Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The effectiveness of the institutions of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, HC 781
Tuesday 21 March 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 21 March 2023.
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Sir Robert Buckland; Stephen Farry; Mary Kelly Foy; Claire Hanna.
Questions 148 - 185
Witnesses
I: Tim Attwood, Secretary, John and Pat Hume Foundation; Dr Anthony Soares, Director, Centre for Cross Border Studies; Gráinne Walsh, Director, Stratagem; Ann Watt, Director, Pivotal.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– (GFA0012) – Centre for Cross Border Studies
– (GFA0026) – Stratagem and the John and Pat Hume Foundation
Witnesses: Tim Attwood, Dr Anthony Soares, Gráinne Walsh, Ann Watt.
Q148 Chair: Good morning, colleagues and witnesses. This is a further session in our ongoing inquiry to review the operational ability and effectiveness of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, coming up to its 25th anniversary. It is a delight to be back at Stormont. Thanks to the Speaker for allowing us, as a Westminster Committee, to hold our meeting here during a busy week of engagements and meetings north and south of the border. It is nice to be back.
I will start by asking the four of you a question that may be a bit of heart and head, if you will. In a couple of bullet points each, what does or did the Good Friday Agreement mean to you personally? What has it meant and signified? I will start with Miss Walsh, who is desperately trying not to catch my eye.
Gráinne Walsh: Many thanks for that question, Chair. The Good Friday Agreement means that I have lived and worked in Belfast for over 26 years. When I was growing up in Glasnevin on the north side of Dublin, there was no way that I would have said that I would be sitting here today or advising organisations about politics and public policy on this part of the island. That is what the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement means to me.
Ann Watt: It means a situation of peace or, at least, relative peace, which is very different from what I grew up with. There were daily incidents that were very real for people here and across the UK, Ireland and the world. It means that I am bringing my child up in a situation where he is not experiencing that on the news every day and where, I hope, we have more of a recognition that this is a shared place and we are looking at a shared future together.
Dr Soares: Chair, you asked what it means personally so that is how I will answer, rather than giving a corporate answer.
Chair: Yes.
Dr Soares: I am still considered a blow-in to this place. I have been here for only 32 years, so I was here prior to the Good Friday Agreement and the ceasefires. I remember going to vote for the Good Friday Agreement as a moment of hope. At the same time, I was conscious that I was from outside. In a certain sense, it was as if I was interfering in an internal conversation, but it was one that we needed to be part of. That is a reminder that not everybody who went in on the day of the referendum was necessarily from these islands, but they had come to this place wanting to make a life in this place. The Good Friday Agreement represented the hope that we could all share for a more positive future.
Chair: Thank you.
Tim Attwood: As Claire will know, I was in the SDLP back-room team and had the honour of working for John Hume and Séamus Mallon in the lead-up to the talks. I was there on Good Friday morning with all the other exhausted politicians. That sense of inspiration and hope was there at that moment. Like Ann, I have young children—one aged 15 and twins aged eleven—and live in West Belfast, probably one of the constituencies that was most affected by the violence of the Troubles. It is wonderful that they have been able to live—go about their business, travel around, go into town and be involved in sports and other activities—in relative peace. We just need to recapture that inspiration and a massive piece of hope from 25 years ago.
Q149 Chair: A number of you used the word “hope”. Witnesses in other sessions have referred to the bravery, the leadership, the anxiety and the idea of, “If we all hold hands and jump, we do not know where we will land but at least we will land together”. Hope is best spurred when you know what you are looking into but you are motivated for something better because what went before was so awful. Do you have any concerns that the generations that have come to maturity since 1998, particularly those who are at school today in Northern Ireland, do not know enough about the why: they know what the Good Friday Agreement is, but they do not know why it was so important and why it needs to be cherished and preserved because of the horribleness of life beforehand? Do you have any anxieties about people forgetting and therefore treating it less seriously than it needs to be treated? When I say “it”, I mean the agreement itself.
Ann Watt: I am not sure that young people growing up today even know that much about the agreement. You said that they know about the agreement; they might know about it in very general terms, but we are not, as far as I know, teaching it as part of the curriculum, not across the age range anyway. It might come up if you do a particular history or politics course. In the first instance, we need to inform young people about the agreement.
Young people will say that the past is not relevant to them and the issues that they care about now. They care about climate change, mental health and job opportunities. However, there is an issue about their not knowing the extent of the problems that there were before and the impact of those on daily lives. That will vary hugely depending on a person’s family background, community background and so on. To see the value of what the agreement achieved, we have to see what we have moved on from, and there is a gap in that understanding at present.
Chair: Okay; thank you.
Dr Soares: I agree with Ann that young people do not necessarily know the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts. That said, what we found since 2016 is that that is not just the case with young people; many older people do not know what the Good Friday Agreement, in all its parts, means and how those are interlinked.
Young people have a different vision of what the future means for them. The Good Friday Agreement was a vehicle for that future. Again, it is not just young people but some politicians in the institutions who might have forgotten the why, the importance of the institutions and the importance of making sure that they function and function effectively for the good of all people in Northern Ireland.
Chair: Thank you.
Gráinne Walsh: In one way, the institutions that operate in Northern Ireland are no different from the political institutions across western Europe and, indeed, parliamentary conversations about democracy. There is a challenge in the disconnect between people, particularly young people, and established politics. We need hope not just in times of political negotiations but every day. How people relate to the institutions is based on how they make them feel or what services and outcomes they are delivering for them. If there is not that day-to-day connectivity, it is difficult and challenging to make it real for them and for them to value that. I would fully expect there to be a disconnect across generations, but it is about having new conversations about how the institutions are relevant for everybody here. That is a shared endeavour across Northern Ireland, the UK and the Republic of Ireland.
Chair: Thank you.
