Jim Wells
South Down · Democratic Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In November 1982, I made my maiden speech in the Chamber, and, here we are, 40 years later, and I am making my last speech in the Chamber as a DUP MLA. I was the last person in the Public Gallery when the Assembly collapsed in 1976.”
“<BR /> <BR />Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank you for your indulgence and for your patience with me over many years. Unfortunately, Mr McGlone has just left the Chamber; I was about to thank him. I have enjoyed my 27 and a half years in this Building.”
“I wish that I could, but I have only five minutes. <BR /> <BR />That was so that a very small number of Irish language zealots could go in and register their marriage or civil partnership in Irish or in dual language: £261,000. Did anybody stop to think about whether there was a more cost-effective way of doing that?”
“We are all perfectly happy with a genuine expression of people's culture. That is fine. However, when the language is so cynically used by militant republicanism, unionism has difficulties. Why, for instance, is there no translation into Irish of the words, "United Kingdom", "Londonderry", "Northern Ireland" or "Her Majesty The Queen"?”
“The Member has made the point for me. The official who came to the Committee made it absolutely clear that £261,000 had been spent already. It was farcical to bring that before either the Finance Committee or the Assembly, because the money had been spent and the processes had been set up.”
“If they want the unionist community to accept the Irish language as a genuine cultural expression, they should get rid of the political baggage and extremism, and stop using the Irish language as a political weapon to try to subjugate unionism.”
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“<BR /> <BR />As I said earlier — I will say it again — I remember a time when we paid senior spads only £82,000 a year, and they were having trouble getting by. Life was tough. Those people were in their thirties and forties and, as I said earlier, had never fought an election in their life and had no political experience but happened to be friends with the Minister. They were having trouble getting by on £82,000. I remember sitting in room 315, as a member of the DUP, and being told by the then party leader that we had to support an increase in the salary of senior spads to £92,000 a year. I remember thinking, "This is not right". Then, I thought, "You could pay the price for opposing it". We meekly traipsed through the Lobbies to vote for a £92,000 a year salary for senior spads.”
“Yes. I will address the amendments. With regard to one of the amendments that Mr Allister has, quite correctly, put forward, he said that there must be a limit on special advisers' pay. I agree with him totally. Let us put on record what special advisers in the Assembly were being paid out of taxpayers' money at the time of the RHI crisis. Mr Richard Bullick was paid £91,809 per annum; Mr Timothy Johnston, £91,809; Dr Dara O'Hagan, £89,480; Mark Mullan, who I never had the benefit of meeting, £75,000; Andrew Crawford, who, unfortunately, I met on many occasions, £68,747; and John Robinson, £84,000 a year. Those are staggering salaries, and they are way out of line with what is paid to spads at Westminster and in other devolved Assemblies in the rest of the United Kingdom.”
“What interests me is that Sinn Féin members are sitting there like little mice in the corner. They are not answering any of these points because they know that they do not have a leg to stand on. They put up Mr McHugh as the big hitter to speak on their behalf. Where are the stars of Sinn Féin? Where are Mr O'Dowd and Mr Murphy? Why are they not speaking out to defend the activities of their spads? The reason is that they know that they are indefensible.”
“I do not blame any Minister, frankly, for the RHI situation. I believe that our Ministers took their eye off the ball and it was the spads, the special advisers, who created the chaos that brought down this institution for three years. Therefore, there needs to be very strong controls on their activities. In the two major parties, they have behaved appallingly.”
“It is absolutely disgraceful behaviour to undermine your permanent secretary in that way and, basically, keep things hidden from him. <BR /> <BR />That is the sort of thing that was going on, and the problem was that the tail was wagging the dog throughout.”
“Indeed, he was about to meet Mr McCormick when his Minister, Mr Hamilton, intervened and told him not to do so. We now know that Mr Robinson colluded with Mr Hamilton to release that information. <BR /> <BR />We had the bizarre situation where Mr McCormick came into the office where John Robinson and Simon Hamilton were sitting and said, "This is terrible. Somebody has leaked this information to the press, to Sam McBride. What are we going to do about it?". Little did he know that the Minister and the spad had done that, and he was never told. <BR /> <BR />I served briefly as a Minister, for nine months, and if I had ever discovered that my spad had behaved in that way — and he would not have — he would have been out the door as quickly as possible.”
