Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris confirms plan to push back deadline to hold Stormont election
The UK government has announced it intends to extend the deadline for calling a fresh election in Northern Ireland and cut the pay of Stormont Assembly members.
Making a statement in the House of Commons, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said he will introduce legislation to “provide a short straightforward extension to the period for executive formation”.
The deadline for the Northern Ireland parties to form a fresh power sharing executive ran out on 28 October.
The current law stated that Mr Heaton-Harris was obliged to call a fresh election within 12 weeks of the deadline passing – which would be 19 January.
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Mr Heaton-Harris told MPs he was now extending the deadline for parties to form an executive by six weeks to December 8, with the option of a further six-week extension.
The 12-week clock for calling an election will now come into effect either on 8 December – meaning an election would have to be held by March – or six weeks later on 19 January, meaning a poll would need to be held by April at the latest.
The Northern Ireland secretary did not say how much he is proposing to reduce MLA pay by while Stormont remains in deadlock.
The moves give parties in Northern Ireland more time to break the stalemate at Stormont.
The proposals will require legislation to be laid and passed at Westminster to be enacted.
“The one thing that everyone agrees on is that we must try and find a way through this current impasse – where I have a legal duty to call an election that few want and all say will change nothing,” Mr Heaton-Harris told MPs.
“Thus, I will be introducing legislation to provide a short, straightforward extension to the period for Executive formation – extending the current period by six weeks to 8 December, with the potential of a further six week extension to 19 January if necessary.
“This aims to create the time and space needed for talks between the UK and EU to develop and for the Northern Ireland parties to work together to restore the devolved institutions as soon as possible.”
He continued: “People across Northern Ireland are frustrated that MLAs continue to draw a full salary whilst not performing all of the duties they were elected to do.
“I will thus be asking for the House’s support to enable me to reduce MLAs’ salaries appropriately.”
Mr Heaton-Harris also confirmed he will give extra powers to Stormont civil servants to enable them to run the region’s public services as the impasse continues.
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DUP on why NI election won’t work
A Democratic Unionist Party boycott of the devolved institutions, in protest at Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), has prevented an administration being formed since the May election earlier this year.
The protocol was aimed at avoiding a hard border with Ireland but has created economic barriers on the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, causing resentment and anger among many unionists and loyalists.
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The DUP has refused to return to Stormont until decisive action is taken over the treaty.
DUP MLA Edwin Poots said the UK government must recognise that until the Protocol is replaced with arrangements that unionists can support there will be no basis to restore devolution in Northern Ireland.
“Our opposition to the Protocol is not dependent on salaries. The sooner the government deals with the Protocol, the sooner Stormont can be restored,” he said.
“It is a matter for the secretary of state if he wishes to call an election and what legislation he wishes to introduce. We are ready to renew and strengthen our mandate. Elections are the bedrock of democracy and unlike others we will readily take our case to the electorate.”
While in the Commons, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson told Mr Heaton-Harris that while courage, understanding, and compromise are “good words”, what is needed is “a solution that sees the institutions restored on the basis that Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom”.
Ireland’s Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney welcomed the decision saying it allows further space for progress in the EU-UK talks.
“I urge the UK authorities to make use of this renewed opportunity to engage positively, and with real urgency, in the knowledge that the European Commission has listened carefully to the concerns of people across Northern Ireland, including and especially unionists,” he said in a statement.
But Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle O’Neill said the uncertainty over an election was not good enough.
“What we now have are new deadlines, multiple deadlines, in which he may or may not call an election,” she told reporters at Stormont.
“So this is not a good enough space for people to be in and I think the fundamental question today has to be around what’s next?
“What do the British government intend to do to find an agreed way forward on the protocol?”
Ms O’Neill also questioned why Mr Heaton-Harris had not targeted the pay cut at DUP MLAs who were refusing to engage with the devolved institutions.
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood welcomed the move to cut MLA pay, saying the DUP “have no justifiable reason for hanging about while people’s homes get colder and their cupboards get emptier”.
Alliance Party leader Naomi Long welcomed “clarity” from the Northern Ireland secretary, but added: “However, the overall picture has not changed. As long as any one party can take the institutions hostage, they will.
“Therefore we need reform of the Assembly and executive to stop that happening, or else we could easily be back in this same situation again in a matter of months.”
Last week, the Northern Ireland secretary confirmed that a Stormont election will not be held in December, saying he had listened to “sincere concerns” across the region about the impact and cost of a fresh poll at this time.
The UK government has vowed to secure changes to the agreement, either by way of a negotiated compromise with the EU or through proposed domestic legislation which would enable ministers to scrap the arrangements without the approval of Brussels.
Opponents have likened the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill to “placing a gun on the table” at talks with the EU aimed at finding a solution and argues it breaks international law as well as risking a trade war.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
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Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
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UN’s Antonio Guterres condemns ‘teaspoon’ of aid allowed into Gaza after dozens die in airstrikes
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
The leaders of the UK, France and Canada are “on the wrong side of humanity and (…) history”, he said, after they threatened “concrete action” against Israel this week if it continues its “egregious” military operations in Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
A woman has been arrested after 12 people were reportedly injured in a stabbing at Hamburg’s central train station in Germany.
An attacker armed with a knife targeted people on the platform between tracks 13 and 14, according to police.
They added that the suspect was a 39-year-old woman.
Police at the scene. Pic: AP
Officers said they “believe she acted alone” and investigations into the stabbing are continuing.
There was no immediate information on a possible motive.
The fire service said six of the injured were in a life-threatening condition, three others were seriously hurt, and another three sustained minor injuries, news agency dpa reported.
The attack happened shortly after 6pm local time (5pm UK time) on Friday in front of a waiting train, regional public broadcaster NDR reported.
A high-speed ICE train with its doors open could be seen at the platform after the incident.
Railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was “deeply shocked” by what had happened.
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Four tracks at the station were closed in the evening, and some long-distance trains were delayed or diverted.
Hamburg is Germany‘s second biggest city, with the train station being a hub for local, regional and long-distance trains.
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