Tim Attwood: As a result of a consultation, the Hume foundation, with other peace partners, held a peace summit two weeks ago in Derry primarily with young people through YouthAction Northern Ireland and the Youth Council for Northern Ireland. I was surprised that some of them had a lot of knowledge of the Good Friday Agreement. The really interesting thing was that those young people were very positive about the future. They want this place to work. There were individuals from loyalist areas—15 year-olds—who said that they wanted to go back to the guns, but they were the exception rather than the rule. One of the young people said, “The conflict was not the problem; the peace is”, because, in so many places, they do not see the dividend. Some working-class people in parts of Belfast or Derry do not see the dividend. Where are the jobs? Where is the investment that gives them the hope for the future? As Ann said, people have moved on to other issues, but there was unrelenting positivity among the young people about making this place work.
Chair: It is the process of peace, of prosperity and of tolerance, is it not? It is those three things; otherwise, you get the, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”, sort of response.
Thank you for those answers.
Q150 Sir Robert Buckland: Developing on from those answers, it is good to hear that some young people are, indeed, more aware of the detail of the agreement. Until we had the seemingly endless debates about the protocol, strand two and strand three seemed to be not as well understood or not as much to the forefront as, perhaps, the discussions about strand one. What is the significance of the interrelationship between the various institutions in the different strands, and why is that important? It seems to me that, if the process is to continue to live, those strands are as important as strand one.
Dr Soares: I will preface my response with a comment as director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies, an organisation that was born of the Good Friday Agreement. It was established in September 1999 specifically to support cross-border co-operation, with a focus on north-south co-operation but also east-west co-operation and co-operation between these islands and our European partners. For us, therefore, the functioning of strand two is essential, as is the functioning of strand three. However, as you know, strand two in particular depends on the functioning of strand one, so, if strand one is not functioning, strand two is not functioning. If the North/South Ministerial Council had been fully functioning after its establishment, it would normally have met 27 times a year. In the past six years, there have been 31 meetings in total, and that is because of the non-functioning of strand one.
Strands two and three are extremely important. Strand two, on co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, is vital because of our geographical proximity, so it makes sense to co-operate and to exploit opportunities on a north-south basis, but the east-west dimension is also extremely important. When talking to our Scottish, Welsh and English colleagues and counterparts, we remind them, “The Good Friday Agreement is yours as well. It is not a thing for just Northern Ireland that does not belong to you and in which you do not really have any direct involvement. You are part of it”. It represents the totality of relations within and across these islands. We all have a responsibility to make it function, to really own that Good Friday Agreement, and that includes Scotland, Wales and England, not forgetting the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, obviously, as part of the British-Irish Council.
Under strands two and three there are institutions whose potential is really ripe for exploiting. People, however, have to commit to those institutions, including the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which itself has not exactly been functioning to its full potential over the years. In more recent times, we have seen a bit more activity there, but, again, when that conference meets and when the British-Irish Council meets, we need to see senior UK Government representatives at those institutions, and I mean the most senior. In most cases, the Irish Government send the Taoiseach, and we need to see the equivalent from the UK Government to show that they are committed to strands two and three as well.
Gráinne Walsh: Apart from the institutional piece, there are those who make the institutions work: the civil servants working in co-operation with politicians. From the work that we did in the Future Politics project and, most recently, with the Institute for Government, we know and understand where the current fault lines are in maximising the co-operation, best practice and capacity building in the Civil Service here and across the water. That is really key. We talk about fractured relationships or lack of interpersonal relationships between politicians as a result of the disruption of the last number of years, but the same has to be said for our civil servants. It is really important that they also benefit from any support and focus that we have to apply when looking at the future of the institutions.
Q151 Sir Robert Buckland: From my experience, when I handled the role of Advocate General for Northern Ireland and the devolution side as a Law Officer, that represented a very important part of the UK Government’s working closely in a legal sense, but devolve-and-forget has been a real issue with the UK Government. In recent years, a concerted attempt has been made to move away from that and an instruction issued for Ministers to say, “This is not good enough”. What sort of impact has that devolve-and-forget attitude had over the years?
Dr Soares: May I come back in on that and also follow on from what Gráinne said? I will respond initially to your question about “devolve and forget”. We cannot forget that there is a constant responsibility that has to be worked at all the time. Just like with the Good Friday Agreement and the peace and reconciliation process, it is ongoing work. We cannot take our foot off the pedal. We have to keep working at it.
On the Civil Service and officials, we as an organisation recognise the need—I will use this term, but we could use others—to border-proof policy and legislation, from wherever it is coming, to make sure that, when legislation and policy are being developed, they support co-operation, whether that is on a north-south or an east-west basis. That means that officials need to take on the concept of border proofing. For example, the Cabinet handbook in the Republic of Ireland states that any policy that is being developed must be checked against north-south and east-west co-operation to determine whether it will affect it. We do not carry out the same impact assessment on how a policy or legislation might impact on north-south or east-west relations.
Q152 Chair: That is about more than just compatibility, is it not? It is an impact assessment as a second piece of work.
Dr Soares: It is in the Cabinet handbook as something that officials must do. It states that legislation must be checked against whether it impacts on north-south or east-west co-operation and relations. We need to take that on, definitely at Westminster but also here in Stormont. The statutory instrument that came out yesterday applies a whole other level of scrutiny by the Assembly—hopefully a functioning Assembly very soon—and puts the Assembly, albeit in a restricted way, on a par with what happens in the Scottish Parliament, which has a Committee that looks at European and international affairs. The Welsh Senedd also has a Committee that looks at international relations. We have not had anything equivalent here in Northern Ireland that looks at that external dimension, and not just at blockages but at opportunities. We need to have that outward-looking dimension in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but that means that officials must also have the capacity. Our fear is that, unless that capacity is built up, once this place is functioning again—hopefully very soon—a lot of capacity will be taken up within the new Committee structure that is the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee. We need to build up capacity there so that we are able to scrutinise the policies and legislation coming from Europe.
I will add one other thing. There may also be a dimension there for an Assembly to look at policy and legislation that is coming out of Westminster and at how that might impact on north-south and east-west relations. It is not just about European legislation and what Europe might do but about what Westminster might do and about how legislation from Westminster might impact on north-south and east-west relations.