“<BR /> <BR />Even though he was on a salary, at that time, of about £75,000 a year, he did not seem to have enough money for the stamps, so he sent the material with the wrong postage on it, and it did not get to the 'News Letter' until 19 January 2017, when Mr McBride, being his usual shy, retiring self, seized on those emails and published them on the front page of the 'News Letter' on 20 January 2017. <BR /> <BR />What was unusual about that was that, in that report, Mr McBride did not publish the name of the two civil servants. Andrew McCormick — a gentleman that I know very well because he was heavily involved in Health, and I have the highest regard for him — rang Mr McBride and pleaded with him not to name the two civil servants.”
“<BR /> <BR />Then, we had perhaps the most disgraceful incident, which has not been alluded to so far, that was revealed not only by the RHI report but by some very interesting Christmas reading that we had last year — 'Burned' by Mr Sam McBride — and I must pay tribute to Mr McBride for revealing so much of what happened. We had the situation where Mr John Robinson, who, at that stage, was the senior spad in DETI, having taken over from Mr Cairns, decided that, in order to take the heat off his Minister, the First Minister and the DUP in general, he would leak material to Sam McBride implicating two senior civil servants in briefings on the RHI. The clever ploy there was that, by doing so, the attention would be diverted from the senior Ministers.”
“Mr Johnston made it absolutely clear that he had no right to do so, and that it was he, Mr Johnston, who would make the decision as to whether the special adviser was removed or otherwise. Therefore, Mr Johnston had much greater power than the actual Minister. Time and again, that was my experience with the DUP. <BR /> <BR />Mr Johnston exercises a role way above his status or position, and that has always been the case. Mr Johnston is still very much a strong individual in the party. He is very intelligent and very hard-working, but he is extraordinarily powerful, with a power that I do not believe should be vested in any one individual.”
“Once the rising star of the Sinn Féin Front Benches, he is now gone. He is like Basil McCrea. Nobody hears anything about him; he has just disappeared. We had this ridiculous situation of Mr Ó Muilleoir — I did not agree with much of what he said, but he was sharp enough — having to wait for the decision of Mr McAteer, who, apparently, did not seem to have any qualifications whatsoever to occupy such a senior position. I inadvertently created the RHI report, and it did, indeed, reveal that. <BR /> <BR />It also revealed the power of Mr Johnston. It was very telling that, when Mr Bell had a disagreement with Mr Cairns, his special adviser, that led to a slight difference of emphasis in London, Mr Bell, who was the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, made it very clear that he wanted to dispense with the services of Mr Cairns.”
“The reason why, of course, they could not appoint Mr McAteer as a spad in his own right was that he had a criminal terrorist conviction, as mentioned in the RHI report. In the report, you see many examples of frustrated permanent secretaries and senior civil servants saying, "We cannot get a decision from a Sinn Féin Minister because it is lying on Mr McAteer's desk in Connolly House". That was a clever way of circumventing the provisions of Mr Allister's Act. Mr McAteer, unfortunately, was not quite as influential as Mr Timothy Johnston — that would be impossible — but he was an extremely influential character. The result was that the Bill was circumvented, and Mr McAteer ruled the roost. <BR /> <BR />Then, we had Máirtín Ó Muilleoir. What ever happened to Máirtín Ó Muilleoir?”
“How did Sinn Féin deal with that? They came up with a cunning plan. They are very good at cunning plans, just as they were very cunning about Research Services Ireland Limited, which managed to siphon £700,000 from this Assembly into a non-existent research company. <BR /> <BR />Their cunning plan was to make Mr Aidan McAteer the super-spad. Again, if we had not had the RHI inquiry, we would have no understanding of Mr McAteer's role. I am waiting to hear the Members opposite try to justify the existence of Mr McAteer and his role. As the RHI inquiry confirmed, every decision taken by a Sinn Féin spad or a Sinn Féin Minister was referred to Mr McAteer. Mr Aidan McAteer had a controlling role.”
