Hain in 'leadership' plea for Assembly future

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Peter Hain, announcing plans for emergency legislation in the Commons yesterday, has appealed to local politicians to bring to an end the democratic deficit and display leadership.

Mr Hain said: “Before the end of this year, Northern Ireland’s political leaders and elected Assembly members must decide whether to take responsibility for their people’s future, as they have been mandated to do, or to opt for political cryonics.

“They must decide to bring an end to Northern Ireland’s democratic deficit or to see locally unaccountable Direct Rule stretch into the foreseeable future."

The Secretary of State said he firmly believed that “Northern Ireland is governed best when governed locally and described Direct Rule as “a 1970s solution to a 1970s problem.”

But Mr Hain warned that if the parties did not “choose to close the chapter of mistrust”, then the Government would be “forced to close the book on devolution for the foreseeable future”.

The Government has declared that if the Assembly has been unable to achieve a power-sharing Executive by the November 24 deadline, then there will be no choice but to cancel Assembly Members’ salaries and allowances, and to cancel the election due in May 2007.

Mr Hain told the House: “It would be absurd to elect Members unwilling to discharge their duties to an Assembly that will not have sat for over four and a half years.”

A failure to get devolution in place soon, will mean deferral until a renewed political willingness to exercise devolved power was evident.

The two Governments would then continue their commitment to developing North-South cooperation and structures as set out in the Good Friday Agreement. In this scenario, said Mr Hain, the Agreement would remain "very much alive."

He said it was crucial that the parties “keep talking” and said it was “time for Northern Ireland’s politicians to show leadership and good faith - in themselves, in each other and in the people who elected them.”

The emergency legislation is expected to be introduced in the House of Commons this week.

(SP)