Northern Ireland (St. Andrews Agreement) (No. 2) Bill

Thankfully, unlike much of the tortuous process of the past number of years, what we have in front of us today is short and simple, in the form of this Bill. The Secretary of State will recall that some of us predicted that we would be here in late March facing more emergency legislation, probably providing for a date in May. When we honestly offered that as our best surmise of what was likely to happen, we were rubbished by the Secretary of State and others. To that extent, our judgment and assessment has been vindicated, but it included the assumption that we would have the required arrangements at least by May. Some of us have always believed in power sharing and have stuck with that belief since the 1970s, in the darkest days of the troubles. Stars of hope arose in the past when parties got together and promoted power sharing, but those stars were shouted down and shot down by people in parties such as the DUP and by people in the provisional republican movement. The unswerving belief by parties such as the Social Democratic and Labour party and others that power sharing, partnership, co-operation and shared institutions that deliver a shared future—not only in the north but on a north-south basis—are the way to create a future for forthcoming generations has absolutely been vindicated by recent developments. I have observed before that our peace process has carried more people on more roads to Damascus than the Syrian bus fleet, and we saw that again yesterday. Not only did the DUP and Sinn Fein agree power sharing—in different ways, they can say that they have previously agreed that—but in meeting as they did, they entered into a sort of political compact. That is very positive. The fact that they were able to present the option of a new date for devolution on 8 May and to make the commitments that they did is a much more hopeful sign of how things are going to work than what we legislated for in this House previously, when we had to remove, at the DUP’s insistence, the provision for the joint election of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister because it was said that they could not be jointly elected under the Good Friday agreement and that it should be done separately. Now that people are prepared to engage in this sort of compact, we will be able, under the review of the workings of the agreement, to revert to joint election in future. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) and to the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Adams) for, as the right hon. Member for North Antrim has said, meeting the other parties yesterday. The president of Sinn Fein met the other parties, not in a series of bilaterals, but at least in order to share some thoughts about certain issues with other parties. If we are to make things work it is important that we make the most of the next six weeks and, the least of whatever difficulties might arise in that period, so that we can, in turn, make the most all the devolved institutions when they return. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) referred to some of the comparisons made in the newspapers between yesterday’s meeting and, for example, the Rabin-Arafat meeting. There is a big difference. We do not have two leaders who are setting out on a voyage to try to discover arrangements and devise institutions. We already have agreed institutions, which were previously established and have proved themselves. All parties, whether they voted for them or not, could work well within them. We need to remember that, in the past, those institutions were brought down and destabilised, not because they could not function or suffered from structural problems and procedural and partisan tensions but because of issues outside. We therefore have cause for more hope and a bit more confidence than some hon. Members suggest. I hope that the Bill, which has been introduced in emergency mode, is the last Northern Ireland emergency measure that the House has to tackle. We know that we cannot have 100 per cent. confidence in that, but I do not want to join the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) in spreading too much doubt about 8 May. We would do better to leave that aside and concentrate on all the other issues about which we want to create certainty and build confidence. The developments of recent days have vindicated those of us who always believed in power sharing and consistently believed in the Good Friday agreement. In the aftermath of the agreement, some of us argued that the institutions would allow people to sit down in partnership and co-operation—not only Unionists and nationalists, loyalists and republicans, but those who voted yes and those who voted no. Again, some people doubted that. Yesterday’s events help prove that those of us who argued for that were correct. Yesterday vindicates not only those of us who stood by the agreement but those of us who helped negotiate it and made specific choices during the negotiations. It vindicates those of us who resisted the pressures from, among others, the Prime Minister and George Mitchell, not to go for an Executive model of power sharing, to duck deciding whether there would be Ministers and an Executive and to abandon the principle of inclusion. We insisted on the principle of inclusion because we wanted to ensure that, when the agreement came to be endorsed, nobody had the excuse for voting against it because that would have created a form of government that included some parties and excluded others. We therefore succeeded in maximising the endorsement in the referendum, but we also wanted to ensure that even those who voted against the agreement would not, by virtue of that, be excluded from its institutions but could participate in them to the extent that they saw fit. We saw that as part of the healing process and as a means of breaking down barriers. Again, that judgment has been vindicated by the progress that we have made. Although changes have been made to some of the decision-making mechanisms under the agreement, the broad architecture remains essentially the same and I believe that we can make things work. I want to make it clear that, when the right hon. Member for North Antrim and the hon. Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. McGuinness) take up their responsibilities as joint First Ministers, they can enter that office free from the sort of harassment and hassle to which parties that previously took that course were subjected. I want to assure them that, as they undertake work, not in the interests of their parties, but—in that office and working with others in the Executive—on behalf of the entire public, they will have my party’s understanding, good will and, every time it is deserved or necessary, our support. That is the only way in which we can take matters forward. I am no less a believer in the institutions of the agreement just because my party is weaker in them than it was. The level of our party support has not determined our judgment. In yesterday’s statements by the leader of the DUP and the president of Sinn Fein—and in some of the remarks made today—people have rightly referred to the past. As on other occasions when there is much talk in the media of progress and a lot of hype and spin, victims are left with very mixed feelings, as the Secretary of State has rightly said. There is an added twist of futility that adds to the hurt that they have carried when they see people settling for power-sharing institutions, which Sinn Fein previously denounced so many times as equivalent to surrender and a sell-out. Even in the weeks running up to the Good Friday agreement, Sinn Fein was saying, ““No return to Stormont”” and was insisting that because we were canvassing models for power-sharing institutions in the north and structures for north-south co-operation, the SDLP was a neo-Unionist party. Similarly, the DUP and others within Unionism totally opposed power sharing and set their face against any attempts at it in the past. When people see parties that then rejected those concepts settling for and embracing them now, they have to wonder whether we needed to go through the suffering, the hurt, the political stalemate, the stagnation and the divisions that we went through—and the answer is that we did not. In recent times in this process—perhaps because of our tolerance, patience and generosity—my party has lost seats, but I can live much more comfortably with lost seats than with what other parties have to live with: lost years, lost opportunities and lost lives. We could have been and we should have been where we are now far sooner. If it is our destiny now, it was always our destiny. If it is the only way forward now in circumstances of peace, then surely it was the only way forward in circumstances of difficulty, division, violence and ongoing suffering. I also want to join the Secretary of State in offering thanks to his predecessors in that office and, of course, to the Prime Minister—and, indeed, the previous Prime Minister, who contributed so much in unlikely circumstances to the process. The Secretary of State knows that we have been frustrated many times about how the process was handled, and we believe that if the Government had been firmer and fairer in the earlier years after the agreement, we would have got further faster. A certain destabilisation of the institutions was allowed and was tolerated—at the expense, we believe, of the long-term process. The Government could have shown better authority in the immediate years after the agreement by making two things clear: first, that decommissioning was absolutely a requirement of the Good Friday agreement and had to happen by May 2000; and, secondly, that decommissioning was not a precondition of the establishment of the institutions. If the Government had shown good authority on those two basic points, we would not have had the running instability that led to delays in establishing the institutions and then the various suspensions and subsequent difficulties. I do not want to pretend in the warm glow of expectation that we now feel that those frustrations and criticisms are not still felt, but we have to recognise—and the House has to recognise—that were it not for the Prime Minister, there would not have been a Good Friday agreement. We ensured that it was a better agreement than perhaps he suggested in the faxes that he sent us in the weeks before its negotiation, but if it were not for him and his ministerial colleagues, I do not believe that we would have had the agreement. I believe that we could have had a better agreement and more from it sooner if different approaches had been followed, but the agreement is still there and we are essentially returning to it. It is a case of back to the future on 8 May. An observation was made in the American context—that irony in politics is just hypocrisy with panache. There were ironies in some of what went on yesterday, and, to give credit where it is due, there was certainly panache as well. I will leave it at that. What we have to do now is make the most of the opportunity and the responsibility—and a real sense of responsibility certainly came through yesterday. We want to take things forward: we have to refit our economy, rebuild and renew our public services and completely upgrade our infrastructure. I believe that all the parties will set their face to that task—not just in the work with the Chancellor, but in the decisions and choices that will be made, some of which, when devolution returns, will be hard. Then we will move from divided grievances to shared government and complete the journey from paying the price for growing apart to reaping the rewards of growing together in both the north and the south. As we do that, we will build a new country and a new society, and we will restore faith in politics—a new belief. Northern Ireland will be known for positive things. We will start to appear at the right end of the league tables rather than always being at the wrong end. We will no longer be a byword for instability, stagnation, political difficulty and political crisis. This generation will have the chance to write its own history in a very positive light. I welcome the fact that people have belatedly embraced the point that the only way forward is power sharing and inclusion. We can put up with six weeks. Although I sympathise with some of what the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) has said, the Secretary of State would not have been in a strong position if he had come here today and said, ““I have kept my word, but I have lost my marbles.”” We know what the deadline was for—it was to ensure an outcome—and I hope and believe that we have that outcome, so let us get on with it.