Northern Ireland Assembly Election — House of Commons, 2019-03-21
Topic: International Affairs
Questions: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if she will make a statement regarding the extension of her power under the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 not to hold an Assembly election.
Anthony Joseph Lloyd (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Secretary of State for her initial response, but I remind the House that it is now well over two years since the Stormont Assembly last sat. In previous periods, we have sometimes had direct rule, but we have most certainly had Secretaries of State and Prime Ministers actively engaged in bringing the parties together Before the passing of the Act last October, the law required that the Secretary of State call an election. There were cynics who said that the reason for the legislation was that the Secretary of State wanted to avoid judicial review and being dragged through the courts to explain why she had failed to call the election. Operating on the bipartisan principle from which all Governments have benefited in the 20-plus years since the Good Friday agreement, we reluctantly accepted last October the need for the legislation. We did that, however, only after consultation and after the Secretary of State had let us know her plans. During the passage of the Act, she promised that she and the Prime Minister would spare no effort to bring the five parties together and get the Stormont Assembly back in operation. In October, it seemed incredible that it would not happen before this March, but five months on I discover through social media—it is unacceptable that consultation takes place through social media—that she plans to extend the period of the legislation I am bound to put this first question to the Secretary of State: has she given up on bringing the parties together? Nobody in Northern Ireland—none of the political parties—says to me they believe she has been sincere or energetic in her determination to get the parties together and the Stormont Assembly back up and running. The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) said in The House magazine that "her basic policy approach has been flawed in the sense that she has decided that Northern Ireland could just stand still, leave it to the civil servants. For that, that’s a glaring failure on her part." Many people agree with that assessment Does the Secretary of State now accept that nothing will happen until after August and that we will drift along once again? If not, and given that she has so little credibility among the political parties, how does she now plan to drive the talks process forward in a meaningful and consistent way, and in a way we have not seen before? What will her best endeavours be, according to the needs of the Good Friday agreement, to move the situation on and bring the five parties together, and how does she intend to involve the authority of the Prime Minister in a way that previous Northern Ireland Secretaries have done with previous Prime Ministers I do not like ever to personalise politics, but I have to say to the Secretary of State that she has seen a massive haemorrhaging of trust in her role in recent weeks and months, because of inadvertent remarks she has uttered and her lack of energy in bringing the five parties together. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has to be a figure of both trust and authority. If she is not part of the solution, she becomes part of the problem, so my last question is this: does she honestly believe that she can regain the confidence of the five parties and the people of Northern Ireland and drive Northern Ireland forward?