HC Deb 27 May 1982 vol 24 cc1142-55
Mr. J. Enoch Powell

I beg to move amendment No. 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 9, leave out 'by the Assembly and'.

The Chairman

With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 3, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out `it', and insert 'the Assembly'.

Mr. Powell

I thank you, Mr. Weatherill, for having reconsidered your original grouping and having detached from those two amendments amendment No. 13, which related to a substantially different point. With amendments Nos. 2 and 3 paragraph (a) will read: proposals for the resumption by persons responsible to the Assembly of all the functions". The words "as aforesaid" in line 13 will automatically reproduce the same effect in the interpretation of paragraph(b). So whether we are dealing with devolution or a resumption of the 1973 Act as a whole by one action, or whether we are dealing with rolling devolution, the same amendment would be made to the provisions, and instead of the resumption by the Assembly and by persons responsible to it of their functions under the 1973 Act, there would be proposals for the resumption by persons responsible to the Assembly of functions under the 1973 Act.

There are separate functions, as there are in the constitution of the United Kingdom, under the 1973 Act for the Assembly and for the Executive, or other persons responsible to it. Those functions are respectively legislative and executive, broadly speaking. The first issue that the two amendments raise is legislative as opposed to executive devolution. The second issue that is raised is the nature of the executive devolution. Under paragraph (a) that devolution has to cover the entire range involved in the 1973 Act. But under paragraph (b) the executive devolution can proceed by stages and may be a devolution not merely to the Executive but to persons responsible to the Assembly. The amendment would therefore open up the possibility that the Executive might, in effect, place itself in the position of functioning as a local authority through persons who would be responsible to it for the administration of certain functions that at the moment are administered by the boards or by local authorities.

These two amendments raise two of the most fundamental questions that it is possible to consider in the context of devolution. First, they raise the distinction between legislative and executive devolution and, secondly, they raise the distinction between devolution in the style of the 1973 Act, as originally conceived, and that form of executive devolution that is enjoyed in the rest of the United Kingdom and which we designate specifically by our limited use of the term "local government".

As this is the first substantive debate that we are to have upon the Bill, perhaps I might be permitted to remark—I am sure that I am not the only member of the Committee to be aware of it—on a certain weirdness and unreality of atmosphere in which the debate is taking place. It would be true to say of us all, including those who represent constituencies in Northern Ireland to which the Bill applies, that our thoughts predominantly are elsewhere. It may be questioned whether the House of Commons is in the best position and in the best mood for taking the vital decisions that are implicit in the Bill in circumstances in which, unavoidably, our thoughts are elsewhere and on other topics. The House of Commons will not require me to specify the direction to which I am referring.

Particularly at this hour of night, and particularly after the hours, by no means wasted, which have been spent this afternoon, I have often found myself reflecting upon the almost grotesque contrast between the business that the Government have required us to transact in the Chamber and other matters for which, ultimately, those of us in this Chamber are responsible—responsible to our consciences and responsible to the public. Those reflections are greatly reinforced by the bearings of the Bill before us, to which it is not inappropriate to refer in moving the amendments because they go to the heart of devolution.

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However, we would be mistaken and the Committee would be deceiving itself if we supposed that when we debate the Bill we are debating, large though the subject is, devolution for Northern Ireland. Perhaps when Parliament debated the Government of Ireland Act 1920 for the better government of Ireland and perhaps when it debated the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922 that performed the Solomon's judgment on one and another part of Ireland, it could have been claimed that it was in some sense debating devolution, but we know that that is not the object of this Bill or the object of those who have brought it to its present stage.

Reference was made at Question Time today—it seems a long time ago—to statements made by a Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office, a noble Lord who sits in another place and who is a citizen of the Irish Republic. He has chosen to retain that citizenship. We understand also that it was by the special desire of the Secretary of State that the noble Lord transferred with him from his previous office to the office that he now occupies. I mention those personal details not in order to be personal but because they render significant what might otherwise be less significant in the utterances of a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office.

