The Committee Secretary's View

Throughout the platform round icons are events relating to individuals and their right to have an opinion in particular debates:

Person joining a committee

Person leaving a committee

Person elected to a position

Roll-call

Parchment-coloured, square icons relate to the creation and amending of documents:

Create a new proposal

Create a new document that is a line-by-line revision of another document (noted by the pen icon in the corner)

Document amendment proposed

Document taken from another committee (note arrow in corner)

Amendment taken from another committee

Debate a proposal

Documents that have an explicit subtype can be displayed with a slightly different icon:

Legislative text

Formal Resolutions

A message to be sent elsewhere

A petition to be considered

Rules and Orders of Business

Diamond-shaped, purple icons relate to decisions taken:

Drop a proposal

Refer a proposal to another committee

Adopt a proposal

Other vote (continue debate)

Reject a proposal

Postpone a debate

Blue, hexagon-shaped icons relate to 'procedural' proposals that do not directly alter text but affect how a committee does its work (and are usually used only for transient things, such as a point of order.)

Procedural motion

Procedural motion with sub-decisions

Debate on a procedural motion

This page views simply the most recent moment in a committee's timeline, giving easy access to the
list of documents and proposals that are in front of the committee.

Users with appropriate permission can use this page to add events to the end of a committee's timeline or create a new session. In this way, this page
can be used to actually run the work of a committee, with the most common actions available here. More complicated editing tasks can be accomplished from the 'Details view' screen.

Session 29166: 1993-12-14 18:00:00

[Exact time unknown] Final drafts of the declaration were exchanged.

Northern Ireland Downing Street Joint Declaration (1993)

This project models the series of formal and informal negotiations which led to the publication, in December 1993, of a declaration issued jointly by the British and Irish Governments. The Joint Declaration was a critical policy document which paved the way for a ceasefire and the entry of Sinn Féin into formal talks. It also laid out a shared set of principles – including, crucially, self-determination for the people of Ireland subject to the consent of the people of Northern Ireland – which would come to underpin the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and provide a framework for its ratification.

Informal British-Irish Bilaterals

This committee has been created to model bilateral contact between British and Irish government delegates which happened outside of the more formal structures set up for intergovernmental negotiation. These informal meetings were sometimes crucial to the development of the Joint Declaration.