Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

Well, I was not happy about that either. The fact of the matter is that, as I said before, in the real world of Northern Ireland politics, deadlines have shifted all the time. Let me stress again: I am not condemning either the DUP for maximising the opportunity for itself, or the Minister for trying to get the right answers. but I am suggesting that the Government need to have an alternative strategy that ensures either that these deadlines are genuinely binding—I doubt that they are—or, alternatively and more probably, that whatever they intend to do in March, if once again faced with an impasse, will lead to a genuine improvement in the chances of the restoration of the Assembly. The Secretary of State said something today that concerned me, namely, that he wished to be given an indication of which individuals Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party would nominate, but he was not able to give us clarity about what form that indication might take. Will it be enough for a press release to be issued by the DUP and Sinn Fein? Will they just need to make a telephone call to the Northern Ireland Office? That is one of the reasons why I feel that slippage is being allowed to come into a process that cannot afford to have slippage. It is for such reasons that I believe that the Government must take much more seriously the danger in the precedent they have set by undermining the credibility of their own, apparently not so binding, deadlines.