Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointments and Regional Rates) Bill — House of Lords, 2017-04-26
Topic: International Affairs
John Alderdice (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I too identify myself with the comments made by my noble friend Lady Suttie about the horrible events in north Belfast and, indeed, about the Bill itself. At this late stage of the Parliament, and at this late stage of a debate on this emergency legislation, it would be quite inappropriate for me to make a lengthy speech or one that simply repeated things that had already been said in the debate. However, there are one or two things that are worth saying No one ever thought that the peace process would be a sprint. Some realised it would be a marathon; others realised it would be a steeplechase with plenty of hurdles. The truth is that in many ways it is a relay race, with Governments passing the baton from one to the next. This generation of Northern Ireland politicians has dropped the baton. A previous generation learned, through painful experience of violence, trouble and many political talks, that there had to be some better way of organising things for ourselves in Northern Ireland. Of the many lessons we learned, the crucial one was that addressing our problem was about addressing disturbed relationships between our communities. The noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, mentioned the three-stranded process. It was three-stranded because we were dealing with three sets of relationships What has been forgotten by the current generation of politicians is that it is all about relationships. As I listen to what has been going on prior to and during the early days of this election campaign, I do not hear people speaking of others as though they recognise that they must have a working relationship with them. To some extent, the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, if not others, demonstrated to the House something of the kind of problem that one might find. If we were to have members of the nationalist community or republicans in this Chamber—which we do not—the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, and others would not have to wonder what they were talking about over such long periods. They would find that the disagreements have no difficulty finding momentum and continuing for many days, weeks and, indeed, years. Without establishing some kind of better working relationship with each other, there is little point in saying that we must have devolution, we must have an Executive and we must get on with working together when there is no sign of that being done That brings me to the proposition laid out by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. On the last occasion on which we debated the issues, he and I both indicated that some creativity of thinking was important, and he has taken that forward. I support what he said about creative thinking and the specific measure that he suggested: between now and the end of June, we hope that there will be agreement, but we will not be hanging on by our fingernails waiting for it. On the part of the officials of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, serious work needs to be done on the option of the Northern Ireland Assembly operating much as the Welsh Assembly did during its first years: taking responsibility, not only because it is difficult to form an Executive but because in local councils in Northern Ireland, for many years, Sinn Fein, unionists, Alliance and others have been working effectively as corporate bodies and making decisions. Sometimes it takes a long time to get the decision, and the decisions are not necessarily always the best, but they are better than no decision and they are better than people in Northern Ireland not being directly represented by the Assembly. I give way to the noble Lord.