Northern Ireland Political Institutions: Reform

Sorcha Eastwood Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of reforming Northern Ireland’s political institutions.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Vaz. I was talking briefly to colleagues on the way over here and I said, “This time a year ago, almost, we had the exact same debate.” That was a 30-minute debate on the reform of the institutions of Northern Ireland, and I was absolutely petrified of causing any controversy, so I did not take any interventions. This will be a 60-minute debate and I would much rather we have a conversation—rows, warts, fights and all, in good faith and in good spirit—and try to come together. I am really pleased to see colleagues in the Chamber from across the House; that really means something to me.

My motivation for this debate is not based on party politics. I feel that the people of Northern Ireland are looking at us, and they are calling for something better. I am not questioning the bona fides of any representative. I think that every single one of us is here to represent our constituents across Northern Ireland in good faith, and every single one of us does that as best we can. However, where I feel we run into difficulties is that we have a system of government that enables or permits—whatever we want to call it—collapse, and that becomes a difficulty. I do not need to rehearse the reasons why. My colleagues from Northern Ireland understand fully how we arrived at this situation and the system that it is based on.

Governing under the constant threat of collapse discourages long-term decision making; it entrenches short-term decision making and paralyses reform. Probably one of the best examples that we can give of that is that we are currently attempting to set a three-year budget for Northern Ireland, for the first time in at least 10 years, and it is extremely difficult to do so. Unfortunately, with the historical muscle memory of what has happened with our governance before, there is a real risk—and a concern and a worry among the public—that we simply cannot have difficult and challenging conversations that really challenge party positions in such a way that there is no fear of collapse.

I do not need to tell colleagues around the table today the price of collapse and constant interruption of government. Such a situation would not be acceptable anywhere else in the UK. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, and we should be treated as such. It would not be acceptable in a mayoralty anywhere in the north of England. Likewise, in the Republic of Ireland, this situation simply would not be tolerated, either after an election or during the course of a Government, where, to be fair, there is a real comparator, in that they have to form coalition Governments.

We are not exceptional and we are not unique in being asked to govern with people who have completely different views from ours. Many, many Governments around the world do that. I think that nearly 30 years after the Good Friday agreement being signed, the public at large—we all serve at their pleasure—are simply saying that enough is enough. The evidence is now overwhelming. I used to say to people 10 or 15 years ago that reform was a niche Alliance party talking point. I do not think we really reserve that luxury any more. I am not picking on any colleagues, but there are colleagues here from the SDLP and from other political parties who really have gone some way to advancing those arguments about reform of our institutions, and have expounded on those points very well.

We are not the only ones making this point. People within Unionism are saying the same thing. When it comes to people living in Northern Ireland, right across nationalism, Unionism and people like me who are neither of those things, there is now a real groundswell of opinion. We have seen constant evidence in polling from various surveys that shows people in Northern Ireland simply do not want to have this system any more.

I do not feel that I am better than anybody else because I do not designate as Unionist or nationalist—part of me is Unionist and part of me is nationalist, but all of me is united community. I feel strongly about that point. We need to bear in mind going forward that the desire for reform is not the preserve of any one political tradition or viewpoint in Northern Ireland, or the solution offered by them. It is felt right across the political spectrum.

The Assembly has now spoken. Just before Christmas, for the first time, it formally backed Alliance’s call for institutional reform. It is not symbolic; it is a historic milestone, and Members across the Legislative Assembly acknowledge that the ability of any single party to veto decision making is untenable. Misuse of mechanisms such as the petition of concern has damaged trust and stability, and reform is now necessary, not optional.

I remember the previous collapses. In December 2019, whenever we were convening all-party talks on how to restore the institutions, there was a viewpoint that it was not the right time to have a discussion about how to reform them. I did not agree with that at the time, but with hindsight I understand why those points were made and why some held those views.

I understand that it is simply not good enough for me to say, “I want these changes done tomorrow in this prescriptive way, and that is the end of it.” That is not how we will move forward in any meaningful way, if no one gets what they want. That was what the entire Good Friday agreement was about.

To colleagues who might take the position that this pulls at the fabric of the Good Friday agreement to the point where it breaks, I would dispute that completely and utterly. It was not good enough to simply have the agreement signed to enable peace. That was very much hard-won and hard-fought and something that we need to jealously guard, but it is not enough any more to say to people that we can forgo the difficult job of governance.

I want this to be a positive and productive conversation. I am willing to hear different viewpoints and to accept that others will disagree about how we do this, but where there is consensus, we owe it to the people of Northern Ireland to say that enough is enough. We need to honour them and their wishes. The reforms remain modest but are essential: removing the ability of any one party to block the formation of an Executive, replacing parallel consent with arrangements that encourage genuine cross-community participation, and restoring the petition of concern to its original purpose of protecting rights, not blocking progress. We have seen, even in recent weeks, how veto mechanisms continue to be abused. That is not safeguarding democracy; it is corroding it. These reforms would not dismantle power sharing. They would make it workable. They are the bare minimum.

