Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill
10:30 am
I join other hon. Members, Sir Nicholas, in welcoming you to the Chair. Unlike the hon. Member for Tewkesbury, my party and I have deep misgivings about a number of the Bill’s provisions, because they reverse clear and unambiguous commitments made by the British and Irish Governments in the joint declaration of 2003. Nevertheless, the depth of those misgivings is not related in any way to the time that we will take to consider the Bill, so there is no issue with the fact that we have eight sittings. I am sure that our concerns will be no more persuasive to hon. Members if we had more sittings. We all know the Government’s form on such occasions.
The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire said that he hopes that the Government will be more accommodating to reasonable amendments from other parties. With previous Bills, the Government, in Committee Rooms and with the support of their Back Benchers, have resisted all sorts of reasonable amendments to unreasonable legislation, most typically with the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill. Hon. Members witnessed the Government withdrawing the legislation that they said was absolutely essential and without which the sky would fall in. They did so not because of what hon. Members said in this House and in the proceedings of this House, but because Sinn Fein finally caught on about the implications of the Bill and withdrew its support, and so the Government’s case collapsed.
There is the possibility that in days to come Sinn Fein will wake up to the implications of this Bill, because it will remove things that they claim that they have—such as the repeal of emergency provisions—and reverses commitments given by the British Government in the joint declaration of 2003. The question for many of us is whether Sinn Fein was in on the provision of the new measures or whether it has slept in. If it has just slept in, when it wakes up will we find the Government coming to the House and telling us all a different story? That has been their form before.