Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out some of the facts about the situation we find ourselves in. I will not labour the point, but I am afraid that the consequences of Brexit were always going to be complex and difficult for Northern Ireland, bearing in mind the particular importance of the border and the clash, if you like, between the irresistible force of the logic of a single market that wishes to police its border rigidly, and the immovable object of the fact that the border has a particular status and sensitivity that means that to make it excessively hard creates other problems and issues that we are all familiar with. That, I am afraid, is the difficulty that we all have to wrestle with. I know that this place sometimes risks sounding rather portentous and nannyish in the way it talks about Northern Ireland, and we have to be careful about that. But in resisting that approach it is logically correct to say that the best way to cure this issue is for the institutions of Stormont to function, and to function well.