Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

I am entirely happy with operating the Good Friday agreement as the people voted for it—people of Ireland north and south. A petition of concern would mean that a mechanism could be checked and proofed. If there were not concerns in relation to rights and equality, it could proceed in the normal way through the Assembly; if there were, it would require cross-community support. I make no apology for my part in negotiating and drafting the Good Friday agreement and in helping to establish the institutions. I regret the fact that we have departed from the Good Friday agreement in so many ways.

The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) referred to the appointment of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. Like her, I listened to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) saying that we need to change things and get to a different way, and that there should not be a situation where one party can veto. Let us remember that the St Andrews agreement limited the appointment of the offices of First Minister and Deputy First Minister to two parties and two parties only. It specified that the biggest party of one designation would appoint the First Minister, and then the biggest party of another designation would appoint the Deputy First Minister. There was to be no role for the Assembly any more in electing and having a free choice in the joint election of First Minister and Deputy First Minister, as the Good Friday agreement provided. If the right hon. Gentleman is in any way serious about what he is saying, then next time we are tabling amendments in respect of changing how the First Minister and Deputy First Minister are appointed, he should join us in supporting those amendments, not oppose them. I checked with the Clerks as to whether the Bill’s reference to ministerial appointments would have allowed me to table such an amendment. I was advised that the narrow terms of the Bill would not have allowed me again to table the amendment that I have tabled in the past.

Given the way in which acronyms are used in this place, no doubt this Bill, which we might call the ministerial appointments and regional rates Bill, will be referred to as the MARR Bill. However, there is nothing memorable about it. It is purely ephemeral in the sense of making exigent provisions in relation to the striking of a regional rate so that rates bills can be issued and councils can get their take of the district rate. I regret that it has been necessary to bring the Bill forward in this House, but I support it in terms of allowing the revenue to come in to support public services, both those run by councils and those provided by regional government departments.

The Bill is also ephemeral in the sense of resetting the meter on the appointment of Ministers. I note that the Secretary of State has chosen a timeline that would broadly equate to what the timeline under the current legislation would be if there was an Assembly election on the same day as the general election. Therefore, those who have argued for an election on the same day can have no objection to that timeline. As we heard from other hon. Members, there is another coincidence in relation to the timeline with regard to the budgetary pressures and the fact that the civil service is now having to assign a percentage of the budget in the absence of an elected Government in the Assembly. All sorts of groups and budget holders, including in the community and voluntary sector, but not only there, have been given the indication that their funding is guaranteed, as was, for the first 13 weeks of the financial year. Those 13 weeks will bring us to within a calendar week of the same deadline that we have. That should concentrate minds—I hope that it does—about what the consequences of an absence of the institutions would be.

[Tom Elliott]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if there is no progress within the timescale set in the Bill, the Secretary of State needs to bring forward further legislation to resolve the budgetary issues, because we cannot keep going through the financial crisis that departments are currently in?

[Mark Durkan]

We have to use the timeline that is created here and now. We also have to use such good will as any of us were able to detect in the talks in Stormont Castle over the past number of weeks.

I personally would not come to the conclusion that one party is determined to prevent the formation of a Government altogether. I wish I had more evidence that I could point to so as to support my hunch that Sinn Féin would want to see the formation of a Government. It would be better if Sinn Féin would say more in public that gave people reason to believe that. In the debate I took part in on the BBC yesterday, I was struck by the fact that Chris Hazzard of Sinn Féin said that Sinn Féin would have a powerful position in relation to Brexit because of having four MEPs and because Dublin was going to have a decisive role as a member state. He put no premium whatsoever on the institutions of the agreement. At no point did he say, “The important thing that will help us to offset some of the challenges and threats of Brexit is having our own devolved Government who are part of using and activating the strand 2 structures that are the best way of doing things on an all-Ireland basis, with relevant sectors being treated as an Ireland market, and that being reflected and respected with regard to EU construction programmes and potential funding, as Michel Barnier has indicated.” There was none of that whatsoever from Sinn Féin. I can therefore see why people are worried about what it is saying about Brexit and asking, “Where are the institutions of the Good Friday agreement?”

