MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

of the

EVIDENCE OF:

held at

Caradog House, Cardiff

On

FRIDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2003

In Attendance:

Lord Richard

Eira Davies

Vivienne Sugar

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Tom Jones

Huw Thomas

Ted Rowlands

Dr Laura McAllister

Peter Price

Paul Valerio

Lord Alderdice

Proceedings

Lord Richard

Thank you for coming. What we have usually done with witnesses is we have asked them to identify themselves for the transcript, then perhaps open up the issues. If you give us 5 or 10 minutes then we can pursue any issues that we want to pursue. In advance we are very interested about the practical experience of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Firstly, how it passes legislation, its structure, and how the Committee system works and operates; those types of issues.

Lord Alderdice

Chairman, thank you very much for your welcome. My name is John Alderdice. I have for the last five and a half years been the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. As you will know the Assembly came into being in 1998 as an outcome of the Belfast Agreement and subsequent to a referendum, which was overwhelmingly supported in the Northern Ireland and the Republic, where a referendum was also held on the Agreement itself. A central piece of the agreement was the establishment of an elected Assembly. There were other important parts, the North/South Ministerial Council, the intergovernmental arrangements between the Republic of Ireland and the UK, and interparliamentary arrangements. Many of which have come into being but not all of these components have fully come into play.

The Assembly itself is, therefore, importantly seen not just as an aspect of devolution within the UK, with devolution as a fundamental principle, it’s part of an international arrangement whose purpose was to bring to an end a long standing conflict. There are many particularities, one might say peculiarities of the arrangements which are specifically to deal with the conflict and the division in the community and which will not be applicable in Wales or perhaps in any other part of the world. But there are also a number of practical and other considerations which may be of more interest to you.

I perhaps find it difficult to put together in a few words something of a practical experience. But perhaps if I make one or two overall remarks about the Assembly and its arrangements we can then open things up.

First of all a few facts about the Assembly. It is a 108 Member Assembly. There are 18 Westminster constituencies in Northern Ireland. Each of them elects, by the single transferable vote system, six Members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. The single transferable vote system of PR is not a new thing for Northern Ireland. In fact, it was introduced in the early 1920s, when Ireland was partitioned and Northern Ireland was established, as a way of ensuring that all sections of the community were represented. However, the Unionist Government at a very early stage was not entirely sure that the representation of everybody was a good idea, so they got rid of it and it came back in 1973 when there was a further attempt to address the diversity of the community. Since that time increasingly elections have been held by STV in Northern Ireland. So at this point the European elections, the Assembly elections, indeed, previously Assembly elections and Local Government elections are all held on STV and the only other system which is used is the first-past-the-post system used in Westminster elections. People in Northern Ireland are very used to an STV system and the opportunities it presents to them to express their views. They do it in a way that very obviously represents their views.

The Assembly itself then produces, as a Parliamentary system does, the executive from within the Assembly. There is a First and Deputy First Minister, to represent the two sides of the community really, and they have to be elected as a slate and by a cross-community vote. A vote where 40% of the Unionists, 40% of Nationalists and 60% of the whole, or 50% of Unionists, 50% of Nationalists and 50% of the whole support it. You will immediately see that everyone elected to the Assembly has to identify themselves as a Unionist, a Nationalist or other than a Unionist or Nationalist. If they represent themselves as others their vote only counts on aspects of the formula. Not on the formula as a whole. This is a difficult and contentious area.

Apart from the First and Deputy First Minister there are 10 other executive Ministers – Cabinet Ministers if you like. The number 10 really came out of political negotiations, the number of Ministers at departments is proposed by the First and Deputy First Minister to the Assembly and must be passed by the Assembly as a whole. The reason for 10 was partly because that was the outside limit drawn up in the Act and partly because, for political considerations, 10 was an appropriate number deemed so by the First and Deputy First Minister. There is a facility also for junior Ministers and two junior Ministers were appointed, one to the first Minister and the other to the Deputy First Minister.

The Executive is formed, however, by the application of an arithmetic formula, The D’Hondt Formula, rather than by, I was going to say negotiations in smoke filled rooms, but in these politically correct days it’s just negotiations in rooms, and this formula is actually conducted by the Speaker in the Assembly. What he or she will do is first of all invite the leader or most senior representative of the largest party to choose a ministerial department and nominate a minister for that department, 10 departments having already been established. So the first leader will then make their choice of person and of department and then we move to the second largest party which will have an opportunity to choose one of the remaining nine departments and nominate someone to that department and so on. It will proceed in a proportionate arithmetic form until all the departments are filled and Members nominated.

The Assembly has primary legislative and executive authority over a range of matters transferred from Westminster -Agriculture, environment, health, education and so on, and at the beginning we had a very restricted number of stages for our primary legislation. We had first stage, presentation, and publication; Second stage very much like a second reading at Westminster; then a Committee stage which was taken in the departmental Committee. I will come back to explain what that means. But within that Committee no votes could be taken on any amendment. The reason being that all votes may be tied to specific cross-community formulae for the sake of our difficulties and Committees are too small to ensure that such a formula would work. It then came back to a Consideration stage.

Lord Richard

How many on the Committee?

Lord Alderdice

There is one Committee for each Government department. There are 11 Members. By Standing Order every Member in the Assembly who is not a Minister or the Speaker must be accommodated in a Committee unless they do not wish to be on the Committee. There is a Consideration stage, which was the only stage when amendments could be taken and it seemed to me this was quite inappropriate because it did not give a proper chance for changes and developments and, indeed, subsequent amendments had to take account of earlier changes. So after a period of time we agreed to put in a Further Consideration stage and then the Final or third stage and then Royal Assent.

Let me pick up the business of Committees because the Committees are actually an extremely part of the running of the Assembly. By statute each of the ministerial departments is shadowed by a Committee. The Committee is established in proportion. So if I could remind you, we have a proportionate system for the election of Members, a proportionate system for the election of the Executive, they may not agree with each other, in fact they don't agree with each other. In fact, they are not all prepared to be in the same ministerial room with each other, so some of the meetings must be conducted by correspondence. But our Committees are also proportionate and the Chairmanship and Vice-Chairmanship of Committees are proportionate as well. All done on a mathematical system. If you have 10% of the votes you have 10% of the Members and 10% of the Committee Chairmanships and Deputy Chairmanships and 10% of the Members of the Executive.

These Committees are a combination really of Standing Committee and Select Committee functions at Westminster. If it’s the Health and Social Services Committee, and they are integrated in Northern Ireland, then any Bill on Health and Social Services will come to that Committee for its Committee stage. But that is also the Committee that conducts research and reports and takes hearings and so on.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Can I interrupt? Can the Committee hear evidence as well?They can't amend the Bill because there are no votes, or they can amend by---

Lord Alderdice

They can put down amendments and discuss them, then agree as a Committee. That amendment will then be put down by the Chairman at Consideration stage and will therefore canvas support.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

They can hear evidence and so it is both Standing and Select. That's very important, isn't it?