Q153 Chair: May I make a cri de cœur? You are a largish panel, and we have a second panel this morning. I would love to for this to run on, but we have a very tight schedule, so, as my colleagues know, pithy questions—here is the manifestation of pithiness, Dr Farry—and pithy answers would be appreciated in order to allow us to cover all the ground that we want to cover.
Tim Attwood: John Hume always said that the process would take generations, so you can never take your eye off the ball on any aspect of the Good Friday Agreement and you need to work at it. Through the Future Politics conference, Stratagem and the John and Pat Hume Foundation had the support of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, which is an Irish business organisation based in the Twenty-six Counties. This year, one of its primary goals is to promote the Good Friday Agreement, because it knows that north-south and east-west working makes sense. Its research shows that stability and peace help not only the North but the island economy and the UK economy. We need to keep our eyes on the prize. Peace and stability give prosperity not only to this part of the island but to the whole island and the whole of these islands. We need to work at that really hard.
Gráinne Walsh: There have also been practical examples over the years, including the sugar tax and the apprenticeship levy. There are any number of policy initiatives where we have seen a disconnect between the intended consequences from Westminster and how they have manifested here. I will not say any more, because we do not have enough time, but we could talk about that all day long. There are practical things that we can do to resolve those challenges.
Q154 Claire Hanna: We will come on to issues of attitude and culture, but I want to ask about the strand one institutions, which have been a focus of our inquiry. We have heard from a number of witnesses about the potential need or ways to change the process for the formation of an Executive and move from mandatory coalition to voluntary coalition. Would that facilitate a more robust Programme for Government and, ultimately, delivery?
Ann Watt: My view on that, which is in the written evidence, is that the current institutions could work with the right approach. The Good Friday Agreement was all about good faith, partnership and everybody stretching themselves and working together. From the tone and wording of the Good Friday Agreement, it is very clear that it was uncomfortable and difficult but there was an agreement to move forward together. We have lost that attitude of partnership, of trust and of trying to take a constructive and businesslike approach to making the institutions work. I am aware that I am not answering your question, but, I suppose, I am saying that the current institutions could work. They have worked during certain periods—not perfectly, but they have worked. In recent years, the situation has been extremely problematic—we have had no Government for four of the last six years—but, with a restoration of the behaviours and the culture, the institutions could work.
Q155 Claire Hanna: Gráinne, do you want to pick up on that? Those are all well-made points about the attitude. As I said, we will probably end up coming back to that, but what is your view, looking at the structures and the potential or need for reform?
Gráinne Walsh: I will not answer your question either, to be perfectly honest with you.
Claire Hanna: It is going to be a long day, Chair.
Chair: It is unusual to have rebellion from the witnesses. I am used to rebellions by members but not from that end.
Gráinne Walsh: My apologies, Chair. It is up to others, not me, to make recommendations about the specific arrangements.
Claire Hanna: I am putting a line through quite a few of these questions.
Chair: Pretend that it was up to you. Indulge yourself.
Gráinne Walsh: It has to be a process of conversations and deliberations by politicians, with experts involved and giving advice. There is also a value in having some sort of citizen voice in that process. Whatever decision we come to, whether it is weighted majority or whatever it looks like—there have been recommendations by others who are far more expert than me—it all has to be done in the context of fully understanding the implications of what we are doing and being mindful of any unintended consequences. We cannot just look at institutional reform in and of itself; we need to look at it in the context of the Programme for Government but also of how it relates to community planning and other issues and developments that we have seen. It is something for a conversation. Nobody has made me First Minister for the day, so I will not make specific recommendations.
Claire Hanna: I think that we have those powers under our Standing Orders.
Chair: We do. I believe that they are vested in me by the Speaker, so, if I appoint you First Minister—
Tim Attwood: You will be the first woman Speaker. No, Eileen Bell was.
Gráinne Walsh: Let us not go there.
Q156 Claire Hanna: Does your centre have a view on institutional reform?
Dr Soares: We do.
Claire Hanna: Can you tell us it?
Dr Soares: Unfortunately, the content of my answer is probably going to disappoint you, but I think that I put it in our written submission. We did a project that involved various community groups in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland around the Good Friday Agreement. The thing that came out strongly from all of the conversations that we had was that the declaration of support right at the start of the agreement had been lost; the political parties in the Assembly had forgotten about the declaration of support, which is about making the institutions function for the good of Northern Ireland. We can tinker around with things and make modifications, but unless the politicians who occupy this place actually make that declaration of support and have it as the first thing in their mind, things will not function.
Making changes, for example, to the process of nomination for First Minister and deputy First Minister and securing effective representation for those who identify as neither nationalist nor unionist should be looked at, but there has to be consent; it cannot be imposed. There has to be a process of dialogue that involves civic society. We come again to the fact that there is no Northern Ireland Civic Forum or north-south all-island consultative forum. There are no places for that.
Q157 Claire Hanna: I think that we will come back to some of those specific issues, but I will approach it in a different way: either by design or operation, why have the institutions not delivered good policy outcomes for Northern Ireland?
Gráinne Walsh: They are very young institutions. We have not, frankly, had a run at it yet, to use a sophisticated political term. There have been stops and starts, which we are all familiar with. There is also misalignment between our institutional arrangements and our policy aspirations. You saw the development of an outcomes-based Programme for Government. However, we have not seen a mapping of the institutions, such as the Committee system, to track outcomes. We have the Environment Committee, but does that track a specific outcome in the Programme for Government? No, it does not, because we have not had the institutions up and running for long enough to progress that as we should.
There are many options. There will be differences in ideological approach. Coalition Governments are really difficult at the best of times. Mandatory coalitions are quite fraught, particularly in a post-conflict society where key issues have not been resolved. We have not dealt with many of the legacy issues. When the system and people come under pressure, we default to our old, bad ways.
Q158 Claire Hanna: I suppose that we are trying to get at reforms, short of lobotomising the elected Members, that could change things. I think that we are all in agreement about the stop-start nature of things. The fact that the Assembly has been down for 40% of the time is part of that. Are there recommendations that you would make? Perhaps better mapping of Committees is one. Are there any other structural changes?