The noble Lord gave an interview on 13 January 1982 which was printed in the Belfast Telegraph. The words that I wish to quote are directly relevant to devolution, which is apparently the subject of the sentence, and are from the last paragraph of that interview: Greater devolved government is not the solution. It is an essential contribution to a new set of attitudes. It is one part of the strategy—co-operation with the Irish Republic is another. Whatever the pressures on us to drop it we have set our faces against that—like flint. So when, in debating this Bill, we discuss what on their face are measures of devolution and transfer under certain conditions of responsibility from this House and the Government as responsible to it to another Assembly and to those elected to that Assembly, we must never lose sight of the over-riding purpose that lies behind it. That purpose is connected not with the better government of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom but with the creation of an entirely different relationship between Ulster and the rest of the United Kingdom on the one hand and, on the other hand, that foreign country which, so far as I am aware at the moment, apart from Argentina is the only foreign Country that claims British territory.

Perhaps I might venture, and I shall venture no more, another quotation from the same source. The noble Lord said: I suppose that if I had my way I would have dual citizenship. Well, he has not. Why not have people living in the North"— that is, Northern Ireland— who regard themselves as Irish, administered by Ireland and Britain? Such is the thinking that lay behind the preparation of the legislation and which lay behind all the tortuous procedures that have led to the White Paper and now the Bill.

That adds a dimension to the weirdness of the fact that at this moment, when British territory is being regained at the risk of their lives by our fellow citizens, we should be debating legislation of which the true purpose is not devolution, but is the detachment in one way or another of a part of the United Kingdom from the United Kingdom to which it belongs. It is a strange event, a weird event and, arguably, a contradictory event to be taking place at 11 o'clock tonight. It is an event for which those of us who sit here are not responsible but for which, with all its contradictory and grotesque nature, the Government are responsible.

I return to the two major issues that are opened up by the amendment.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell (Hemel Hempstead)

Is it so weird that we should be debating this Bill? Is it not part of our objective to restore to that distant place to which the right hon. Gentleman referred the process of democracy? Is not the object of the Bill, with whatever faults it may or may not have in the right hon. Gentleman's mind, to restore to the Province of which he is so distinguished a representative some wider processes of democracy?

Mr. Powell

What the processes should be to deserve that name within the United Kingdom is a matter that we can debate both on the amendment and on many of the other amendments that will no doubt be selected for debate.

I make only this point to the hon. and learned Gentleman. There is an important distinction between the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands and the inhabitants of Northern Ireland. The former are the inhabitants of a colony not represented in Parliament and not forming part of the United Kingdom. Their democracy, therefore, will be such democracy as is possible for a territory whose inhabitants, though British, are not represented in the House. At any rate, it is difficult to see how they can go beyond that except to the step of total self government—no doubt within the Commonwealth, but total self-government.

But the inhabitants of Northern Ireland are inhabitants, like those whom the rest of hon. Members here represent, of part of the United Kingdom. What is democracy in the rest of the United Kingdom is democracy in Northern Ireland. What is meant by the rights of people in Northern Ireland is what is meant by the rights of people—their political and other rights—in the rest of the United Kingdom. I am prepared to call the hon. and learned Gentleman in aid in support, in using the Bill or criticizing the Bill, of that criterion. Those who inhabit any part of the United Kingdom are entitled to the same rights as those who occupy any other part of it. In the last resort they are part of the United Kingdom because they are represented in the House and it is the House that carries the ultimate responsibility for them, at any rate in every political respect.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence (Burton)

The right hon. Gentleman spoke earlier of the unreal atmosphere in the House when we are discussing this matter while our min 's are on other things. Has he considered how difficult it is for some of us, who very much resent the attitude that the Republic of Ireland is at present taking in the EEC towards this country——

The Second Deputy Chairman (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)

Order. I remind the Committee that we are discussing an amendment to leave out the words "by the Assembly and", so we ought to direct our attention to that.

Mr. Lawrence

I am directing my mind to that, Mr. Armstrong. What I am saying is specifically related to a point that the right hon. Gentleman raised at the beginning of his remarks. As there is at present an unreal atmosphere of anger and resentment, surely that is hardly the right atmosphere in which we should be considering a matter that may involve the coming together of this country and Southern Ireland in the context of the Bill. I find it difficult at present—such are my feelings of anger and irritation—to direct my mind to any closure or healing of the breach that there may be between Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider that as another matter that affects our thinking?