Strand 1 of the Good Friday agreement would be pretty central to making those institutions work because, as we know from what happened before, strand 2 cannot be activated—we cannot have a North South Ministerial Council—unless we have northern Ministers in a northern Executive. It is therefore imperative that we get our institutions up and running. A failure to do so means that we are sentenced to the hard Brexit that people are complaining about and worried about, but also a hard Brexit in the absence of any devolved mitigation—any north-south axis that can be used, including by the Irish Government. Strand 2 provides that the views of the North South Ministerial Council will be reflected and represented in various EU meetings, so it gives the Irish Government a potentially powerful role. However, whenever Chris Hazzard referred to the Irish Government’s role yesterday, none of that related to the fact that they would be reflecting the views of the North South Ministerial Council in EU meetings. We need to get the institutions up and running, although I recognise that there are issues in the way.

I do not accept the rewriting of recent history by the hon. Member for East Antrim in relation to the renewable heat incentive. When questions were put to Treasury Ministers and to NIO Ministers about a Westminster and Whitehall interest in RHI, the DUP was seething at any such suggestion by me, by my hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), or by the two Ulster Unionist party Members. The DUP was completely opposed to a public inquiry. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley made it very clear on TV on several occasions that consideration by the Public Accounts Committee in the Assembly was sufficient and there was no need for any other inquiry. It had Sinn Féin on board with that position for quite a while, and then things fell apart between them.

Like the hon. Member for East Antrim, I ask why the Northern Ireland Executive did not produce a draft budget. Why are we in this position at all, with no hint or sign of what the devolved budget would have been? Let us remember that back on 21 November the DUP and Sinn Féin issued a joint article, stating:

“This is what delivery looks like. No gimmicks. No grandstanding.”

And that was when there was no sign of a draft budget. The DUP was quite happy to say that it was good government not to have a draft budget at that stage. We are now at a point when we should have long had the revised budget. That is what the joint article by Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness said and it was accompanied by a lovely photograph: back in November, Sinn Féin and the DUP gave us the Mills & Boon version of lovely government. Then the wheels started to come off after the pressure created by the RHI issues in December.

What was the root cause of the arrogance that manifested itself in the RHI scandal? It was the fact that the DUP felt that it was not accountable to the Assembly and that it had been appointed entirely according to its own mandate. We heard Arlene Foster say that she had a mandate from the people of Northern Ireland. The DUP’s mandate in last year’s Assembly election was no greater than that which the Labour party got in Great Britain, and yet we were told by Arlene Foster that her mandate from the people of Northern Ireland meant that she could ignore the mandate received by everybody else in the Assembly. Given that she was not appointed by the Assembly, contrary to the provisions of the Good Friday agreement, she had no sense of accountability to it, which is why the DUP made it clear that it would veto any motion passed by the Assembly on the RHI. Of course, that is what it did, and in so doing it not only ignored the proper authority and its debt of accountability to the Assembly at large, but broke the ethic of mutuality and jointery in the offices of the First and Deputy First Ministers. That made it very difficult, if not impossible, for Martin McGuiness to continue as though there were no other strains present.

Those are not the only challenges that we need to resolve. Other hon. Members have touched on legacy issues, but unfortunately, given Madam Deputy Speaker’s advice on time, I will not be able to go fully into them. The hon. Member for Blaydon has referred to the Sammy Devenney case, which happened in my constituency. Conservative Members have also raised concerns about former officers being pursued and questioned about previous cases. However, although those cases have been presented here as examples of people being pursued for prosecution, they have actually come about as a result of new inquests about controversial deaths that have shown that some of those who were killed were not terrorists or gunmen as had previously been reported, and that therefore their killing was wrongful. It is entirely legitimate that legacy issues should be pursued and questions asked. Officers gave various accounts—and Ministers in turn, down the years, have in this House given false accounts—of those deaths and incidents. It is entirely proper that those cases should be well pursued.

