Trevor Lunn
Lagan Valley · Independent · Northern Ireland
“I know what I am going to do: I am not quite sure what he is going to do. <BR /> <BR />In discussion at the Committee, we had submissions from the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) and the Catholic Schools' Trustee Service.”
“They are relaxed about this. I know that they have some concerns about the Catholic ethos of their schools, but I cannot believe that the admission of non-Catholic teachers into Catholic schools will change the ethos of those schools at all. There is more of an obligation on teachers coming in to accept that ethos and run with it.”
“All that I can say to that is that the women, mostly, and couples who go to an abortion clinic, advisory service, hospital or private hospital are also entitled to freedom of movement and freedom of action. They are entitled to that under the law that was brought in by the British Government.”
“. Not yet, anyway. We have had this Bill from Chris, two Bills from the Green Party, and I forget the others. It has been a good day and, as others have said — yes, Pat Catney, of course, my constituency colleague, as well — it indicates what the Assembly is capable of.”
“The other day, we talked about the Brook advisory clinic and all the shenanigans around it. Most people here are too young to remember that, but it was effectively the same issue. <BR /> <BR />We are where we are. I hope that the Bill will pass; I am sure that it will now, judging by the tenor of the House. It will be another step.”
“<BR /> <BR />Back in 2015, I decided to visit the Marie Stopes clinic. I wanted to find out exactly what it was about. That year, the police had been called to the front of the clinic 200 times.”
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“I thank Ms McCann, Ms Bailey and Mr Durkan for bringing the motion and amendments on behalf of their parties. We have no problem in supporting any of them, in whatever order they come up. I think that amendment No 1 will probably be called first; perhaps it will go through. That means no disrespect to amendment No 2, which is very thoughtful. <BR /> <BR />The crimes we are talking about are disgusting. They are serious, cowardly and mostly involve the strong on the weak. This is, of course, the element of control. I acknowledge that some men suffer in this way, but, let us face it, most of it is against women and children. That is the cowardly aspect of it. <BR /> <BR />Amendment No 1 refers to the 83% of rape cases that do not achieve recommendation for prosecution. I am not the first today to say that that is absolutely appalling.”
“In relation to the Minister's previous answer about derelict land, will he agree with me that there is a severe danger that the Maze/Long Kesh site might qualify under that description if something does not happen fairly soon?”
“I thank the Minister for her very detailed report. Unfortunately, there are only three lines in it on problem-solving justice. Will she expand on what is in the report on that area? Will she reference the cooperation between the probation services, North and South, and the input that they might have into problem-solving justice?”
“I have seen the police on Twitter proclaiming that they have seized a very expensive motor vehicle because it did not have any insurance. I have yet to see the same situation arise —”
“I thank the Member for that. If you are 17 years of age and try to insure a 500 cc motorbike, you will not get cover — it is not available. The same applies to quads. Not only is there a problem because insurance is required but cover is impossible to get. Other Members made the point that, most of the time, we are talking about youngsters. If you see a quad — I am talking really only about quads — being driven on a public road by somebody who is 16, 17 or 18 years of age, it is absolutely certain that it does not have proper third-party motor insurance. <BR /> <BR />The police seem to be reluctant; they have seizure powers, but they do not seem very keen to use them. It is a mess that needs to be tidied up quickly.”
“Farmers do not have any great difficulty in getting cover because they have a clear need because of their occupation: perhaps somebody wants to draw a boat out of the water or something like that. There are situations in which it is possible to prove to an insurance company that there is a need for the cover and the vehicle.”
“Try getting a council to enforce a noise abatement order and see how far you get. Quad biking happens in the open air, probably in the countryside, and it is not feasible. <BR /> <BR />Currently, there is no requirement for liability insurance if a vehicle is being used off-road, but there is for on-road use. The law for on-road use is reasonably clear. These things are regarded as motorised vehicles and have to have type approval, be registered, have an MOT if necessary, display number plates, reflectors, indicators and have third-party motor insurance. This is where I can contribute something. Trying to get third-party motor insurance on these contraptions is very difficult and is a specialised market. Companies that will insure them are not keen to insure a quad that is purely for recreational use.”