The Second Deputy Chairman

Order, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will confine himself to the amendment.

Mr. Powell

I certainly shall, Mr. Armstrong. It is in no way in contravention of your reminder to the Committee if I find myself in agreement with the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence). I am also unable to escape from the analogy between those two territories—in other words, that claim is laid to them by an external Power and that that claim is being pursued against them by force, based upon or exerted by that external Power. These thoughts are so strong in our minds that we would be insincere if we attempted to pretend them away.

At any rate, no blame attaches to what we are doing tonight or to that fact that we are doing it tonight under these disabilities. Certainly, no blame attaches to those who voted against Second Reading and wish that it were not a matter that we had to consider at all, at any rate in its present form. However, the Bill is before us, and it is necessary to understand the implications of what it contains. It is as a contribution to that that my hon. Friends and I have tabled the amendment.

I address myself to the first issue—that of legislative as opposed to administrative devolution. I preface my observations by pointing out that the whole structure and purport of the clause is permissive. The Secretary of State has claimed it as an advantage of this legislative approach that he leaves it open to the Assembly to make certain choices and that he takes no decisions himself.

I want to ensure that we understand the nature of some of those choices and that we do not foreclose choices that such an Assembly might wisely or legitimately seek to make. One of the choices is between executive devolution and legislative devolution, and there is a very fundamental difference.

As has already been said, Session after Session in the last Parliament, the House debated proposals for legislative as well as executive devolution to Scotland. One of the results of that, which is indelibly impressed on the minds of hon. Members who took part in, or witnessed, those debates, was the incompatibility of legislative devolution with the unity of the United Kingdom.

It was originally a desire on my part to pay courteous tribute to the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). I think that it was I who first christened this question the West Lothian question. I have given the hon. Gentleman notice that the matter might be raised in the present context. He was most persistent in that repeated analysis which is one of the methods by which the House educates itself and, thereby, those out of doors.

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The proposition in application to Northern Ireland is much stronger now than it was when those debates took place three or four years ago. We did not like the curtain that the Secretary of State lifted for a moment over the future when he allowed himself to speculate that the parliamentary representation of the Province in tile House might, in due course, be reduced again as a consequence of what is proposed in the Bill. Whatever may be the future, the right hon. Gentleman, as I understood him—I am sorry that he is not present; I am sure that I am not misinterpreting him—indicated beyond a peradventure that he looked forward to the effective representation of Northern Ireland in the House being increased to 17 seats by legislative action to be taken in the next month or two. So near was the prospect that the Secretary of State admitted that it was worth consideration and that there was a possibility that the constituencies for the purposes of the Bill might be the 17 constituencies that were envisaged for the future parliamentary representation of Northern Ireland. We were grateful to him for the admission. We shall be able to explore the matter later in the proceedings.

The old escape route from the West Lothian dilemma, from the incompatibility of legislative devolution in a unitary State to only one part of that State, the old escape route from the dilemma of de minimis, which was the steadily used escape route during the 50 years of the 1920–22 Government of Ireland Act, is not seriously available when we look to the future.

It was just possible, though it was part of the corrupt and slothful bargain by which the House disinterested itself for 50 years in the affairs of Northern Ireland, that the fact that there would be 12 hon. Members here—yielding, perhaps, a majority for one side of six or seven—who were not on all fours or on the same footing but carrying the same responsibilities as all their fellow hon. Members, would be lived with. That was terminated when the 1972 and 1973 Acts abolished that constitution.

An anomaly can be lived with but not recreated. But that proposition does not need to be applied in the case that we are considering because we are now discussing a Northern Ireland which will be represented in the House by 17 seats. There is no answer, and there will shortly in practice be found to be no answer, to the question addressed to those 17 hon. Members: "How come you here to debate and to vote with us on a whole range of subjects for which you are not responsible to your constituents as we are responsible to ours?" More than that, "How come you 17 Members, whatever may be the majority among you one way or the other, of one inclination or the other, to decide, perhaps on the Address in reply to a Queen's Speech, what form of government there shall be in the United Kingdom, when the subjects on which the election was conducted in Great Britain were very largely not the subjects on which the election was conducted in your own part of the United Kingdom?" That is the reason. It is the unanswerability which was teased out and proved time and again in the debates on the Scotland Bill that constitutes the ultimate incompatibility between legislative devolution and membership of a unitary parliamentary State such as the United Kingdom.