“Jim Allister, with the support of the Assembly, in 2013 got legislation passed that would prevent someone who had a criminal terrorist conviction from being appointed to the position of special adviser. As we know, that followed the disgraceful decision to appoint Mary McArdle as special adviser in the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, which then became the Department for Communities. We know the whole situation behind Mary McArdle's appointment. Sinn Féin was so embarrassed by the appointment and concerned about the uproar that, eventually, she was quietly removed from the position and sent to Connolly House. <BR /> <BR />We saw a genuine attempt by Mr Allister to stop those evil people, who had committed horrendous terrorist crimes, enjoying salaries of £50,000, £60,000, £70,000 and £80,000 a year as special advisers.”
“There is not a blade of grass on the DUP lawn that has not been sown, nurtured and harvested by Timothy Johnston. He was senior spad, senior chief executive and Chief Whip rolled into one. Why do I make that comment? To show how we have a system in this country that has led to one individual having such supreme power that there is a need for Mr Allister's Bill. We have only to look at the RHI inquiry report. I note that the Sinn Féin representatives, who have remained remarkably quiet today, have not quoted from the damning remarks by Lord Justice Coghlin throughout his time as chair of the inquiry. <BR /> <BR />Look at the Aidan McAteer situation.”
“<BR /> <BR />If you were to ask me the names of the top five political influencers who have had the most control over the legislators in their countries over the past five years, I would give you this rundown: number five, Vladimir Putin; number four, the chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party; number three, Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea; number two, Dominic Cummings; and number one, Timothy Johnston, the senior spad in the Executive Office.”
“He has been tenacious throughout in his work on the Bill and he has listened. We have heard the words "reasonable" and "Jim Allister" in the same sentence. How often do you have that? He has been flexible; he has altered the main tenets of his Bill to meet the concerns of the Committee, which is to be applauded. The Bill is much better as a result of his activities.”
“It was only Mr Bell's explosive interview that created the crisis in the Assembly, where we moved from a position of wanting a short, sharp, private inquiry to a position of there being demands for the full RHI inquiry under Lord Justice Coghlin, who, in my opinion, did an excellent job. Clearly, had I not stepped down, Jonathan Bell would not have been appointed because there would have been no slot for him and there would have been no RHI crisis. Little did I know what chaos I had created. <BR /> <BR />That has given me the freedom this afternoon to speak openly and honestly about my experience of special advisers, state my understanding of what I believe has been going on, and say why I am such an enthusiastic supporter of Mr Allister's Bill. I pay tribute to him.”
“I did so holding a commitment from my party that, after the dust had settled on the totally untrue allegations that were made against me, which led to one individual getting a three-month prison sentence, I would return as a Minister. That never happened, but little did I know that, when I made that decision to stand down, I would create a situation that would bring about the downfall of the Assembly and lead to the RHI crisis. You may ask, "How is that possible?". By stepping down as a Minister, I enabled one Jonathan Bell to be appointed to the Executive. Had Mr Bell not been appointed, the RHI crisis would never have occurred.”
“Mr Allister and Mr Wells certainly did not have the good looks, but we had the experience. The Bill benefited enormously as a result of the scrutiny, however. <BR /> <BR />People are very critical of the Assembly, and I accept that they have every right to be, but I think that, in two aspects, we do serve the public well. The first is through the role of the Committees, which is often very positive, and the second is our scrutiny of Ministers through questions for written and oral answer. On those aspects, we can stand with all the other legislatures in the United Kingdom and say that we are doing a relatively good job. Other aspects, of course, leave a lot to be desired. <BR /> <BR />My Deputy Speaker, you will remember that, on 27 April 2015, I resigned as Minister of Health.”
“I notice that several members, having gone through that, have suddenly had a Damascus-road experience and have received additional information about where they are going with the Bill. Without wanting to be controversial, that would have been better done in Committee. Although I accept from the honourable Members that they were not spoken to by the spads, perhaps the Chief Whip or the party leader had a little word in their ear and said that they were too constructive and helpful to Mr Allister's Bill in Committee and that it is now time that they had the ultimate Damascus-road experience. That having been said, I think that the Committee worked well together. We were a good mix of youth, good looks and experience, and, as a result, we were able to tease out issues. I am not saying who had which attribute.”