Lord Alderdice

It is very important and they can and do hear evidence on Bills as they go through. They will advertise in the newspapers for evidence on legislation, inviting representations to be made, they will hear that on the way through and they have the right to call for papers and persons to any issue whatever under the devolved agreement. This led to difficulties with the Civil Service because they had the right to call for personnel papers or any confidential matter, which could in principle be dealt with in public. So one of the things I had to do was call together all the Chairmen of the Committees and the head of the Civil Service and Senior Civil Servants and reach a convention by which certain matters would not be dealt with except in extremis and if they had to be dealt with, to be dealt with in camera. They also have the right to initiate legislation. The only Committee that initiated legislation was the Standards and Privileges Committee. The legislation it instituted was for the appointment of a Commissioner to deal with Standards and Privileges.

Lord Richard

How much of the time of the Committee is actually devoted to the legislative process and how much to being a Select Committee?

Lord Alderdice

This depended very much on which Committee, because some had a great deal of legislation coming thorough. They will sit down and draw up a work plan for the whole year. Then the Minister would say: I have got four bills that I want to take through and that would immediately create difficulties for the Committee. The Finance and Personnel Department also incorporated quite a number of other departments because of the history of devolution, such as the Office of Law Reforms. The Finance Minister would be dealing with the Divorce Bill and that had to go to the Finance and Personnel Committee. So there were very real practical problems that Committees were substantially overburdened in some circumstances, and in others, for example, the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure Committee, almost no legislation at all and lots of opportunities to interview.

Lord Richard

Do they meet as and when they want to, or every month or fortnight?

Lord Alderdice

They meet as and when they wished. None met less frequently than once a month, some twice a week. Normally Plenary would be Monday and Tuesday, Committees Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Peter Price

Could you repeat that?

Lord Alderdice

Plenary days Monday, Tuesday. Committees Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Sometimes Plenary would extend on to Wednesday as well. That caused a bit of difficulty because people couldn't be in two places at the one time. Friday was usually not a heavy Committee day. You might have a couple of Committees meeting on that day. But most Members like to try to have part of Friday for constituency work.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

When we were in Scotland we were hearing evidence on the way the Scottish Parliament works and their system on legislation and more than once there we were told that we should go to Northern Ireland and listen and hear about what you had been doing on the grounds that in some ways it was procedurally better than their practice. What are the differences, in so far as you understand it, between the Scottish system and Northern Ireland system which existed until the suspension of the Assembly?

Lord Alderdice

It’s interesting. Maybe because we’ve all learned a lot from each other in Wales and Scotland and in Northern Ireland we all feel quite positively about each other. I'm not sure which aspects they were referring to. One of the things we have tried to develop, which they have at a much more advanced stage is the question of pre-legislative scrutiny. We looked at this and realised that we didn't need any special arrangements. All we needed to do was persuade the departments to publish their programmes and, indeed, I made it clear I was quite happy for them to publish draft Bills. As you know, with ourselves any Bill that comes forward before First Reading has to be proofed by the Speaker for conformity with our powers and also with the European Convention of Human Rights.

I made it quite clear that I was happy for draft Bills to be published outwith that, entirely by departments, to facilitate pre-legislative scrutiny. They started to do it in the later stage. It proved quite difficult to persuade them. One of the reasons was historical. As you know, much of the legislation for Northern Ireland for a long time took place by Order in Council, which is unamendable. So Civil Servants got into the way that every piece of legislation would have to be perfect, because even if the Government discovered it was a bit of a mess on the way through they couldn't do anything about it, other than drop it. So they got into the way of not allowing things to be amended. They had to be absolutely right and not change them. We tried to persuade that them actually not to make sloppy draft Bills, but it was quite reasonable to leave it open for amendment. It’s quite interesting that some of the improvements this made were not just in the legislation but in relationships.

I notice that one of the concerns around for you here has been having a Parliamentary system, does it necessarily make it a very antagonistic kind of arrangement. Let me give you one example of why I don't think it does. We had a piece of legislation come from Agriculture and Rural Development. There was a clause which required that any dog which was found to have attacked somebody, if the matter was taken to court, it must be put down. This had been brought forward by the Minister, an SDLP Minister and the Executive was very keen to rush it through rather quickly. So almost no time was left for amendments to be put down to this.

Mr Peter Robinson, also a Member of the Executive, but of a very different party and persuasion, put down an amendment to allow for flexibility, for the court to decide whether the dog should be put down. It was out of time. The time for the amendments was past. They have to be put down in advance of sessions. He came to me, and like his much respected party leader, he's an expert on Parliamentary procedure. He said that I had the right in extremis to permit amendments to be taken. I said that this was true but that he would have to persuade me this was an unusual circumstance. He explained how the Government was trying to push this through and in fact there was no time to put an amendment down. So I said, that seemed reasonable, that I would permit the amendment and we would have the debate. So he made debate and he made his case as to why there should be a degree of flexibility in dealing with the dogs and the Minister stood up and said, I have listened to what the Member has said and I am persuaded by what he said; there is a very good point here.

At this juncture he fully expected that the Minister would say, however, I don't think it’s phrased in quite the right way, so if the Member will agree to withdraw his amendment I will give consideration. She did not. She said, this is absolutely right, I will give notice that I will be voting for his amendment. Peter Robinson was shocked. He said I have been at Westminster since 1979, not only has this never happened to me before, I have never seen it happening before, I am shocked. I am extremely pleased and I hope the Minister will follow through what she says. She did. It was voted through. Put through in legislation. As a post-script, one of my friends came to me six months later and said that her dog had survived because of this.

I want to make the point that just because you have a Parliamentary procedure does not mean that it has to increase antagonism. There was an obvious situation where if people were prepared to accept something from each other then it could build bridges between people who are very, very different.

Another example was the situation with the Foot and Mouth epidemic. Ireland as a whole is a natural quarantine in such circumstances. I have no doubt, had we had a Northern Ireland Office Minister still responsible for agriculture, that we would have found ourselves bound into the UK arrangements for dealing with Foot and Mouth. Mrs Rogers said this was not acceptable. We have a completely different system of tracing animals. We have a long history of dealing with this. We will put different arrangements in place. We will go to Europe to ask them to treat Northern Ireland differently. She was not immediately successful on that, but she was certainly successful, which is measured by the fact that Dr Paisley who was Chairman of the Agriculture Committee stood up later and said what a tremendous job this Minister has been doing. She's stood up for the farmers of Northern Ireland. I want it to be clear this is very much appreciated by people.

There are two examples, one in the case of legislation and one in the case of scrutiny of a Minister, not in an antagonistic way, but in a supportive way of the Minister, of how a Parliamentary system does not have to create antagonisms. In fact, it can, if handled well, give the opportunity for people to work together.

Ted Rowlands

Looking through the list of the legislation the Assembly has passed, how much of it is mirroring the UK legislation? For example, Local Government Best Value Act. The Best Value Acts have been passed in successive Parliaments; it’s the latest buzz in legislation terms. Did that mirror the UK one? Or was it completely and utterly different?

