Control of Donations and Regulation of Loans etc. (Extension of the Prescribed Period) (Northern Ireland) Order 2010

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, to the first occasion on which he is to take a statutory instrument through this Committee. We are delighted to see him engaged in matters regarding Northern Ireland, and I hasten to assure him that if anything I say during the next few minutes appears in any way critical of Ministers in Northern Ireland, it does not refer to him or, indeed, to the other present incumbents of the Northern Ireland Office. I cannot resist the temptation to refer to paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum. The phrase that leaps out from that paragraph is the reference to, "““time to conduct a full consultation exercise””." The word ““exercise”” is either redundant or a Freudian slip. It is quite different to say that a full consultation is to be conducted as opposed to a consultation exercise. The emphasis and meaning are quite different, and I hope that as a result of this, we will never see the word ““exercise”” again. I am satisfied in my own mind that the officials who wrote this meant ““exercise”” and not ““consultation””. That observation may be more pointed than perhaps it should be, but it reflects my feelings on the matter. I noted the references in my noble friend’s speech introducing the regulations to their genesis in the 2006 Act, and that evidently this issue was raised in the talks that took place at Hillsborough earlier this year. That underlines the highly political nature of this, not just because it refers to political parties but because it is a highly political matter. I know that the legislation simply provides another four months in which to conduct the consultation, but I feel entitled to make some comments on the underlying issue of the exemption from the publication of political donations. This of course is advantageous to those parties which have something to hide about the nature of their finances, and there is a political party in Northern Ireland whose published finances have never been accurate or, in my view, truthful. Thus the regulations enable that party to continue to conceal some aspects of its finances. That reflects, if I may say so, what I am quite satisfied is the dominant attitude of the Northern Ireland Office—that all issues relating to Northern Ireland should proceed on the basis that the first concern is to keep Gerry happy. That has been the dominant influence on policymaking in the Northern Ireland Office for several years—more years than one would like to refer to. If that seems somewhat exaggerated, just remember this: there would not have been an agreement on Good Friday if the Northern Ireland Office had had any influence in the negotiations that week. It was its exclusion from the negotiations that generated the possibility of there being an agreement. We who took part in that will never forget the great contribution made by the then Prime Minister in coming over and excluding the Northern Ireland Office from the discussions and conducting them himself. Regrettably, in subsequent months and years the Northern Ireland Office regained its influence over policymaking, and the bad advice and bad influences which flowed from that. At the beginning of this century, the settled attitude of the Northern Ireland Office was, as I have mentioned, reinforced by evolving the doctrine that one had to bring in the parties at the extremes, at the expense of those moderate parties that had actually made progress, in order to ““cement”” the situation. Of course, bringing in the extremes has not cemented the process in the way the NIO said it would. The uncertainties have remained, and they have been touched upon already. I hope that the change of Government will produce a change of outlook and of policy. I hope too that Ministers will get control of the department and ensure that the attitude which states that ““everything has to be done to please Gerry”” ceases to be the case. This reinforces the point made by the noble Baroness: the consultation should be with all parties, and all parties should be equal in it. We cannot have a situation where one party is more equal than everyone else. That has to end. Until it does, the Northern Ireland Office will continue to be the unhappy place for the people of Northern Ireland that it has been for far too long.