The chair of Westminster’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has conceded that reform of the devolved institutions won’t happen without backing from either Sinn Féin or the DUP.
Sir Robert Buckland said efforts to adopt any of the reform recommendations tabled by the committee last month would be “stymied” unless Stormont’s two biggest parties were onboard.
The MPs’ report made a raft of recommendations aimed at stabilising the power-sharing institutions..
They included reform of the rules around electing a speaker and rebranding the first and deputy first minister titles to better reflect their equal status.
The two DUP MPs on the committee, Jim Shannon and Carla Lockhart, did not endorse the report, while Sinn Féin has signalled that it opposes reforms.
Sir Robert, who succeeded fellow Tory Simon Hoare as committee chair in November, said he accepted that “you need the two main parties to agree” to any reforms.
“I suppose you could say that without one of them the process is in effect stymied,” he said.
However, the Welsh-born MP for Swindon South said the larger parties’ veto didn’t mean the committee’s work was in vain.
“It would have been easy for my committee to just wring its hands and say there’s nothing we can do but I think it was incumbent on us to come up with some ideas,” he said.
“I think what we produced was, I hope, a measured and constructive contribution to the debate that, frankly, I think, citizens in Northern Ireland welcome – they want to hear politicians coming up with solutions, rather than the same old head shaking and suggestions that somehow it’s all too difficult.”
Sir Robert said the current dormancy of the institutions, due to the DUP’s boycott, highlighted the need for reform, as did the transforming political landscape.
“The boots have been on the other foot in the past and Sinn Féin’s lack of cooperation meant there was no executive or assembly – now it’s the DUP doing it and it doesn’t make it right ‚” he said.
“It does illustrate the challenge that everybody must acknowledge, which is an increasing number of people who vote in elections in Northern Ireland don’t identify with over tradition, and that therefore, we are arguably entering a period of multi-polar politics in Northern Ireland, which means that, you know, the question marks do arise about the the continuance of the St Andrews principles, because they were formulated in a very different time.”
The committee chair said the Good Friday Agreement was a “process not and event” and therefore those who support the accord should be “open to further reform of its institutions”.