Putting it at its lowest, I do not believe that it is right for the House 'of Commons by this Bill to say to the Assembly "You cannot separate the two—you must take the one with the other or have neither". That is what clause 1(1)(a) says. It says that if there is to be devolution at all it must be legislative as well as executive devolution.

The foreseen and foreseeable consequence of that would be to create or to recreate a line of division between Ulster and the rest of the United Kingdom. It would be to reintroduce the representatives of Northern Ireland into this House as what they have not been these last 10 years—second-class citizens. It would also throw into relief the separation of that part, and only that part, of the United Kingdom in almost every legislative or political transaction, in almost every controversial transaction that took place in this House. Ever and again, the question would be raised—with what justification, on this subject or on that, do the representatives of Northern Ireland come here to vote with the rest of us when they or, rather, representatives of their electorate, have power to legislate separately for that Province on those subjects and to take those decisions separately for that Province?

Legislative devolution is thus the beginning of separation, and legislative devolution to a Province that is henceforward to be fully represented in the United Kingdom is the more clearly the beginning of separation. Indeed, the Secretary of State himself—as always, I am groping to pay him a compliment, and that was my only reason for interrupting him just now—was candid enough to say, in the debate on Second Reading, or it may have been in the debate on the White Paper, that if the result of the Bill was to be an approach to the content of clause 1(1)(a), it would bring into doubt the full representation of Northern Ireland in this House.

What is the meaning of belonging to the United Kingdom without full representation in this House? Is it really compatible with the United Kingdom? Is it compatible with the nature of this House that some parts of the Kingdom should be more or less represented in it than others? This is a House of equals, or it is nothing.

When the first separation that ever took place under the British Crown was debated in the House of Commons, although not actually in this place, in one of the most memorable debates ever held—the debate upon conciliation with America—Edumund Burke moved a motion which was the first of a series of propositions. The first proposition, and that on which his celebrated speech was delivered, was that the people of the colonies had not had the right to elect burgesses and knights to the House. He drew attention to the impracticability of representation of the House as the essential criterion which enforced, and was bound to enforce, the legislative separation, and ultimately the separation, of the American colonies from the mother country.

When we talk about legislative devolution, let us understand, particularly in the light of the known and declared purposes of this legislation, that ultimately legislative devolution is incompatible with the Union. That perhaps would be a consideration that the House might less regard if there were a clamour and an agitation amongst the people of Northern Ireland to live under different laws from the rest of the United Kingdom.

If the people of Northern Ireland were to come to the House and say, through their representatives here or otherwise: "We do not like your laws. We want to make our own laws. We want different laws from yours", then, no doubt, the conclusion would have to be drawn—that if there is to be devolution it must be legislative devolution. However, the whole burden of the complaint, the whole burden of the demand so often expressed by the representatives of Northern Ireland in the House, is that the laws which apply to them should be the same as those which apply in the rest of the Kingdom.

During the period in which legislative devolution was in effect, from 1921 to 1972, there was an anxious care to keep as closely as possible in the legislation of a parliament of Northern Ireland, though often at an awkward interval of a year, or, in some cases, several years, to the legislation in this permanent House. The reason for that was that it was realised that legislative separation means political separation, means separation.

Mr. Gorst

May I reinforce the right hon. Gentleman's argument with an example from another part of the world. In the Caribbean, two French Islands, Martinique and Guadeloupe, have direct representation in the French assembly. As a consequence of that direct relationship there is a much closer relationship between France and those territories, despite the distance that is entailed. That reinforces what the right hon. Gentleman is saying.