“Every week, we notice that there is a full turnout, which is interesting. Nine out of nine members are always present, albeit perhaps one or two of them remotely, and something very interesting always comes along, so the time flies. If somebody had asked me two years ago whether that could happen on the Finance Committee, I would have thought that it was impossible, but all the Committee members who speak to me find it an extremely enjoyable, interesting and fulfilling body, and that is no doubt down to the expert chairmanship of Mr Aiken. <BR /> <BR />He and the members have taken the Bill through its Committee Stage, and I think that the Bill has come out much better as a result of that scrutiny. We spent many hours taking evidence from expert witnesses. We teased out the nuances of the various aspects of the Bill.”
“At the outset, I pay tribute to the Chair of the Finance Committee. When I was appointed to the Finance Committee in April 2015, it was seen as a punishment. Normally, when one errs and strays like a lost sheep — to add to the scripture — in a party, one's punishment, if one has been a really bad boy, is to be appointed to the Finance Committee. If one has been horrendously badly behaved, one is appointed to the erstwhile Committee of the Centre, now the Committee for the Executive Office. I have had that experience, and one of the happiest times of my political career was when my Chief Whip said to me, "I am taking you off the Committee of the Centre". <BR /> <BR />I have to say, however, that the Finance Committee has been one of the most interesting and rewarding that I have sat on in my 26 years in the Assembly.”
“That issue was teased out in Committee. We dealt with the case of the Department for Social Development, as it was at the time, where a spad clearly acted well beyond the rules and caused a great deal of concern amongst Members. The issue led to disciplinary action. The problem was that the Minister intervened and said that the matter should be taken no further. How can the Member rely on the Minister to take disciplinary action against somebody whom they appointed?”
“I sat through every minute of the deliberations of the Committee. As with Mr Frew, members had adequate opportunity to raise any concerns that they had, and I thought that the Committee worked well in dealing with scrutiny of the Bill. The Member is now raising issues that he wants to be teased out with the honourable Member for North Antrim: would it not have been better to have resolved those in Committee rather than bringing them at this stage to the Assembly?”
“I have an excellent relationship with the vast majority of ordinary members of the DUP, and I had a relationship with the spads that I will reveal later. <BR /> <BR />The point is that the Member did not, in my opinion, raise concerns in Committee on the appointment of spads, and he did not express concern about Mr Allister's capping of their salaries. I still believe that, while he does not have the scars to show it, a friendly word has been had with him that certain spads will not accept Mr Allister's cap on their salary. Has the Member had that discussion, and has he changed his tune because of that?”
“Honourable Members are keen to know what goes on behind the scenes in the DUP. Certainly, when I speak, they will hear an awful lot about that”
“Unsuccessfully, indeed, but I still have the stripes on my back to prove that that happened. Was he, perhaps, re-educated by senior spads and told that, particularly on the issue of their pay, he had gone too far and followed his genuine intellect rather than party instructions? Why has there been this hint of an about-turn, and who gave him the friendly word in the ear to change his mind, as I experienced on many occasions?”
“The honourable Member said that he fought a lonely battle. Does he accept that, as an erstwhile colleague, I gave him my undoubted support throughout Committee Stage? On the Committee, his reaction to the Bill was positive, and he supported the Committee's report: he has now raised issues that he is concerned about. Why did he not raise those concerns in Committee? That would have been the obvious vehicle to deal with them. Was he, perhaps, taken into a darkened room by a spad and re-educated on those issues, as I was many times?”
“They do not have to become a special adviser; they can become a consultant to the Department. Therefore, Ministers do not have to break their pay code in order to achieve the expertise that they require. I suspect that even the person who is on £80,000 per year might be motivated. The ordinary man in the street would regard that as an absolute cricket score. What we have been paying spads is just horrendous. A ceiling must be agreed. Mr Allister's proposal is the best way forward in the interim.”
“If your Minister leaves, you take over whoever the new incoming Minister is from your party or you move to another Department. The Member knows the names that I will be quoting later. Mr Johnston, Mr Crawford, etc, went on for years and years. If they were unhappy on their measly £77,000 a year, would you not expect some fallout? Would you not expect them to be headhunted for posts with even better salaries? <BR /> <BR />Is it not ridiculous that there are spads who are paid more than a Minister? Surely, one has to accept Mr Allister's point of view, which is that there needs to be a ceiling. As Mr Allister eloquently stated, there may be a time when we need some high-flying person to come in, perhaps from industry, but there is provision for that.”