“I agree with the Member's comments on health and safety. My understanding of the current law is that there is no requirement on the driver of a quad bike to wear a crash helmet, as there is a requirement for motorbikers. <BR /> <BR />The police have a difficulty because, if the equipment is being used off-road, they have to be certain that the landowner does not want it to be happening and has not given permission. That is not easily obtained. The police have to try to implement the law of trespass. Trespass, according to my basic knowledge, does not mean just a presence on the land; it means that there must be damage. The purpose of the motion is to tidy up this type of thing. Theoretically, a noise nuisance complaint could be made, but that would involve the local council.”
“I think that I deserve an extra two minutes, Mr Speaker.”
“I thank Ms McCann and her colleagues for tabling this timely motion. The law on the use of scramblers and quads is, indeed, confused. Questions could be asked about the current legislation, in particular, the extent to which it is being enforced by the PSNI. <BR /> <BR />There does not appear to be any restriction on the size of a machine or the age of the person operating it if they are off-road. In theory, it would be possible for a 13-year-old to drive around on a 650 cc machine as long as he or she is off-road.”
“I believe that the 'Sunday Life' reporter Chris Woodhouse was roundly abused as well but for what reason I am not aware. As Mr Kelly said in introducing the matter, we are politicians; we have to put up with this. I do not believe that a priest or a reporter should have to suffer that kind of abuse, and I am glad to hear it being condemned by all sides.”
“They dealt with it with their normal restraint and dignity and with respect for human rights and the tensions on both sides. <BR /> <BR />It has been quite a good summer, relatively speaking, for parading. I hope that, as a result of this agreement, as others said, there may be an opportunity now to move forward to discuss these things in an atmosphere of calm and cooperation rather than of stand off. I certainly hope so. Like others, I utterly condemn the treatment of Father Gary Donegan. This is a man who, as others said, has spent night after night and day after day trying to, as I understand it, keep young people in particular away from trouble and from perhaps getting a record that they should not have. He deserves better than to be confronted by a group of people abusing him in those circumstances.”
“Like others, I welcome the agreement and the resolution of this long-running dispute. I pay tribute to the loyal orders and the Crumlin and Ardoyne Residents Association for, dare I say it, finally seeing good sense after two and a half years and, I believe, something over £20 million of expenditure. There were major sensitivities on both sides; we have to acknowledge that. An agreement that took a long time to come to fruition is better than no agreement at all. <BR /> <BR />I also commend the police operation; I do not think that anybody has mentioned the police yet. The PSNI has held a line up there nightly for all that time. Sometimes it erupted, and sometimes it did not, but the cost of it and the resources that the police had to put into policing the area over that time have been massive.”
“The Minister's statement points to a high level of cooperation between North and South, which is very welcome. I only hope that it does not come to a juddering halt in about two years' time. <BR /> <BR />Specifically, I understand that drug courts operate in Dublin, which enable offenders to access programmes that are led by the probation service there — the statement refers to those — to tackle their addictions and turn away from crime. In the context of our proposed problem-solving courts, is there any intention to try to learn from their model?”
“I hope that she is minded to pursue it, and I hope that we can come to a satisfactory outcome to try to put a stop to the sort of experience that the proposer has so graphically explained to us today.”
“There is a fair bit there, but I agree with the thrust of the motion and the amendment that what is required, if we can come up with it here, is a specific definition of what stalking means. <BR /> <BR />I was struck by what Claire Hanna said, which was that the Scottish Parliament has, not for the first time, come up with something. I know our legislators have a horror of anything vague, so I wish them luck with this one, but it talks about acting in a way that would cause harm or distress — or all the other words you could use — to a reasonable person of reasonable intelligence. That sort of definition exists in some of our laws already as a catch-all, as Claire said. It is worth pursuing. <BR /> <BR />I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this in due course.”
“— there to my mind is a half-hearted attempt to bring in cyberstalking —”
“It talks about the person pursuing a course of conduct in breach of section such-and-such that amounts to harassment. It even gives the specific examples of:”
“The mystery perhaps is that the PSNI — I was on the Policing Board for five years with Mrs Hale — does not appear to have specific statistics to highlight the actual extent of stalking in isolation from the overall term "harassment". It seems odd that, in the 1997 Act, which everybody has referred to, there is an attempt to define stalking. I remember in the last mandate when we tried to define the term "bullying in schools", and such difficulties we had, particularly in the case of cyberbullying. I believe that a large proportion of what now constitutes stalking in this country is to do with cyberstalking, which is so difficult to tie down and prosecute. The 1997 Act makes an attempt at it, almost by giving examples of what it means. It states:”
“We will obviously support the motion. We will support the amendment also, although I must say I have far more sympathy with the motion, but it is entirely up to the Minister what way she moves on this once the debate is complete. <BR /> <BR />I pay tribute to Mrs Hale straight off, because it is not easy to come here and talk in such a personal way about something like that that has happened. I have had the experience, so I will just say, "Well done, Brenda, and thank you for bringing the motion to the House". <BR /> <BR />The motion uses words like "hidden crime", "insidious", "terrifying", "psychological harm" and "in the most serious of cases, murder". That is not an exaggeration. Those things happen.”