Mr. Powell

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I believe that I am not mistaken in saying that those are parts of metropolitan France, which is as near as one can get to what we mean when we say "parts of the United Kingdom". It may be—I must not be tempted, Mr. Armstrong, to elude your ever-watchful Argus-like vigilance—by observing that one day we may once again have to consider, perhaps in relation to the Falkland Islands, to Gibraltar, or to other scattered territories, whether perhaps, though it has been outside the realm of our experience or contemplation hitherto, representation in the House, or in some way or another, and legislative union and real union, are not the future, the only future, which for them and for their inhabitants will be genuinely secure and genuinely British.

I have just made a general statement about the wishes and aspirations of the people of Northern Ireland. I said that they were far more interested in being assured of legislative uniformity with the rest of the United Kingdom than in the power of differentiation.

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Sir Philip Goodhart (Beckenham)

rose——

Mr. Powell

I have just embarked upon a point, but I shall give way afterwards if the hon. Gentleman still wishes to intervene. Of course, the House has legislated separately on certain topics for the different parts of the United Kingdom. The House gave a separate and good educational system to Wales in the nineteenth century. It has preserved certain rights to the people of Scotland that were given under the Treaty of Union. On certain matters in which the European Court of Human Rights has concerned itself of late, the House has, by common consent, legislated differently, or not at all, for different parts of the United Kingdom. Lest any hon. Member should think that that is a contradiction, I should make it clear that it is not. That is not an assertion that Wales should have legislated on Welsh education, Scotland on Scottish education, Scotland on Scottish morals, or Ulster on Ulster morals, but a statement that the House—to which we all belong—is capable, on the authority of all who belong to it, of legislating differently, if that is the local desire for different parts of the United Kingdom. Therefore, by legislative union, the United Kingdom has succeeded in nevertheless being able to provide for meeting—within a general uniformity of law, and a general equality of rights—differences of wish, nuance, habit and assumption between the parts that make up the United Kingdom. Of course, the people of Ulster resent—as those in the rest of the United Kingdom should resent—the impositon of the obligation by an external authority to have their law changed. However, I am not talking about that. That is just as much an outrage upon the House as it is an outrage upon a part of the United Kingdom if the Government find that they have to submit to it because of the treaty obligations into which they have entered.

That does not alter the fact that the right of the people of Ulster to run their own affairs—just as the people of the other parts of the United Kingdom run their affairs—is executive devolution and is not the right to distinguish themselves from the rest of the United Kingdom by creating a different corpus of law. Therefore, there is no demand in Northern Ireland—to which the House might feel required to respond—for legislative devolution. Once it is understood that devolution contains the kernel of separation from the United Kingdom, there will be a repudiation.

Ulster wants, and has a right to, executive devolution. It has a right to it, because that is what the rest of the United Kingdom enjoys. Therefore, the amendment makes a distinction. I am sure that the Secretary of State is serious in saying that the maximum range of options should be open to the Assembly that he hopes to create. In that case, let the options include the eligible and the ineligible option, and not the obligation that the eligible and the ineligible should be combined.

I come to the second major issue—indeed, I have already trenched upon it—which is raised by these amendments. I mentioned just now that there is a demand, and I do not see how it can be rationally refused by the Committee, that people living in Northern Ireland should have the same democratic control over their own local affairs and over the administration of the law in Northern Ireland as is possessed by their fellow citizens in all the rest of the United Kingdom. The manner in which that is exercised in the rest of the United Kingdom varies from part to part. There is a variegated system of local self-government from one end of Great Britain to the other. There would be no inconsistency in there being a similar variegation in that pattern when it was extended, as it ought to be, to Northern Ireland.

I suppose it could be said, but only jocularly, that the pattern extends at the moment to Northern Ireland, but it extends only in the sense that there are elected bodies which discharge rather more than nugatory but relatively unimportant environmental functions and that all the other functions which in the rest of the United Kingdom are supervised and administered by elected bodies are supervised and administered in Northern Ireland by Ministers responsible to this Parliament. If there is a gap and an injustice, then that is the most manifest gap and the most manifest injustice. So it is natural that in considering this Bill we should say that we want any Assembly or any body which is thinking about the future administration and government of Northern Ireland to be able to think about that.

