Northern Ireland Bill (Allocation of Time)

I think that what the right hon. Gentleman says is entirely fair, but I understand why there is concern, and I only hope that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland will find that we can deal with his worries. Part 3 of schedule 1 deals with the arrangements that will apply during the initial period of devolution, up to 1 May 2012, if this new model is the one selected by the Assembly. Paragraph 6 disapplies, at the point of devolution, the normal requirement to re-run d’Hondt following the establishment of a new Department. Paragraph 7 waives, during the period up to 1 May 2012, the requirement that the Justice Minister be elected within the seven-day envelope set for the appointments of all other Ministers after an election. That avoids the possibility of another election being triggered automatically, and is intended as a prudent transitional arrangement to allow the Assembly flexibility to deal with the issue in the early years of devolution in a way that minimises disruption to devolution. Amendment 26, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), opposes that provision. I hope that what I have said, and what I will say in a moment, will persuade him not to press his amendment to a vote. I recognise, of course, that there are fears that both after the transfer of powers and after the 2011 election, the Assembly will be unable to agree on whom to appoint as Justice Minister, but a number of amendments put before the House deal with that difficulty. Amendments 5, 6, 8, 9 and 27 seek to provide that if a Justice Minister has not been appointed six months after responsibility for policing and justice has devolved or six months after the Assembly election in 2011, or if the Department is dissolved in 2012, the Secretary of State shall assume the direction of the Department or of the functions that it previously exercised. Amendment 25, also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, provides that the Prime Minister should have power to appoint a Member of this House, or of another place, to act as Minister during even a short-term vacancy—due to a fall down the steps of Stormont, for example—in the office of Justice Minister. Although I acknowledge that having no Justice Minister in place is clearly unsustainable in the long term, if the Assembly were unable to appoint a Justice Minister it would be right for the Government and Parliament to have the maximum flexibility to decide both when and how to intervene if such action were ever required. In my view, it is unhelpful to speculate at this point on exactly what the nature of that intervention might be, and on when it might prove necessary. Such prescriptive amendments would prevent the necessary flexibility in those extreme circumstances should they ever arise, and for that reason the Government oppose them. However, I am happy to assure the House that, in doing so, we are not claiming that it would ever be acceptable simply to abandon responsibility to people in Northern Ireland in the event of what would effectively be a catastrophic breakdown of confidence. Rather, we are saying that we should have confidence in the parties which have themselves produced this agreement and which have, through their Assembly, produced the report that we hope will become this legislation, and that we should back and have the confidence of the parties behind it. Amendment 22, tabled by the hon. Members for Foyle, for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell) and for South Down (Mr. McGrady), adopts a different approach to the problem of the Justice Minister’s post not being filled. It proposes that in the event of no Justice Minister’s being appointed within seven days of an election, all Northern Ireland Ministers will cease to hold office and will be reappointed by means of the d’Hondt mechanism, including the Justice Minister, irrespective of what other provision the Assembly has previously made for the selection of the Justice Minister. This approach is built on by new clause 1, which provides that unless certain conditions have been met before 1 May 2012, all Ministers will cease to hold office at that point and the posts, including that of Justice Minister, will be filled using d’Hondt. This is a significant and radical departure from the wishes of the Assembly as set out in recommendation 10 of the Assembly Executive Review Committee report, which states that the appointment of the Justice Minister should be made by cross-community vote, at least in the transitional period up to May 2012. It also goes against the terms of the agreement between the First and Deputy First Ministers, which stated that there should be no presumption about the fall-back arrangements for appointing the Justice Minister in the absence of agreement in 2012. It is essential that the House grasp this point: one of the bases of the 18 November agreement is the assumption that there would be no fall-back arrangement. Therefore, to put anything else in its place would be to undermine the principles by which that agreement was reached. It is for this reason that the Government are unable to support these amendments. Paragraph 8 of schedule 1 provides that the Justice Department will automatically dissolve on 1 May 2012 unless the Assembly has before that date passed either a resolution, with cross-community support, to continue the Department under the same model, or an Act making new arrangements for the ministerial oversight of the Department, choosing any one of the pre-existing seven models. Amendment 23 seeks to remove paragraph 8. Doing so would remove the provision that gives effect to the part of the First and Deputy First Ministers’ agreement that outlines that the initial arrangements for ministerial oversight of the Department should be sunset on 1 May 2012, and that there should be no presumption about what the oversight arrangements would be beyond that date. This was an integral part of the political agreement that enabled recent progress. In addition, removing paragraphs 9 and 10 would mean that, should the Assembly not elect to use the Minister/junior Minister model in the first instance to set up a Department of Justice, it would be unable to switch to this model at a later date, should it wish to do that. Amendment 23 also seeks to remove paragraphs 9 and 10, which make technical amendments to sections 21B and 21C of the 1998 Act to allow for the possibility of this model—the Minister/Deputy Minister model—being selected as the second model. This is necessary because at the time that model was legislated for, it was anticipated that it would be used as the first model and the legislation was drafted accordingly. The Government therefore oppose this amendment. This clause and schedule are necessary to give effect to the agreement reached by First and Deputy First Ministers on the departmental model for a Justice Department and, as such, to pave the way for the future devolution of policing and justice at the point that the Assembly is ready to request it.