“The European Investment Bank, in the past eight years, has invested £43 billion in projects within the European Union and £1 billion in projects outside it. I admire the Minister's confidence that there may still be money coming from that source, but I frankly doubt whether that will be the case. Has he anything concrete to offer by way of facilities that may replace that kind of loan?”
“I thank the Minister for that very complete answer. He has just about taken away every supplementary question that I might have dreamt of. Just to be clear, only £2 million of the £8 million that he mentioned over four years is in the current Budget period. Is he satisfied that that money will still be available in future years? Also, is he satisfied that the quality of advice given across council areas will be reasonably uniform?”
“The Minister will be aware of the many promises that his predecessor made — before the election, of course — about major road projects. He seems to be saying the same thing now: it will be as and when money becomes available. He has just given us the timescale for the Randalstown project, but can he give us any idea of the timescale for any of the major projects?”
“I thank the First Minister for her answer. Given that the Maze project was originally to benefit from considerable EU funding — indeed, we lost a tranche of funding due to our inability to agree about this in the past — how do the Executive expect to fund future investment if there is no EU funding available in the future?”
“I also welcome the Minister to her first Question Time. Under the current legal services legislation, the agency does not have any powers to carry out inspections of the offices of legal representatives. Is the Minister satisfied with that, or is it something she might look at?”
“I heard about a case recently in which a father and son were disqualified from keeping horses for 25 years. They are now to be seen regularly at horse fairs with a relative, who buys the horses. That is outrageous. There must be some scope for a central register. Banning only the individual and not the household from keeping an animal in these circumstances seems completely off the wall. If I were banned for animal cruelty, my wife could go out and buy a pet. That does not make any sense to me at all. I feel strongly about that. I hope that the Minister will address those points in whatever she has to say today. In this country, we are all animal lovers except for the small number of people who clearly are not. Frankly, it is those people whom we need to deal with.”
“I think of a case in my constituency a couple of years ago, when a dog was sprayed with an inflammable liquid and then set on fire. Under the regime of a two-year maximum sentence, the court awarded a sentence of 10 months. Frankly, how cruel do you have to be to get the maximum sentence for something like that? This dog was set on fire. It lived in agony for a few days and then had to be put down. In the normal way, that 10 months was probably subject to remission for good behaviour. There was maybe even a discount for remorse; I do not really know offhand. This kind of thing makes a nonsense of the law. <BR /> <BR />There was the east Belfast case, when somebody who was kidnapping animals to groom them for fighting got a suspended sentence. What is going on?”
“The amendment talks about "further and tougher criminal sanctions". Members made the point that the Justice Bill passed in February toughened up the sentences considerably. A five-year maximum sentence for animal cruelty is among the most severe in the UK, if not the most severe in these islands. The same Bill increased the sentence for causing unnecessary suffering from six months to 12 months and the fine from £5,000 to £20,000, which is also very severe. I have a slight problem with where unnecessary suffering ends and animal cruelty begins. There must be some overlap there. <BR /> <BR />The problem lies not with the legislation or the level of sentences but with the courts. As in many areas of our legislation, the courts do not avail themselves of the available facility to really make a point when they are delivering these sentences.”
“I thank the Member for that intervention. I do not disagree with him: I am just making the point that it is a difficult area. It is not a simple thing to establish a register. Who would it be available to? <BR /> <BR />I speak as a pet lover, as Mrs Pengelly did. I grew up with dogs, and, when I got married, I lived with cats — I choose my words carefully — for the last 40 years. I also twice had the experience of owning a horse, which is not something that I would recommend financially, but it certainly was a very pleasant experience.”