To Unionist colleagues in particular, I want to make a plea, or at least make my own views known and quite plain. I completely understand why some people in the community, given the different political make-up across Northern Ireland, now see discussions about reform as being couched in some sort of ulterior motive of majoritarianism and exclusion. It would trouble me greatly, to my core, to the extent that I would not participate, if any Government or Administration simply excluded Unionists because they did not feel that there were enough of them to—in a crass way—make up the numbers.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

The hon. Member very piously tells us what would offend her, but of course it did not offend her in December 2024 to be a cheerleader for the Secretary of State railroading through a protocol that treats Northern Ireland as a colony of the EU, and to continue support without cross-community consent on a basis of majoritarianism. There is quite a gaping void between what she is saying today and what her party did in December 2024.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I thank the hon. and learned Member for making his point. I see where he is coming from. I believe that Brexit was a fundamental act of self-harm. I think it caused damage to relations, and certainly I think that most people in Northern Ireland—Unionist, nationalist or other—regret Brexit. I completely understand where Unionist colleagues are coming from, because there is a difference, and it is incumbent on all of us to work to ameliorate and patch up issues that pertain to this day in terms of the operation of the protocol, but I do not want to get sidelined on that.

In conclusion, I want people to understand that this is a genuine and heartfelt appeal for constructive work. We are now calling on the UK and Irish Governments to no longer sit back and wait for that crisis and collapse. That is not the time to have these conversations at all. We are calling on the Secretary of State to immediately convene a process of institutional reform, to engage the co-guarantors of the agreement in both Governments, and to move beyond the delay and prevarication that are simply not honouring the wishes of Northern Ireland.

People who are Unionist, nationalist and other voted for a Government, and we simply cannot sit here and say that we do not see fit to provide one for them. This is not controversial. This is not new. It is not part of other polities—it is not part of anywhere else in the UK or the Republic of Ireland. I simply ask that we try to move forward today in good faith and in accordance with the wishes of the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, who simply want to have a Government.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Claire Hanna]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. Those subsequent changes, particularly at St Andrews, have distorted the institutions away from a place of consensus and towards veto, brinkmanship and power struggle. There is a lot in the agreement that the SDLP would like to revisit—not least strand 2, which has shockingly underperformed—but the immediacy and urgency of this issue means that we have to focus on where common ground can be found.

I agree with a lot of what the Alliance party has suggested but, bluntly, I do not think it is achievable. I do not think that it is possible to get there from where we are now, although we were very open to a lot of those conversations, not least on mandatory coalition and designation. As a party that is anti-sectarian, centre-left and for a new Ireland, we have never fitted neatly into any binary, but it is important to recognise both where we are as a society and where we want to get to.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

There is a real point there: people who may be in what we would term a Unionist or nationalist party may not really regard themselves as those things. That is a really positive and legitimate challenge. As the hon. Lady herself says, even her party does not fit neatly into boxes, and I certainly know Unionists, in Unionist parties, who would also feel the same. Does she think that the current set-up gives no latitude to reflect the views of people who may be Unionists or nationalists?

[Claire Hanna]

Clearly, we are a more pluralist society. I am unashamedly a new Irelander, and that is an important part of my identity. That is a factor in our politics, as is the legitimate position of Unionists, so we cannot wish it away. We cannot say, “I don’t see colour or designation,” but for so many of us it is clearly not the primary identifier. Many of the reforms can take effect even without going into what, as I said, my colleague called the “ugly scaffolding”.

The proposals we are making are keyhole surgery. They are not a lobotomy or amputation; they do not fundamentally undermine the principles of power sharing. I remind hon. Members that of course the agreement is not an ornament to sit on the mantelpiece; it is not a relic. It is a toolkit, and it envisaged change. It has been changed on the Floor of the Assembly, and it allows for that.

We want to put down some modest proposals, some of which I have advanced through the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and its excellent 2023 report on the existence of an Assembly. We propose the election of a Speaker by a two-thirds majority. Two thirds exists elsewhere in the agreement, for example in the threshold for calling an election, and I do not think anybody could say that the election of a Speaker oppresses or suppresses any community. Mike Nesbitt of the Ulster Unionist party and Patsy McGlone of the SDLP both achieved that threshold during the stalemates. That would allow an Assembly to exist, even if an Executive does not.

On Executive formation, we would call, first, to rename the joint office of the First Minister, reflecting the fact that one of those Ministers cannot order paperclips without the other, and restoring the intent and joint nature of that office. Ideally, we would then move on to the reforms that the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann) suggested around St Andrews.

