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Session 2005 - 06 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill |
Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Geoffrey Farrar, Hugh
Farren Committee Clerks †
attended the Committee Standing Committee BTuesday 25 April 2006(Morning)[David Taylor in the Chair]Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill10.30
am
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that there is a money
resolution in connection with the Bill and copies are available in the
room. I also remind hon. Members that adequate notice should be given
of amendments. As a general rule, my co-Chairman and I do not intend to
called starred amendments. In addition, I ask hon. Members please to
ensure that mobile phones, pagers and so on are turned off or on silent
mode during Committee sittings. Finally, I am content on this occasion
for hon. Members to remove their jackets if they so wish. We come now
to the programme motion, on which debate may continue for up to half an
hour.
That the order
in which proceedings in Standing Committee on the Northern Ireland
(Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill are to be taken shall be Clauses 8 and
9, new Clauses relating to Part 2, new Schedules relating to Part 2,
Clauses 13 to 17, Schedule 1, Clause 18, new Clauses relating to Part
4, new Schedules relating to Part 4, Clauses 23 to 27, Schedule 3,
Clauses 28 to 31, Schedules 4 and 5, Clauses 32 to 34, remaining
proceedings on the
Bill. I welcome you,
Mr. Taylor, and your co-Chairman, Mr. Atkinson, to the Committee. I
have served under you on several occasions and I know that you will
discharge your duty fairly and efficiently.
The debate in the Programming
Sub-Committee took less than 30 seconds, so I assume that there is no
opposition from the Official Opposition or others to the programme
motion and I hope that the Committee will support it. It gives us scope
for two days of consideration, although I hope that we can finish
earlier. Mr.
Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): I join the Minister
in welcoming you to the Committee, Mr. Taylor. I have also
had the pleasure of serving under you and I am sure that this, too,
will be a pleasurable experience.
The Minister is right in
assuming that we have no objection to the programme motion, but I
should make just one point, which I have raised before in Committee and
in the House. We have rather a lot of Northern Ireland business to
consider at the moment. We were due to sit today and on Thursday, but
the introduction of another Bill means that we will now not sit on
Thursday. In addition, we had a rather ridiculous
situation on Tuesday or Wednesday last week, when an important statement
was made in the Chamber at the same time as an important statutory
instrument Committee was beginning—the two items of business
overlapped, even though both were extremely
important. I
therefore ask the Government to be a little sympathetic to Opposition
parties, which do not have as many Front Benchers and officials as the
Government. I also ask them to think about their timetabled
legislation. The Bill deals with important issues, such as devolving
policing and justice matters to the Assembly. The other Bill, which
will be introduced tomorrow, deals with the important issue of setting
up the Assembly. Such issues are not trivial, and I ask the Government
to give a little more thought to the timetabling of Northern Ireland
business. Having said that, I have no objection to the programme
motion. Question
put and agreed
to.
Clause 8Tenure
‘Her Majesty The Queen on
the recommendation
of'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 12, in clause 8, page 7, line 35, leave out
‘Secretary of State' and insert ‘Her
Majesty'. No. 13, in
clause 8, page 7, line 37, leave out ‘dismiss' and
insert ‘recommend to Her Majesty
the dismissal
of'.
Mr.
Robertson: I have just agreed to the programme motion, but
I do not intend to fill both sittings, although if we need to do so, we
shall. I do not want to drag debates out, so I shall speak briefly to
the amendment, which is intended to probe the Minister.
I have mentioned in the
Chamber the fact that the police ombudsman, for example, is appointed
by Her Majesty the Queen, no doubt on the recommendation of the
Secretary of State. However, the chief electoral officer is to be
appointed by the Secretary of State. We had a long debate on that issue
on the Floor of the House during discussion of a separate
amendment. I was
concerned that there could be a rather incestuous relationship between
the Secretary of State and the chief electoral officer. It particularly
concerned me that, in circumstances that were not clearly
defined—they were defined by the words “public
interest”—the Secretary of State would have the power to
cancel a canvass of the electorate if he felt that
appropriate. We could
not satisfactorily tease from the Minister the circumstances in which
it might be in the public interest to cancel such a canvass. I have
tabled the amendment to explore the situation again and ask the
Minister why it is appropriate for the Secretary of State to make the
appointment. That seems inconsistent with other, similar
appointments.