“We will also support the motion and the amendment. I have some reservations about the wording, but the general thrust and spirit of the motion is fine with us. <BR /> <BR />There are obvious difficulties with having a central register, as outlined by Mr Sheehan. There is the question of data protection and the question of who has access to such a register. However, at the end of the day, if the Minister is capable of bringing forward something that allows the Department, the PSNI, statutory agencies and charitable agencies involved in this work to have access to previous records, it would be a good thing. It would also be a good thing —”
“We can borrow judiciously in a controlled way, but let us not pretend that borrowing is some sort of silver bullet and we can borrow our way out of problems: we cannot. Again, borrowing at highly competitive rates from the European Investment Bank is one way to move forward. I have to disagree with Mr Allister: the priority for that bank is obviously to lend money within Europe. The figures that have been given to me bear that out big time. <BR /> <BR />I will leave it at that, Mr Deputy Speaker. I know I have done the rounds there, but there are questions for the Minister.”
“I absolutely think she should — including the one in Lisburn, before anybody asks. You have got to make savings where you can and try to square the circle. <BR /> <BR />I will finish with this: as I said yesterday, we need to work at eliminating duplication and waste — the waste caused by a divided society. I cannot stand here as an Alliance Member and not talk briefly about the costs of division in this country. We need to consider revenue-raising opportunities. I think the Minister and I agree about this. He sometimes nods his head but does not smile. I think perhaps there may be some scope there. We have got to take the major decisions. We have got to organise what we are doing here.”
“Prison Service staff are close to breaking point. Everybody knows that. The level of absenteeism, stress-related problems and pressure that those people work under is intolerable. The service is still being starved of money through the Department of Justice, which itself has been starved of money for some years. We could say much the same about the PSNI. The demands on the PSNI budget are quite intolerable. Something will have to give. We could start talking about all the new demands that are coming along with Stakeknife and so on. It just cannot go on on that basis. We will see what the new Justice Minister can do to help you out, Minister, as you grapple with those problems. It is only a small matter, but I wait with interest to see whether she continues with the closure of courthouses across Northern Ireland.”
“<BR /> <BR />The Health Minister has a difficult job, but there are difficult decisions to be taken. I would make one comparison. If you look at the area of Strathclyde in Scotland, you see that it has about the same population as we have. It is rural plus urban. It has one major hospital. We have five in greater Belfast, and I include Lisburn. I do not say that you have to close them all, but there has to be a major rationalisation of the health service in this country or we will just continue to grapple with the unachievable and run out of money. That is not what any of us wants. <BR /> <BR />I am on the Justice Committee now. Let us talk about the Prison Service and the PSNI. Both have suffered major cuts. They are vital services. The Prison Service in this country is close to breaking point.”
“I apologise; I was sidetracked. <BR /> <BR />I will just say a few words about health. The health budget is half of what we spend. Our health service is clearly massively inefficient. That is not to say that it does not do great work; of course it does. Nurses, doctors, consultants — everybody involved in the health service — do their best to provide an excellent service for all our people. In a lot of ways, they are succeeding, but at what cost? I wonder when we will take the major decisions and pay attention to John Compton in 'Transforming Your Care', Sir Liam Donaldson's report and Professor Bengoa, in another report about to come before us. Is that going to lie on the same shelf as the other reports, or are we going to actually take action on it?”
“Maybe I will have a look at that. The figures that were given to me were completely different. It hardly makes —”
“I am tempted to keep it going and let him. Go on.”
“There has been €43 billion for us in the last eight years and £1 billion for the countries that Mr Allister and his like think we will join when we are still inside the European party but outside the loop. He called my comment nonsense. I will repeat the word: his figures are complete nonsense, as so much of the Brexit argument has been.”
“I will come to that in a second. <BR /> <BR />Back in the day, I can remember Dr Paisley — God rest him — advocating it as DUP policy that we should milk the European cow for as much as we could get until it ran dry. The comment was repeated by the present Speaker — not you, Mr Deputy Speaker. <BR /> <BR />I have figures that indicate something different. Ten per cent of the EIB's annual lending is outside the EU, primarily focused on developing economies in neighbouring regions. That hardly includes us. Over the last eight years, the EIB has provided €43 billion for long-term investment in the UK and £1 billion to all the European Free Trade Association countries combined; that is Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein.”
“Those who advocate Brexit — it is so topical that I cannot resist talking about it — really need to look at that. Mr Girvan thought that we could still draw on money from the European Investment Bank if we went for Brexit. I query that, and I will tell you why in a moment.”