“Take it from me, as someone who was around here probably before the Member was born, the reality is that what we have in this Building is a single transferable spad. We had absolutely no trouble in attracting people to show an interest in becoming special advisers. Indeed, as far as I can recall, only one special adviser has ever left, and he left to become a High Court judge, and a very good adviser he was too. Clearly, he left to take on a very attractive salary, but all the rest stayed. There have been special advisers around this Building for 16 and 17 years. <BR /> <BR />At Westminster, when a Minister falls, his spad goes with him. Therefore, it is a very volatile and temporary position. Here, you can be a spad for three or four Assembly terms.”
“I would feel quite incentivised by £77,000, but the spads were putting pressure on their Ministers to increase it to £91,000. Surely, if the Member does not back Mr Allister's proposals today, we will get back to the situation where spads are earning obscene salaries — much higher than the Ministers whom they serve, and we could once again have a situation where a junior Minister on £6,500 a year being looked after by a spad on £85,000 a year. Can he not see the total obscenity of that situation?”
“I have no doubt that the honourable Member for North Antrim has been lobbied heavily by spads on this issue. I can think of 91,402 good reasons why spads do not want the present situation to change, but, given the track record of spads in this Building over the past five or six years, how can he justify any system that allows people who are not out of their thirties, who have never secured a single vote in an election in their lifetime, some of whom have minimal experience of the systems of government, earning £91,000 a year? Surely there has to be some limit on that. <BR /> <BR />I remember being ruthlessly whipped as an obscure Back-Bencher, which, of course, I have remained, and being told that the only way to incentivise spads was to increase their pay from £77,000 to £91,200.”
“On a point of order, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. Either the Minister of Finance has the gift of prophecy and a crystal ball or there is collusion going on, because, during the questions on marriage and payments in Londonderry, I noticed that he had turned to the answer before the questioner had finished the question, and he had turned to the answer for the supplementary questions before they had been asked. I understand that topical questions are supposed to test the Minister's mettle and to find out whether he is on top of his brief. Could it be that Members from his party have been giving him the text of the questions in advance of their being asked? Is that in order for topical questions?”
“The Member raised an important point, which was raised by the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone during the Committee's consideration, when she made the point that, perhaps, it could be seen as a slight conflict of interest in having the promoter of the Bill as a member of the Committee. In fact, I think that most members believed that that was extremely useful. It was fortuitous and coincidental but certainly made the Bill's passage through the Committee much simpler. What is his reaction to the suggestion that was made that, for future private Member's Bills, the sponsor should be allowed to be an ex officio member of the relevant Committee, so that the other Committees would benefit from the opportunities that ours had during the past two months?”
“Therefore, if someone is at the level of a Deputy Chairperson, and we would never dream of giving the Deputy Chairperson of a Committee their own personal spad, it is logical that there was never a need for them to have a spad in the first place and, with the demotion of the role of junior Minister, it is a complete anachronism to have them now.”
“<BR /> <BR />It is interesting that the Independent Financial Review Panel carried out an independent assessment of the role of junior Ministers and decided that, such was their importance, their salary had to be reduced dramatically down to that of the Deputy Chairperson of a scrutiny Committee. That is an indication of the panel's assessment of the role of junior Ministers. Their role is more of a supportive one; they do not make policy, they do not have a vote at the Executive, and they cannot issue ministerial directions.”
“First, as one who served here from 1998 to 2007, it is clear to me that junior Ministers could function perfectly adequately without having their own bespoke spads. I think that I had better name the individual who became a junior Minister in 2007: Ian Paisley Jnr. I do not think that everybody picked up the clue that he was giving us. When he took that post in 2007 and realised that other, senior, Ministers had a spad, he demanded one as well. That is the only reason for it. Of course, when Sinn Féin heard that Ian Paisley Jnr was getting a spad, it had to have one for its junior Minister.”
“Can the Member reassure us that his amendment will stop that from happening in the future?”
