Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

I understand entirely the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. With reference to the events of last summer, it needs to be put on the record that there was a smooth enough transition in the actual appointment of the new First Minister and Deputy First Minister. To come back to the point that I made in an intervention on the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady), what happened subsequently was that Sinn Fein decided—this was nothing to do with the process of the appointment of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister—to block meetings of the Executive on a political basis. We wanted to proceed with those meetings.