New Clause 4 - Reserved matters: new institutions
Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Des Browne (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Northern Ireland Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Reigate for inspiring this new clause. It adds the criminal justice inspectorate and the Law Commission to the list of organisations in schedule 3 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to which I referred when talking about devolution.
The new clause makes it clear that those bodies fall within the reserved field before the devolution of justice matters, and it will allow them to be transferred on devolution. It is essentially a technical measure, which is designed to facilitate the devolution of those bodies in due course and to respond to an issue raised by the hon. Gentleman by removing what confusion there may have been.