Northern Ireland

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for repeating the Statement and for the recognition in the Statement of the great courage of the Police Service of Northern Ireland: the police officer whom the dissident Republicans attempted to murder—actually, just around the corner from my own home—and the dozens of police officers who have been injured in the riots and disturbances created by loyalists.

However, despite what is said in the Statement about flags, do Her Majesty’s Government understand that this is not fundamentally about flags or flying the flag on designated days? Since the time when I was Speaker, starting in 1998, we had an understanding and agreement among all the political parties. The union flag would be flown only on designated days over Parliament Buildings. It was not an issue of contention at that time, or in the decade and a half since that time. This is about other issues. It is about a context being created by some political leaders for their own political interests. That is why I would like to pay particular tribute to the courage of Naomi Long, the honourable Member for Belfast East, and many other Alliance representatives and representatives of other parties who have been standing up for democracy and have been personally attacked and had their lives threatened for that courageous stand. I also pay tribute to the many ordinary people who have been terrified: cancer patients trying to go for treatment; business people trying to keep their businesses open; and ordinary people going about their business and trade who have been frightened and intimidated by what has been going on.

During the time when I was a member of the IMC, we were able regularly to brief the community in some detail about what was going on and who was doing it. That has not been the case. Despite the undertakings of the previous Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, that there would be six-monthly analyses of what has been going on, we are really not getting much detail—for example, of the activities of loyalist paramilitaries like the UVF. The noble Baroness has repeated that “the leadership” did not sanction this. That may be so, but is it the case that the leadership of the UVF in East Belfast has actually been involved in this? This is the kind of detailed question that some of us would like to explore and I fully recognise that the Floor of the House may not be the appropriate place for questions and answers. I ask my noble friend to encourage the Secretary of State to meet those Members of your Lordships’ House who are interested and concerned about Northern Ireland and who feel it is urgently important that we have a meeting with her in the near future to explore these things.

Finally, I ask the Government to recognise that the British and Irish Governments were the drivers of the peace process and without them there would not have been an agreement. Can they understand that they are also the guarantors of the settlement and therefore cannot back off and suppose that those who are there and sometimes have their own games to play will be trusted to deliver the peace that needs to be maintained?

[Baroness Randerson]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments, particularly those on the courage of the PSNI. The Government fully appreciate that there are complex issues behind these protests and that it is about more than just flags in many cases, not least about issues of deprivation. Ironically, the more unrest there is in Northern Ireland, the less likelihood there will be of further economic investment, so it becomes a real problem.

The noble Lord referred to the Assembly agreement, with which he was intimately involved, on the flying of flags. I believe that Lisburn city hall uses a similar method. There are a variety of agreements on the flying of flags. However, these decisions must be made in Northern Ireland. They are devolved, democratic decisions to be made in Northern Ireland and cannot be made by the UK Government.

We have to keep repeating the importance of democracy in relation to Northern Ireland. Democracy must be our watchword. I will of course take the noble Lord’s words to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. It is important that your Lordships are fully involved and fully briefed where possible on issues relating to Northern Ireland. I will ensure that those comments are repeated to my right honourable friend.

Finally, the roles of the British Government and the Irish Government remain crucial in supporting and encouraging the Northern Ireland Executive but it would be counterproductive on many issues for the British Government to intervene on matters which are devolved and must remain devolved.

Northern Ireland: Recent Events

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement made in another place. I would like to add our appreciation on these Benches for the dangerous and courageous work of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. We add our support for Naomi Long, whose life has been threatened as an elected representative, and for other elected representatives whose homes and offices have been attacked and whose families have been terrified and frightened by mobs that have been roaming about. Not only have elected representatives suffered, but many other people have been discomfited as well. A doctor told me today that cancer patients were not able to get to hospital because of what was going on.