Although there has been a measure of agreement among Sinn Féin, the DUP and the British Government—notwithstanding disagreements on questions of national security—on limited approaches by the historical investigations unit, the Social Democratic and Labour party wants more architecture on legacy issues, not least with regard to thematic approaches. The HIU is able only to produce individual reports on individual cases, and not to join the dots, show the patterns or draw on the wider lessons. It is also confined to looking at killings, but the troubles have many other dimensions and legacies of victimhood that are not just in relation to killings. People have many questions about the pattern, motives and character of the violence carried out by paramilitaries as well as, possibly, by the security forces, and they want those questions to be examined and tested. I think that that would give a more equal assessment of the past.

We considered those proposals in the Haass talks. Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan had particular ideas about a strong approach to thematics, which would have reflected the interest right across the community. It would not only have addressed issues of state breaches and allegations against state forces; it would have been very wide, open, thorough and responsive. We need to return to those sorts of arrangements in respect of the past.

We need to make progress on the Irish language Act, but let us be clear that part of the problem is that people are selling riddles, because in the St Andrews agreement there was a pledge from the British Government that they would legislate for a language Act, whereas the only commitment on the part of the parties was for a language strategy. Ambiguities and contradictions were built into it and some of us sought clarity at the time. Sinn Féin was spinning it that there would be an Irish language Act in the Assembly, but we pointed out our honest interpretation of the literal language. Of course, we were decried simply for pointing out the truth.

Whatever the problems in relation to the Irish language Act and the RHI issue, we need to remember that Brexit is the biggest issue facing us all. What helped bring about the discolouration in the politics around our institutions? The fact is that it was Brexit, which has made a much bigger difference to the political atmosphere in Northern Ireland than certain Members care to admit.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

Yes, and my party and I are fully pledged to doing that. Nobody worked harder to create the principles and the precepts of the agreement and to get those institutions established and up and running—and we did so, I have to tell the right hon. Member for North Shropshire, with very good assistance from the EU. As someone who was a Minister in Northern Ireland—both a Finance Minister and a Deputy First Minister—I had many negotiations with many people in the EU, including Michel Barnier, who was very constructive and helpful in relation to a number of funding issues. Yes, he had his particularisms about which one had to be careful and understand where he was coming from, and certainly his officials had to understand where he was coming from, but it was a useful and constructive contribution—one of many—from the EU.

[Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)]

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that if article 50 is triggered we will no longer have InterTradeIreland, Waterways Ireland, Tourism Ireland, and the six bodies that were set up by the Belfast agreement? I do not see any threat to them from triggering article 50.

[Mark Durkan]

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that it was his party that said, “If we are going to go ahead and agree these implementation bodies, the cover has to be that the way in which we can show that they meet our test of mutual benefit is that they deal with matters that largely transpose EU business and involve questions of common compliance.” There is the Food Standards Agency, and Waterways Ireland and the Loughs Agency have some environmental compliance issues—and of course there is also the question of EU funding. As the hon. Member for St Helens North said, the role of the Special EU Programmes Body is not going to exist if no common EU funding is to be available any more.

If the rationale and justification for the existing bodies is wounded and weakened, those of us who negotiated and supported the agreement have the right to say, “We’ve already had nearly 20 years of this limited area of implementation co-operation. It now needs to be developed and expanded as the agreement promised it could be.” If the existing bodies are wounded and winged by the fact of Brexit, and if they limp along and struggle for relevance, clearly there must be—in the context of a review at least of strand 2, if not the wider agreement—negotiations on new bodies. Those negotiations, as we know, will not find themselves unlinked to other issues and factors as well. Some hon. Members have hummed to themselves that Brexit has no implications for the Good Friday agreement, and that as long as they say that they will consult Ministers and that they do not want border posts, no other damage has been done. They do not understand the politics that went into the agreement, and they do not understand the politics that will upset the workings of that agreement because of the implications of Brexit.

That is why if people have a care for the Good Friday agreement, they should have no problem with amendment 86. If people vote against amendment 86 on Wednesday, they will be voting against the idea that we can have the Good Friday agreement at the same time as pursuing Brexit.