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[Sammy Wilson]

Well, it was collapsed by the parties that were in power at that stage, because they had the ability to keep it running—but they did not. It collapsed again when the distribution of seats changed. It collapsed for a number of reasons, but the important thing is that those arrangements were put in place to safeguard minorities. The Alliance party and the SDLP, which are now calling for reform, were the keenest to have that consensus requirement in the Belfast agreement.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

rose—

[Claire Hanna]

rose—

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[Sammy Wilson]

I find it rather odd that the hon. Member has talked about how dysfunctional the Assembly is but wants more powers for it. Either it is dysfunctional or it is not. If it is functional and she wants more powers for it, why do we need the changes?

Let us look at the words that are used. “Reform” is one, and I have noticed that another phrase—“keyhole surgery”—has come in. Of course, these are all euphemisms for removing the very safeguards that were required when nationalists were in the minority. That is why they were put in place. Now the arithmetic in the Assembly has changed, and we find that those parties that believed there should be safeguards for minorities no longer require those safeguards and want to revert to a form of majority rule.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

I am really glad that the right hon. Member is making this point, because there is a bit of an idea out there that this is about not protecting minorities. Does he not agree that the make-up of Northern Ireland is very different and that everybody is a minority, and therefore everybody—Unionists, nationalists and people like me who are neither of those things—deserves protection?

[Sammy Wilson]

If that is the case, the requirement for consensus rather than majority rule is even stronger, yet the proposed changes would remove those safeguards.

The difficulty of getting the three-year budget through has been mentioned. I served in the Assembly for a number of years; I was Finance Minister in the Assembly for a number of years. In the first year after I took over, we had an immediate 3% cut to our budget, and then we had a 2% cut year on year, under the coalition Government that existed at that time. We got a three-year budget through, despite the fact that the two biggest spending Ministers were outside with the unions protesting against any cuts.

How did we do that? Instead of thinking we could just drive it through, as the current Sinn Féin Minister is trying to do, we had hours and hours of negotiations, compromises and so on to get it through. That might be difficult, but that is no reason to remove the requirement for consensus and the safeguards for minorities. We now have a cabal in the Assembly of nationalists, republicans, the Alliance party and a bunch of individuals, who form a majority and would be able to drive things through if it came to a majority vote.

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[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I commend the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) for securing this debate. That is probably where the consensus largely ends, although I suppose I could agree with her—indeed, I would put it much more robustly—that our system of government at Stormont has lamentably and demonstrably failed. The Executive eventually scraped together what passes for a programme for government; they now cannot agree a budget, and we have individual Ministers locked in litigation, one with the other. Of course, all that is against the background of the Executive almost more often being down than up.

The elephant in the room, to which no one has been prepared to refer, is this question: why is this system of government not working? It is very simple. If the only form of devolution we can have is one based on the prerequisite that a party that does not even want Northern Ireland to exist, never mind succeed, must be at the heart of the Executive, it should not be a surprise to anyone that that Executive stumbles and fails. You cannot say, “We will make a success of Northern Ireland, yet we need an all-Ireland.” The very raison d’être of Sinn Féin is, first, not to believe that Northern Ireland should even exist and, secondly, to ensure that it is not a success. There is no better place from which to make sure it is not a success than from the inside of Government. That is the fundamental reality.

Day and daily in Northern Ireland, we hear very clearly from the so-called First Minister that everything they are doing and everything they are working towards is about getting a referendum to destroy the United Kingdom and take Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. If we create a system where those with that motivation, who have no desire to make Northern Ireland work, must be at the heart of government, and we cannot have a Government without them, it should not be a surprise that the system fails. It is not rocket science.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Actually, I agree: I want Northern Ireland to succeed and I do want to be a success for Northern Ireland. Does the hon. and learned Member not agree that the constant collapses are destroying the premise of a successful Northern Ireland and we should do everything we can to stop that happening?

[Jim Allister]

If the hon. Member had been listening more carefully, she would have understood why it is failing. It is failing because at its heart is a party that does not want Northern Ireland to succeed and, if it has the levers of power, will never permit it to succeed. That is the fundamental point.

What do we do? It is quite clear to me that the Executive is the failing side of devolution in Northern Ireland. It is the Executive that has collapsed multiple times. We need to distinguish the various strands of devolution. We have the Executive devolution, we have legislative devolution, and I suppose we have the scrutiny side of devolution. The latter two have actually worked, within limits, relatively well. The lamentable failure is on the side of the Executive.