Lord Alderdice

There are three types of legislation broadly speaking. One is legislation that is effectively putting into operation European Directives. In those circumstances we found we had really very, very little room for manoeuvre at all. Secondly, where theoretically we had the capacity to vary, but in practical terms how are you going to vary Social Security? Are you going to diminish it, which would not be popular locally? Or will you try to increase it, in which case you won't have the money to pay for it from the Treasury? So you have little option.

Then the other range of the kind to which you refer, where what is happening in other places largely influences broadly how you deal with it. But if you take Local Government Best Value that was a very contentious one because 60 out of the 108 Members were also local councillors who did not want to be told precisely how they would deal with this. You may say that is obviously a conflict of interest, but you have to understand the instability of the structure was so great that many people who had mandates at Westminster, or in Europe or at Local Government level were not prepared to give them up for the sake of the Assembly because they felt that if the Assembly collapsed they would have no mandate. The leader of the SDLP, former Deputy First Minister has now no mandate because the Assembly is dissolved. He is not a local councillor any more; he’s not a MP or an MEP. So by being a man of great integrity he fell foul of precisely the fear that other members had. So there was an example of the peculiarities of our situation that ensured that although there was an attempt by the Civil Service to replicate what was going elsewhere, they were local differences.

Lord Richard

Your devolution is different from the Scots. The Scots have got everything devolved except that which is reserved and you have got everything devolved, haven’t you?

Lord Alderdice

We have a series of things that are reserved and a series of things that are excepted. The excepted matters are those things which are never going to be devolved. Things like Europe, Defence, Foreign Affairs and, indeed, elections are not devolved to us because we have tended to take them inappropriately into our own hands in the past. There are some things that are not yet transferred which could be. For example, policing, prisons, criminal justice, local income tax varying powers, in fact regulation of communications and broadcasting is also not transferred, but there is serious discussion of devolution of prisons and police and the establishment of a Department of Justice and devolution of criminal law. We do not have that presently, which the Scots have.

Lord Richard

Do you have anything like Sewel motions?

Lord Alderdice

Yes, we have., giving the capacity for us to make decision - we have them both ways. We have them that we can petition the Secretary of State to allow us to make legislation on things within his power and we can similarly indicate by a Sewel type motion that we are content for something to be done at Westminster.

Lord Richard

How many of those do you actually---

Lord Alderdice

Very few. We have very few of them, a handful.

Lord Richard

Why is that?

Lord Alderdice

I'm not really sure.

Lord Richard

There are all sorts of things that Westminster does which are perfectly acceptable to Northern Ireland.

Lord Alderdice

Yes, but perhaps because we had a very long period of time when we had our own devolution and were used to doing things our own way. I mean if you take, for example, something like the Mental Health Act, the 1959 Mental Health Act in Britain was changed when it came to Northern Ireland in 1961. One of the changes was that personality disorder was not regarded as a mental illness. Therefore, one could not be formally detained under the diagnosis of personality disorder in Northern Ireland. This made for a radical difference in the way things were dealt with by psychiatrists. In fact, I think it was rather better. So even though there was a fair bit of read across, there was a capacity to make some differences. We were very used to that. More used than the Scots were. We also have our own completely separate Civil Service.

Vivienne Sugar

Could you just explain the process of petitioning the Secretary of State?

Lord Alderdice

It’s simply a situation where if a Minister wishes to bring in a piece of legislation, a component of which remains at Westminster under the Secretary of State, he can write to the Secretary of State and ask if the Secretary will give us permission for this. If he does that then when the Bill comes to me for proofing it should also have a letter from the Secretary of State to say that the Secretary is prepared for this. If it doesn't have I will either ask for it to be done, or on occasion write myself to the Secretary of State. But he must give approval, otherwise it won't come through.

If a private Member wants to bring forward a piece of legislation, an example being the Commissioner for Children, which remained part of the remit for the Secretary of State, the private Member should write to the Secretary of State and ask for that. In the case of that private Member only parts of it were accepted.

Lord Richard

What actually happens then is that Northern Ireland says we want to do X, whatever it is, petition the Secretary of State, the Secretary says, yes, I agree. That's in relation to an excepted or a retained matter?

Lord Alderdice

Reserved matter. Yes.

Lord Richard

It then comes back down to you. You do the legislation.

Lord Alderdice

Absolutely.

Lord Richard

Not a question of being in the queue to compete for parliamentary time in Westminster?

Lord Alderdice

Not at all. When it comes right the way through the Secretary of State can say he's not going to submit it for Royal Assent, indeed the Attorney General can, between Reconsideration and Third stage, object, but that has not been done.

Lord Richard

So in other words, Westminster gives you the right to legislate in areas, prima facie, that are within the competence---

Lord Alderdice

We have never attempted, and I think would be ill advised to do so, to do it on a full Bill. Where it usually arises is, for example, in the context of a Bill where we wish to make something a criminal offence and that is not a devolved matter. So then the Minister would ask the Secretary of State "Is it possible to make this a criminal offence in such and such a fashion." The Secretary of State will say that's right and reasonable or no, I don’t think that’s reasonable. So it’s not usually in the context of a whole Bill.

Lord Richard

You would then pass the legislation?

Lord Alderdice

Oh yes, absolutely.

Ted Rowlands

May I ask what have the legislative forces meant in staffing to the Assembly, what kind of support staff are there for Members to handle this legislation? Secondly, within departments, teams and the rest of it, can you give us an assessment of the size and nature of the officials required at both ends?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. First of all in terms of the writing of the legislation there are no immediate implications because there has been a Northern Ireland statute book since the early 1920s, so the Executive has always had its own draftsmen. However, on the Executive side the question immediately arises of, as you say, Bill teams. The decision was taken by the Northern Ireland Civil Service that they would not establish a Bill team in each department because some departments may not have a piece of legislation during that year and what that meant was that in some departments they develop a great deal of expertise and in other departments very little. I don’t think the Civil Service has found a way of solving that particular problem. I couldn't give you any idea of the manpower involved. That's not on my side of the House, as it were.

On our side the main components really would be the Bill Office, which is a small office with a senior clerk and some junior clerks who would not only assist in the passage of the Bill, but will give advice, procedural advice to the Speaker’s Office and to the Clerk of the Assembly. We have a small legal department, nothing so grand as what the Scots have.

Lord Richard

Is the Bill Office under you?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. One of the things that we have from the beginning been very clear about is if we are there to scrutinise the Executive we must have a completely separate outfit. At the start we had no legal advisors. All the people that were seconded to us were from the Civil Service. At a very early stage I, indeed, Members of the Assembly as a whole, decided this was not a reasonable situation. I couldn't possibly use legal advice which was also being provided to Ministers, otherwise how could I scrutinise anything? We established senior counsel for myself andemployed a number of lawyers in house who are employed directly by the Assembly, not by the Civil Service. Everyone who works in the Assembly is a Member of Assembly staff employed by the Assembly Commission. Some of them may have won their jobs in open competition coming from a Civil Service background and seconded by the Civil Service and they may then choose to go back. But many are from Local Government or the private sector or the community sector.

