It is great to hear that the Democratic Unionist party now supports north-south co-operation. It would be good if we were to allow the north-south bodies to operate properly as well. I totally agree with the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) about the deficiencies of the Barnett formula. The SDLP, many years ago, proposed moving away from the Barnett formula to a more needs-based approach. It is just a pity that DUP Ministers at that time campaigned loudly and actively against it. However, we are here now.
This is a Bill that nobody wants, least of all the civil service which is being asked to use these powers. We know why we are here: the DUP refuses to form a Government. Many of the arguments some of us are using today were used by the DUP when Sinn Féin pulled the Government down and kept it down for three and a half years. It seems to me that people cannot even learn the lessons they were trying to teach others. We know how that ended: Sinn Féin realised halfway through that boycott that it was doing nobody any good. The waiting lists were still getting longer and certain people were beginning to get the blame for that. My view is that we have a responsibility to all the people in all our constituencies, no matter what their politics are, to have a Government functioning and working together. I heard again today from the DUP that devolution cannot work without the consent of both communities. That is painfully true and obvious, but is it okay, then, to have direct rule, which is basically what this is becoming, operating without the consent of the nationalist community? That is what we are being asked to have, and that will have its own consequences as we move through the process.
The shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), rightly referenced the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement—the immense change it has brought about and the bravery of that political generation to make very hard decisions and take very big steps, much bigger than those we are asking people to take today. Its impact has been profoundly significant for many people, particularly in my generation.
Over the last number of years, we have faced chaos in our politics inflicted by a Brexit vote somewhere else, because the people in Northern Ireland voted to remain by a majority. That has been the genesis of the crisis we are in today. We argued for a couple of years about the protocol and its implications. Now we have the Windsor framework, which gives us the opportunity to trade into both markets. We have had former American Presidents, the current American President, former US Secretaries of State and the current US Secretary of State, countless Senators and Members of the House of Representatives coming over and telling us that they want to help us by bringing jobs to Northern Ireland. There is not a single other place in the world where American politicians are saying they want jobs to leave America for. That just does not happen. It goes against the political current in the United States of America right now. This is a huge opportunity, and it is an opportunity that we need to grasp. Frankly, I do not understand why we cannot do two things at the one time.