Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 13 Rhagfyr 1973.
I wish now to deal with some of the arguments raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster on the question of rent and rate strikes, the economic policies and the fact that they have not been presented to the Assembly. These are valid points which she is right to raise in this House. I hope that when the new Executive begins work on 1st January it will pay immediate attention to them. If the hon. Members for Antrim, North and Down, South directed their activities and opposition to demanding to see these policies and that they be debated in the Assembly instead of stopping the Assembly from working, the communities would see the value of the Assembly.
The whole question of confidence in the Executive will be based not on what is written in the Act, not on the position of two sentences in Section 5, but on what the Council of Ireland and the Executive do. They will be judged in Northern Ireland by results. Some of the policies which are to be hammered out will cause great difficulty. They will create political differences, and no doubt my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Ulster and I will be on the same side in some of them. But I want to see these arguments starting in Northern Ireland. I want to see the Assembly and the Executive working, and I want to see the hon. Member for Antrim, North using his considerable talents in pulling these policies apart and putting forward alternatives on behalf of those he represents. He claims, and I do not doubt it, that he is a good constituency Member for all his constituents. He has a job to do in that Assembly. There is much work to be done in Northern Ireland in the coming months and years. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot pull it all down with one hand and build it up with the other.