Ninth Standing Committee
on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 14 July 1999
[Mr. Barry Jones in the Chair]
Draft North-South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) (Amendment)
(Northern Ireland) Order 1999
10 am
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Paul Murphy):
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Draft North-South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1999.
The draft order was laid before the House on 28 June. It is entirely technical. Nevertheless, it is important in ensuring that all the north-south implementation bodies, which are an important aspect of the Good Friday agreement, can operate in the manner that was agreed by the political leaders--north and south--and endorsed by the Assembly and the Dail.
The Government and the Irish Government signed the implementation bodies agreement in Dublin on 8 March 1999. It provided for the establishment of north-south implementation bodies, as proposed under strand II of the Good Friday agreement. The North-South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) (Northern Ireland) Order 1999, which gives effect in domestic law to the agreement, was passed by the House on 8 March and made on 10 March.
The agreement provided for the establishment of six bodies, including an implementation body for special European Union programmes. That body is to have several functions in relation to the structural funds' community initiative programmes, which benefit Northern Ireland, including the new round of community initiatives after 1999.
As detailed in the agreement, it was expected that any successor to the current peace programme would be in the form of a community initiative and would, therefore, fall within the terms of the treaty and the previous order. At the Berlin European Council of 25-26 March, provision was made for the continuation of the PEACE programme, but not as a community initiative. The European Commission's draft regulations for implementation of the Berlin conclusions of 29 March showed that the proposed allocation of 500 million euros for the new PEACE programme would not come from the separate and distinct community initiatives budget but from the European Union's mainstream objective 1 budget.
To ensure that the implementation body has the authority to fulfil the relevant functions in regard to the PEACE programme after 1999--as was the clear intention of both Governments--it has been necessary to clarify the interpretation of the original treaty agreement in respect of the establishment of the bodies involved. That was done by means of an exchange of letters between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Ireland on 18 June this year. That exchange confirmed that the treaty should be construed as including any successor to the PEACE programme established within the framework of European Community structural funds.
The next and final step in clarifying the matter is for both Governments to bring the exchange of letters within the terms of their associated domestic legislation, hence, the draft order that we are considering. The Irish Government have drafted an equivalent amendment Bill, which both Houses of the Oireachtas passed on 24 June 1999. The text of the exchange of letters is in schedule 1A of the draft order.
As I said at the outset, it is important that this technical matter is resolved satisfactorily. We want the Good Friday agreement to be implemented in full. That is why we took the Northern Ireland Bill through the House last night and in the early hours of this morning. Implementing the agreement means not only getting the institutions up and running, but ensuring that they can carry out all the functions for which they were established. That is the purpose of the short draft order and the reason why I commend it to the Committee.
10.4 am
Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire): I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I will not detain the Committee for long.
I would like to ask the Minister a couple of questions for the purpose of clarification. When he talks about the PEACE programme, is he referring to the peace and reconciliation programme funded by the EU some years ago? Has that programme's name been changed; is he talking about a continuation of that programme?
Do the Government, though the agreement, intend the PEACE programme to be implemented exclusively through the north-south bodies, or is there a different and separate means of implementation? Is there territorial integrity--if north-south bodies are involved, will the money be invested exclusively in the territory of Northern Ireland or will it, as happens with some Interreg funds, be used for cross-border activities and programmes? While I am on the subject of Interreg funds, will they continue under new agreements for structural funds? If so, will the Minister clarify how those funds are to be administered in future?
10.5 am
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne): I would be grateful for answers to several queries. If we are to vote on the order, it is important that those of us who do not deal with the Province as much as the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) know exactly with what we are dealing.
As I understand it, the order refers simply to PEACE. To start, I would like to know who asked for that change--the British Government or the Government of the Republic? It is important to know that, because significant implications arise from understanding who asked the British Parliament to make changes to a document with ramifications for a foreign nation, giving that nation a say over sovereign territory of the United Kingdom. Did the Government of the independent nation of the Republic of Ireland come forward and say, 'Please could we co-operate?' or did the British Government realise that they had got their drafting wrong? I shall return to the question of sloppy drafting later, if I may. The Minister mentioned, the Good Friday agreement and I wish to say something about that later, too.
Another issue arises from the question of whether the order is necessary. The order reminds us that the EU, whose funds we are considering, seeks to treat the island of Ireland as one region--it considers it to be one place, with one group of people, one economy and one future. We cannot allow this morning to pass without commenting that, in that, we have another example of Parliament being asked to pass an order to give effect to the concept of there being one region in the EU called Ireland.
Some of us have spent much time trying to persuade the EU that the concept of a Europe of the regions is an absolute nonsense and that it undermines the sovereignty of individual member states. The order is one more move in the direction of that concept. We have also tried to persuade the EU that the island of Ireland is not united--that there are two peoples, with different histories and cultures. Were the EU to tell the Italians and the French that they were one group of people living in one place and that they should be treated as one, there would--quite properly--be enormous outrage. Our dealing with an order that seeks to give effect to the fallacious concept of one region called Ireland should not pass without my protest.
The Minister told us that the order was necessary to give effect to the Good Friday agreement. However, as I understand it the original order, a fairly lengthy document, was produced to give effect to the agreement. Will the Minister confirm that the original order was introduced because of the Good Friday agreement? If that is so, and if, as the Minister said this morning, the order before us is intended to amend the original order, we are faced with an example of the Good Friday agreement being modified to suit the purposes of the British Government.
That is why I want to know whether the modification was sought by the Dublin Government. Yesterday, when hon. Gentlemens such as the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) tried to suggest that the Good Friday agreement should be modified, they spent eight hours being told that that was not possible--that an agreement was an agreement and it could not be modified.
At 10 o'clock this morning, however, the Minister stands up and says 'I want this order to modify the Good Friday agreement.' That tells us a good deal about what has been going on in the House yesterday and today. It tells us that when the Dublin Government want something, right hon. and hon. Members have to be dragged here at 10 o'clock in the morning, when it is hoped that we will say nothing and that we will rubber stamp a change to the Good Friday agreement. Last night, when Unionists sought such a change, nothing happened.
The Minister owes us an explanation. Why can a foreign government demand and obtain an amendment to the Good Friday agreement when duly elected Members of Parliament who speak for the majority of people in a province of this nation are told for eight hours that they cannot have a change because an agreement is an agreement? Such an approach seems absolute nonsense.
I venture to suggest that one of the reasons for that approach is that the hon. Member for Lagan Valley and his colleagues, who are wedded to democracy and peaceful means of resolution, do not have guns to hold to Ministers' heads and explosives to put under their cars. When these are involved, we come here at 10 o'clock in morning to make changes. When one tries to use the democratic process, however, one is told, 'Absolutely not.'
Those are some of the preliminary matters that the Minister must explain. When he has done so, he must remember that successive Governments have been wedded to clear English. I was up late last night, but I lost even more sleep by trying to get my mind around both the original order and the draft order before us. As expected, both contain explanations of particular sets of initials, but some acronyms, are not explained. It is not good enough to assume that the few people who show an interest in the subject understand everything. We owe the people who need to consult the orders some explanation.
We have an explanation of community initiatives, or CIs. At the beginning of part IV on page 11 of the original order, which is the bit that we are seeking to amend, I noticed a reference to Interreg. Some people are well aware what that means, but I am not. I understand merely that it is another EU interference in the sovereign affairs of members states.
| 