EU Referendum: UK-Ireland Border

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) on securing the debate and his leadership on this important issue more widely.

Contrary to what we have just heard from the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), several serious concerns and questions have arisen since the Brexit outcome, and those have been addressed by people looking at these issues. He seems to blur and conflate the questions of a customs border, a migration border, the common travel area and the free movement of goods. Those things are distinct and should not be conflated. We had the common travel area in circumstances in which we still had customs borders and controls, and various exchange controls.

Committee B—the European affairs committee—of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which met in Malahide in the aftermath of the referendum, commissioned a report on visa systems. It is a very good report, and I commend it to the Minister, who has just taken up his post. If he wants a good understanding of the true history of the common travel area—without the false assumptions and impressions that are given, as though the area has had a singular, linear and even history, which it has not—he would do well to read that report. I pay tribute to that committee’s two current rapporteurs, Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, who represents Sinn Féin in the Dáil, and Baroness Harris from the other House. Her predecessor as rapporteur was Lord German. The report is a very thorough investigation of the issues.

In case other hon. Members care to know this, the committee is chaired by the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), who was not in the alarmist camp in relation to the leave prospectus. The report states that

“as already noted, the Committee is not currently in a position to draw clear conclusions or make recommendation on the implications for the CTA of the UK leaving the EU. The Committee therefore hopes to explore this issue in more detail as part of any future inquiries it holds on the wider implications for British-Irish relations of the UK’s vote to leave the EU.”

Committee B will not be the only committee of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly to look at those issues, but it would be wrong of anybody to pretend that there are not issues or that my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South is trying to conjure up or exaggerate some of these problems.

[Tom Elliott]

I hear an acceptance, at least, from both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union will be implemented. We are now talking about how that will be done and the mechanisms for doing that.

[Mark Durkan]

We are talking about the implications of the referendum result—a referendum, remember, that we were told at the time was constitutionally advisory. Let us be very clear that the people of Northern Ireland voted clearly to remain in the EU. They did so when they voted in the referendum, and they did so previously when they voted for the Good Friday agreement, which took the UK and Ireland’s common membership of the EU as a given. That is written into the fabric of the agreement between the two Governments; it is there in the preamble and it is there in strand 1, strand 2 and strand 3. That agreement itself depended on the principle of consent—the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, as well as the consent of the people of the south—and that consent was binding. It is a bit much for people to say that the rest of us should take it as a matter of passing lightness that Northern Ireland could be taken out of the EU against the clear wishes of its people and with potential damage to the Good Friday agreement.

Remember that, as well as the European Union being written into the Good Friday agreement, so too was the European convention on human rights, and we know that there are people in Government who want to dispose of that as well. Those are not mere stud walls to be knocked through but supporting walls of the institutions that we have and the Good Friday agreement, which was given democratic legitimacy—it is a democratic high-water mark—by the unique and overwhelming endorsement that it received from the people of Ireland, north and south, in 1998. No one has dared to contest that since. Those are not matters that we should in any way take as given.

Those who are now grinning like horses chewing thistles because they have got the leave result that they wanted cannot pretend that there are not issues and complications. The rest of us want to minimise and mitigate those, and ensure that people in Northern Ireland are in the best position. It is clear from what my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South said that that is what we are doing. We are looking for flexibility and a space that allows us to maintain access to the EU and its benefits, which a majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to retain.

Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

Without getting drawn too far away from the subject of the Bill, none of us pretended that the 1998 agreement would absolutely solve the problems or dissolve any of the paramilitary organisations. We committed to a framework for decommissioning and a number of other changes. We consistently supported the existence of the Independent Monitoring Commission to deal with the questions of ongoing paramilitary activity. In this House, whenever the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), announced that the IMC was being wound up, some of us said, “You are taking away the monitoring commission because Sinn Fein has made a political issue of it, but the issue of paramilitarism has not gone away, and it will come back.” We pointed out that something like the IMC would end up being needed. That is exactly what happened last year.

