It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) who has spoken very eloquently about the attractions of Northern Ireland. She is right to point out, as we consider the dark news of the weekend’s events, the many tremendous assets that Northern Ireland has going for it, which include, most of all, its people despite everything that has happened in recent days. We have seen the worst of what can happen in Northern Ireland, but we have also seen the very best, with people coming together in a very, very strong way to send a powerful message about the future that we all want for our beloved country. Although we may have our disagreements—our strong disagreements—we all hail from Northern Ireland. We were born there, we live there, and our families grew up there. Our grandchildren, those of us who have them—I am blessed to have two young grandchildren—will live their lives there, and we want to see the very best for them. We are united in that great hope of wanting to see the very best for the future of our country.
Part of the sad fact of what we have to deal with is not just the human tragedy, which we spoke about earlier, and the terrible events in Londonderry, but the fact that we do not have a functioning political Assembly or a functioning Government in Northern Ireland. That is deeply regrettable. I remember the evening when Martin McGuinness came and told Arlene Foster, me and a number of our aides that he was going to resign. Even at that stage, we urged him to think again. We said to him, “If you collapse everything, it will be much, much harder to build it up again.” It was throwing away 10 years of progress over something that, by comparison with all that we have been through in Northern Ireland and have overcome, was a comparatively minor issue—important, but not the sort of issue that we had dealt with previously and had overcome. We urged him to think again, but Sinn Féin was determined to take this course of action. In the full knowledge of what might be at stake, it plunged Northern Ireland into a needless election. We have all seen what unnecessary elections sometimes bring about: very much unintended consequences. These elections have outcomes. Martin McGuinness called that election; Sinn Féin effectively called that election in the belief that it would strengthen its position and things would carry on with it in a more important, dominant position. Of course, it did not work out that way.
We are where we are, and this statutory instrument is a necessary one. Of course, we will not oppose it, but we do not believe that it is at all satisfactory in terms of the government of Northern Ireland. Quite frankly, we cannot go on like this for much longer, and I think the Secretary of State knows that. Indeed, the House needs to be reminded that when the Conservative party manifesto was written in 2017, the Government said that they wanted to
“avoid any return to direct rule, but in the continued absence of a functioning devolved administration, a Conservative government will do all that is necessary to provide the good governance and political stability that Northern Ireland needs, including political decision-making from Westminster”.
That was in the Conservative party manifesto in 2017, and it bears repeating today because what we are being offered in Northern Ireland is the worst form of government that can possibly be imagined anywhere in a modern, civilised, developed, democratic country.
The people who are running the Government in Northern Ireland are effectively senior civil servants. David Sterling, the head of the civil service, made it clear on 23 March last year that it was totally and utterly unacceptable for senior civil servants to be put in this position. Not only is this SI—and the primary legislation that underpins it and give it its locus—wrong in principle by having Northern Ireland governed in this way; it is also a flagrant breach of the Conservative party manifesto, on which this Government stood and on which they are supposed to be proceeding.