Gráinne Walsh: A duty to co-operate would be helpful. Form has to follow function. We need to see a commitment and a sense of common purpose.
Q159 Claire Hanna: Is there a way in which you think that could be designed in structurally, as opposed to an attitudinal change that collective responsibility and—?
Gráinne Walsh: Yes, it could be done legislatively, and that would lead the way to cultural change, but that requires people having time and being supported to make those right decisions. It is about capacity-building for politicians and civil servants. It is a system-wide change.
Tim Attwood: With regard to the Programme for Government, my brother Alex, who was a Minister in two Executives, always said that Ministers went into Government; they did not take power. They became slaves to the system. How do we bring that creativity? How do you bring Ministers together, without civil servants, to think creatively about all the cross-cutting issues? The silo mentality happens in all Governments. It is difficult in power sharing, as Gráinne says, but it is even more difficult when you have the divisions that we have in the North. How do you overcome that? You need to overcome that silo mentality.
Last night, we had an event with Leo Green, a former adviser to Sinn Féin, who has worked on power sharing in the Balkans and Northern Ireland. They have more vetoes than we have. Dawn Purvis, vice chair of the Hume Foundation and former Member of the Legislative Assembly, has said that trust is a huge issue. She came up with an idea. I know that some of the MPs have been on this island. She said, “Let’s have ‘I am a politician: get me out of here’”. Put the politicians together and they have to work together to get out of there because that builds trust. There is a lack of fundamental trust among the Executive parties. That is portrayed to the public, who do not trust the politicians.
Q160 Claire Hanna: Ann, can you give us an idea of the reforms that we can make to structures? There is a lot on attitude.
Ann Watt: I will not labour the point, but I do think that attitude, culture, trust, leadership and behaviours are all absolutely key and are the most important things here. What can we put in place to help that? A joint Programme for Government is essential. It is essential for any Government, yet we have not had one here since 2015. Well, it was set in 2011 and ran until 2015. Similarly, there has not been a multi-year Budget here since that for 2011-15. You have an Executive in place, with politicians who are elected on all sorts of different manifesto commitments, and there is no agreement about what they will actually do, which—taking a sidestep into the current situation—leaves civil servants, at the minute, without even a Programme for Government to follow. A Programme for Government, which says, “This is what we are about as a Government and Executive, and this is what we are working towards”, is essential. Then, the hope would be that individual Ministers would know what their contribution is to that, whether it is something that is primarily for their Department or something that is cross-cutting. That is absolutely key.
The other characteristics of how government has worked here, and things that need to be addressed, include the fact that, because the political situation is so fraught, there is an absence of long-term planning; it is all really just about survival. There is an absence of long-term strategic thinking. You can look at the lack of investment in infrastructure, the absence of a climate change strategy or Climate Change Act until last year or the failure to address educational inequality. Those things are big, long-term problems, but there has not been the sustained focus on them that there needs to be. There is a lack of long-term planning and focus on the delivery of real outcomes that really tracks what is happening in health outcomes, education, climate change, infrastructure or whatever. There is no focus on delivering better outcomes in the real world.
Difficult choices are not made either. We can see very clearly in our health service at the minute that the choices that should have been made about reconfiguration have not been made because they are politically unpopular.
Claire Hanna: Thank you.
Q161 Chair: I just want to pick up on a few thoughts that have emerged through the questions and, indeed, your answers. Quite a lot of this hard bakes and perpetuates, does it not? The Northern Ireland of 25 years ago is not reflective of Northern Ireland as it is today. Would there be any merit in removing the need to self-designate as unionist, nationalist or other, and, effectively, have MLAs sign up to a sort of NI version of the Nolan principles of public life, which are that we will serve the public and be respectful, tolerant, honest, transparent, etc? Could that be a stepping stone? If the simple answer is yes, say yes. If the simple answer is no, say no.
Gráinne Walsh: It is an idea that is absolutely worth considering in the mix of options. Again, as I said, it would have to be mapped out, thought through and done with consent and consensus, frankly. It comes back to the original question: are the institutions relevant to young people? If their reality is not about two communities—two identities—there is a disconnect, so how do we make the institutions more relevant? Those are the challenges for us all.
Q162 Chair: Is there a quick word from anyone else on that?
Tim Attwood: Put it this way: we tinkered with the Good Friday Agreement at St Andrews, and that did not help, especially around the First and deputy First Minister.
Chair: There is a danger in saying that it is carved in tablets of stone and is a non-iterative, non-organic, non-living document. It provides the foundation stone—
Tim Attwood: Some of those changes did not help.
Q163 Chair: Indeed.
The other quick question that I wanted to ask—it is a quick question; whether the answer will be quick, I am not sure—is about the citizens’ assemblies, civic panels and greater engagement that a number of you have referenced. You have all referred to the lamentably depressing figures on how often Stormont has not sat, the lack of north-south engagement and so on. When do the public just say, “A curse on all your houses. We are interested in outcomes, improvements and betterment, and all that you people are interested in is process. Process does not improve the health service, achieve better educational attainment, grow the economy or improve the housing stock. When you have stopped talking about process and you are prepared to focus on outcomes, come back and talk to us; otherwise, we will just go off and live our lives despite you rather than because of you”?
Dr Soares: I will start on that by bringing it back to north-south, cross-border co-operation. Whether or not the strand two institutions are functioning, co-operation continues. Be it business or civic society, they continue to co-operate. Civic society continues to do its work. The community and voluntary sector does its hardest work when the institutions are not functioning. It is extremely difficult, but they are committed to the work that they do and the communities that they serve. They want to make their lives—
Q164 Chair: I accept that entirely. In so many of our engagements as a Committee, we hear that loud and clear. My underlying concern is about the people who are socially empowered to forge their own destinies, notwithstanding what might be happening here. Is there a risk that the political processes here just focus on the narrow and the extreme, because those are the only people who continue to involve themselves with the political process, because everybody else has just said, “You are not relevant to me. I am opting out”?
