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Mr. Öpik: The right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) referred to copper bottoms and failsafes. When is a copper bottom not a failsafe? What is a failsafe's bottom made of? I fear that if we use such terms too much, the public will give us the bum's rush, which may be made of copper or something else.
The collective effect of amendments Nos. 8 and 28, as set out by the right hon. Member for Bracknell, would not necessarily be what he intends. There is a possibility that the Assembly would end up running on an ad hoc basis. I am worried that it would sit on and off, according to official notices, and that it would rattle along without being master of its destiny but without being fully suspended. However, I know there is an underlying feeling that all sides should not be punished if one side fails to deliver. I can see some case for that proposition, but I look forward to hearing what other hon. Members have to say about it.
None of the various approaches adopted hitherto have been very effective, and we must now recognise that we face a true deadline. That deadline must not slip, nor must it be so half-hearted that it can be negotiated around. A clear suspension at least has the benefit that it is unequivocal and less open to abuse.
Amendment No. 18 deals with timing. The Bill specifies no time within which the review must take place. If we do not set a deadline, we risk an open-ended start date for the review. The danger is that time will stretch while the review goes uninitiated for some reason. I note that amendment No. 15 also seeks to set a deadline: it suggests seven days, and my amendment suggests four weeks: I do not mind how long it actually is so long as the period is defined.
Amendment No. 23 suggests that the review should have an upper time limit of three months. Again, the length of time matters less than the fact of its limitation. If we do not limit it, the process may stall as we wait for the result of the review. One of the Bill's weaknesses is the lack of a specified time duration for the review. We have seen how deadlines can slip, and enshrining them in the Bill would provide a powerful failsafe against ending up in the quagmire of a never-ending review.
Mr. Andrew Hunter (Basingstoke):
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) succinctly expressed the arguments for the amendments that he and the right hon. Member for Upper Bann
In this debate, as on Second Reading, the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) has totally failed to convince. It simply is not good enough for the Social Democratic and Labour party--even it can rightly boast about standing for democracy and against violence--to hide behind collective decisions, the findings of reviews and wide generalities. The hon. Gentleman has failed to say what the SDLP would do if the IRA did not abide by a decommissioning schedule. His party, much to its discredit, cannot answer that question and refuses to do so.
The hon. Gentleman's amendment should be rejected because, among other reasons, it inspires a sense of deja vu. The initiative begun by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and Lord Mayhew was scuppered by the SDLP because the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) had in mind a bigger picture--the inclusion of the IRA--and one feels that one is seeing an action replay of those events. Members of the SDLP are not prepared to answer a direct question. One fears that one knows the reasons why.
Mr. Mallon:
I spent some considerable time on Second Reading giving the answer to that very question, which was raised by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). I took on the points that he raised directly. I am prepared to repeat those so that the hon. Gentleman can understand what I am saying, but I am not sure that it would be fair to all the other hon. Members who were present during the Second Reading debate to take up time at this stage.
I know that the hon. Gentleman sometimes finds it difficult to understand Northern Irish politics, despite his practise at it. I will spend any time that he wants with him, privately or publicly, to show him that, in effect, we are not going to bow to pressure from either side, whether it is Sinn Fein or Unionist.
Mr. Hunter:
The hon. Gentleman obliges and, once again, fails to give a direct answer, although the implications are obvious. The question that the SDLP continues to refuse to answer is whether it will support the continuation of Sinn Fein in the Executive in the event that the IRA does not abide by a decommissioning schedule--[Hon. Members: "Answer."] The answer is not forthcoming. We must draw our own conclusions from that. I rest my case. The amendment of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh is as deficient as the rest of his argument on the entire process.
Mr. Paul Murphy:
The whole purpose of this failsafe is suspension and there is an obvious reason for it. As I have said many times this evening, the situation in Northern Ireland is different from anywhere else. The Assembly is based on the agreement, which in itself is based on the concord--the agreement between Unionism and nationalism. It will not work otherwise and we all
Mr. Murphy:
We cannot try it. As the hon. Member knows, this matter was put to the people. They believed that this was the best way forward to achieve that result.
If we accept that as a reality--I think that we must--clearly, if we find that the commitment on devolution or on decommissioning is not met, we will have to suspend the institutions of the agreement. As we outlined, those institutions are the Executive, the Assembly, and the north-south and east-west bodies. Clearly, one would then have to go to the review that is set out in the agreement.
The Bill also makes additional provisions--some that are not particularly pleasing to my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) and some that are not particularly pleasing to Ulster Unionist Members. So we may well have got it right this time--who knows?
The Bill states:
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has powers to call the Assembly and to limit the time of its meeting, so that it will not go on endlessly--as one hon. Member suggested. The limit would be set by the Secretary of State and common sense would prevail. For example, if a loyalist group with no Assembly or Executive members had failed to decommission, we should not want the whole apparatus to be suspended for any length of time. However, it is important that the Assembly should deal with the issue and discuss it, and that the review should take place of how to deal with that non-decommissioning.
It would be different if the IRA did not decommission, because Sinn Fein would be in government. That would clearly be more difficult to deal with; that is where the operation of the agreement comes in. It states that the two Governments and all the parties who sit in the Assembly--whether or not they are in favour of the agreement--will review where we go next. That will be the same--whether the effect is exclusion, expulsion
or suspension. People will have to get round the table and find a way out of the impasse, deadlock or crisis in the process.
That is why we cannot exclude specifically through the measure. We cannot prejudge or determine what the review will do, because it will include representatives of all the Unionist parties in the Assembly and of the two Governments. If the report was so dramatic, the review would deal with the matter and decide how to continue, under the arrangements in the agreement. Whatever happens, we must undertake that review under the terms of the agreement.
It would be a good idea to have a meeting of the Assembly after a review. The Assembly would have the opportunity to debate and to vote on the results of a particular review. The most important reassurance for Unionists--indeed for all of us--would be that the suspension would be automatic. There is no doubt that, as soon as the commission reports difficulty, the suspension becomes automatic. If we were to use the provisions of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, and the Assembly voted for the exclusion of a party from the Executive, the Executive would have to be suspended; d'Hondt would have to be invoked and the excluded Ministers would have to be replaced. The effect would be the same in both cases. However, the measure is in the spirit of the agreement; it allows for automatic suspension and for review. It also allows us to deal with the more difficult issues of loyalists who fail to decommission.
"The first meeting shall be held within 7 days of the making of the suspension order; and at that meeting the Assembly shall debate, but not vote on--
The right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) rightly referred to the difficult situation with loyalist decommissioning, particularly as loyalism--in this sense--would have no members of the Executive, or in some cases even Members of the Assembly, who could be put out of it; yet if, as General de Chastelain's commission said, the Loyalist Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defence Association, for the sake of argument, failed to decommission and that was reported to the Government, the process would still come into operation. How do we show that the whole apparatus of government in Northern Ireland will have to be dealt with in the same way as those who are represented on its Executive will be? That is one good reason why the Assembly should meet.
(a) the situation that led to the making of the suspension order; and
(b) the matters which fall to be reviewed under . . . the Belfast Agreement."
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