Some of us have been consistent about recognising where there are problems and that they need to continue to be addressed. We were right about the questions arising when the IMC was wound up with no procedure to deal with ongoing concerns. We were right to say that the issue needed to be addressed in the Stormont House agreement. We were right in the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for South Down has described when we said that we needed an enforcement approach and a whole community approach to secure an end to paramilitarism, as well as all the other changes that were needed to achieve a wholesome society. We were the only parties that advocated such proposals. To an extent, some of the sentiment of that is reflected in the agreement, but in a highly edited, partial and incomplete way, and that is why we have tabled our amendments.

We used to have an Independent Monitoring Commission that reported. Now we have an independent reporting commission. The legislation does not seem able to say “monitor”. The “Fresh Start” agreement refers to the term “monitoring”, but for some reason “monitoring” is not in the Bill. It is as though the legislation has carefully avoided saying anything that the commission will actually do. So we have to look at the “Fresh Start” agreement to see what the commission might actually do. For some reason, it is avoided in the lengthy clauses of the Bill.

The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr Donaldson) said that under the “Fresh Start” agreement the appointments, as well as the one appointment by the British Government and the one by the Irish Government, were to be made by the First and Deputy First Ministers. They were not. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) is correct. The “Fresh Start” agreement said that the Executive shall nominate two members. Therefore, our amendment is consistent with what is in the “Fresh Start” agreement. It says that the appointment should be made, rather than by the First and Deputy First Minister, by the Justice Minister after consultation with the First and Deputy First Minister and in agreement with the Executive. So our amendment is more consistent with the “Fresh Start” agreement than the clause or the right hon. Gentleman’s amendment.

[Tom Elliott]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the “Fresh Start” document says that the Executive are supposed to make the appointment. Perhaps the Secretary of State or the Minister of State will tell us why the legislation did not say that the Executive as opposed to the First and Deputy First Minister were to make the appointment so that there could be a collective decision by the Executive rather than a decision by just two Ministers.

[Mark Durkan]

I fully accept the point, and I hope that the Secretary of State and the Minister have heard it. It would be useful if they addressed it.

It is unfortunate that, every time something is referred to as a role of the Executive it ends up becoming an appointment by the First and Deputy First Minister. With all that can be said about their acting jointly, people know that the habit has been that distinct and separate appointments have been made. There is not the trust in the appointments system. It is very like what Macaulay said about Disraeli and Gladstone. One of them is a charlatan and knows it; the other is a charlatan and doesn’t know it. So people do not have full confidence in the appointments system when something wider is required.

The “Fresh Start” agreement specifies that a number of things will be done by the Executive. The work towards an end of paramilitarism and a lot of other commitments in the “Fresh Start” agreement are put in the name of the Executive. I will be addressing the limitations of that in subsequent amendments and new clauses. We are meant to have an approach that is about all the parties, and all the parties may not be on the Executive. If this is about an all-party approach, we should be creating mechanisms that involve all the parties and we should not pretend that these issues will become the sole responsibility or property of the Executive. Nor should we pretend that the due responsibility of the Executive is discharged simply by the First and Deputy First Minister making appointments. I do not believe that any of that is adequate.

The fact that we needed to be back in Stormont House for talks on the negotiations after the crisis showed it was not sufficient that things were done between the First and Deputy First Minister. We had a crisis and needed all-party talks to bring us back from the brink. The First and Deputy First Minister’s positions and parties had brought us to the brink. Now we seem to be ending up with mechanisms that mean that everything will be done by the First and Deputy First Minister in future. So none of the lessons has been learned. None of the mistakes in the scoping of past negotiations, the scoping of the agenda or the politics of how these things are managed has been learned from.

I know that the amendment has been tabled by the Ulster Unionist party in respect of the role being conferred on the Policing Board. As the party which argued most in the Stormont House negotiations that the key roles in the Historical Investigations Unit should be appointed by the Policing Board, I do not agree with the amendment. After all, the HIU has a role which will involve constabulary powers. If there is a policing element to it, the evidence can be gathered, investigated and referred for prosecution. The role of the reporting commission is quite different. Nobody saw that there would be huge tension—apart from dealing with some of the cases that have already been looked at by the Historical Enquiries Team—between the role of the Chief Constable and the PSNI, and the role of the HIU.