Dr Soares: Most organisations that we speak to and work with, despite all their frustrations, want the institutions to work. They want local politicians to take charge and to legislate.
Q165 Chair: I know what they want, but what if they do not get it? There are lots of things that I have wanted in life, and, at some point, even I have had to give up the ghost and say, “It ain’t going to happen, Simon. Go and do something else”.
Dr Soares: I do not think that we are at that point yet, with people reaching the end of their tether.
Q166 Chair: You accept that there is a point.
Dr Soares: Perhaps there is a point, but I do not think that we are there, and—fingers crossed—we are moving towards a position where we will have functioning institutions again. When the institutions are functioning, there will be a responsibility on the politicians to make them really function. If MLAs come back into the Assembly but do not get on with the work that needs to be done, that frustration will build again. People will look at the Assembly and say, “You are still not dealing with the issues that affect us every day”.
Q167 Chair: It is, in that oft-used phrase, the last chance saloon.
Tim Attwood: In any normal political scenario, as in the UK, when politicians fail, they get a kicking at the next election. That has not happened. There has, obviously, been a change in the political landscape with the third party now quite strong. It is remarkable how enduring our system is to keep supporting and putting back into office those who have failed us.
I go back to the peace summit from two weeks ago. People who are working at the coalface of division and sectarianism, who are exhausted by 40 years of trying to keep the peace, I am surprised by how positive they are, when they say, “We need to do more”. The key question is this: how does civic society become a more effective lobby? How we harness that passion to get this place working is one of the challenges.
Q168 Chair: At the beginning of the session, we talked about the importance of education. Do you think that a piece of work needs to be done—not to inform voters; that sounds rather top-down—about the fact that there are lots of ways to assess whom you will support in the ballot box? You can do it on the basis of, “I am part of them, and they are not part of us”. It does not really matter, but it is the “them and us” sort of stuff and which one is not the other. Or there is a far more evaluatory way: who has the better policies for health? Who has the better vision for education? Who has been in charge of that? What have they done? You could make your assessment on that basis, instead of deciding that, “They’ve been totally rubbish on all those things that are important to me, but I'm still going to support them because I am a part of that tribe”. There is a job to be done there—it is not just for politicians but for the electorate and commentators—to reconsider how people evaluate, is there not?
Gráinne Walsh: Probably for as long as we have not dealt with some of the legacy issues, we will come back again and again to the divisions. The unresolved aspects of this have been well rehearsed, and we will be triggered every time to go back to that. Our political institutions and electoral system drive certain behaviours. Nobody is behaving necessarily abnormally, given the circumstances in which we operate. As long as we remain with those legacy issues, we will not see people make decisions based on the outcome, such as a revised health service.
It is more than education. It is about people's participation. It cannot just be individuals such as ourselves. After this performance, I may not be invited back, but I am sure that the others will be. It is about the people who are not usually heard or do not make policy interventions. It is about ordinary citizens and what role they play in analysing the services and legislation that shape their lives and those of their families. That is where we should be looking to, if you want people to connect to our institutions.
Ann Watt: Your original question was about the public losing patience. We have an astounding tolerance here of not having a Government. Any other part of the UK, Ireland or anywhere else would not put up with that, but we do. I cannot tell you why that is. My only answer is that we have low expectations of what we might get from a Government, so there is a continued tolerance of that situation.
When you look at the evidence in the Northern Ireland life and times survey, you see that people say that they want this form of government as opposed to any other. However, in a LucidTalk survey a year ago, they gave the Executive a rating of -52 on how well it was delivering. So they want these institutions but not this particular manifestation of them.
There is a surprising tolerance of no Government and also of really poor outcomes in public services. Health waiting lists is the prime example, but there is a multitude of others, particularly related to inequalities in health, education and life outcomes. There is an absence of a poverty strategy, for example, and there are many other examples.
Q169 Mary Kelly Foy: I will follow on with the point about reform and those parties that do not necessarily identify as unionist or nationalist. Should there be more regard, within the cross-community features in the institutions, for parties that are identifying as “other”? That could be quite a diverse group. If so, how would that impact on the institutions’ ability to deliver for all the people of Northern Ireland?
Dr Soares: I will preface my response by saying that any changes have to be made with the consent of the parties. There is a mechanism within the Good Friday Agreement to review the agreement and its mechanisms, so it is in there, and we should not forget that that review process exists. The Northern Ireland electorate, however, is changing—we have to acknowledge that fact—so the mechanisms within the Assembly and how it functions, and the cross-community consent mechanism, also have to reflect those changes. If we are looking at changing that, it has to be done with consent. It has to be done through a proper conversation with not only the parties but civic society at large to reach a point at which it is established that, yes, we want to change that mechanism. It does not seem right that we get to some points where the votes of what are now a significant number of MLAs do not count. Even in the secondary legislation that will be voted on tomorrow, there are moments when the votes of MLAs who are not unionist or nationalist will, effectively, not count. We have to get beyond that point.
Tim Attwood: We started off in 1998 with 108 seats. Maybe that changed too early, because, as we said, this is a generational process, and having other voices from women and some of the loyalist political representatives might have been helpful over the past 15 years. There is the reality of the political changes that have been made, so that needs to be addressed. However, you have to be cautious about making change during political crises. We tinkered with the Good Friday Agreement once, and it did not necessarily help, so we have to be careful about how we manage that process. It needs to be a reflective and inclusive conversation, and it needs to be reflective of wider civic society, not just the politicians.
Q170 Chair: You have used the word “tinkered” twice. Do you see it as a tinkering or as a thoughtful response to issues that had arisen?
Tim Attwood: The Good Friday Agreement was a solemn international covenant between the people on this island. We tinkered with it in St Andrews, and, in my view, it did not help the working of government. So yes, obviously, as politics changes, you have to recognise that, but it is not about tinkering with it. You need to have a solid, positive, engaging conversation, as we did in the Good Friday Agreement, and it needs to be a broad conversation rather than something that is done of necessity because a political deal was done to resolve a particular problem. This is too important to do a deal that is just a sticking plaster; it needs to be more thoughtful.