Dr Laura McAllister

What's the history of that? In the case of Wales it is more obvious why the original set-up was as it was, because it was constituted a corporate body and so on. The Presiding Office has had to move away as the Executive in legislature. Why is this the case in Northern Ireland; that you didn't have any kind of independent advice in the legal---?

Lord Alderdice

Mostly it was because nobody thought seriously about the issue. When the Assembly was set up there was a little flimsy dozen pages or so and that was the Standing Orders. My instructions from the Minister were: "Please try to make sure this does not fall to pieces, John." But on the whole, I mean, the decisions about where it would meet and the financing was not thought through at all. We were given a budget of 13 or 14 million pounds. When we worked it out we needed 36 million pounds. There were no proper arrangements for Hansard, no training done for anybody. The Commission, which was established to decide on Standing Orders and procedures for rules in Scotland, nothing of that kind existed for Northern Ireland. I don't think it was thought through and decided, I think it was never thought through. So we had to think through that ourselves.

In our context there were practical reasons, of the kind I have described, why I think we moved in this direction. How can you scrutinise if you are getting the same person giving advice to both sides? There is also political impact. On the Nationalist side the idea of employing the Northern Ireland Civil Service to give the back up to Nationalist and Republican Members was regarded as nonsensical.

We then moved into all sorts of fascinating issues like: how do you employ people. You can't just employ people from Northern Ireland. That means anybody in the UK can be employed. Furthermore, anybody from the Republic can be employed. You can't only employ people from the UK or Republic of Ireland, that would contravene European legislation, so that would mean that you could employ somebody from the south of Sicily but not from the Parliament in Canada, another Commonwealth country with similar kinds of arrangements. In the end therefore we had to completely do away with any nationality requirements at all when we were advertising, so anybody can apply from anywhere in the world to work in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Not a lot do it. But in principle they can.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

What proportion is?

Lord Alderdice

Almost none. One or two from the south, one or two from over here in the UK. The occasional ex-patriot.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

You talked about changing the functions of the areas in which the Northern Ireland Assembly could hold power. Could you remind the Commission of the process whereby these changes can be achieved and who has to agree and how is it done?

Lord Alderdice

From a political point of view there will need to be agreement within the Northern Ireland Assembly, essentially a political agreement amongst the main political parties to say, for example, we want criminal justice and policing to be devolved. In legal terms it must be done by Act of Parliament at Westminster.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Act of Parliament. There is no provision for an Order in Council?

Lord Alderdice

As far as I'm aware you need an Act to devolve those major areas.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

No short cut?

Lord Alderdice

I do not think so.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

No discussion of a short cut?

Lord Alderdice

Not that I'm aware of. I will need to check that out to be sure. I'm not 100% sure about that, but my understanding is that it would require an Act.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

In Wales there are a lot of jagged edges, and one of the things that we have to think about is how to try and smooth them out.

Lord Alderdice

As far as I know for that major area it’s necessary to have an Act at Westminster. I don’t think it can be done by Order. But if you will permit me I will check that and come back.

Dr Laura McAllister

The evidence that we had from Professor Rawlings talked about the Northern Ireland example in relation to the rolling programme of devolution, making the point that the excepted matters are ring-fenced in the sense that they would require an Act of Parliament and then the movement from the reserve to the transfer can be done by Order in Council.

Lord Alderdice

I will have to check that. Even, well, I will have to check that.

Lord Richard

How often do you have petition the way you described it? Fairly regularly? Twice a year?

Lord Alderdice

I would have thought that two, three times a year would have been the number of times. It’s simply when a Minister decides basically that he wants to include something in the piece of legislation.

Lord Richard

You come up against the Reg Board and through the Reg Board until the Secretary of State gives you permission. He has a veto on the policy, but you have the final say?

Lord Alderdice

Well, we don't have final say in the sense that he can veto it at the end, but the process of legislation goes through the Assembly.

Lord Richard

Do you send the Bills direct to the Monarch?

Lord Alderdice

No, to the Secretary of State, which is different from Scotland.

Ted Rowlands

Given you have legislative powers, why was the term ‘Assembly’ used instead of ‘Parliament’?

Lord Alderdice

Well, this really came through the process of the talks. You see, there was a lot of ambivalence around on the question of a Northern Ireland body. On the Unionists side there are some Unionists for whom the Parliament is Westminster. People, I suppose from outside, have come to the view that the Unionists wanted Stormont in the old days. But they didn't. Carson regarded Stormont as a failure. Its existence. Not because it didn't work as a Parliament, but because for him if any part of Ireland was outside the UK that was a failure. Unionists came to like Stormont because they had control of things. But the Parliament for many Unionists, like I suspect Lord Molyneaux, for example, would always have been Westminster. In the Nationalist community there was ambivalence for a different reason; the idea of having a Parliament within the North was partitionist, for them the Parliament is the Dublin Parliament. So there was always this kind of ambivalence politically on both sides. Even the question of having Ministers was something that came in at quite a late stage. During the discussions there was an idea that we shouldn't have Ministers at all. We should have Chairmen of Committees.

Ted Rowlands

Like the original Government of Wales Bill?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. It was only at a late stage, and I mean, some of the Nationalists then realised what the implications of that were. Seamus Mallon famously said, ‘If you think it’s of any interest to me to sit here in this part of Ireland implementing Mrs Thatcher’s policies, forget it. I want a proper place where Irishmen can make their own decisions and have them implemented.’ So from his Nationalist perspective it moved to being a requirement to have Ministers with a capacity for legislation.

Lord Richard

There has never been any real or any recent argument that Northern Ireland shouldn't have legislation, has there?

Lord Alderdice

Not since the later part of the talks, certainly. There are some Unionists who look at current Welsh arrangements and think they are an excellent idea. Even in relatively recent times, I think Lord Molyneaux and some of his colleagues have suggested it’s quite clear the Northern Ireland Assembly does not work, therefore, why not knock all that down and have something of the Welsh Assembly model. But politically this is something which is completely impossible, even if it were desirable.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

You referred to the cost that had not been thought out, having separate services for the Parliament. Has there been concern in Northern Ireland about the cost of the Assembly and, indeed, the Northern Irish Executive following the passage of the Northern Ireland Act.

Lord Alderdice

Yes. There has been and I think for two reasons. The first is that I think there is a general perception that we have too many departments, too many Ministers and that 108 Members is probably too many Members for something the size of Northern Ireland, which is 1.5 million people. There are some of the parties who for good reasons and for very obvious political reasons make the point that here is a lot of money being spent on this. In truth, of course, the amount of money that the Assembly costs in comparison with the budget, which they are overseeing from the Northern Ireland block, is actually extremely small.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

The block is very large. Compared with per head expenditure in England, it’s large.

Lord Alderdice

That's right.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Larger than Scotland?