There could, arguably, be difficulties between the reporting commission and the Chief Constable. For example, last year in the aftermath of the two murders, when the Chief Constable made an assessment that shared publicly the police’s working theories in relation to that murder, something of a political crisis was created and a panel was set up to look at those issues, including to say whether it accepted what the Chief Constable had said. It would be odd if the reporting commission, which was in part appointed by the Policing Board, had to look at issues that had been the subject of comment by the Chief Constable. That might be a dilemma for the Policing Board and might raise tensions. I do not believe that the Policing Board appointment answers the question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Elliott]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that his party was to the fore in proposing that the Policing Board would be instrumental in the appointment of senior members of the HIU? There could easily be a conflict between the HIU director or directors and the police. If the proposed arrangement will work for the HIU, I do not see why it should not work for the reporting commission.

[Mark Durkan]

I do not think the potential conflict would be the same. Obviously, there is the issue that was considered in the talks that some of the cases that had already been dealt with by the HET are currently the subject of PSNI investigation. Whether they will be referred to the HIU or reopened by the ombudsman is a factor in that. The prospect of any potential tension around the Chief Constable’s role was among the reasons why we said that appointment by the Policing Board would be a sensible way forward.

A different issue arises in relation to the role of the reporting commission. If we take the example of the controversies last year, the panel, which was a proto make-do version of the reporting commission, had to examine issues on which the Chief Constable had rightly spoken. Obviously, there was argument and tension about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Elliott]

It is quite clear that neither the Government nor other parties support amendment 1, so it would be difficult for us to win a vote on it. I am disappointed that none of the parties has dealt with the implications of having a more independent appointment process, and moving away from the direct political appointment process. We are where we are with the Bill, however, and the UUP broadly supports it. We would like to have seen some changes, but by and large we want the process to move on.

[Mark Durkan]

Obviously, my hon. Friends and I believe that amendment 7 takes forward the terms of the agreement in a better spirit than does clause 1, but we do not want to press the point to a Division. I want to put it on the record that that does not mean that we are content with the proposals. Equally, we think there are some questions about the other clauses in the group, which the Government should continue to address. In his response to our points about the limitations of clause 5, the Minister did not reinforce the sort of encouragement that he has said the Government want to give the First Minister and Deputy First Minister about consultation. If the Minister had been more forthcoming, we might have believed in the worth of his encouragement to the First Minister and Deputy First Minister. On that basis, we do not intend to press the amendment to a vote.

[Tom Elliott]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Exercise of functions

Amendment made: 3, page 2, line 17, leave out “or Ireland”.—(Mr Wallace.)

This amendment limits the Secretary of State’s duty to give guidance about the exercise of the Commission’s functions in relation to disclosures of information which might prejudice national security. As amended, the duty will cover only the national security interests of the United Kingdom.

Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 3 to 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Extension of period for appointment of Ministers

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Social Security

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Elliott]

As I understand it, last December’s Stormont House proposals were accepted by the SDLP as well as Sinn Féin. Is the hon. Gentleman now saying that this is a worse deal or a better deal than the Stormont House proposal?

[Mark Durkan]

I will answer the right hon. Gentleman’s question: I think it is a worse deal. We not only have this order to transpose the 2012 Act—all the parties in Northern Ireland said they had difficulties with that legislation—but the way in which this is being taken forward means that the Government in Whitehall now have the power, by order, to transpose the Welfare Reform and Work Bill currently going through Parliament. That needs to be understood, because the legislative consent motion passed by the Assembly endorsed all the welfare clauses of the current Bill, as originally tabled. DUP MLAs voted to endorse all the clauses, even though they had voted for amendments to delete some of them or to insert additional clauses. Within a period of weeks, they voted with an entirely different attitude in relation to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, hiding behind direct rule. I therefore think that the deal is worse.