Q171 Mary Kelly Foy: Would anyone else like to comment?
Ann Watt: I very much echo what has been said. Any change has to be made with consent and buy-in from all the parties. That means that it needs to be informed by a wide conversation. It is good that the Committee is doing this inquiry, because that is part of it. We need, however, a conversation that involves political voices who have a particular viewpoint—that is fine, important and valid—but we also need the more neutral, non-political voices to analyse what the impact of particular changes would be, to think it through and to give greater clarity to all of us about what those changes might bring about. At the minute, the conversation is very political, and it is in a crisis situation. We need a more widely informed conversation about any changes. We are all here making the point about the importance of the consent that was given to the Good Friday Agreement, how that is an absolutely solid foundation stone and the fact that any change therefore needs to be approached very carefully.
Q172 Mary Kelly Foy: Thank you. I do not know whether Dr Farry is going to ask a question. Do you think that Westminster and Dublin could or should be doing more to support the institutions?
Ann Watt: The UK and Irish Governments were absolutely fundamental to the Good Friday Agreement and to its sustaining and nurturing since then. That has fallen off in recent years, and the attention from the UK and Irish Governments needs to be restored, not least when looking at the situation that we are in now, where we do not have the institutions. There needs to be a greater concern from the UK and Irish Governments about the absence of a Government here and also about what happens to the business of government and public services when there is no Executive. At the moment, it is being left to civil servants to take very limited decisions. The former head of the Civil Service referred to that the previous time around as resulting in stagnation and decay in public services. That is the reality, unfortunately.
Gráinne Walsh: The UK and Irish Governments need to refocus and reinvest in the political leadership, capacity and institutions in Northern Ireland. There will be benefits, not just for here but for relationships and policymaking across this island, with Westminster and with Scotland and Wales. It would be a really timely intervention now. That is why this particular inquiry is important and helpful. The politicians need to be supported to do what is a really difficult job, as do civil servants to support them. That is key.
Mary Kelly Foy: Thank you.
Dr Soares: I absolutely agree. The British and Irish Governments took their eye off the ball for a period. They thought that things had been sorted after the St Andrews Agreement, and perhaps even a bit before that. Relations between London and Dublin over recent years have not necessarily been the best. They absolutely are improving, and I stress the need for constant dialogue between London and Dublin.
I will give you one specific example, on which we worked and campaigned. The ad hoc group for north-south and east-west co-operation, which we convened, had meetings with various UK Government Ministers and officials about the introduction of electronic travel authorisation, and we are glad that that issue has been resolved. We now have the exemption so that those who are legally resident in the Republic of Ireland will not now be required to have that authorisation. That is an example of legislation that was introduced despite the fact that the border here is referred to ad nauseam. It is legislation that was introduced in Westminster that seemed to have forgotten that there is a land border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. As such, it made absolutely no sense. We are really glad that the UK Government have now decided to exempt those who are legally resident in the Republic of Ireland and allow them to travel across the common travel area. That is great.
There are lots of other things that need to be done in that area, but that is a positive example, which happens only as a result of there being a good relationship between London and Dublin.
Tim Attwood: If you look at the history of the lead-in to the ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement, the extent of the conversations held behind closed doors, the diplomacy between Dublin and London, and the diplomacy of the Irish embassy with MPs, trying to build up information and a better understanding, was intense. What Father Gerry Reynolds and Father Alec Reid did in Clonard monastery, when loyalists, nationalists, republicans and unionists were speaking very privately while other political conversations took place, was intense. That stopped for a while and did not have as much intensity.
You can never have enough conversations. We need to create the opportunities to inform and guide where we can. Politicians change from election to election, and people move on. One has to work really hard at keeping the peace, and sometimes, as Anthony says, people took their eye off the ball.
Mary Kelly Foy: Thank you.
Chair: Of course, that requirement has been amplified, as those side conversations at the water cooler at EU Council meetings do not now take place. There needs to be greater formalisation and attention. I take Dr Soares’s point about the need for senior representatives of the UK Government to be involved on a regular basis in order to find a permanent workable replacement for those conversations.
Q173 Stephen Farry: Good morning, everyone. I want to challenge all four of you on a couple of answers that you gave to previous questions. You all stressed that reform should ideally happen in the context of functioning institutions, rather than in a crisis, and that it should done by consensus. Let me ask you two “What if?” questions. Is it realistic to expect parties that have an inbuilt advantage through the current arrangements to voluntarily give that up, if that is the definition of consensus for reform? The second question is probably the bigger “What if?” at this stage. What if we never emerge from this rolling crisis? Will we be perpetually waiting for reform to get stability? Would reform provide a means of getting us to a point of stability rather than the other way round?
Dr Soares: I will begin. Bad outcomes are the likelihood when we are rushed into things and when things are done because we think that they need to be done quickly. We have seen plenty of examples of that, not necessarily connected to the Good Friday Agreement but to other things that are happening, where the thinking has been, “We have to do this, and we are going to do it” but we have created other problems as a result. We have to be really wary of that.
There is an argument that the fact that we are in a crisis does not necessarily mean that we should not look for reform. That is true to an extent, but it has to be done with consensus. The other part of your question was why parties that profit from the current situation would ever want to change it. If, as we have all been saying, that is part of a wider conversation and that wider conversation says loudly that we want a change, that puts pressure on parties, even those who, as you describe it, have an advantage under the status quo. They will not want to be seen to be going against that wider conversation, that wider push and that wider call for change.
Q174 Stephen Farry: I welcome your response, Anthony. To give you a classic example, we have a strong consensus in society—bar one political party—that the institutions should be up and running. We have carnage in our public services, but the crisis is perpetuated.
Dr Soares: I cannot give you an answer as to how to solve that question. You have just described the current situation, and everyone can see what it is. Political parties make political decisions, and they have to take the consequences of those political decisions, positive or negative. You have just described the picture; I cannot argue with that.
