My Lords, there might be a couple of technical issues surrounding this. As I understand it—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—under the current law the first item of business when the Assembly meets is the election of a Speaker. The Assembly would refuse to do that under the current circumstances, so that would have to be addressed.
However, there is a wider point that I want to make. I am sure that the Minister or his predecessors have been saying for more than a year that they are prepared to think outside the box. However, this is a hermetically
sealed box; it has a number of combinations on it but nobody knows what they are; and it has not been opened in the past year. Not a single idea has been brought forward. For months the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Trimble, have been putting forward options—but they are talking to a brick wall, because the principal holy grail at the moment is, “Don’t upset the Sinners”. As long as that is the driving force, we will never move a yard forward.
So I hope that the Minister will, with the Secretary of State, genuinely be prepared to look outside the box. We will be sitting here having this conversation in several months’ time, and I do not know whether these are the right options but I think that they certainly merit discussion. The Northern Ireland Office has to start thinking outside the box. I understand that the Prime Minister and everybody else is Brexit focused. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, rightly said that this is the biggest change that has happened to us in the last 20 years and we are out to lunch. Our voice is not being heard, yet the people of Northern Ireland will be the most directly affected. It is barking mad that we are in this position—so let us genuinely think outside the box.
I hope that when he winds up, the Minister will be able to refer back to Amendments 7 and 8, which I spoke to earlier, concerning the circumstances in which our health service and other matters could be addressed in the future. These are all parts of a bigger picture. I just hope that he will persuade his right honourable friend in the other place to start thinking outside the box, because we are trapped, it is wrong that we are trapped and people are hurting. This Parliament has a responsibility towards those people, and we are not doing our duty.