Northern Ireland Assembly Members Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support these amendments from an additional point of view, which is that in Northern Ireland we have had a great deal of trouble, perhaps over the last 30 years, with encouraging new blood into the political system. Even today, it is very difficult in certain respects to see where that new blood and those new people are going to come from. We have far too many people double-jobbing and excluding new blood from coming in. This is a really practical problem for the development of political progress, and for developing a future away from terrorism and some form of intimidation. We have far too many people who, if they have not been far too long in a single job, have also been holding people out of other jobs while not doing those jobs as fully as they should, so I support these amendments.