Tim Attwood: I am sure that you would agree that the quick fix of St Andrews is not what we want. That was just the British Government trying to do a deal with one party to get the institutions up and running. It is about taking a considered approach. There may be an inevitability that things will not get back up and running, and then there will have to be a real process. That should not be done in a crisis where we do something immediately. What happened at St Andrews happened very quickly. You will have to take stock of the situation: the British and Irish Governments will have to take stock, as will the parties, and then there will need to be some considered discussion. If you are going to change the Good Friday institutions again—that might be needed—you have to do it in a considered way. That does not rule anything out, but it should be done in a considered way.
Gráinne Walsh: I agree with Tim. I imagine that even the parties that are deemed to benefit at the moment are not having a particularly pleasant time of it, nor would they necessarily be comfortable defending the current situation. This is about considered interventions and not having quick fixes. Of course, there will have to be longer-term thinking.
We have limited time for going into “What if?” scenarios, Stephen, so I will pause there.
Stephen Farry: It is a fairly plausible scenario.
Ann Watt: I would just echo what everyone else has said. Any change has to have consent across the board. I find it very difficult to see how you can do that—well, you cannot do that—without the commitment of the two main parties. If that leaves us in a perpetual situation with no Government, I do not know. We certainly need some arrangement to have Government here in the absence of the Good Friday Agreement institutions, but that is a whole other question.
Q175 Chair: I am not quite buying this, with respect. Let me tell you why. Roll back to the John Major years: there was no consensus, and John Major said that consensus could probably be found and was worth exploring. So, after being led, convened, cajoled, chatted, progress, status quo and fallback, etc, we eventually ended up with the Good Friday Agreement. I take Mr Attwood’s point entirely that changes made on the hoof and in a panic are very rarely good ones. You can quote the Dangerous Dogs Act as a prime example of that, but someone has to lead.
I think that Stephen is right that there is no incentive for the two main parties to change because, even if the system is not working, at least they are dominant within it. The Secretary of State has said that he will respond to grassroots campaigns to consider reform. Does it not need to be a little bit more muscular than that? Let us pray that Stormont gets back up and running, but is there not a risk that everyone will then say, “Right, it is up.” We have all had that piece of flat-pack furniture, have we not? “Do not touch it. It is standing. Do not put anything on it, because it might fall down again. I did not quite follow the instructions right. I thought I was a bit short of a screw or a nail or something. Do not do anything with it; it is just up, and let us just rejoice in the fact that it is up.” Then it will collapse again.
In essence, the nub of the question, as Dr Farry was intimating, is that it needs more than, “Well, let us just do something as and when. We will know the moment.” Well, it needs someone to actually lead, on the basis that every governmental organisation is iterative and organic. It changes. The House of Commons today is very different to the House of Commons of 20, 40 or 50 years ago. However, we can have discussions about reform of the Commons without fearing that it will collapse, because no party has a veto, can go off in a sulk or whatever it happens to be. Do we not need a more co-ordinating leadership role to bring people together to say, “How can we make this thing work better?”, rather than just sitting, like Mr Micawber, waiting for something to turn up?
Dr Soares: Those conversations are happening. They are happening out there in civic society. With regard to leadership, when you say that someone needs to lead on this, going back to your analogy of a flat-pack company—not necessarily any particular company—and the instructions, the risk is that, if the leadership comes from somewhere else, the instructions will be foreign when they get here. We will have the flat-pack, but we will be working off a set of instructions that do not necessarily fit with the language that is happening in the conversations here. Those conversations are happening. What the push is to get those conversations beyond where they are at the moment, I am not sure, but I want to stress that those conversations are happening.
Q176 Chair: I am not doubting that they are; I merely question their efficacy. You can have lots of rooms with plates of sandwiches, French fancies and cups of tea with well-intentioned people—I do not use that pejoratively. You can have lots of well-intentioned people saying, “In a perfect world, this is how it would be”, and so on and so forth. Unless political principles are driving and harnessing the ideas and trying to find the sweet spot of consensus, you can have as many well-intentioned people in as many well-appointed rooms as possible, but naught is achieved, because the political drive to find the consensus—to bully, cajole, etc, still working on that principle of consent as one of the key foundation strands—is just missed. I can have all sorts of conversations about what I might want to do but, unless my bank manager is prepared to sign off on it, the answer is no.
Gráinne Walsh: That is where political leadership comes in. We will push it back to political leadership.
Q177 Chair: I know where it comes from. The question that I am asking and that, I think, Dr Farry was asking is this: is it not now time—if not now, when?—for somebody to pick up the cudgels and lead the conversation to find a reform agenda of consensus?
Gráinne Walsh: All I can say is that it is rare for an individual such as I, in the job that I do, to sit in front of a Committee; normally, I support people to do that. We, as citizens, are interested now. This is an important time and an important conversation. We are signifying that, 25 years into devolution, now is the time to look at the arrangements in order to support politicians and civil servants to make the adjustments that we need to make to support better government and better policy outcomes. That is happening. It is important, though, that there is political leadership. We will not get into who should do that. That is not for us. It is most definitely for politicians to do, and you are clearly doing it. I have never heard so much conversation about institutional reform. For many years, you could not even mention the need to reform, but that day has passed. That is the really interesting opportunity that we have at the moment.
Tim Attwood: It is inevitable, if we do not get the institutions up and running, that there will be a conversation. Some of the people in this room, as well as political parties and others, will lead that conversation. There is an inevitability. If we cannot get the institutions up and running this time, people will say, “What do we do?”. I will be honest: at the peace summit, there were no conversations about changing the institutions; people are just desperate for them to work. There is an educational aspect, and it is about trying to explain how, if there are changes, we might make negotiations happen to get the Executive up and running.
Q178 Stephen Farry: To formally discharge my official question, I was due to ask you about behavioural and cultural changes—
Chair: You and I do this: we wander down a cul-de-sac.
Stephen Farry: Absolutely.
I was due to ask you about behavioural and cultural changes short of institutional change, but I feel that most of you addressed that earlier. If anyone wants to come back on it, feel free. Otherwise, I am happy to move on. That is great, Chair. Thank you.
Chair: Are you finished?