There is the question of the violence, but it did not come about just with this issue of flags. It has been developing over the last number of months, with issues about Catholic churches and parades. This is clearly a mounting process with paramilitary organisations. What is most concerning is that instead of some political leaders trying not just to condemn but to contain this, it is actually being spread out to other circumstances. While the Assembly in Stormont has flown the flag only on designated days, now the whole question of the flag being flown on all sorts of other days is being raised and creating difficulties which were never there before in more than a decade of the Assembly functioning.

I am disappointed that it has taken some time for any clear guidance to come out of 10 Downing Street and the Prime Minister. I ask my noble friend why that is so. There have been no clear statements saying not just how wrong this is but how important it is for politicians not to spread the problem but to seize the problem and control it. I ask my noble friend if she could give me some reassurance that the Prime Minister and his colleagues will not merely sit at Number 10 Downing Street and be concerned, but that they will start putting pressure on political colleagues in Belfast, who are picking up on this and spreading the problem rather than containing it and closing it down. Of course, there are other issues that need to be dealt with, including difficulties for Protestant young men and their educational status in some loyalist areas. But this is not the way to deal with them. I plead with my noble friend to make a case to the Prime Minister to be more engaged.

There have recently been complaints by the Deputy First Minister that he can see the President of the United States more easily than he can see the Prime Minister of our United Kingdom. This is not a help in a situation which is beginning to spin out of control.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am about to conclude. It is important to make these points because I believe that the amendment that has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, affects the very heart of the Bill. That is why it is necessary for me to make these points.

If the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is accepted by the House, we will no longer be putting forward to the electorate change that is real, relevant and radical. We will actually be doing something that is quite predictable. On that basis, I support my noble and learned friend the Minister and I hope that we do not accept the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I have listened with some care to what previous noble Lords have said. It has been very thoughtful and I am not surprised that the noble Lords, Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Armstrong, take the view that they do. They are exactly the kind of recommendations that any good senior civil servant would give to the Prime Minister, which is, “Hold on to whatever power you have because it seems little enough at times”. I understand that.

But it is a mistake to suggest that the response of the other place is disrespectful. I do not think that it is. It is disagreement. There is a fundamental disagreement between those who take the view that a fixed-term Parliament is in the interests of the Parliament and of the people and those who take the view that it would be best to stick with what we have. Of course, this House and the other place felt it completely appropriate to have fixed-term arrangements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Most other places around the world think that it is a good idea. It is not outlandish. Colleagues in the other place and noble Lords on the other Benches stood for election to the other place. It is not something that came suddenly out of the blue, like getting rid of the Lord Chancellor, for example. That was not thought through terribly enormously or consulted on. There is a disagreement. Some of us take the view that a fixed-term Parliament where you elect someone and say, “You will be elected for this period of time to do this job”, is the right way to do it.

The question that has now been raised is, “Is the amendment that has come back from the other place a fair and reasonable one or a scrawny child?”. It does not seem to me unreasonable that one should wait for the passage of two terms of Parliament, which is after all what we are talking about. To simply return to the question in a month or two tells you nothing about whether this approach is reasonable. Sometimes one has to take time to think one's way through and see if what you have is genuinely a change for the better or worse.

It is clear that there is an intellectually honest disagreement. Noble Lords here have understandable points, but it is not the case that the Government are seeking to be disrespectful. Rather, they are saying, “We do not agree with this and so, having listened to what the House of Lords has said, we have said that we appreciate that but we think that post-legislative scrutiny after two mandates is a reasonable way to address the issue”. I appeal to noble Lords to see it in that light and give the other place the primacy that is appropriate in this context.