Lord Alderdice

It’s quite difficult to calculate. But I would suspect that per capita it probably is. At that level there is a concern. The other thing is that frankly I don't know anywhere where the Press do not hold up to criticism, particularly any devolved institution. I don't just mean in the UK, it’s also the case in talking to colleagues in continental Europe, that it seems to be very much the vogue at present to make enormous criticisms of what is spent on politics and political life and we come in for our fair share of that, as I suspect is probably the case in Cardiff. It’s certainly the case in Edinburgh. We were very fortunate. Our Parliament building was built a long time ago (it was completed in 1932). Everybody thinks how far seeing were those who spent the money. Isn’t it wonderful to have such a building? It has been no reassurance, I might tell you, for me to say this to colleagues in Edinburgh and Cardiff who have asked how long does it take you to be appreciated. When I tell them about two generations they are not very reassured.

Paul Valerio

Can I ask about tax varying powers? You don't have them. Is there any demand either by the public or politicians?

Lord Alderdice

There has been discussion about this on a number of levels, but there is a great anxiety amongst those who are really involved, for example, Finance Ministers, that if you try to tinker too much then the Barnett Formula may be tinkered with adversely. Everybody thinks the Barnett should be tinkered with so that you get even more than Michael was pointing out. But those who deal with the Treasury know that if it changes it will not change in that direction. There are number of areas people may well say, we don't actually agree with what the government is doing in London. We think some taxes should be higher, Income Tax for example. We also still have a rating system for the raising of money in Northern Ireland. So there are some parties who take the view that we should have a local income tax rather than the rating system. We have another particular issue in Northern Ireland and that is that we have a land frontier with the Republic which has brought its Corporation Tax way, way down. This has disadvantaged us in attracting new inward investment. There has been quite a lot of discussion about us having capacity to have a lower Corporation Tax than the rest of the UK in order to be able to deal with the competition from the Republic of Ireland. The Treasury made it clear from the very outset it was not in the slightest bit interested in this, but it is something that has had a fair bit of discussion.

So, yes, the issue of tax varying powers has been discussed, Corporation Tax, Income Tax as a whole, local Income Tax as an alternative to rating. Nobody has suggested Community Charge at all. But everybody -- people put it in reports, they say things about it, but nobody has gone any further than that because every time they have the Minister of Finance at the time has said, well, fine, but you do understand if you open this up with the Treasury the chances are that the Barnett Formula will be reduced. Because we started off in the 1920s, we have a history in Northern Ireland of trying to raise our own funding through taxation. It became quite clear that we did not have a sufficient tax base to survive and provide the level of Social Security and the general welfare benefits that the population wanted. That's why we went to a block system. So people are very aware that we really could not sustain ourselves in the style to which we have become accustomed from our own taxes.

Paul Valerio

Did you say that 60 of the AMs are Local Government councillors as well?

Lord Alderdice

Yes.

Paul Valerio

Do they meet in the evenings?

Lord Alderdice

Most of the local councils meet in the evening. It’s not a very big place. So very few people who don't already live in Belfast choose to have a second residence in Belfast. Almost everybody, even if it is very late at night, goes back home to wherever and, yes, they sustain that. Many of them will say to you, I wouldn't continue doing this if I knew the Assembly was going to survive. But, of course, that's been very difficult and unstable. It does raise a question of conflict of interest both in the question of the Minister responsible for Local Government and in the question of Ministers when they are dealing with Local Government legislation. That has been debated around. But I think there is a general appreciation that we're in transition.

The other area which is of interest is that there are quite a number of MLAs, Members of the Legislative Assembly, who are also Members of the Westminster Parliament and, indeed, two are Members of the European Parliament. There is an interesting question there about the division of labour. At what point is a particular responsibility that of a Westminster MP or that of a local Member? For example, a Member came to me from South Armagh who was very concerned about army observation posts, he wanted to go to London to the Ministry of Defence to complain about this. He asked, ‘Can I have funding to do that?’ The answer was no, you can't because it’s not a devolved issue. You have a Member of Parliament in your area. It’s he who should be going to deal with this particular issue. But because we're so much in transition we haven't really worked that one through.

Vivienne Sugar

Can I ask about engaging with the public? Are citizens able to petition the Assembly to promote particular pieces of legislation? Do you have the equivalent of Regional Committees that go out and about and meet in different places and invite the public to come in? What has been done to try and improve turn out in elections?

Lord Alderdice

Turnout in elections has not usually been a big problem in Northern Ireland. In fact, there's some people turn out more than once per election. A different kind of a problem! Turnout is not as big an issue as it has been more widely because every vote counts in such a divided society.

In terms of popular interest, because we have had a building that is a substantial building in itself and is of historic interest and so on, we have had a very substantial number of visitors, young people from schools. My own office at my request has organised quite a number of debates for young people. We use the Senate Chamber because it was a bicameral legislature in the past. We don't use the Members Chamber, but we can use the Senate Chamber for debates with young people, students and others and we have had 40 – 50,000 people a year coming in, most of them Northern Ireland people, but obviously a lot of other visitors. When you have got a building that is attractive in itself, then that's something.

We've tried to persuade the Committees to go out around the country. We arranged seven or eight places around Northern Ireland which had video-conference facilities, and all else that was required. We put into our Standing Orders that if some Members were in Belfast and some of the Members were in Derry, conducting the meeting by video-conference was a valid way. But in fact, we didn't really get very much interest from the Members in doing this. It was a lot more convenient to do the business in Belfast. Northern Ireland is not so big that it’s not possible for people to come. We also webcast all of the proceedings in the chamber so people can see it on the internet if they wish.

People do have the possibility of signing petitions and those petitions are presented at the start of each session by a Member. It’s simply a matter of the member indicating in advance they wish to do it. I call them, they come up and present it to me, and I indicate which Minister and Committee I'm going to send the petition to. The Minister will receive the petition and will then subsequently respond to it, and send me a response, which I pass on to the Committee. At this stage those are the main kinds of areas.

We have tried to develop an educational facility. We have two full-time teachers on secondment who spend all their time developing educational programmes and encouraging visits and tours. We are going to be increasing that when we are in operation again to deal with the older young people. We have learned a lot from our colleagues in Edinburgh, who have done a lot. You have done a very great deal. The other two people places which are impressive are Ottawa and Canberra. They have put a lot of money into providing transport for young people to come to their Parliament. So that's not a particular issue for us.

Peter Price

I'd like to ask about the balance of work within the Assembly, if we take the categories of legislation, policy formation and of scrutiny, thinking in terms of scrutinising the work of the Minister and expenditure and so on. How would you roughly categorise the proportion of time of the plenary sessions and of the Committees in those three categories? Secondly, and if you looked at it qualitatively, what's your sort of bird’s eye view? Do Members tend to gravitate to wanting spend their time on legislation, for example, or policy formation at the expense of scrutiny? Or which way round does it go? And is there anything special about the Northern Ireland circumstances that would not be repeatable in a Welsh context?

Lord Alderdice

The last question first. I do not in think in this kind of area that we're particularly different. I think most of it is probably transferable.

