Owen Smith said the decision to call a Westmnister election had undermined efforts to get a Stormont deal. Picture by Hugh Russell

Secretary of State James Brokenshire needs to "pull his finger out" and inject fresh energy into the stalled Stormont negotiations, Labour's spokesman on the north has said.

Owen Smith was speaking to The Irish News after the latest effort to get devolution restored petered out last week. Three deadlines imposed by Mr Brokenshire have come and gone without agreement and it remains unclear where the process goes next.

Mr Smith (47), who previously worked as a special adviser to Labour MP Paul Murphy when he was secretary of state from 2002-2005, said his Conservative counterpart's bid to get agreement between the DUP and Sinn Féin had been undermined by Theresa May's decision to hold a snap election in the midst of the talks.

"I think the Conservatives have a degree of blame to bear because the election clearly made it more difficult to do the deal," he said during a visit to Belfast yesterday.

He said the Tory government had acted in party political interests by calling the June 8 election and that this disregard for the consequences had been the "hallmark" of how the party had behaved both under David Cameron and Mrs May.

The shadow secretary of state said the British prime minister's failure to get involved in the talks was "wrong".

He said the experience of Labour's time in office demonstrated that sometimes it was necessary to get input from the prime minister and the taoiseach.

Mr Smith said James Brokenshire and the British government needed to provide the process with fresh impetus as it resembled "Groundhog Day all over again".

"We could do with a bit more energy – a bit more va va voom," he said.

"If he (James Brokenshire) can't, then the prime minister needs to step in."

He praised his Tory counterpart's efforts to restore devolution – including an out-of-hours meeting with Alliance – but bemoaned the lack of progress.

"James needs to be commended for working so hard – meeting at 3.30 in the morning with the Alliance Party is an illustration of how hard he's prepared to work – but he's not made much progress and he does need to pull his finger out," he said.

"The people of Northern Ireland would expect him to pull his finger out and see some progress over the next couple of months."

The Labour MP for Pontypridd said the Tories-DUP confidence and supply deal had also created difficulties for the talks process.

"Obviously there's a risk that one side of the community has the ear of the government when it shouldn't have," he said.

"And even if the initial deal is transparent in terms of what Northern Ireland and the DUP are getting, there will be concern that the DUP have got more of an influence than they ought to have."

Mr Smith said there would be concern about "side deals" though he insisted he was unaware of any.

"There have been side deals in the past by both governments – we all know that," he said.

Commenting on recent moves by the secretary of state to relax the regulations around political donors in the north, the Labour spokesman on the north said Mr Brokenshire's decision not to backdate funder transparency to 2014 was the best decision because it had the support of the majority of the north's parties.

The Labour Northern Ireland spokesman also called for a more open discussion about an Irish language act and what was on offer during the talks.

"Without getting into the detail a bit more publicly there's a danger that you fuel suspicion about the scale and cost of an Irish language act," he said.

Mr Smith said an open discussion would "debunk myths" about how the legislation would be implemented, while also "allaying fears".