Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

I shall certainly curtail my remarks substantially. Several points arose from the speech by the hon. Member for Foyle, which was a comprehensive analysis, although I did not share all his conclusions. On several occasions I would have liked to test his analysis, but I resisted doing so because of the time constraints that have been placed on the House. That is a very good practical illustration of the absurdity of the position in which the Secretary of State’s timetable motion has placed the House today. We are constrained from giving a proper consideration to this Bill on Second Reading, let alone at the later stages. We have two hours and 10 minutes for the Second Reading of a Bill that is of constitutional significance, and that is a constitutional outrage. That said, the Liberal Democrats will support the Second Reading of the Bill. We have been supportive of the Government throughout the devolutionary process. Occasionally we have been critical friends, but I like to think that we have always been supportive and been able to reach an accommodation with the Government. I hope that by the time that we come to the end of this process, if not in this Chamber then in the other place, we will remain able to make that proud boast. However, as the Secretary of State knows, substantial issues of difference still lie between us. As things stand, it will be difficult for me to compromise on certain points that I shall mention later, on which we have tabled amendments. We are in favour of the devolution of criminal justice. We have supported and promoted it for a long time, and we see it as the final piece in the devolutionary jigsaw. It is a major step in the normalisation process, as it is called. Several measures have already been put in place to provide greater transparency and accountability regarding operational matters, and they now need to be plugged into a democratically elected Assembly. That would be a recognition that criminal justice sits well with the other devolved Departments, including health and education. Criminal justice does not exist in a silo. The hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Christopher Fraser) spoke earlier about the budget. Although that is not germane to the text of the Bill, is part of the proper context in which we should consider the devolution of criminal justice. I was surprised when I heard the Secretary of State say that chief constables on the mainland of the United Kingdom would be envious of the budget given to the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland. That would probably be the only operational aspect of policing in Northern Ireland that would be the subject of envy from other chief constables. That point again highlights the inconsistency in the Secretary of State’s position. On the one hand, he tells us that we have to railroad the Bill through today because the whole process is so fragile, but on the other, he says that we have to look for cuts and savings in the front-line policing budget. We all know the context of the Patten level of policing being set at 7,500 until 2010 and thereafter of the suggested reduction to 6,000. To my mind, if devolution of criminal justice is to be successful politically, it must be given the resources operationally. If we fail to debate it in that context, we will have failed in our duty. Our principal concern, however, relates to the provisions of schedule 1, which deal with the removal of a Minister from office. The House will be aware that the schedule proposes that a Justice Minister can be removed by a simple cross-community vote in the Assembly. The Secretary of State might argue that that is the same procedure as for the removal of any other Minister in the Assembly, but to do so ignores the political implications of that part of the Bill. We have warned the Secretary of State and Ministers not to consider policing in Northern Ireland as in any way comparable to other ministries. Policing in Northern Ireland has a particular special context and special arrangements, including those for human rights compliance and the structures for oversight and accountability that are not considered necessary in the rest of the UK. Indeed, the subject of our debate this afternoon substantiates that point. We are offered yet another model for a ministry of justice in Northern Ireland in addition to the various others that are already on the statute book. Again, it emphasises that the justice ministry will not be just another Department and says that an issue as important as policing in Northern Ireland must have special arrangements. An entirely new Department must be created, outside the 10 Departments in the Assembly, to accommodate such weighty functions. That model says that although we have already considered how such a ministry should be structured, we have not got it right yet and that the matter is too important to be anything less than perfect. Simply to say that the Minister in charge of one of the most contentious and critical Departments can be got rid of in the same way as any other Minister ignores the special circumstances that surround the role. Policing and justice functions are different in the Northern Irish context. They are so different that the parties in the Executive believe that they should look beyond themselves to find a person who can fulfil the role of the Justice Minister. Reference has been made to the Alliance party as the elephant in the room, but the elephant that has more determination in this debate than any other is the elephant that chooses not to come to this room. It is not the Alliance party that is pulling the strings, but Sinn Fein. It is not the function of the Bill or the House to appoint the next Justice Minister, but we all know that it is widely said that an Alliance party nominee would be expected to take up the role, for the reasons that the hon. Member for Foyle explained. It is obvious that there is a certain logic and appropriateness in that. However, to place an Alliance Minister in a role from which they could be so easily removed is, in our view, completely unacceptable. That is our point of disruption as far as the Secretary of State and the Government are concerned. There is no equivalence between a Minister who simply has to retain the confidence of his party nominating officer and one who has to maintain the confidence of political opponents while doing the most difficult job in the Assembly. The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) has recently been the subject of some controversy as Minister of Environment, given his views on man-made climate change. I wonder, in passing, whether he would retain the confidence of political opponents in the way that is expected of the Minister for Justice. Indeed, important though climate change is, the removal of the Environment Minister, if it were to happen, would never have the political implications of the removal of the Justice Minister. It is also worth remembering that in a cross-community vote, the vote of a Member of the Alliance party is worth less than the vote of a Member of the DUP, Sinn Fein, the SDLP or the Ulster Unionist party—or the new force, or whatever it now is. The vote of an Alliance Member does not count in the stage that requires 50 per cent. of Unionists and 50 per cent. of the nationalists to vote, as Alliance is neither Unionist nor nationalist. Is it right that a person can be removed from such a fundamental position by a mechanism that does not even treat them as equal to the other parties in the Executive? No other party would accept such an onerous duty under such disadvantageous circumstances, and we cannot expect the Alliance party to do so. When the House moves to consideration of the Bill in Committee, we will deal with amendments that seek to correct what we regard as an unacceptable provision. If the Government do not accept our constructive amendments, I very much regret to say that, although they will have our support on Second Reading, I cannot guarantee that they will have it much beyond that.