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26 Mar 2003 : Column 315—continued
Mr. Quentin Davies (Grantham and Stamford): The right hon. Gentleman may be under an illusion. He said that clause 14 had been discussed. I was not in Committee any more than he was, but if he reads the record of Committee proceedings, he will see that clause 14 was clearly not discussed—it was one of the victims of the Government's pernicious timetabling system, which prevents important clauses from being discussed. We shall come to clause 14, a foolish and obnoxious provision, later, but it was not discussed. It is revealing that the right hon. Gentleman assumes that it has been, when it has not.
Mr. Murphy: We are debating new clauses, as opposed clause 14. However pernicious, the programming system works, and the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have two days for Report and Third Reading on the Floor of the House which, bearing in mind the current situation, is particularly generous. Clause 14, which deals with disqualification, was discussed at length in the other place. The hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity—doubtless he will take it—to debate at length in the Commons too the relevant issues.
1.45 pm
Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East): The Secretary of State is right that the Select Committee considered the Bill, but chose not to deal with additional clauses because of an undertaking given to it by the Minister of State. The Chairman of the Committee said:
- "I am not trying to put words into your mouth but you would not be introducing these draft clauses into the Bill as it goes through Parliament in the next two or three months, whatever it is, without the situation having arisen here which would allow for the resumption of the Assembly."
Mr. Murphy: I shall go on to explain to the House in detail why we are considering the clauses today, and what changes have been made to them.
I repeat however that the issues behind the provision on disqualification for membership of district policing partnerships and the provision on the Belfast sub-groups are not new. There was a deliberate procedure and policy on my part to ensure that we are as transparent as possible and give political parties in Northern Ireland, which have now had five months—four months—to discuss those matters, along with Members in the Commons and another place, the opportunity to debate the issues. It is not as if they have come out of the blue—the issues that we are debating today have long been in the public domain, because I made a decision to put them there. I also made a decision to separate them and, when we look at the provisions in detail, I shall explain what that means.
Rev. Ian Paisley (North Antrim): Surely, as the Minister of State suggested in the Select Committee that those matters would not be dealt with until the
Assembly was up and running again, people would be left thinking that the matters would not be dealt with until that happened? The Secretary of State said that we have had months to consider them, but we had an assurance from his colleague that those matters would not be dealt with until the Assembly was restored.
Mr. Murphy: As I shall explain in a few moments, there was a need to review the way in which we would present those matters to the House of Commons.
The House will be aware that, some weeks ago in Hillsborough, the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach, together with the pro-agreement parties, met to consider a variety of issues relating to the current state of the peace process and the political situation in Northern Ireland. We met for about 30 hours and came to conclusions which will be published in a few weeks. We also knew that the timetable for the Bill was rapidly progressing. I faced a situation in which the Bill would have to be delayed so that we would have time to reach a position in which we could publish the declaration and, hopefully, have acts of completion made public. At the same time, I realised that delaying the Bill would cause difficulties. Similarly, I realised that if we implemented the relevant provisions later, we would have to introduce a third police Bill, and I was not content with that.
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann): The Secretary of State may feel that his last phrase anticipates my point, but I shall make it nonetheless. If circumstances change and he feels that he can bring the new clauses into operation, they will not take effect for several years because they can only be implemented in relation to the next set of district policing partnerships, which will only be formed after the next local government elections. He could therefore have waited for the next police Bill, because we have had three police Bills in the past six years, and at that rate, we can confidently expect another police Bill long before there is a need to implement the provisions. There is therefore not the urgency that the Secretary of State suggested.
Mr. Murphy: I do not know whether any police Bills will be introduced in the next couple of years, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman knows that I hope that there will not be. However, we faced a clash of timing, so with that particular dilemma in mind, we introduced the new clauses. I want to explain to the House that we have added further safeguards to those provisions.
Hon. Members will know, in respect of the disqualification of members of district policing partnerships, that that matter is already dealt with in respect of members of local authorities, who can indeed become members of district policing partnerships even if they have, in the past, served custodial sentences. I shall deal with it in more detail in a few moments, but there is nothing new about the concept in respect of members of local authorities. That refers to independent members.
The important point is that when we began our consideration of these matters last November, hon. Members who were interested in these matters were made aware that a number of safeguards were built into the clauses, the most important of which is the fact that the clauses cannot come into effect unless I lay an order in the House of Commons and unless the House and the
House of Lords consider, by way of affirmative resolution, that these clauses should come into operation. The clause to which I just referred has a commencement order.Additionally—this was not the case originally—I have decided to place a similar safeguard in the Belfast sub-groups clauses, which will be considered by the House later. They, too, will have a commencement order, so they will not come into operation and will not be implemented unless I decide to lay the order, and unless the House and the other place vote affirmatively for them.
Mr. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland): I welcome what the Secretary of State is saying, but there remains in many quarters a deep feeling of unease that the Bill still leaves the Government as the sole judge of when it is appropriate to bring in the commencement order. Undertakings given in the House are all very well, but Governments sometimes change their minds and sometimes even change their Secretaries of State. As the Bill stands, it would be possible to introduce these provisions without acts of completion. It would be necessary only to insert the term "acts of completion" into the subsections that refer to the introduction of commencement orders. It would then be clear that it is for the House to decide that appropriate conditions had been met. Will the Secretary of State consider that?
Mr. Murphy: It would not be particularly helpful to insert "acts of completion" in the Bill, but I will provide more detail about what might be appropriate as we proceed this afternoon. More significantly, it is not just for the Government to decide whether the clauses are implemented: the House of Commons and the House of Lords will decide that, because the order will be subject to affirmative resolution. That means that both this place and the other place will have a say in determining whether the orders are commenced.
Lady Hermon (North Down): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way a second time, but I must press him further to make it absolutely clear that neither commencement order will be introduced by the Secretary of State until after acts of completion—not in the context of, or during, such acts of completion, but after acts of completion. We need a very clear statement to that effect from the Secretary of State.
Mr. Murphy: Indeed, as the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) said a few moments ago, changing the composition of DPPs to include other parties cannot happen until the next local government elections in Northern Ireland. So there is, inevitably, by the very nature of the process, a time gap. We have made it clear that the commencement orders will not come into effect until after the acts of completion.
It is also important for the House to understand what we mean when we say that these clauses, together with other matters that will be debated in Northern Ireland in the next couple of weeks, are all conditional—this will become clear as we move along—on acts of completion, as the Prime Minister called them, by the Provisional IRA. That is why we made it absolutely clear that the
two clauses have commencement orders built into them. There are two further safeguards. One is the pledge that people must take—I shall refer to it again later—and the other is the five-year period that must elapse between the completion of a sentence and the taking up of office.
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