To give you a rough idea of the day, how it operates, we would start off usually with one or two statements from Ministers. We tend to have statements quite frequently because of the North/South Ministerial Council and the insistence that anything that is happening there, any Ministerial North/South meeting, is reported by way of a statement followed by questions. That perhaps is something that is particular to us. But only by the way of the number of statements made, not by the nature of them.

We then would have legislation and what I would have tended to find is that we would have reasonably substantial second reading debates and then they go to Committee. There is reasonable scrutiny in the Committees. That's really where the serious scrutiny takes place. Once it comes to consideration stage people almost have the view that if you put down an amendment it is because you want to change things. The idea of probing amendments really has not caught on. So the idea that you put down an amendment purely to try to get something on the record, or get an undertaking from the Minister does not happen anything like what I observe in Westminster. Which means that quite a high percentage of amendments that are put town actually get voted through because they will very often come out of scrutiny in the Committee and I can give you figures of numbers of amendments and numbers of Bills and so on, and you will find that most, a significant number of amendments will actually pass. And when it comes to Statutory Rules, for example, there have only been two prayers of annulment actually brought to the Assembly and both of them were passed by the Assembly. Very different from Westminster where people use the opportunity to probe or push or get it on the record.

We then have questions on Monday that will be one and a half hours divided in three half hour sessions. For half an hour a Minister or the Deputy First Minister or the First Minister, or the two together, will receive questions and answer them and be followed by supplementaries. We get through on average maybe seven, six, seven, eight questions, plus three supplementaries each in the half hour. The First and the Deputy First Minister are there every other week. The other Ministers are there by rotation of about one in four because apart from Ministers the Commission comes up for questions once very three months.

Then there are motions which may be to do with the resolutions for Statutory Rules, or they may be motions from Committees in receipt of a report, consideration of the report, or they may be Private Members business. Usually we would have two, three hours perhaps of that. So we would go on to round 6 o'clock, sometimes it’s later than that, but we try to finish up by six, half six that sort of time. In the Committees it varies.

Just to pause for a moment. If one categorised that it sounds to me as about one third of your Plenary time is spent on primary legislation, a very small amount on secondary legislation and I'm not quite clear how you would group the other between policy formation and -- it does sound as though the Plenary is active in that field.

Lord Alderdice

So the other component really is statements. I'm not sure we spend as much as a third on primary legislation because statements come in and take up---

Peter Price

I interrupted you when you started on the Committees. That's interesting how they split.

Lord Alderdice

That varies enormously from Committee to Committee, depending on how active the Chairman and the ordinary Members are and what is happening at the time, for example, when Foot and Mouth happened the Agriculture Committee was meeting almost every Friday with a Minister in attendance to say what had happened in the previous two weeks. The Finance and Personnel Committee was meeting not just regularly during the session, but through the recess in order to get through a lot of the work that they were getting through. So it varied enormously. Legislation was always regarded as having prime time. If you have legislation to get through then everything else has to be set aside to get it through. We were generally quite good at that, although in the case of the Finance and Personnel Committee the 30 days they normally have to scrutinise something at Committee level had to be extended fairly often. Too many Bills.

Lord Richard

How many Bills do you actually get on Statute each year?

Lord Alderdice

I was comparing the Scottish Parliament with ours. Between May 1999 and March 2003 they passed 62 Bills, of which 50 were Executive Bills. For us between December 1999 and October 2002, which was a year less, 63 Bills were introduce, almost exactly the same number, but because of suspension they didn't all get through. So of those, 32 became Acts and most of the rest were picked up by Westminster and carried through as Orders in Council.

Lord Richard

You got them all in the end?

Lord Alderdice

Basically in the end. Private Members Bills(one), Committee Bills (three or four). Almost all Executive Bills got through.

Lord Richard

How constitutionally can Westminster legislate by Order in Council to produce an Act for the Northern Ireland Parliament?

Lord Alderdice

It does not produce an Act. It produces an Order in Council. What happened was that the work that the Assembly had done on those pieces of legislation was taken up and re-drafted in the form of an Order in Council and the Secretary of State then brought it as a new Order in Council but containing most of what was in the Act and simply took it through.

Lord Richard

Why can't we do that in Wales?

Ted Rowlands

It's unamendable.

Peter Price

This is an emergency temporary situation; presumably that's the logic. Not an ongoing legislative procedure.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

For three years you have had an enormous amount of legislation going on. According to Rick Wilford and Robin Wilson towards the end of the period it was working very well and then the suspension. Then you go on free-wheeling and putting through Orders, practically all the legislation that was in hand at the time of the suspension. What's happening now?

Lord Alderdice

Now we're not just suspended, we're dissolved as well since May.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Instead of 20 Acts per year, you have gone down to the bare minimum?

Lord Alderdice

Absolutely, in fact, arguably even below the bare minimum because there is a tendency on the part of the Northern Ireland Office Ministers to say if there is anything can be postponed in order that Assembly might take it up it’s better to leave it to the Assembly. If it has to be done it will be, but it would be so much better if the Assembly were doing it.

Ted Rowlands

When we met David Steel he expressed a considerable unease about the Scottish Parliament having become a legislative sausage machine. He was worried about the degree of scrutiny and, of course, without any revising capacity there was judicial review and also a hand over of the legislation, if I remember rightly. How have you avoided what he appears to be concerned about in the case of Scotland?

Lord Alderdice

I don't think we have entirely avoided it but there are one or two slightly different dynamics. The first is that our Civil Service, because of their experience of Orders in Council, have tended to be particularly careful that anything that was coming forward had rather fulsome exploration by them. So while they might not agree with particular policies, it was not shoddy stuff coming forward.

Ted Rowlands

A history of quality legislation?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. That had been a quite long history. Secondly, I think that one or two of us realised from an early stage that the initial process for legislation was inadequate and so had this Reconsideration stage instituted. But I think that Members themselves found it difficult to move from being local councillors or MPs whose main interest was the more historic constitutional issue. Most Northern Ireland MPs don’t see their time atWestminster as being UK legislators. They see it as being political leaders for the communities in Northern Ireland. So I myself felt that the capacity, the opportunity for using the legislative powers, was not exploited really very much. Certainly not as much as they might have been.

I tried to develop a close relationship, for example, every Monday morning, apart from meeting the deputies and the senior clerks, I would meet with the Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service (and still do) and discuss with him all the plans for legislation that were coming forward, how I could be helpful, what difficulties there may be, what things he needed to know about how things were going to be going on in the Assembly. So that continues on. It’s now the third Head of the Civil Service since I started. We still have meetings and discuss the questions. I have gone and had a meeting with all the Permanent Secretaries to discuss with them why it would not be possible for them to institute more pre-legislative scrutiny by publishing drafts and allowing Committees and the public to explore those widely before they would come to the Assembly. The answer is there is no procedural reason for not doing it. They just haven't done it before. Yes, it’s a good idea. We have had workshops of Senior Civil Servants at which I have spoken and got them to mix with the Parliamentary staff to discuss how they might work together to involve more people in the pre-legislative scrutiny.

