A number of Members have said today that they would regard it as a last resort. I agree because we have to be incredibly careful about what we wish for here. We have to be extremely cautious about the notion of starting to take the drug of direct rule because it very swiftly leads to a very difficult and very precarious political position. I say to my right hon. Friend that there is a process laid out in primary legislation passed by this House—the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018—that says we have, first, five months and then, potentially renewable, a further five months in which to find a consensus and get an Executive re-established at Stormont. At that point, to answer his point about “If not now, when?” there are statutory obligations on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland which will require decisions to be made at those various different waypoints, but it is extremely dangerous and extremely difficult for us all to prejudge, or indeed to wish that those talks, stuttering though they are, but attempted though they definitely are, should not be given enough time to come to a sensible conclusion. I think everybody has been clear that that is what we want them to do; we want them to be successful if they possibly can be.
The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), was of the same mind. He spoke about a paralysing political stalemate in Stormont which must not become the new normal, and I agree.