Justice and Northern Ireland

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments. I believe that she has accurately reflected the position of the Unionist community. I know that she very much regrets that the Ulster Unionist party, through its leadership, has placed itself along with the dissident republicans and Unionists. I also recognise that the hon. Member for Foyle and other members of his party are not completely content with every aspect of the arrangements for policing and justice; they have said so. If either Sinn Fein or the DUP had been left to write the agreement themselves, it would have been a very different document. That is the nature of doing deals and reaching agreements. They are compromises by their very nature, and we need to seek consensus in order to move forward. The hon. Member for Foyle could very well have said, "We didn't have our thumbprint on this document, so we are going to vote against it or abstain." He did not do so, however. Although it was not as they would have wished, he and his party supported it in principle and voted in favour of it. I believe that that is the position that the Ulster Unionist party should have adopted, and I very much regret that it did not do so. I am glad that the Conservative Opposition in this House made their position clear, but I regret that they were not in a better position to persuade their colleagues in Northern Ireland to follow the route that they were taking. I strongly believe that the people of Northern Ireland support the devolution of these powers, and that they want us to get on with the work of dealing with jobs, education and health. Those are the matters that come to me when I meet people on the streets. Seldom has anyone come up to me and said, "We need to get policing and justice sorted out," or "We need to get parading sorted out." People want the Assembly and the Executive to get on with the day-to-day, bread and butter issues, and that must be our priority over the weeks, months and years ahead. I should like to say a final word on the issue of the sunset clause. I started off by regarding the sunset clause as a necessary evil. Both parties recognised it as a temporary expedient, but we were unable to reach a permanent agreement on it. I have moved my position, however; I now think that the clause will assist us all. Over the next year or two, it will allow us to use our experience of having the devolved functions to determine whether any changes would be beneficial or necessary. We should not, however, wait until the period of time has passed before we sit down and try to resolve any such matters. As soon as the new Assembly is elected in 2011, it must straight away get down to working out its processes for continuing the role of policing and justice. We should not be nervous about the fact that our experience over those years will enable us to determine whether the same system should be continued, whether it should be tweaked, or whether more significant changes should be made. I am not afraid of looking at that issue in 2011-12, and I believe that the sunset clause will benefit the Assembly. I think that, before I arrived in the Chamber, the hon. Member for Foyle spoke of not making the perfect the enemy of the good. That is exactly where we stand today. Regrettably, some people believe that we should wait until we have all our ducks in a row and everything is perfect before we move forward. We should never make progress in Northern Ireland if we did that, however, because nothing is ever perfect in politics.