What are the subjects which the people of Northern Ireland are most anxious to control for themselves? What are the executive functions which they resent being administered by this Parliament, not because of the v ay in which the administration is carried out either by the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues or by those who went before, but because it is carried on in a manner which is not democratically controlled by themselves? What are the subjects to which that resentment most applies? I will tell the Committee—education, health, housing, planning, the environmental services, roads, water, sewerage. In short, they are most of the subjects which make up the intercourse, by speech or writing, between hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituents and their constituencies.

They are the things which touch people in their lives or in the lives of their families—their housing, their education, what they will be allowed to do with their houses, what they will be allowed to build and where, whether a supply of fresh water will be brought to them where they live and their means of communication with their neighbours. All these things are things which are the texture of daily life and which in the rest of the United Kingdom are administered under democratic local responsibility. It is that administration which the people of Northern Ireland most eagerly claim and which they can least easily be denied. If that is the kind of structure they want and the kind of rolling devolution that they want to roll, then let us enable them to roll it.

I invite the attention of the Committee to the way in which clause 1(1)(b) would read when these amendments are made: proposals for the resumption by persons responsible to the Assembly of"— now I have to insert——

Mr. Lawrence

Clause 1(1) (a).

Mr. Powell

No. I am reading clause 1(1)(b). I am obliged to the hon. and learned Member for Burton for his interruption because perhaps I was not being clear. The words "as aforesaid" in line 13 import what is already written in paragraph (a): by persons responsible to it"— the Assembly. We can write those words in substitution for the words "as aforesaid" in interpreting paragraph (b) following the amendment to which I hope the Committee will agree. It will then be: proposals for the resumption by persons responsible to the Assembly of some of the functions that were transferred functions under the 1972 regime. Those are functions which are at present administered by Northern Ireland Departments. Is there any reason why the Assembly should not administer those functions through the bodies which at present exercise them? Is there any reason why the elected Assembly for Northern Ireland should not exercise supervision and control over the administration of education by library and education boards, or over the administration of the health services by the health and social service boards, or the administration of housing by the Housing Executive?

Should it not be able to opt, if it wishes, to leave in the hands of the Executive those functions which in the rest of Great Britain are in the hands of Ministers, and to introduce democratic control into those subjects which are under democratic control in the rest of Great Britain? As for the environmental services, the Assembly might decide—certainly it should have the power to decide—to make a clean sweep to bring about genuine local government in the hands of either district councils as they exist or a system recognisably similar to district councils.

I am sorry that I have lost the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State again. I use such poor oratorical powers as I possess to rivet the Secretary of State to his seat on the Front Bench. Ever since the hon. Lady the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) referred to a bed of nails I have looked upon the right hon. Gentleman with eyes of more sympathy and compassion than those eyes ever exuded before. Perhaps it is because of the bed of nails that the right hon. Gentleman finds it ncessary so frequently to take a turn of refreshment from that seat in the House.

I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman wants to deny to his favoured new intended creature the right to do what one of his Ministers has been advocating. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell), who is the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland with responsibility for the environment, has been talking about the subject in the past few weeks. He talked to the first conference of the Association of Local Authorities. Perhaps because he found himself in such congenial company he said what some of us have been saying for a long time and suspected were the thoughts of the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and those of his predecessor—that it was about time that there was some real local government in the discharge of environmental functions. He said: A positive view needs to be taken and indeed following the election of an Assembly in the autumn a key question which will no doubt be considered is to what extent local politicians may wish to return power to district councils". 11.45 pm

We are used to receiving lectures whenever we have dared to say that. We have said it; indeed, we could not help saying it. The absurdity of those powers being withheld from representative bodies stares us in the face whenever we are in our constituencies. We have always been told by the Secretary of State or others, "But you can't do that. It is not possible, because they would all be quarrelling or discriminating." But it looks as though we were on the right lines after all, because the Under Secretary—the Secretary of State's right-hand man in environmental matters and his spokesman of local government—speaking in beautiful Newcastle in my constituency, in the shadow of the Mourne mountains, told the conference of local authorities: following the election of an Assembly in the Autumn"— I am glad that the Secretary of State has returned to hear this; it is good stuff and I am sure that he authorised it— a key question which will no doubt the Under-Secretary had no doubt, even though when we have raised the matter we have always been assaulted not with doubts, but with asseverations of impossibility; Oh, blessed be the Under-Secretary for he has no doubts!— be considered is to what extent local politicians may wish to return power to district councils or"— I must be fair and point out that the Under-Secretary went On— keep it at Stormont for their own exercise of devolved powers. The Under-Secretary thought it fair, as we think it fair and as the House must surely think it fair, that those who will be locally elected to decide these matters must at least have a choice whether they wish the powers to be given to local councils or kept under their own hands, as they are at present under the hands of Ministers.