Stephen Farry: Yes.
Mary Kelly Foy: I jumped in and asked my question.
Chair: Right, very good.
Q179 Sir Robert Buckland: In many ways, the question that I wanted to ask about the involvement of think-tanks and other specialist organisations has been answered. Ann in particular answered in direct terms, Chair, so I do not think that there is need for us to go down that avenue again, shady and attractive though it might be.
Chair: You are on an avenue, and we are in a cul-de-sac.
Tim Attwood: And we are on a roundabout.
Q180 Chair: That may say more about you than does it about me.
On that point, we as a Committee have meetings and engage with lots of organisations across the piece, and we come away from thinking, “God, they had some really interesting, good ideas or some very serious concerns”. We then relay those back to the relevant Minister, official or whoever it happens to be, and everybody nods frightfully politely and says, “Oh yes, we will do something about that”. How are all the meetings that we sit through—with the French fancies and the platters of sandwiches and pineapples on bits of wood—harnessed by the Speaker’s Office, the Northern Ireland Office and the political leadership of the parties here? Are we in a silo of political operatives and—I do not mean this rudely—well-meaning intelligentsia, who have lots of great conversations about how things could be, and never the twain shall meet? Who does the connectivity? Who brings everybody together? Who convenes?
Dr Soares: On that—
Chair: Pret A Manger will now be sending me a letter before action, because I have dismissed its lunch offer quite considerably.
Dr Soares: Bringing people together in order to have those conversations is one of the things that the Centre for Cross Border Studies does. Our annual conference is normally representative of what we do precisely in that area.
Just to give you an example, at last year’s conference—they always take place in September—as keynote speakers, we had Bernadette McAliskey to start us off, set the right tone and energise people; we had the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste; and we had the British ambassador. However, the people sitting in the room are political representatives, civic society leaders and from business. They are all in that room. It is not just about the conversations happening on the platform and what is being discussed by the panels; it is about the conversations that happen between the people in those rooms outside the conference hall.
Q181 Chair: I get that. I am sorry to press you as a panel, but we, as political practitioners, pick up a growing sense of electoral impatience. I am significantly worried about the tipping point of disengagement here. When was the last time that a party leader of any of the parties in Northern Ireland, the Secretary of State or the Minister of State in Westminster picked up the phone or whatever and said: “You’ve just had a conference, Anthony. Give us the top five read-outs. What was the mood of the room?”? Ann, what do you think about this?
Dr Soares: Those conversations happen, and we are asked, “What is the mood?”. When I say, “We are asked”, it is not by one particular Government or side; all sides ask us periodically, “What is the mood? What is happening? What are the issues?”. The electronic general authorisation was a practical issue, and we got it resolved. We have those conversations continually. I would not dismiss them as unimportant; they are important.
Q182 Chair: No, I am saying that I am not entirely convinced that everybody recognises their importance and, therefore, they miss the trick.
Dr Soares: It might be particular to the context that we, as the Centre for Cross Border Studies, have to operate in that we do not necessarily shout about what we are doing. We do a lot of it quietly. In order to build trust, it has to be done quietly. We have to strike the balance between building trust between people and not necessarily shouting about what those conversations are and how they take place. There is transparency. We say, “These are the issues that are being discussed, and here’s where we are”. However, it is a particularly complicated context here sometimes.
Q183 Chair: Mr, Attwood, what about the Hume Foundation?
Tim Attwood: As I mentioned, we had a peace summit three weeks ago in Derry as a result of a consultation with people who do peace and community work on the ground and with young people. There was a citizens’ jury element to that. I was surprised. Those people have been at the coalface for 30 or 40 years in some of the toughest parts of the North trying to keep the peace against paramilitaries or criminals.
Chair: We are doing an inquiry into that, as you know.
Tim Attwood: Yes, of course.
There was an energy in the room that they wanted more such conversations. There was an energy about advocating on behalf of the actions of that peace plan, so that we can work with the institutions and with our Governments to ensure that the journey of reconciliation is completed.
It needs to be resourced. Ann is doing a great job at Pivotal, but there are limited resources to fund think tanks and the creative solutions that we need. There is limited money to support those conversations. To be honest, the Department of Foreign Affairs reconciliation fund is probably in the lead in supporting organisations to facilitate those conversations. Where is the support from other Governments and other institutions to ensure that civic society—you will hear other examples later—is supported to have those conversations, which might lead into the other conversations that we have just talked about on how we address some of the institutional problems that we face?
People are up for that conversation. There is the Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics this week.
Q184 Chair: I am under no illusion about people’s appetite to engage. When was the last time that the Secretary of State had a conversation with the foundation about thoughts, ideas, reform or whatever it happened to be?
Tim Attwood: We have asked for a meeting, as I said.
Q185 Chair: When was the last time that you had one?
Tim Attwood: It was at the unveiling of John Hume’s bust in London in November.
Chair: Okay; thank you.
Gráinne Walsh: Minister Baker participated in our Institute for Government roundtable in January. We have regular engagement through a range of organisations.
Chair: Good. Minister Baker is a great man.
Ann Watt: There is an issue here in that a lot of—
Chair: I am getting a sideways look from my colleagues, but there we are.
Ann Watt: There is an issue here. I will speak just for my organisation. Pivotal was set up because there is an absence of public policy debate about the day-to-day issues that affect people’s lives in our political discourse. A lot of what our organisations do is about trying to encourage dialogue and debate outside politics and then seeking to get some connections to politics. We are trying to engage with people who are disillusioned with politics in a lot of cases. Maybe that is part of the problem. Again, I speak for myself—
Chair: You could be the conduits for that.
Ann Watt: Maybe we have closed ourselves off a bit too much in our efforts to give a voice to people who are otherwise disengaged.
Chair: I can feel myself drafting a paragraph or two on this for our final report, subject to amendment by my colleagues.
I will draw the panel to a close. Thank you for your attendance this morning. We will move swiftly on, because time presses, to our second panel. You are welcome to stay and listen to the proceedings of the second panel. If you need to go, please feel free.