inclusion, you should not introduce a form of exclusion that has clearly militated against a particular party." Our record on that is clean and it is clear. We want all parties to be treated fairly according to their democratic entitlements, but that is not what the Bill does. I do not want to dwell on the issue of who would be the Minister and how the Minister would be appointed, because there are more serious issues in the Bill. Whoever was appointed according to the model in the Bill—and in all likelihood, given the current thinking of the DUP and Sinn Fein, it will not be an SDLP Minister—may stay in office, but can be put out of office at any time. That does not apply to the other Ministers, who can be put out of office only in accordance with provisions in the agreement and terms for exclusion. I think it quite unfair that an Alliance Minister might be put out of office just for being annoying, although some people might consider that a good enough reason. The chances are, however, that whoever is appointed will be the Minister until the next Assembly election, if devolution comes before it. The Bill provides that, after the Assembly election scheduled for May 2011, all the other Ministers will have to be appointed by means of the d’Hondt system, and if that has not happened within seven days, there will be an election. However, the Bill also states that we do not have to appoint or elect a Minister of Justice. Our Department of Justice can continue indefinitely without a Minister. If we consider the Department of Justice to be so important and sensitive that we must get it absolutely right, can we really be saying that we want to pass legislation whereby we are prepared to leave the ministerial post vacant after an Assembly election—that the Department can continue without a Minister? And for how long are we saying that that can continue?