So I suppose things like that we have done. But I think if we've got reasonably good legislation it’s probably because it has been pretty well prepared. On certain areas, because substantial people in the business and academic and professional community have tended to stay away from politics in Northern Ireland, when it comes to technical financial questions, for example, not many of the Members actually understood terribly well what was happening. So the Minister would understand, Mark Durkan, a very good Finance Minister understood very well, one or two of the people in the Finance Committee would understand, but the chamber might be virtually empty because most of the Members say "I haven't a clue. No point wasting my time." And in sort of answer to what you were saying, Peter, the chamber was by no means full because the Members were saying "This is his or her bit. I am away doing other work." But they all come in for the vote.

Dr Laura McAllister

I was going to ask you about the size of the Assembly. The figures of 108 in population terms is relatively large, but from what we understand it was reached because of disagreement over how STV would work on the basis of the 18 constituencies and how many representatives there should be for each one to make sure the smaller parties had representation. But setting that aside, is it fit for purpose? Do 108 Members deliver the kind of scrutiny and legislative policy role that is required of an Assembly operating at that level? Because it’s an issue that exercises us where we only have 60 Members. Different powers admittedly.

Lord Alderdice

Well, I think that there is a certain minimal size that you have to have otherwise you can't do the business properly.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Like what?

Lord Alderdice

It’s hard to do it with less than 60 or 70. Because if you have a number of people who are Ministers they are out of the frame for a start, you have a number of people who are chairing Committees, therefore ought to be spending time becoming expert on that area and not being available for lots of other things. Apart from the scrutiny Committees, Committees that scrutinise and do all the other things there are lots of Committees we have haven't talked about, Procedure Committee, Audit Committee, Public Accounts Committee, Standards and Privileges, House Committees to do with IT, Environmental concerns, the Commission of the Assembly, the Whips and the Business Committee. All have to be staffed by Members. Of course, you are quite right, I suspect we would probably have been going for more like 90 Members rather than 108 if it hadn't been a matter of concern to ensure that some of the smaller parties got in.

Admittedly we too have 10 Ministerial departments plus the department of First and Deputy First Minister. That's rather a lot. Probably more than you need for the moment. Although not if justice was devolved. The Scots have two Committees for justice. It’s quite a large area. But 10 is quite a lot of ministerial departments. Nevertheless, if you are going to get in a spread of people from different political parties, different genders, different attitudes and background, if you are going to make sure that you get people in from business and professional, academic community who traditionally stayed out, then you have to have -- and if you have to cover all the constituency work, the increasing work of co-operation with other Parliaments, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, European networks, the other devolved institutions, representational functions of the community, you have to do all those things properly and have a number of people who are particularly expert in health, social services, agriculture or finance which all become increasingly technical areas, you can't do that with a handful of people. They are stretched so thin they can't do the job properly. No time to think. You have to react. So I find it difficult to see how you could do that with less than 60 or 70 people, no matter how small the community is.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

You always had very close links with the other two speakers or Presiding Officers. Is it a fair question to ask, you give the impression that your Members were pretty hard working. Is it possible to give an in impression of workload in the three Assemblies as you gathered it to date?

Lord Alderdice

To be honest I find that very difficult, because for much of the time the close relationship that was built up with the three Speakers was actually involving the development of the staff of the three institutions. Because if you have got an elected body in Westminster or Dublin, generations of people are staff. When I became Speaker nobody knew how to be a Parliamentary Doorkeeper, never mind a Committee Clerk. All the people had to be trained and developed. We got a lot of help from Westminster. The Canadians were helpful. We learned a great deal from Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast together. When it came to working with IT or Hansard or developing clerks, there was a lot of that.

The main things that I would say there were… the Scots have a lot more legal input than us. I'm not sure whether they -- I think they needed it because they seemed to get into a lot more legal issues. They seem to take actions against each other on Standards and Privileges issues far, far more frequently than we did. We found, I think, that it was very helpful for us to have a separate cadre of staff that were not Civil Service that were able to feel a loyalty to us. I felt that our staff had a greater degree of freedom to get on with building a Parliament than our Welsh colleagues have who didn't seem to have the same degree of independence to think in a different and more Parliamentary way. We and the Scots, I'm not sure about yourselves, have gone through a process of establishing new terms and conditions of business. We took over the old Northern Ireland Civil Service terms and conditions and found that didn't work when Civil Servants had to deal directly with representatives all the time,. might not have so much to do during the recess but than they had a huge amount to work coming up to the budget. So we had to develop new terms and conditions.

So I think I can say a lot more about the workload of the staff and that kind of context than comparing the Members.

Tom Jones

Do your staff exchange at all with Westminster or Edinburgh?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. We haven't had a lot of long-term, six to 12-month things. But during our period of suspension we have undertaken work for Westminster or Edinburgh or whatever. Our Hansard staff are covering the Parliamentary inquiry in Scotland into the building of the Parliament. We staff the inter-Parliamentary body with our Hansard people. Not just within the UK, - when the Kosovans were setting up their Parliament our Deputy Clerk went out to Kosova for three months to help set up the Parliament there. We have had a number of Bosnian clerks over to us. The Canadians were helpful. We have a long-term programme of a couple of clerks, or other Members of staff going to Ottawa to work there for a month or so at a time. And at the moment, because of suspension, we have had people inDublin as well as in Edinburgh, contact with Cardiff and people in London.

Lord Richard

The impression we get listening to what you are saying is that there are enough quality people there, but obviously some need training. Do you find the pool is big enough to produce good quality Civil Servants? The pool, the population, the people coming out of university?

Lord Alderdice

We don't have a problem of getting good people from within Northern Ireland. What we did find is it was good to get people from outside the Civil Service because they have particular ways of looking at things. You can get people in from Local Government, from university, from professions and other places who would come in specifically because of their ability, obviously on the IT side, and fairly obviously on things like accounting. When it came to us looking for a finance officer, initially we had somebody in from the Civil Service. We found it really was not very satisfactory. We needed to get somebody in who was in the big world of accounting and was used to what was going on in wider accounting and employ that person directly to bring us much more up to date with, not current Civil Service funding, but with the proper way of funding a Parliament. We wanted to employ lawyers from outside who had made their way in the legal world rather than necessarily somebody who had been in the Civil Service legal department. So there are plenty of good people within Northern Ireland.

There is also something that I think is important about enabling Parliamentary staff to develop a career within the Parliamentary system. Westminster is big enough that you can spend your whole life making your way up the tree. But in Cardiff and Edinburgh or Belfast it won't be possible. It’s only possible if you can start off as a junior in Hansard in Belfast, then get a job in Dublin a little bit more senior, then go to Westminster and finally end up as the editor of Hansard in the Edinburgh Parliament. That requires the capacity to move round in the Parliamentary field. That's quite an enriching thing.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

That's happening now, is it?

Lord Alderdice

It’s happening in some areas more quickly than others. A third of the Hansard staff in Dublin were originally trained by one of the people who was our editor in Belfast, but because we kept collapsing they all went to Dublin for jobs.

