Ex-Northern Ireland secretary urges sanctions for parties refusing to power share
A former Northern Ireland secretary has warned that the rules around power sharing in Northern Ireland need to change if the devolution settlement is to survive. Lord Hain, who helped negotiate the arrangement in 2007, suggested that sanctions should be imposed on any political party that refuses to power share and therefore collapses the Northern Irish government.
The Labour peer continued: “From 2007, when a settlement I helped negotiate under Tony Blair brought the unlikely duo of Ian Paisley Snr and Martin McGuinness to share power, there was a decade of DUP/Sinn Fein-led self-government as stable as Northern Ireland was ever likely to get. Then, that was collapsed by Sinn Fein for three years.
“There’s got to be a cost for doing that and my amendment would impose one, not so much as a penalty, more as a deterrent.” Lord Caine, a minister in the Northern Ireland Office, spoke of his “disappointment” that the UK Government had had to step in and legislate for something the Northern Ireland Assembly should be in charge of. He said: “People in Northern Ireland rightly expect to see those decisions taken at Stormont and I agree with them.
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