Northern Ireland

: My Lords, I am most grateful for the positive response from both noble Lords. I am not in a position to answer some of the more detailed questions of the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran; I will have to deal first with the Bill. I would rather take the opportunity to read what took place in the other place while I was in Grand Committee. It goes without saying that criminality has to stop. There is no excuse for it. As I have said previously, if you are not on the side of the police, you are on the side of the muggers, the rapists and everybody else. It is as simple as that. There is no grey area: you are either with the police in fighting crime, or you are not. Legislation to modernise and devolve the police service is in the other place, so there will be plenty of opportunities for discussing these issues as well. There will be no excuse for anybody to say that they did not know who was running the police and other such things. However, if I go about answering the detailed questions which were asked, we could be in trouble. We have to make it absolutely clear that, whatever might have been said, hinted at or spun, the UK Government have no legal authority whatever to pull out of governing Northern Ireland. In other words, the internal governance of Northern Ireland remains the exclusive responsibility of the British Government. There is no question about that. You cannot divorce some issues on the island of Ireland and it makes sense to co-operate on them, but there is no question of joint authority. There will not be any joint authority. Along with other Ministers, I am responsible to this House in Westminster. Just as I will not be responsible to the Northern Ireland Assembly when it is recalled, I am not responsible to the Government in the south. I am responsible to this place, and other Ministers are responsible to the Commons. The sovereignty and the buck stop here at Westminster—there is no argument about that. That does not mean that there cannot, and will not, be greater and deeper co-operation on relevant north/south issues. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, the parties have got to work together. Northern Ireland is almost unique in the sense that it is the one area of the world where political parties get elected and do not want to start pulling the levers of power. That is not easy to understand, although I understand the history. If the parties were to come to the table and, wherever they come from, to think that they had got a piece of success or could get a share of it, rather than victory, defeat, failure or dominance, we might be able to go forward. As the Statement made clear, this is predicated on success and not on failure. Some of the issues raised by the questions are currently before Parliament and, as the Secretary of State said, they will be taken seriously, particularly where there are cross-party views in the Assembly. Some of the issues are before this House and the other place as I speak. Education was mentioned; the Secretary of State has made it clear that teachers, parents and children need to plan for the year ahead and it is intended now to abolish the transfer test. But there is a wide range of other issues that need to be addressed, including the way in which pupil profiles are to be used, the content of the curriculum and the entitlement framework. Those will be open for a recalled Assembly to consider on a cross-community basis and to come forward with ideas. The fact is that the Assembly will not have the power to take such decisions and be responsible for them until there is agreement to set up a power-sharing executive. That is what we want. We are not holding back. Our success will be measured by whether our direct-rule Ministers are out of Northern Ireland. But the Assembly will not be able to have it both ways. We want a cross-party Assembly. We will genuinely take account of what is said, but we are not accountable to it. That is the point. We are accountable to this Parliament. We want the Assembly to have its own executive to which it can give orders and over which it can exercise power. That is up to Assembly Members and they have been given a date by which it is intended to happen—namely, 24 November. Other orders and processes of legislation, which we have made clear are still some way off, are contentious and involve hundreds of millions of pounds of public expenditure—for example, the water reform process and reform of the rating system. All those issues are matters for the Assembly. We just want it to get to work; this is an attempt to get it to work. It is no good mentioning particular incidents of criminality, because I will not defend any of them. They are all unacceptable. It does not matter where they come from; they must all be condemned by all democratic parties. There are no hints here that some crime is okay. All crime is off as far as democratic political partners are concerned, particularly those that want to share the exercising of power. The Secretary of State has made it clear that we will listen. We are doing our best, but, as direct-rule Ministers, we are second best—that is self-evident. However, a reform process is under way in Northern Ireland across a range of issues, whether it be the economy or public administration, and we are determined that the people of Northern Ireland should not lose out because of the delays. There is no guarantee of success by 24 November, but we want this to be a success and we want to be out of there as direct-rule Ministers. Members of the Assembly are well able to do it themselves. That is what they want and, frankly, that is what we think the people of Northern Ireland want as well.