My Lords, before speaking on the detail of the Bill, perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank the Minister for his engagement with Members of your Lordships’ House over the past few months while we have been working our way up to this point.
It is welcome to have that engagement because it is helpful, and as the Minister has indicated, it will continue tomorrow and no doubt in the days ahead as we move towards the further stages of the Bill. I would also say that the nostalgic contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, reminds us that the passage of time has, I would suppose, disappointed some of us in that we envisaged that while of course we came from a terrible state back in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, nevertheless we had hoped that by this stage we would be moving on to a different political environment than the one in which we find ourselves. But I suppose one has to play the cards one is dealt and we will have to deal with the matter before us.
Without wishing to be negative about it, I have to say that if the Stormont House agreement of 2014 was a steak and kidney pudding, the Bill before us is a reheated version with the steak and kidney having been removed from it in the form of the real substance of the discussions in 2014. Agreement had broadly, though not entirely, been reached, but in early 2015, for base political reasons, one party to that agreement—Sinn Fein—ratted on the agreement and left Northern Ireland facing a huge constitutional and financial crisis, which was totally uncalled for. It was all to do with the politics in the Irish Republic and had absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the people of Northern Ireland. There is no point in dilly-dallying about the issue. That is why this particular negotiated proposal is before us. The one that we understood was agreed was ratted on by those who had agreed to it. That is why we were left in 2015 with another wasted year, when progress should have been made in other matters.
As to the Bill, the Independent Reporting Commission is something that I broadly welcome. The previous mechanism that existed—the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, was a member of it as well—probably ended prematurely. However, after the events of last spring and summer—when two murders had taken place, where the police had clearly indicated in a statement that the IRA was involved and when we did not have any mechanism to shine a light on that—it was perfectly clear that a gap had opened up. We will have things to say at a later stage in the Bill about the establishment of this body, its membership and so on, and the Minister himself will be returning to it, as he said in this opening statement. Nevertheless, it will instil a degree of confidence that there is somebody there who can shine a light.
No matter what anybody says, when we come to the issue of pledges and so on, the history in Stormont has been that parties will close ranks and misuse the processes for cross-community support when it suits them. There is a long-established history of that. Nevertheless, the fact that the body is being established is a step forward to redress and fill a gap in the market which clearly exists.
It was quite shocking to people to have it put to their faces by the chief constable that the IRA was still involved and that, effectively, Sinn Fein was under its influence. Most people, if they were asked in the street, would probably say that that was true. But to have it said by the chief police officer to your face after a murder, and after the passage of time, was quite a shock. Something had to be done about it, and we are
gradually moving in that direction. I have no doubt that the Secretary of State in the other place, who had been in charge of the negotiations of the Stormont House agreement in 2014, would have much preferred to have put the total thing forward, but she was unable to. We faced a crisis throughout last year. Yes, the security issue was critical but other issues caused the problem as well.
As we go forward into the Bill itself on the issue of the state of the pledges, I can only say that I am not a great fan of pledges. I do not believe that they matter to some people. Pledges in local government were introduced way back in the 1980s or 1990s. People who were known terrorists and members of councils willingly signed them without any hesitation. Indeed, I think the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, was a member of Belfast City Council at the same time. We had some leading lights in there, such as the councillor who blew up the Europa Hotel 23 times. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, was a member; the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, was a member; and I was a member. We know who this man was and we know what he did, and he was quite prepared to sign a pledge. If we move forward to where we would be with Stormont, Mr Gerry Adams says he has never been in the IRA. Could we fill a telephone box in this country with people who would believe that? Yet he is the leader of a party in the current Government. The history is that these folks will sign anything. It does not matter to them; it is water off a duck’s back. I have little faith in this sort of activity.
I have no objections to it. If you want to put it in, put it in if it makes people feel better. Yet if we felt that somebody was going to be effectively damaged by it and put in a petition of concern, there is no sanction. Even if the Assembly agreed one, it is perfectly capable under that process of being stymied anyway. That is why we always felt more comfortable with an external process where something could be delivered. I have no difficulty with this although some make the argument that the use of the word “transitional” could give people a lot of wriggle room. At the end of the day, given what people are prepared to stand up and say—they lie to your face with impunity—I have little doubt that they would sign whatever they were required to without any hesitation.