Mr.
Hanson: I hope that I can help the hon. Gentleman,
and I fully understand why he tabled his amendment. I refer him to the
statutory provision that provides for the appointment of the chief
electoral officer—the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1962,
in which no mention is made of Her Majesty the Queen. However, the post
is, is understood to be and is defined as a Crown appointment. The
wording of the clause will preserve the current position; in essence,
the chief electoral officer will still be a Crown
appointment. There is
no need for the amendment. In fact, inserting a reference to the Queen
would put the chief electoral officer, for the first time, on the same
statutory footing as, for example, senior clergy in the Church of
England. The amendment is unnecessary because the post will be a Crown
appointment. Given that assurance, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will
withdraw his
amendment.
Mr.
Robertson: I am grateful to the Minister for his
explanation. The concerns that we raised in Committee in the House
remain—we were not satisfied with the explanation on that
occasion—but I accept that we were discussing a different
amendment on a different day. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment, by leave,
withdrawn. Lady
Hermon (North Down) (UUP): I beg to move amendment No. 20,
in clause 8, page 7, line 30, at end
insert— ‘(1A) A person must
not be appointed as Chief Electoral Officer for less than two years at
a
time.'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
following amendments: No. 5, in clause 8, page 7, line 31, leave out
subsection (2). No.
6, in clause 8, page 7, line 33, leave out subsection
(3). No. 7, in clause
8, page 8, line 5, leave out subsection
(6). No. 23, in
clause 8, page 8, line 10, leave out ‘plus' and insert
‘less'. No. 8,
in clause 8, page 8, line 11, leave out subsection
(7).
Lady
Hermon: I, too, am delighted to serve under your
chairmanship, Mr. Taylor—in this and perhaps a second
sitting. We are still
discussing clause 8, which concerns the tenure of the chief electoral
officer. Amendments Nos. 20 and 23 stand in my name and I shall say a
little about each. However, I would like to remind the Committee of the
words of the Minister in his winding-up speech on Second Reading.
Speaking about the chief electoral officer and his independence, the
Minister
said: “The
proposal will bring the chief electoral officer into line with other
modern approaches and modern terms and conditions of
appointment.”—[Official Report, 13 March 2006;
Vol. 443, c. 1244.] I
would be thrilled and delighted to hear from the Minister which other
modern approaches and modern terms and conditions of appointment are
mirrored by
those of the chief electoral officer. I say that specifically because,
under clause 8(3), the period for which a person holds office as chief
electoral officer must not exceed 10 years. That seems clear. There is
no discretion. This
is where my amendment No. 23 is particularly important. It applies to
subsection (6), which drives a coach and horses through the provision
that the fixed-term appointment must not exceed 10 years. It sets out
an exception to that golden rule and states:
“This section applies
in relation to the person who at commencement holds the office of Chief
Electoral Officer as if...the total period which under subsection
(3) must not be exceeded were 10 years plus the period of his
appointment before
commencement.” If
the Minister wishes to have a fixed term and wishes to have, as he said
on Second Reading, the chief electoral officer brought into line with
other modern approaches, let us have a fixed term of 10 years and let
us replace the word “plus” with “less”. Let
us have 10 years. Let us have a fixed-term appointment. That is the
purpose of amendment No.
23. I turn now to
amendment No. 20, which is the lead amendment in the group. Curiously,
subsection (2)
states: “A
person must not be appointed as Chief Electoral Officer for more than 5
years at a time.” That
seems clear. However, it means that the person who is appointed as
chief electoral officer could be appointed for a week, a month or an
hour. I gently suggest to the Minister that one of the modern examples
to which he referred on Second Reading could have been a reflection of
the appointment of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. According
to the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998, an appointment as ombudsman
may be full-time or part-time, but
it “shall be for a
period of 7 years.” That
was the modern approach to take to the appointment of the chief
electoral officer.
Under the Bill, the chief
electoral officer has no security of tenure and cannot be appointed for
more than five years. Amendment No. 20 would secure a basic minimum
tenure of two years for the chief electoral officer. That is a
significant and responsible position, particularly in Northern Ireland
where we have a history of electoral fraud. Can the Minister explain
why this phraseology has been used? Is it just poor drafting? Will he
accept the amendments, even at this late
stage? 10.45
am
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