The Secretary of State has indicated the process by which the Bill has come before us tonight. We will support it, but I believe that it should have come before the House far sooner. The fact that we have lingered for so long before bringing this necessary Bill before the House is a reflection of the Northern Ireland Office’s attitude that we must not offend Sinn Féin. Let us make no mistake about this. It bears repeating that we are here today because of the political cowardice of the Sinn Féin Finance Minister. This time last year, he was faced with a challenging budget, but he would not have been the first Finance Minister to be faced with such a budget. All Finance Ministers since 2008 have had to bring forward budgets that were criticised by pressure groups and faced Departments screaming about cuts, but at least they brought those budgets before the Assembly, argued their case and made amendments when necessary so that the good governance of Northern Ireland could be continued. Máirtín Ó Muilleoir refused to do that.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) wanted to give Sinn Féin the benefit of the doubt, but I believe that it has opted out in this regard. We have only to look at the history. It opted out of the difficult choice on welfare reform. It let the hated Tories bring in welfare reform, but now it is critical every time there is an issue about universal credit, personal independence payments or any other aspect of welfare reform, although it abrogated their responsibility on that one. The same applies to the changes required in the health service. The Sinn Féin Minister had a report, which she accepted, but she then refused to do anything about it because that would have involved hard decisions about hospital closures. Now the same thing is happening with the budget. The Secretary of State should not be too optimistic that he will reach an agreement in the talks that leads to Sinn Féin going back into the Executive and re-establishment the Assembly. It will continue with its list of unrealistic demands as a cover for the fact that it does not want to get into the Assembly in the first place.