Mr. Budgen

The right hon. Gentleman will know that many of us Conservative Members who do not follow these matters with the same particularity as he does have, nevertheless, put it to the Secretary of State that there may be something to be said, though it is not a very big point, for doing what we promised in our election manifesto we would do, which is to restore local government.

We have always received the reply that it would be unacceptable to the minority community. As a true Unionist, the right hon. Gentleman is concerned with the rights of the minority, so will he explain his understanding of how the minority community would become reconciled to such an enhancement of local government, as so helpfully suggested 'by the Under-Secretary?

Mr. Powell

I will respond to the hon. Gentleman's request. I would have said before resuming my seat that an additional commendation of the amendments to Conservative Members is that they provide a means, within the scope of the legislation, of achieving what the Conservatives held out in their election address to the people of the Province. It is about as near the realisation of the natural implication of those words as one could obtain.

I am asked how I reconcile that advocacy with the well-known assertion that a minority—I presume a different minority in different parts of the Province, but a minority here or a minority there—would as a consequence be maltreated. I reconcile that without difficulty. The House, ultimately, is the protector of all minorities within the United Kingdom. It is so by its nature, because the House is a congress of minorities. It could not, without destroying its nature, fail to secure equality of rights to minorities of every description in every part of the United Kingdom.

So long as Northern Ireland remains a part of the United Kingdom, and so long as the House retains the right of surveillance and control over Northern Ireland—a right which a new clause which we shall not be dealing with as early as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) would have liked seeks to reinforce by legislative provision—this House remains the guarantor. I do not believe that the House would long remain passive when it was brought to its attention that such and such, under its aegis and protection, was happening in one part of the United Kingdom or another.

I need not rely on that ultimate recourse of all minorities everywhere in the United Kingdom. I rely upon the proceedings of the Secretary of State for the Environment in England and Wales. I have not followed the proceedings as closely as I might, but, from what I understand, the Secretary of State for the Environment goes to considerable lengths in saying and enforcing what local authorities under his surveillance can be allowed to do. Indeed, it appears that he sometimes seeks to exercise that interference in matters which might be left in the control of local authorities so that their ratepayers bear the consequences of their decisions.

Let that pass. We are no strangers in the rest of the United Kingdom to the fact that this House created local government. Local government is not the direct descendant of something in the Saxon kingdoms. In creating local government, this House has not set it upon the political waters to drift in any direction. A board or Minister has always retained supervision. There is no question but that powers will continue to be possessed by any Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in almost any conceivable circumstances of intervention in the event of certain trigger possibilities being realised. I cannot imagine that one would set up, in any part of the United Kingdom, a form of local government for which there was no ministerial responsibility to the House for the prevention of malpractice by local government.

That is my second and main point in answer to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. It would inevitably be part of such a system that ministerial responsibility in the House would be there to be invoked. It would have to be justified, of course, but he would have that power and the House would be secure in the assertion that there was no question of minorities suffering from the exercise of local democratic responsibility.

My last observation is that in the powers that the district councils have there is considerable scope, if they like to indulge in it, for discrimination in the advisory, as well as the executive decisions which they take. There would be no difficulty in constructing situations of deliberate disadvantage to one part of a district or another part of a district.

I can speak only from my own experience. In my constituency, I have the whole or the greater part of three local authorities—one with a large Unionist majority, one with a large anti-Unionist majority, and one with a very near balance. I can assure the House that, far from being engaged in cutting one another's throats, they are engaged in administration, debate and the exposure of local needs and grievances in a manner which is extraordinarily like the behaviour of local authorities in Great Britain—except, of course, that their area of responsibility is much more narrow. So from my own knowledge and experience, Unionists and anti-Unionists who are elected, for example to the Newry and Mourne district council, may pass political resolutions by a majority, but when it comes to the administration and the provision of recreational facilities they do not discriminate between a Unionist village and a non-Unionist village. There would be a great row in the council chamber if such a thing were thought upon.