We must remember that the order will not only have the immediate effect of transposing most of the 2012 Act as implemented in Great Britain, but also provides a power, simply by virtue of regulations, to change a lot of the terms and conditions of the benefits, and can almost disappear some categories of benefits in the 2012 Act. In essence, we are being signed up to that without so much as a provision stating that when this direct-rule power is exercised, there must still be a legislative consent motion in the Assembly. We have been treated to the fiction that while we have direct rule, we have not lost any devolution because all the powers still exist on paper in the Assembly. That means it will supposedly be entirely in order for MLAs to table motions in the Assembly to amend such areas or to come up with their own private Members’ Bills, so we will have the nonsense of parallel, competing legislative strands. That is the sort of fiction and nonsense to which we are being treated.

Let us be very clear that the problem does not relate to the political or legislative processes; the real problem is the potential impact on people whose benefits and living standards will be affected as a result. Let us remember that when the Welfare Reform and Work Bill goes through—it has now been endorsed by a legislative consent motion—it will change the limited work capability element of universal credit for new claimants from April 2017. It is quite clear that although the decision-making power, which the Secretary of State has under the enabling legislation that went through over a week ago, will end in 2016, the effect of the decisions made under that power will not die with the power. The changes in relation to the limited work capability element of universal credit for new claimants will come in, meaning a reduction in the value of current payments of almost £30 a week—from £102.15 to £73.10. That is why all the health charities and disability campaign groups are so opposed to clauses 13 and 14 of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland is now sealed into that by virtue of the legislative consent motion and the measure previously passed by Parliament.

There will be a similar reduction in the amount paid to those in the employment and support allowance work-related activity group. We know from hon. Members representing constituencies in Great Britain that that is one of the notorious vexations. We have heard about just how the work-related activity group has been treated in practice, and about some of the bizarre interpretations, decisions and procedures that people have had to go through. We are now locked into a lot of that courtesy of both the legislative consent motion and this order. We do not have reason to be happy if we take seriously what our friends in all parties across the House are saying in raising their valid concerns. That also goes for some aspects of the sanctions. The time limit on the sanctions is different, courtesy of the efforts that we all made in relation to Stormont House.

I want to make it quite clear that we were signed up for Stormont House in December 2014, because the terms of the agreement stated that the proposals would be developed and brought to the Assembly. When the Bill was brought to the Assembly, however, nothing in it had changed. That is why we tabled a series of modest amendments, which would not have shattered the Stormont House agreement in any way, and which the British Government confirmed would not have stretched or undermined their understanding of what was operable under the agreement. But no, the DUP decided to veto the proposals and, on top of that, Sinn Féin decided to vote down the amendments even though the Tories had voted down similar amendments here in the original 2012 legislation. So those were the people who decided that we were not going to take Stormont House forward on an all-party basis, as had been agreed. I want to put this on record, because I do not think that enough people have understood what happened.

I will make one concession to the Government. A lot of the wriggle room that we had in the Stormont House agreement came about as a result not only of the top-up mitigations from the Executive’s own budget but of the understanding that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury were going to allow the Social Security Agency in Northern Ireland a certain amount of leeway in the interpretation and operation of some of the measures. That is one reason why the big money that it was thought would be needed to make good some of Sinn Féin’s demands was not actually needed after all. The funds did not need to come out of the Executive’s budget because of that leeway being allowed.

However, some of us recognised that the arrangement was time-limited. We were worried that the effects of the welfare cap—which is not to be confused with the benefit cap—would, over time, squeeze and reduce that comfort. We said that we had to be honest about that. The SDLP was also very clear about saying at Stormont House that we had to be up front and public about the fact that, when the next wave of cuts came, we would not be in a position to say that they could be sustained out of the Executive’s budget and that we could not make a claim on the block grant to try to make good those claims. We said that we had to say that up front so that people understood it. Sinn Féin did not want to acknowledge that fact because it was still locked into the pretence that it could say it was protecting all existing claimants and all future claimants for ever more, amen. We never joined in that pretence, but no other party joined us in making that candid declaration that we could not constantly find more and more hard shoulder to run on.

