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Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell): Let me make it clear straight away that I agree with the Minister when he says that clause 1 is fundamental to the Bill. It is the Bill. As we are totally opposed to this very long Bill, we shall be dividing the House on the Lords amendment. We also
share the Minister's view that the other amendments are consequential, and we have no objections to them. Today's debate should be entirely on the Bill.I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box. It is so long ago that it will almost certainly have slipped your mind, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as it will the minds of most Members, but when we last debated the Bill way back in January, the poor old Home Office took the brunt. Its Ministers were not very well briefed because it was not really their subject. The debate was decidedly embarrassing for everybody concerned. So, the House will be grateful that the Northern Ireland Office has at last come clean and made it clear that this is really a Northern Ireland Office Bill. I am pleased, in addition, that we have not a Home Office but a distinguished Northern Ireland Office Parliamentary Private Secretary on the Bench. We are pleased to see the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) in his place.
Originally, there was a charade that the Bill was a modest piece of tidying-up legislation dreamt up by the Home Office, which suddenly felt that it would be right and proper for the Irish to sit in our Parliament and for us to sit in the Irish Parliament. That seemed completely untrue at the time--nobody believed the charade. Mercifully, the Government are now at least coming clean and claiming that the Bill is important to the peace process. At least we shall have transparency and honesty this time round.
1 pm
I shall briefly re-examine the history of the Bill, which was not in the Queen's Speech. As the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) has pointed out, it was not, in any shape or form, in the Belfast agreement, which we support. It suddenly appeared in January and was rushed through the House in one sitting. I suspect that all its stages were rushed through on the Floor of the House because the Government rightly identified it as a constitutional measure. We were told that the Bill was urgent, but the urgency diminished when it left the House in January, went to the other place and disappeared into a sort of Bermuda triangle, only to reappear many months later. The timetable for this debate on the penultimate day of the Session is the result of the Government losing interest in it and introducing it for proper debate and discussion in the other place extremely late in the day.
We can therefore disregard the idea that the Bill is important and urgent, as it is neither important nor urgent in the peace process. If it were, the Government would have made sure that it progressed expeditiously to the other place and it would probably have returned to us nine months ago. Instead, the Bill has had one of the most leisurely passages through the House that any piece of legislation has ever had.
The Minister has been helpful today, as he always is, and has given us a few more reasons for introducing the Bill. I think that I am paraphrasing correctly--I know that he will jump up at the Dispatch Box if I mislead the House in any way and traduce him--in saying that he stated that we want Members of the Irish Senate to sit in both legislatures because we get on well with the Irish. He said that we have a good relationship with the country of Ireland and the Irish Government--[Interruption.]
I never make a speech without the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) intervening, and people appreciate our great double act. However, before he gets excited, let me say that I endorse our close, happy and good relationship with the Republic of Ireland, our immediate neighbour and a fellow partner in the European Union.We have much in common with the Republic, but we also have a special relationship--although the Minister did not use that phrase in response to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor)--with the United States of America, which has come to the aid of Britain and Europe in two world wars. The USA also spearheads NATO which, despite proposals for a separate European army, is still our principal defence umbrella. Like our Irish friends, the Americans speak the same language as us, and we have a close relationship with them. There is no reason why American politicians should not sit in our Parliament or the Northern Irish Assembly or why we should not have reciprocal access to Congress. Equally, as someone who believes that it is in the country's interests to be in the EU, we generally have a good, robust relationship with all our EU partners.
Mr. George Howarth indicated assent.
Mr. MacKay: I am glad that the Minister agrees. There is no reason whatever why we should not have French, German, Spanish and even Danish people--with whom we have the closest relationship of all--in our Parliament. Therefore, there is no good reason for singling out the Republic of Ireland, which is only one of the many countries with which we have a good, happy relationship, and saying that its people can sit in our legislatures and vice versa. That is not a happy state of affairs.
Let me move on to the Bill's constitutional aspects. The Bill is significant as it fundamentally changes rules on who can sit in this Parliament and who can sit in the Northern Ireland Assembly. We must consider carefully whether it is right and proper for people to sit in two Parliaments in two different countries, with two different allegiances. Any reasonable observer would say that such arrangements were anomalous and extremely unwise, and that there would have to be exceptional reasons for adopting them. Even the Minister would admit that no exceptional reasons whatever have been given.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): Before the right hon. Gentleman gets carried away with that argument, is he aware that it is possible under European electoral law for people to stand for election in a European constituency in countries other than their own? Thus a British national could represent an Italian constituency in the European Parliament.
Mr. MacKay: I am sorry to hear that the hon. Gentleman thought that I was becoming carried away. I was only mildly warming up. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am fully aware of the arrangements to which he refers. However, he will confirm that, in the European Parliament, one cannot represent two constituencies in two separate countries at the same time. The point that the Opposition are making is that it is
anomalous for a politician to be elected to two separate Parliaments in two separate jurisdictions. There is no good reason for such a practice.
Mr. John D. Taylor (Strangford): The hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) was correct, but his argument is inconsistent. He wants to apply the measure not to all members of the European Union, but only to the Republic of Ireland.
Mr. MacKay: It is up to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) to address that point when he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire): Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that at least one member of the Conservative party sits in this House and in the European Parliament? [Hon. Members: "Not any more."] I apologise--she does not do so any more. However, does the right hon. Gentleman accept that it is possible to do that and that other hon. Members have a dual mandate? Does he accept that, despite the potential conflict of interest between legislatures, those hon. Members have managed to pursue their activities responsibly and do both jobs reasonably well?
Mr. MacKay: I was fascinated by that intervention. As usual, the Liberal Democrats are out of date. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) no longer represents an Essex constituency in the European Parliament. Secondly, it is perfectly acceptable to sit in two Parliaments if one represents one country. It is entirely up to electors and to individual political parties to decide whether it is wise or popular to allow that, but the Opposition have no fundamental objection. The hon. Members for Foyle (Mr. Hume) and for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) sit in two Parliaments, but, both here and in the European Parliament, they represent parts of the United Kingdom. That is not equivalent to the matter under discussion.
I hope that we now have the Liberals' support. This week, they have continuously made U-turns on the Floor of the House on all Northern Ireland matters. They started on the Government's side in January and are still on their side in the Lords. However, we now have every right to assume--I welcome and accept the olive branch--that the Liberals will now move to our side of the argument. Of course, that will be significant when a vote occurs later in the other place. I welcome that support, for which I thank the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik).
Mr. Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham): May I put to my right hon. Friend a small example of the incompatibility of being a Member of two Parliaments? I have just come from a meeting with the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, at which we talked about sugar. It would be impossible if, for example, a person represented a constituency in one of the Commonwealth countries in the everything but arms regime which was demanding the inclusion of sugar in
that regime, and also represented a constituency in Britain in which sugar was grown, because there is a direct contradiction between the interests of the two.
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