On Clause 6, on the extended period for the appointment of Ministers, my party has been pushing at this for a number of years. The clause adds only an extra week but when we previously did this we filled the silos the minute we got back home and then started to negotiate a programme for government. With this, we are trying to do it the other way round: first, see if it is possible to agree a programme for government; then, if it is, Ministers would be identified on the basis of the programme broadly agreed. I think a programme for government should be a short, sharp document. The ones I was involved in during previous Executives turned out at something like 90 pages. The vast majority was never implemented anyway. If this works, it might help to focus people on a number of key issues that were agreed before taking office. That might be helpful, but on the other hand people might say, “Well, if whoever were the two largest parties agreed among themselves, never mind, we’ll go through
this process and sort it out afterwards”. They can still do that but at least this opportunity is provided and the public will be able to make their judgments.
When we deal with the financial issues we should remember that, last year, Stormont for the first time since 1921 could not balance its books. That had never happened before. Yes, there was the welfare crisis—largely created by Sinn Fein, although all parties had issues or major objections, including my own party. I support some of the compromises that have emerged since. However, the principal reason that there was a financial crisis was really down to sheer incompetence. I got Parliamentary Answers from the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, in November 2014 in which he set out when the Government had advised the Executive what their budget was. They were advised in autumn 2010 what their budget was up to the end of 2015, and they were advised in June 2013 what their budget was up to 2016. Knowing those figures and for that length of time, it was obvious to anybody that there would have to be reductions in public services, even though the financial settlements for Northern Ireland were more generous, taken in the round, than for other devolved regions. Despite that, nothing of substance was done and the arithmetic just did not add up. Although welfare was a significant portion of it, it was not the majority.
What is the solution to that? Instead of having four years in which to plan, to go through a process of people voluntarily leaving their posts and making other arrangements in departments, we ended up changing the budget in-year—the worst possible set of circumstances. Not only that, we have now given the Administration—the Government went ahead and pushed this through in September last year—permission to borrow £700 million to pay off 20,000 public sector workers. That was entirely avoidable. I am also concerned that the Assembly is now racking up huge amounts of borrowing. By the end of this financial year, it will be close to £3 billion of borrowing. That is becoming a very substantial slice of our cake.
We also find ourselves in the position where between 20% and 25% of the population are on hospital waiting lists. We have moved on nearly two decades, so the performance of the Assembly now has to be looked at not simply in the light that it has survived, which I welcome, but also in terms of its delivery. That is where there is huge failure.
Although there are many measures in the Bill to be welcomed, many issues are not in it. I am very pleased to see the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, in her place and in such good voice this evening. Given that she was a leading light at the time, she will recall the changes that were made to the structures in 2006—the fundamental reason in my opinion why we are not further on—when, following the St Andrews agreement, changes were made to the identification of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. Instead of the Assembly appointing them on a cross-community vote, it was done by whichever were the largest two parties. That meant that each subsequent election became a sectarian headcount. That is still the position now. I think that the public have caught on, are getting that message and realise what was done. Nevertheless, that
is one of the reasons why we are where we are. Instead of having a shared Government, we have a shared-out Government. There is a lot more to be done. That change was made without reference to the people who had actually negotiated the agreement. It was done behind closed doors and was done basically to buy off those people who had been difficult. I understand why Tony Blair’s Government did it and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who is not in his place, was deeply involved in it. However, I believe that it was a fundamental mistake and we are still paying the price for it.
There will be opportunities at a later stage to discuss all these issues and more and I look forward to that. I hope that as we move forward we will address delivery mechanisms and real improvements to people’s lives because, sadly, many people have been sucked into violence. Even in my former patch, the paramilitaries are rampant. The idea that they have gone away is not true; they are still active and have morphed into different areas of activity. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, will not wish to prejudice anything he might subsequently discover but this is no secret. He will find that there are huge areas of activity in which they are still engaged. They are in many cases major role models for young people in inner-city areas right across the Province. We have not drilled down into the social and economic deprivation in those areas, which is as bad as ever. Yet those are the very people who should have been convinced by the actions of the Assembly that politics works, and works for them. All those young people with no aims or goals in life are at the mercy of people with warped political ideas. We should bear in mind that many of the young people who have been arrested for dissident republican activity had hardly been born at the time the agreement was made, let alone had any major experience of it, as the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, pointed out. However, they have been used by people to deliver what the latter can no longer deliver, and that is an outrage. Only by making politics work and deliver for those communities will we eventually break the link between the two and the poison that these people spread. I look forward to further discussions and debates next week when we will have an opportunity to drill down into some of these measures in greater depth.
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