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield]

My Lords, I listened with great attention to the Minister a moment ago and I think that I detected an anxiety on his part that the royal prerogative on the dissolution of Parliament would somehow be thrown into confusion. Her Majesty the Queen graciously places her prerogative at the disposal of Parliament every time the question arises. She always has and always will. I hope that the Minister will elaborate on the anxieties if indeed I am right to detect them in what he said, but I cannot see the problem about the Queen's personal prerogative of dissolution being revived on a vote of the House of Commons if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is passed. There is no constitutional dilemma at all here. Perhaps he has better advice than I have and perhaps he could elaborate in a moment or two.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bach]

Once this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament, it will be a fixed-term Parliament.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, how can it be a fixed-term Parliament unless Members were elected to it as a fixed-term Parliament? That is the point—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I am sorry, but the reality is it is not a fixed-term Parliament. Members were elected to a Parliament on the old system—quite a different matter.

[Baroness Jay of Paddington]

I ask the noble Lord, through the Minister, whether it is therefore the Government’s position that all the arguments and discussions we had about no-confidence Motions—as they related historically and as they will, presumably, be affected under the fixed-term Parliament legislation—will not apply to this Parliament before 2015.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this is one of the most important issues before us on Report on Part 1 of the Bill. The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Rooker is eminently sensible. Surely we should all be able to agree that, where major constitutional change is concerned, there should be a search for consensus. Major constitutional change should not be made on a small participation in the vote.

I fear that turnout at the referendum will be low, partly because the question of whether we should switch from first past the post to the alternative vote system of elections is fairly obscure and technical, and partly—this is a very important factor—because this legislation, proposing as it does such important changes to our constitution, has not, as convention and normal practice require, been the subject of public consultation by way of a Green Paper or pre-legislative scrutiny. That means that there has not been an extensive debate, other than in your Lordships’ House, where the extent of the debate has been well justified in these extraordinary circumstances. In the time that will be available between this Bill reaching the statute book and the day that the Government have appointed for the referendum, 5 May, there will be very little possibility of the Electoral Commission explaining to, informing and, indeed, educating the people of this country about the choice that it will fall to them to make. Those are significant reasons why we should insist that there should be a substantial turnout if the result of this referendum is to be binding, and I think that a minimum turnout of 40 per cent, as proposed by my noble friend Lord Rooker, is well judged.

I think that there should always be a high hurdle in a referendum. It would be intensely undesirable if Governments got it into their heads that referendums were a readily available, convenient way of introducing a change that they happened to think was desirable. I very much heed the advice of the Constitution Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. In its report on referendums, it has made it very clear that it considers referendums to be in principle undesirable and inconsistent with the principle of parliamentary government. Although the committee concedes that referendums may be appropriate on significant constitutional issues, I am sure that the tenor of its recommendations is that we should not automatically reach for referendums as a convenient device for the Government of the day; rather, it should be rare and difficult for a proposition to be put to a referendum.

I take the view that, where there is to be a referendum, it should be advisory rather than mandatory. Again, my noble friend Lord Rooker has proposed to the House a very sensible compromise: if there is a majority on a genuinely substantial turnout, we accept that this referendum will be mandatory but, if the turnout is less than 40 per cent, the question of where we go from there will come back to Ministers and to Parliament. That all seems very sensible. Surely, when we are developing constitutional change, we should do all we can not only to achieve consensus between the parties in Parliament but to achieve a substantial consensus in the country. Therefore, I support the amendment.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I think it is only right for me to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who was regarded with much affection during his time as a Minister in Northern Ireland. However, that also leads me to my questions about his amendment. He was famed for his plain speaking and uncluttered thinking, but sometimes the simple response to a complex issue may not be the right one, and I think that that is the case with this amendment.

Two of the amendment’s components trouble me. The first is the notion that it should be a non-binding referendum; in other words, we say, “This is so important that we must hear what the people have to say. But if we do not like what they have to say because of the numbers who turn out to vote, the Government will then do something different from what the people have said”. I do not think that it is a very advisable to ask the people what they think but then for the Government to decide whether they will follow through on that. However, it goes further than that. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will be very familiar with the fact that the only elections in Northern Ireland which are not held on a proportionate basis of some kind—in fact, all the rest are held on the STV system—is the election to the House of Commons at Westminster. I could very easily see a situation where the turnout in Northern Ireland was much higher than in other parts of the United Kingdom—that is not unusual—and where there was overwhelming support for moving away from the first past the post system, as it is not used for any other elections and no one in Northern Ireland seriously proposes going back to it.

