What’s to stop the Department of the Nations now?

I’M SURPRISED. As my former boss, Paul Murphy, makes clear in today’s Column, this week’s deal to devolve justice and policing essentially completes the devolution of power from London to Belfast that was agreed and commenced as part of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The importance of this in terms of Northern Ireland’s politics is well described in today’s piece. But the changes it will bring to the Northern Ireland Office are also profound. My tenure coincided with the suspension of devolution and hence an enlarged team. We had five ministers (including the SofS) each running two or three of the devolved departments. Two ministers also had responsibility for Political Development and Security respectively. The running of the departments, and three of those ministerial posts, went in 2006 with the St Andrews Agreement.

As Paul makes clear, relinquishing this power was something we all dearly wanted to make happen. But the NIO remained an unusual deparment, with an ongoing ‘hard’ remit over security and policing. I dare say that role changed a little with the end of Operation Banner in 2007 but it has taken until this week for the NIO to lose that executive function. It will shortly become like those perpetually existentially challenged and much maligned departments in Gwydyr and Dover House. Like them, and for the first time, it will become common currency to discuss the abolition of the NIO.

Back to my surprise, which is generated by the lack of renewed speculation about that long-predicted amalgamation of the Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Offices into one single Department for the Nations (and possibly regions). The road block has always been the practical difficulty of merging Northern Ireland with its spooks and troops with Wales and Scotland, which have neither. With all that gone, what’s to stop the merger going ahead?

Timing, for one. Machinery of government changes this close to an election (not to mention the reshuffle it would cause) are unlikely and could be used against Gordon Brown. But there’s something else as well. Unless or until Wales votes for primary law-making powers, the Wales Office has a real function in the LCO process. So, rather than easiest done away with, it will shortly be the case the Wales Office is the least dispensable. And, rather than the afterthought in any such reorganisation, it may soon be that the role of the Wales Office is a main factor in any decision.

Who’d have thunked it?