That brings me to the points that were made earlier about the fines. We were asked whether we regretted the fines. We resented those fines, those penalties, those levies, those savings forgone. We have been told by the Secretary of State that they are not fines but savings forgone. I notice that the right hon. Lady did not contradict DUP Members when they were calling them fines; it is only me who gets contradicted. Whatever they are called, we resented them because they were an exercise in budget bullying. The DUP never objected to that budget bullying; indeed, one might think that they were actually in on the tactic, and in on the threat about not renewing the computer system.

The fact is that the Assembly was being bullied. I have said before that I do not believe that the Treasury will treat the new suite of devolved capacities for Scotland in relation to welfare reform in this way. I know that Scotland’s deal on welfare is not perfect. Its operation will be problematic, but I am pretty sure that the Treasury will not resort to the kind of tactics that it used against the Northern Ireland Assembly when it comes to dealing with clear differences of view between the Scottish Parliament and the Westminster Government. I believe that it will take a different course.

If we are to be honest about this issue, we must be clear that there is a need to consider whether we need to realign the devolution of welfare in future so that the situation is sustainable. When the sunset clause in this legislation kicks in, and if there is some other mid-term welfare reform package in this Parliament, we do not want the Assembly to spasm into crisis for exactly the same reason.

We said at Stormont House and elsewhere that perhaps we should realign towards something more akin to the Scottish model of devolution. In Scotland, the burden is to take an interest in the benefits that people rely on if they have disabilities and long-term conditions. That points towards a way that we could go that would allow us to be more complete in the protections that we say we are offering people and perhaps provide a more sustainable course for the future.

That answers the point that the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) made about the architecture of the Good Friday agreement and devolution in the first place. There might be a need to look at realignment, as we have declared. Indeed, I declared that a number of years ago. However, we have not had any takers at any of the talks. If people want to do that, they will find that it could go ahead.

The way in which the implications of this order and the orders to follow are being sold is wrong. Remember that this is only the first of a number of orders that we will get, courtesy of direct rule. Indeed, it is more direct direct rule than we had before, because when a lot of the Northern Ireland social security legislation was passed under the old style of direct rule, it was taken through the House by Northern Ireland Office Ministers. Now, we have direct rule by the DWP, thanks to the way in which Sinn Féin and the DUP have decided it will happen.

It is wrong for parties that oppose these changes to benefits and sanctions to say in respect of making sure that these cuts and changes will happen by direct fiat and by the hand of a direct-rule Minister in the DWP, “Well, that was a good deal because we saved devolution.” Who was threatening devolution? The only parties that were threatening devolution and the institutions were Sinn Féin and the DUP. They contrived the brink and we all had to teeter on it. When they were saved from themselves in the end, they said that they had done a good job by getting concessions that were available anyway—they were not concessions at all.

That is the nonsense and dishonesty that lies at the centre of the politics of this. We are not one bit happy or content. We are not thankful to the Government for this at all. There were ways of dealing with these issues. They should have been taken in a mature way by devolution—

Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill

Debate between Tom Elliott and Mark Durkan

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for South Down, I said that some of these amendments are cost-neutral. That was what the Minister told us at the time, and some of those points can be repeated for this exception. The Minister in the Assembly said that some of these proposals were cost-neutral. However, some of them will not be cost-neutral, and I make no pretence in that regard.

Proposed new subsection 3A would deny the Secretary of State the right to

“make any limit on the number of children for which any child benefit, child tax credit or child element of universal credit can be claimed”.

Many people have opposed the two-child rule, and the amendment would mean that we do not hand that rule to the Tory Secretary of State when many of us are opposed to it.

[Tom Elliott]

To follow up the question from the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), if some of the amendments are not cost-neutral, where does the hon. Gentleman think the money will come from? Will it come from the block grant and the £585 million currently in place, or from Her Majesty’s Government?