“I refer the Member to paragraph 54.34 of the RHI report, where Lord Justice Coghlin says:”
“Does the Member agree that the salary levels up until 2017 were almost obscene? The top spads were getting £91,809 each. You had the situation where a junior Minister on a ministerial salary of £6,500 a year was serviced by a spad on £72,120 a year. Is that not an 'Alice in Wonderland' situation?”
“The Minister is dealing with a very important issue that every MLA has been approached on. I give him one example that he will be very aware of: the Carlingford lough ferry has not been told to close, but its business has collapsed as a result of the lockdowns on both sides of the border. I have been approached by a lady whose job is to supply hotels with equipment and furniture. Again, she has not been told to close, but her business has completely dried up. Would he consider a scheme where, if a company or a business can show that 90% of its trade has stopped as a result of the latest restrictions, they could qualify for funding that comes out of the Northern Ireland block grant rather than it coming from the job retention scheme?”
“The Minister has made that specific point many times. He knows the circumstances that we faced in March, when things had to be rushed through and we were just at the start of the pandemic. I am sure that he will accept that much has changed in the intervening six or seven months. Do honourable Members not have the right to reconsider their position, given the historic events that we are now facing?”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, you have admonished many humble Back-Benchers throughout this debate because they had drifted from the Budget to a debate on coronavirus. Can I suggest that the Minister is doing exactly the same thing?”
“We could find that, eventually, the private sector is ruined and goes to the wall, which will provide Translink with a monopoly, and, of course, it will have been helped financially. <BR /> <BR />The Minister obviously committed some sins in a previous life to deserve the position of Minister of Finance at this juncture. There are many difficulties, but until we mature as an Assembly and stop saying, "Please give me, give me, give me" and suggest to the Minister and the Department of Finance where we feel this money can come from, I could be here for another 26 years listening to exactly the same debate and getting absolutely nowhere.”
“I think that that is very relevant to the Budget being discussed this afternoon. <BR /> <BR />The final category that I would like to highlight is that, in the Budget, there is protection for the Department for Infrastructure's transport division and Translink's coaches. They will be protected in the present situation, but what about the hundreds of drivers and owners of private coaches in Northern Ireland who have seen their business dry up to absolutely nil since March? They still have to pay insurance, maintenance, rates and, more importantly, they have to pay the capital repayments for leasing the vehicles. A coach can easily cost £200,000 or £300,000. They have not been ordered to close down, but they have to close and they face wipeout.”
“The Minister should include in his Budget a scheme similar to the hardship fund in the earlier package that kept some of those businesses —.”
“It is a very small amount and it will not save businesses from going to the wall. I ask him to include in his Budget companies that have not been asked to close but which will have to close because of the restrictions. No cognisance has been taken of their needs. I mentioned ferry operators earlier. The Carlingford ferry operator has not been told to close, but it will close. <BR /> <BR />The business model for soft-play areas depends not only on paying customers but on cafes. Their business model indicates that they have to have their cafes open to make them pay. The cafes are closed; therefore, soft-play areas are in great difficulties. Dog kennels depend on the holiday trade, which has absolutely died. They have not been told to close, but they will have to close because of the situation.”
“I agree with Mr Frew. The landscape for support, and the Budget that has been outlined to support companies in this particular period of restrictions, is very different from that which was available in April, May and June when there was the luxury of 80% furlough payments for employed and self-employed people. There were grants of £10,000 and £25,000, and there were bounce-back loans. We now face a totally different situation. I believe that many companies will not see a resumption of trading in four weeks' time, and we have to accept that. <BR /> <BR />I accept that the Minister has a small budget in comparison to fund that. Compared to what was available to the Executive at the start of the financial year and what is available now, it is very small beer indeed.”
“I reckon I must have been involved in about 100 monitoring rounds over 26 years. Therefore, do not be critical of Departments who readily identify unspent funding and give it up. The tendency would be to try to spend it rapidly on some hasty project where there may not actually be a need. <BR /> <BR />Mr Frew made the point that it is unforgivable, after a series of monitoring rounds, to still be left with unspent money at the end of the financial year. Obviously, that is totally wrong. However, some of those who spoke today clearly do not understand the funding mechanism that the Assembly has to live within. We all face very dark times, and I detect in the Chamber that many Members are very uneasy with the present restrictions that have been implemented and the Budget set out for the implementation of those policies.”