Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

I wish to speak to amendments 2, 3 and 4, which stand in my name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends. First, however, I should like to pick up a couple of points made by the hon. Members for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) and for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), both of whom have tabled amendments concerning the post-2012 scenario. I listened with great care to both speeches, and I understand the logic of the reasoning, but I believe that putting into the Bill a provision that envisages the future involvement of Whitehall and Westminster in criminal justice matters in Northern Ireland would send the wrong political signals. Given the political history of Northern Ireland, I think that the Government would be ill advised to countenance the possibility that devolved criminal justice powers could head back here at some future stage. Amendments 2, 3 and 4 express concerns to which I referred on Second Reading, but I will speak about each of them individually. I have already placed my concerns on record, and the Minister explained the Government’s position on those concerns. He told us in his winding-up speech on Second Reading that those whom the Assembly appoints, it should have the power to remove, because other Ministers, who are effectively appointed by their party leaders, can be removed by their party leaders. I accept that that has a legislative and constitutional symmetry, but that should not be our only consideration; indeed, it is by no means the most important consideration. If legislative neatness had been our only consideration hitherto when passing Bills in this place, an awful lot of laws would have taken a very different shape. The danger is that, in pursuit of legislative neatness, we might ignore or not give sufficient importance to the end product, which must surely be the devolution of criminal justice in a stable and sustainable way. I put it to the House, and directly to the Minister and the Secretary of State, that the model that they have put forward today would be neither stable nor sustainable. It would be unacceptable to leave a Justice Minister in a position in which his or her removal could be effected in a different way from that of every other Minister in the Executive. That would be unacceptable for any Minister. If the political operation of every Minister is to be of equal standing, the stability and continuity of the positions ought to be the same.