If the only type of Executive that can be formed has at its heart a party that wants Northern Ireland to fail, the obvious answer is not to have an Executive of that type. We should sustain the legislative devolution and the scrutiny and pass the Executive powers to the central Government, but we should make their Ministers pass their legislation through the Assembly and make their Ministers’ actions subject to the scrutiny of the Assembly. Indeed, it would be far more vigorous scrutiny than at present, because at the moment the scrutineers who sit in the Assembly Committees scrutinising Ministers are members of the same parties that they are scrutinising. If Assembly Members were scrutinising Ministers from the Northern Ireland Office, it would be a lot more vigorous, I assure you.

If we are to get government that works, we have to face the reality that the current system is incapable of working. It will never work, because of the fundamental flaw that at its heart is a party that thinks that Northern Ireland should not even exist, never mind succeed. We have to circumvent that. If we cannot have an Executive that allows those who want Northern Ireland to work to govern, Executive powers must be vested where they will not be subject to that restraint and that flaw.

We should keep the part of devolution that is working. If we ever come to the point at which we are capable of forming a workable Executive, we should restore it, but we cannot go on as we are, limping from one crisis to another. Stormont is now a byword for failure in Northern Ireland. People just roll their eyes and laugh at the very thought of good government coming from there. We are only going to take politics further down the longer we cling to a system that is lamentably and totally failing. Let us get some new thought, which needs to be focused on getting an Executive system that can work. It does not need to be perfect, but I want to be very plain: flawed British rule, subject to the restraints of Stormont, would be preferable to destructive, malevolent Sinn Féin rule.

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[Jim Shannon]

I am not going to get into a row, but under devolution we have seen the delivery of childcare. People see that in my constituency and every constituency in Northern Ireland, whether they like it or not. I tell you what: my constituents like it, and that is the point I want to make.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important to have a functioning Government in Northern Ireland, because the local growth fund and what the UK Government have done on that for Northern Ireland demonstrate that only Northern Ireland can look out for itself? We cannot expect others to keep doing it for us. That is why we need to change how we do things.

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[Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) on securing this important debate. I recognise that I am new to this portfolio, and those who have spoken before me know far more about it than I do, so I am still in listening mode.

I have found many of the arguments compelling, if contradictory. I invite the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) to intervene on me to explain her answer to the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister), if she wants to do so, because I would have liked to hear her answer. Maybe she can do so later.

I begin by reaffirming the Liberal Democrats’ full, unwavering support for the Good Friday agreement. It transformed Northern Ireland by establishing institutions robust enough to bridge the deep sectarian divisions, an achievement that endures today. The Northern Ireland of today is not the Northern Ireland of 30 years ago, but maintaining the agreement does not mean preserving those institutions in aspic—quite the opposite, in fact.

As a former sub-dean at University College London’s faculty of laws, I feel compelled to cite the warnings of its constitution unit, which in its recent work on Stormont reform highlighted how the current arrangements make institutional collapse all too possible and any recovery politically costly. The question we are therefore compelled to ask is whether strand 1 institutions are still fit for purpose in today’s Northern Ireland, and, if not, what reforms are necessary.

Time does not permit an exhaustive list of the potential merits of reform, but three stand out clearly. The first is greater stability. Allowing the formation of the Executive to proceed when a party entitled to nominate the First Minister or Deputy First Minister refuses to do so would prevent a single party from vetoing Government altogether. That principle already applies to other ministerial posts, and would strengthen, not weaken, devolution and power sharing.

The second is more effective decision making. Continued use of parallel consent and an overly lax triggering mechanism for a petition of concern has repeatedly blocked budgets, the election of a Speaker and legislation, even where there is overwhelming Assembly support. Replacing parallel consent with a weighted majority and restricting petitions of concern to their original purpose of protecting vital interests would still provide minority safeguards, absent the danger of deadlock. I would like someone to intervene on me on that point to explain why weighted majority does not give protection to minorities—because surely it does give some protection.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation we have, whereby Governments can simply go without being formed, would be anathema anywhere in the home counties, whether it is a local mayoralty or a regional district within GB? Surely to goodness that would not be tolerated in the UK—and Northern Ireland is indeed part of the UK.

[Mr Kohler]

I entirely agree. Compelling as many of the arguments are from all sides, a situation in which governance is not happening cannot be right and cannot be the solution. Surely, compromise must be reached.

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[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. Hon. Members will be delighted to hear that I do not intend to speak for very long, but I congratulate the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) on securing this debate, which has largely been conducted in a very civil manner and has aired some very interesting positions.

The position of the Conservative party is that we are very much open to supporting political parties in Northern Ireland in reforming their institutions, but we stand by the principles of the 1998 agreement, in that we think that ideally any change must come from Northern Ireland itself.

[Sorcha Eastwood]

Does the hon. Member agree that the concept of Northern Ireland working is absolutely key and fundamental; that a system of government that collapses plays straight into the hands of those who are not particularly interested in a prosperous, progressive and inclusive Northern Ireland; and therefore that anybody who cares about Northern Ireland should be very interested in engaging in these conversations?