Of course they would rather have STV but that is not on the agenda at the moment. Northern Ireland could vote overwhelmingly for a move away from first past the post and the Government could say that the rest of the UK have not voted in such numbers—although the outcome is still clear—and have the freedom to ignore the situation or to espouse it. If this is what the people want, maybe we should move away from the first-past-the-post system in Northern Ireland—and perhaps in other parts of the UK—and argument could then begin to emerge that the Government had the freedom to bring forward different electoral systems for the one Parliament. That would not be a change because it is already the situation in our elections to the European Parliament. It would not help to bind things together in the United Kingdom if we had different forms of elections to the House of Commons.

I am seeking to show that what appears a simple, straightforward, elegant way of addressing a potential problem in fact opens up a series of other matters which have not been referred to in today’s debate. I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Reid, who is also a much distinguished servant of Northern Ireland.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I thank the noble Lord for that. His argument would carry immense weight if not for the simple fact that the circumstances—historically, socially and constitutionally—in Northern Ireland are unique in the United Kingdom. Nowhere else has a referendum been held inside and outside the United Kingdom at the same time, as was the case with the Good Friday agreement; nowhere else is there a Chamber where automatically all of the parties must share a percentage; nowhere else are there constitutional arrangements which stand completely at odds with every other part of the United Kingdom, for very good reasons. Therefore, the arguments the noble Lord has made very eloquently fall on the simple point that Northern Ireland is already unique, and anything that added to that uniqueness would be marginal compared to the differences that already exist.

[Lord Alderdice]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. However, I am sure he will not go back to Scotland to argue that Scotland is not unique in its history, culture and background.

The point is not the uniqueness of the situation in Northern Ireland but the importance of holding together a single system for election to the House of Commons so that various procedures do not enter into it which have the untoward effect of differentiating representation in the House of Commons. We need something which binds our United Kingdom together. That is why the simple and, on the face of it, not unreasonable proposition from the noble Lord opens up all kinds of other boxes. That is not his intention but it is a real possibility, and that is why I oppose the amendment.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

Like my noble friend Lord Blackwell, I have been a loyal supporter of the Government throughout this Bill. However, like him, the amendment gives me cause for concern and I feel there is a lot in what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has said. I share my noble friend’s views about the danger of a precedent being created in this way without any threshold.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, argued persuasively that we may not like what the people have said. However, as I understand it, under the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, 60 per cent of the people will have said nothing. They will not have said that they are in favour of it; they will just have stayed away. That is hardly an argument for there being the high-level consensus for the change that it is proposed to bring in.

Even with the noble Lord’s amendment, we could have a binding referendum with one in five people voting in favour of it, which seems a perfectly satisfactory threshold. My concern is more about different results from different parts of the United Kingdom, to which he refers. We may have different turnouts in different parts of the United Kingdom because of the nature of the elections that are taking place on the day. We may have low turnouts in one place and high turnouts in another, and large parts of the United Kingdom may feel that they have had a system foisted upon them in circumstances where they have voted against it and there is not the level of consensus required.

For me, the danger of having no minimum to which we can point as giving a level of participation across the country represents a grave danger to the unity of the kingdom, because all parts of the kingdom may not feel that they have been treated fairly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I did not expect words that I used as a Minister from that Box to be thrown back at me during this debate. Given that it has been a bit of a rush since we finished Committee, I would have thought, to be honest, that the Minister’s advisers would have been better getting ready the package of concessions that we have been promised than trawling through my old speeches—which, I would add, were on regional referendums. This is different.