Mr. Budgen

Will the right hon. Gentleman explain how he understands the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Mitchell) in the event of the Bill becoming law? Would that not mean that an enhanced local government in Northern Ireland would be ultimately considered and surveyed by the devolved administration within Northern Ireland, and thus be shorn of that guarantee to which he referred—the duty that each and every right hon. and hon. Member has in the House of seing that justice is done to every citizen of the United Kingdom?

Mr. Powell

I think that the hon. Gentleman has unconsciously reverted to the first half of my argument, because he is really talking about legislative devolution of the power to create by local law a local system of local government. It is not my conception of the United Kingdom that we proceed to create local government in that way, and I do not believe that that is what was meant or envisaged in the speech that I quoted of the hon. Member for Basingstoke. Knowing him as I and we iio, I would not believe that.

I have one last observation with which I want to leave the fruitful question which was addressed to me by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. He might have asked, "Why have certain people succeeded in so brainwashing the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessors in that position that they apparently genuinely believe this absurd story that local government is unworkable and undesirable because it would be inherently discriminatory and therefore not desired by the minority?" Soon after the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor came to office, I said to him, "Don't believe me, don't take any notice, if you don't want to, of my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux), or of any of us, just go and ask. Just go, for example, to any of the district councils in my constituency, or all of them, and ask 'Would you like to administer water and sewerage in your area? Would you like to administer planning decisions?'"I am perfectly prepared to rest on that test, because I am absolutely certain what the result would be. It is what they say already, and it is not just the Unionist councils which say it. The Down district council, which does not have a Unionist majority, has been saying it just as much as the Lisburn district council, which has a Unionist majority. They would say, "That is just what we want." I cannot imagine any district council in Northern Ireland saying to the Secretary of State, "The last thing that we want are any more powers. The last thing that we deserve is any increased responsibility. We are quite content with swimming baths, playing fields and the odd bus shelter. Please go away, and take your wares somewhere else." I have always been prepared to ask. The same invitation is extended to the right hon. Gentleman.

12 midnight

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West might ask "How came the brainwashing? Who does the brainwashing and why? In whose interests is it to assert and to seek to convince Ministers and the House that local government is rejected and unacceptable in Northern Ireland?" I shall tell the hon. Gentleman. It is the people who do not want Northern Ireland to be part of the Unix ed Kingdom. One of the ways in which they hope to see Northern Ireland moved out of the United Kingdom is by creating such a sense of frustration in Northern Ireland in that it is not given the same rights and forms of administration as the rest of the United Kingdom that in the end, in one way or another, it can be wangled out of the United Kingdom. It is because those who have spread that view are opposed to the Union and recognise that local government is a commendation of the Union that that myth has been put about.

I believe that in my short speech that the Committee has received with relative patience, despite the hour, I have opened up preliminarily a large part of the area that will have to be considered in more detail as the Committee proceeds with its work.

I repeat that we are not saying: "Force the Assembly to have this or no alternative." What we are saying is that the Assembly ought to be able to choose these alternatives if it wishes. It ought to be able to choose executive without legislative devolution. It ought to be able to choose local government rather than centralisation. We ought not to narrow the scope. We ought to widen the scope. That will be in the spirit of much that the right hon. Gentleman said and of the opportunities which we provide for the Assembly.

I think that we are opening up an area of debate. It is a large subject. It is one that, at this stage, the Committee will want to traverse. It is convenient that by the witching hour one should at any rate have opened up the subject for discussion, from which point it can be continued perhaps with more likelihood of a happy outcome, on a later occasion.

Mr. Prior

On a point of order, Mr. Armstrong. I said about an hour and ten minutes ago that I felt that we should make a start on the amendment and see how we got on and that after deciding how, far we would get I would not expect the Committee to sit too late. The time has come when I should ask the Committee to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

To report Progress and ask leave to sit again.—[Mr. Thompson.]

Committee report Progress; to sit again tomorrow.

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