Peter Price

Do you think there could and should be a common Parliamentary service employing the staff in Westminster and the three devolved Assemblies?

Lord Alderdice

If you ask me from a Northern Ireland perspective I would have say that given that for many of our people the national Parliament is in Dublin, not in Westminster, you have to be thinking more widely than the UK. I think that might be quite a step.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

They find it quite hard to get it between the two houses in Westminster. A radical suggestion has been thrown out by the Commission seems pie in the sky.

Lord Alderdice

The Hansard people have established a Hansard body for all the Hansard editors and clerks in the islands; they now meet on a regular basis to discuss Hansard issues.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Are you on the Business Committee?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. I am the Chairman .

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

How is that staffed?

Lord Alderdice

By the Clerk of the Business Office.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Employed by the Assembly?

Lord Alderdice

Yes.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

The whips are on it?

Lord Alderdice

Yes. In the case of the larger parties also the deputy whips.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

The fact that it’s a very political job does not prevent the system being done by a clerk?

Lord Alderdice

No, no. On the contrary.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

At one stage you had a special assistant.

Lord Alderdice

This is my current one. (indicating Mr Richard Good, seated beside)

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Who had quite a lot to do with the Business Committee?

Lord Alderdice

He had a lot to do with the pre-Business Committee meetings and other private conversations with people.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

He was the McDonlad of Northern Ireland---

Lord Alderdice

Absolutely. It’s still important for Chairs to be channels of communication between people and for people to know whether they can talk to somebody before they talk to me. Or to find out what discussions there should be. It’s still useful. The Business Committee is a very useful meeting. It has been attended by Sinn Fein, and pretty much all the parties.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Doesn't exist now?

Lord Alderdice

Not during dissolution. Only on later occasions were there any votes required. Most things were done by consensus and the minutes were published every week and put on the web.

Lord Richard

Minutes published?

Lord Alderdice

Yes.

Lord Richard

Usual channels operated openly?

Lord Alderdice

Yes.

Vivienne Sugar

I wanted to go back to the question of the volume of legislation. When we were in Scotland we were told that basically in their first term they were playing catch up, that there were a lot of things that had been part of manifestoes and they wanted to get things through. Some of them would be particular to Scotland to property law or land owning. So I am surprised to hear you say that the volume of legislation you dealt with was very similar in scale to Scotland. Was any of that catch up, local particular things that people wanted to get through? Or can you describe the different kinds that you have dealt with?

Lord Alderdice

Remember you have a completely different kind of Scottish legal system. Ours is the English Common Law system. It’s the old problem of statistics. If you compare the numbers of Bills they had and we have had, it's not terribly different. If you compare the number of clauses per Bill they have an awful lot more. So it's a bit of apples and pears in a way. You also have a different kind of Government. Theirs was a coalition Government. You had two parties determined to see things through and their electoral prospects would depend on how much they got through. In the case of Northern Ireland it took a very, very long time for a Programme of Government to be agreed and then all parties were expected to -- 80% of the elected representatives were Members of Government parties. So it’s a completely different kind of---

Ted Rowlands

80% were all on the Government side.

Lord Alderdice

Yes, well, theoretically. They were members of Government parties, being on the same side. But it meant that you had a very different kind of animal and a different business in terms of legislation.

We also had a situation where because we had Northern Ireland Office Ministers who were expecting this body to come through following the talks, there was a little bit of material waiting around to be implemented and once the Scottish Parliament was in place it was in place. We were in place in shadow form for over a year before we had power. But during that year there would have been attempts on the part of NIO Ministers to not bring legislation forward unless it was very urgent. It’s difficult to compare the---

Vivienne Sugar

If there were a resumption of the Assembly, would you expect the volume of legislation to stay as it was, to stay the same as it was in the first period or to be less?

Lord Alderdice

One of my concerns and frustrations was that it took us so long to get the legislation started, that there was a lot of public frustration. All this money and building was in place, but very few Bills were coming out the other end. So one of the things that I have been negotiating with the head of the Civil Service has been to ensure that the Civil Service under the Northern Ireland Office Ministers was continuing to publicly consult on pieces of legislation. This could be presented subsequent to an Assembly election, to the new governing parties on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Nevertheless, there would be material which could be going through the Assembly within the first year, rather than finding it took 18 months to negotiate a Programme of Government and then to start legislation going through, which would mean that only the second half of the mandate would be of any use. We have carry over for almost all legislation so it doesn't fall at the end of the day.

Dr Laura McAllister

Can we go back to the electoral system; you are fairly invaluable to us in a sense of how STV operates and we are looking at electoral arrangements. When the original discussions for implementing STV were under way, how important was the issue of co-terminocity to the Westminster Parliamentary seats? I can imagine that to the Unionists it was pretty central. Were there other reasons for the co-terminocity being limited? Secondly, were there other debates about the advantages of STV? You clearly have got a history of using STV which is different to the rest of the UK, things like levels of representativeness, generally, capacity to have smaller parties integrated, and so on. Can you give us a flavour of the kind of discussions that were going on?

Lord Alderdice

In some ways there were less discussions than you might imagine, partly because of the history. We had STV for quite a period of time. From a voter point of view it’s incredibly easy and transparent because everybody can understand that I put a one against the person I like most, two against the person I like second best and on so on. Although, that's notnecessarily the way it happens. You count the number of candidates, you put one against the one you like most. Then you put 14 against the one you like least, then fill out the rest. Who you are against as well as who you are for. Because there was such an emphasis on ensuring proportionality in everything, it’s perfectly obvious that you have got a completely proportionate system that is very difficult to corrupt, and it’s also very difficult for parties to control it. So the electorate have a great deal of freedom in what they do and in then precisely how they get people in in a second of those preferences.

So there was not a huge amount of debate.

On the question of co-terminocity, if STV is going to work you have to have multi-member constituencies. Part of the advantage is that wherever you are there is a probability that in your constituency you will actually have somebody that appeals to you that you can go to. In Welsh terms, for example, even if you were in a very Labour constituency if you have got five or six Members there is a fair chance that you will have a number of people who are not Labour, who are Plaid Cymru or Lib Dem. Whereas in Westminster seats, any Unionists in West Belfast have to go to Gerry Adams, so they don't go.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

What's the relationship between the Members from the same constituency?

Lord Alderdice

It’s very interesting because in some of the constituencies even when you have DUP, Sinn Fein and everything in between, when it would come to a constituency issue, maybe for an adjournment debate or something like that, they would all be prepared to work together, all stand up and support the constituency and, indeed, what people then began to do in the local constituency was to say: there is no point in us getting one particular party to promote this. Unless you can get cross-party support for this it’s going nowhere. But if you do get cross-party support then it can be very powerful. When it came to the local constituency you very often would find that the local constituency Members were prepared to break the party issue on a social and economic question.

Lord Richard

Happened in Europe too.

Lord Alderdice

Yes.

Lord Richard

Thank you very much indeed. From our point of view it’s an extraordinarily useful session. We are very grateful to you.

Lord Alderdice

Thank you very much. I wish you well in your deliberations.