The other thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that this is not a threshold in the normal use of the word. This is not what the House of Commons voted on, or against. It is not the threshold. If it is not 40 per cent, it does not stop it going ahead. I do not wish to do that, but with all the arguments and permutations that one can think of, one can imagine lots of reasonable cases to be made to proceed accordingly after the result. All I am saying is that, given the binding nature of this, as others have said, and not knowing what is going to happen in only the second-ever national referendum, and on a key issue of changing the voting system—not like elections, where Governments come and go, as someone said—it just gives Parliament an opportunity to think again, and Parliament would be well advised to take the will of the voters. I do not argue with that at all, but I simply say that the Bill is too black or white, all or nothing.

By the way, I do not claim any credit for this amendment. I wrestled last week with how I could bring back the issue of a consultative indicative—which failed in a vote on, I think, 6 December—and deal with the idea of thresholds, which I am intrinsically against for the reasons that many noble Lords have explained. Nevertheless, we have to have this as a back-up. I was wrestling with this with a very bright young person in the back of a taxi when the solution was offered to me: join the two together—make it indicative only if the voter turnout is different. We can still proceed accordingly; we can still have the referendum, still have the result, still make the change to AV, whatever the voter outcome. I am just saying that if the voter turnout is less than 40 per cent, Parliament could say, “Hang on, we had better think about this again”.

We have come a long way since those who originally proposed the alternative vote—the Electoral Reform Society and company—actually said, “It is so small a change, you do not need a referendum”. That has been their case virtually all along—that we did not need a referendum on this. I do not support the AV system in the Bill anyway, but that is not the issue. I have back-up amendments, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, because I genuinely think that you have to get a yes vote in the four countries of the UK. That is not implied in this amendment; it is there in Amendment 11A.

I accept that there is clarity and certainty in the way in which the Bill is drafted. There is too much clarity and certainty when we are dealing with an electorate of well over 40 million. It is true that on election day, as has been said—I have not yet checked the figure— 84 per cent of people are eligible to go to the polls. When you have, among the 16 per cent who are not, a massive block here in the capital city—it is not as though they are spread out all over the country—we will end up with a massive block that will get the chance to vote only in the AV referendum.

I am simply saying that this gives us an opportunity. It does not wreck the Bill—I repeat this for those who will deliberately misunderstand and misreport what we say—it does not wreck the idea of the AV referendum, it does not stop the outcome. Whatever the outcome of the election, it can still proceed if there is a yes vote. All I am saying is this; let us give ourselves, as a Parliament, the opportunity to have a rethink.

My final point is that I know that it looks simple. It is a few words—and Amendment 10B should attach to this to give discretion in Clause 8—but the general will is there. Everyone understands what we mean. If this were carried, parliamentary draftsmen would knock the other clauses into shape tomorrow to make it work. I can give noble Lords a classic example of that. The next two amendments after this—

[Lord Alderdice]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It seems to me, and I am grateful to him for it, that in his remarks about subsequent amendments on the four separate parts of the United Kingdom, which would introduce a whole load of complexities such as vetoes, and on the question of the simplicity having to be addressed overnight by parliamentary draftsmen, he has said in effect that what I said is correct: that this is not as simple as it appears and that all sorts of complexities are introduced by opening this particular box. Therefore, I think it would be best for him to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

I said that they were a back-up. I do not speak for anyone else. If this amendment were carried, virtually half the rest of the amendments to Clause 1 probably would not even be moved—I certainly would not move mine. I am simply saying, “Let’s give ourselves a chance to think again”. If we are not prepared to do that and the House is prepared to rollercoaster on to a binding referendum in which we do not know what the result is going to be and it could be carried by a majority of one on a small percentage, then I will say, “Hang on a minute, I think I want to build some more checks into this”. However, those amendments are a back-up. If this amendment were carried, more of my amendments would disappear, so the noble Lord’s point carries no weight at all.

It is in the House’s own interest to take the opportunity to give us the chance to think again. This amendment would not destroy the Bill or the referendum and would not stop the outcome being implemented, whatever the result. I think that we should test the opinion of the House.