It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Secretary of State. I agree with much of what he said, and I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. Given the amount of Northern Irish legislation that we have had to deal with in recent months, it should come as no surprise that the Secretary of State sought the longest extension time he possibly could. I am not entirely sure whether he wanted that or whether the Leader of the House and the business managers said, “You can have one more go at this and don’t bother coming back again.” I think there is probably quite a lot of truth in that.
The Secretary of State is right to have gone long, regrettable though that is. The stakes are incredibly high, as we know. We are all familiar with the phrase “last chance saloon”. It has been applied on so many occasions to so many issues, particularly with regard to the politics of Northern Ireland, but we should be cognisant that this feels like a very important time in the negotiations on the protocol, and we await the outcome with interest. The Government are right not to give a daily running commentary and five-minute bulletins. These are big issues that need to be resolved calmly and amicably, and in the new spirit of trust and mutual respect. Therefore, it is a question of getting it right rather than getting it done by a particular time.
This is important, because if we get it right and a situation is alighted upon that can command near-universal support—ideally universal support—in this place and elsewhere, that will lead on to addressing all those points that we hear about weekly in the Select Committee, where the shadow Secretary of State and the Secretary of State have set out the problems relating to health, education, housing, infrastructure and the post-covid rebuilding of the economy. Those issues require real-time intervention by local politicians representing their communities and making the changes that people want. This could take one, two or three weeks. It will take as long as it needs to take in order to get it right.
All of us, irrespective of what side of the debate we come from, have been seized this week of the importance and seriousness of the time in which we are operating, of the need to get this right and of the urgency required to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, for which there is a pent-up appetite in all parties. Nobody wants to be sitting metaphorically twiddling their thumbs; they want to be discharging the jobs to which they were elected. I think it was Dave Allen who used to say, “May your God go with you,” and now is the time, whichever God we believe in, if any, to pray that we are moving towards a solution that works across the piece and that can lead to an enduring settlement, in terms of wider UK-EU relations and how the protocol operates, and to ensure that a space can be carved out so that that deeper taproot of devolution, such as we see operating in Scotland and in Wales, can really take root and flourish in Northern Ireland.