I have had the opportunity to make a number of interventions throughout this evening’s debate, so I will make only some short remarks now.
I cast Members’ minds back to the middle of the last couple of decades, when we were going through the negotiation process. At that point, my party made it clear that it was reluctant to go into a particular government until certain demands were met. There were previous times before that when other Unionist parties made
similar claims and drew similar red lines. The then Government party and the then Secretary of State, who is now in the other place, made it clear that a certain train was departing a certain station, and that if the Democratic Unionist party and other Unionist parties were not on board, that train would depart without them. Not only would it depart without them, but government would then happen without them and they would be left sitting on their hands. In Lloyd George blackmail mode, that was what was held out to people in Northern Ireland, and it was clearly meant that that was going to happen.
The interesting thing at the moment is that there does not seem to be the belief on Sinn Féin’s side that the Government are actually prepared to follow through with such an offer. If the train is leaving the station, Sinn Féin should be on board and it should play its role. If it is not prepared to be on board, the train should depart without it and we should be allowed to govern without it.
The Government do not want that to be the case; they do not want it to be on the agenda. They want everyone to be singing and on board the same little train going forward. Well, if the members of one party are blocking progress, they cannot be allowed to pull the safety cord on that train, bring things to a halt and say that nothing else happens without them.
It is incumbent on the Government to recognise that if they are not prepared to let the train of devolution go forward without Sinn Féin’s participation on its terms and its terms only, it is about time that they stepped in and allowed devolution without Sinn Féin or had direct rule. Tonight, we are standing at that point. Will it be direct rule, or will it be devolution without Sinn Féin’s active participation? I do not think the Government have the guts to go for the latter choice, and I think they are now timidly being pushed towards direct rule.
I said in one of my interventions that it is essential that we do not have drift in Northern Ireland, because there is a certain type of Irishman who will fill the vacuum. We saw a bit of that yesterday in Omagh, and we have seen a bit of it today in Londonderry. Certain people will try to fill the vacuum with violence, and that is not acceptable.
The Government have to move, and move expeditiously. They cannot allow themselves to be seen to be pussyfooting or taking this issue quietly and slowly. They have to make sure that they take strides with determination to implement this budget measure and then, within a matter of weeks, move to the next phase of direct rule. That will mean preparation and money being spent on preparing the Northern Ireland Office to have new Ministers drawn into it from this place and from the Government side of the House to help govern Northern Ireland.
The decisions my constituents want taken with regard to healthcare, education and infrastructure will require ministerial direction and ministerial determination. It is unacceptable that we have a situation, starting tonight, where, no matter how nice a gentleman he is, the head of the Northern Ireland civil service will be completely unanswerable and unaccountable to anyone in this democracy. That situation is not acceptable, and we cannot let it run for weeks on end. It has to end immediately, and the Secretary of State needs to take determined steps to see that that is the case.
When the Secretary of State spoke tonight, he made it clear that civil servants will act within certain boundaries, but they do not have to do that. If they made a decision the Secretary of State did not like, he would have to take the head of the civil service to court. That situation is unacceptable, and it cannot be allowed to continue or even to get off the ground. We need to make that very clear.
The decisions that are coming up are coming up rapidly. Police pay, police recruitment and police retention are key issues we hear about every day and will require political direction. On other issues, Northern Ireland wants to be an events location. Next year, a major golf tournament is coming to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell). The year after that, there is the British open. Decisions will have to be made in January next year to let those events go ahead without any problem.
We will also have our Milk cup, or SuperCup, football tournament, and events to do with the North West 200. All the decisions on the finance of those events, and all the decisions to do with whether we have the Red Bull air races taking place in Northern Ireland, will have to be made in January. That will require political direction and political determination. Those decisions will not be taken by a civil servant; in fact, civil servants will be reluctant to go anywhere near those issues and to start making those decisions, because they might be too controversial for them.
As the independent chairman of the Northern Ireland taskforce on motorsport, I want to know, and I ask each week, what will happen to the needs of motorsport in Northern Ireland. It is a huge industry generating tens of millions of pounds for the local economy in many parts of our country, yet we do not have political decisions being made about how moneys will be allocated to events and events funding in Northern Ireland.
It is perverse in many ways that with tonight’s decision we will be having more British rule in Northern Ireland—and with no more of an Irish dimension. The fact of the matter is that Sinn Féin has brought about a situation where it now appears to be in a worse place, as an ideology, than it was in 1997 and in 1985. While Unionism was on the back foot and being pushed out of its sense of place and sense of nationhood, we now have Sinn Féin putting its community in a very difficult situation.