“People have talked about the Narrow Water bridge. There is an amazing number of views on it. I will make one point that has not been made: when the First Minister was Minister for tourism, she invested £7·5 million, I think, in the tourism industry in the Mournes. To do that and then to refuse to provide a link to other major tourist destinations in the area that happen to be on the wrong side of the border — Carlingford and Omeath — defies logic. At that time, it was going to cost the Assembly about £3 million, at an overall cost of £20-something million. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Well, the DUP managed to do it. <BR /> <BR />I will talk about housing briefly. The loan arrangement to housing associations was much mentioned yesterday. That is very welcome. Where does the money come from? The European Investment Bank.”
“I can remember travelling up and down to Derry as a relatively young man in the 1970s, and people talked about a bypass for Dungiven then. That was in 1971, and here we are now, 45 years later, with still no date for it. There is no budget for it — where will the money come from? It is the same for the A5, although there is still the possibility of some help from the Southern Government. <BR /> <BR />In the Lisburn area, the famous Knockmore link is part of the infrastructure around Sprucefield that Mrs Palmer was talking about. It, too, has been promised, but promised for when? You could go on and on with this, but, in the meantime, our construction industry has been decimated.”
“Yet, we have the major construction projects that people are talking about, such as the A5 and the A6, which have now been promised. I do not envy Mr Hazzard his job because he has to try to deal with the promises made by his predecessor, Miss McIlveen, in a storming run-up to the last election, when, I think, she promised to reconstruct every road in Northern Ireland, if that was worth anything. <BR /> <BR />We will see where that goes, but let us consider the A6 in particular. I forget who mentioned Dungiven — perhaps it was Mr McAleer — but try telling the people of Dungiven that we are about to provide them with a bypass, and they will look at you with the same cynical eye as they have done for the last 30 years.”
“<BR /> <BR />Of course, we also have the inconclusive scheme that was introduced in the last mandate to try to persuade some teachers to retire early and allow new graduates into the profession. We could not even agree about that. I presume that it is still there and still on the long finger, but somebody has to address it. <BR /> <BR />I will get off education and talk about infrastructure for a moment. I sat on the all-party construction industry group here for some years. The construction industry is on its knees, along with the quarry products and aggregates industries. They are suffering so badly that, eventually, they may well get to the point of no return. We have lost so many major employers in that sector, going right back to Patton and so on, that you just despair sometimes.”
“I have some sympathy for him because he could not square the circle of funding. No Department can do that at the moment, so I will go back to my original point: you have to take serious decisions in some of these situations. <BR /> <BR />Look at teacher training, which one or two other Members mentioned today. If you look at the statistics for the output from all our institutions five years ago, you see that only slightly more than 60% of those graduate trainees have obtained a teaching post. Those figures come from the General Teaching Council (GTC). They are not even full-time posts. Teachers who qualify and manage to obtain one term's worth of full-time work are regarded by the GTC as being in employment and are counted in that figure. Nobody knows how many of them have gone into proper full-time work.”
“We have a situation with the priorities for education — the STEM subjects, for a start — which is not being properly addressed. Funding for primary-school language projects has been cut — just done away with. Some primary schools are still trying to paddle their own canoe and do something about that using their own budget, restricted as it is. The necessity for a second language is well proven. It is essential that our children have a second language, in the same way as most children on the continent have English as a second language. It is formative, educational and good for children. <BR /> <BR />In the STEM sector, I could mention Sentinus, which, I believe, had its annual awards yesterday. Funding for Sentinus was cut and cut again by the previous Minister.”
“We have the, frankly, scandalous situation with special educational needs, which has been well referred to in the last few days. We have problems in early years and with the balance of funding between primary and secondary, but particularly with the highly formative first two or three years of a child's education, which are not being properly dealt with.”
“Some schools have been promised a new build, and the best that they can hope for is that they may have it in 10 years' time. That is how bad it is. I know that some are under way, but there has been a whole round, every year, of schools being added to the list of capital builds on a promise — the money is not there and will not be there unless we change the way we do business. So, again, the challenge for the Minister is to bring some of that about, although it is probably more to do with his ministerial colleagues than with him. <BR /> <BR />I could talk about area planning — I prefer to call it sectoral area planning, because that is what it has been so far. CCMS has gone its own sweet way, and I can hardly blame it, because nothing would have been done otherwise. It has made some progress with the rationalisation of its estate.”
“I can think of one school that I visited not so long ago in Mr Girvan's area that is operating out of Portakabins that are 22 years old. They are not built to be occupied for 22 years. On one of the occasions that I was there, the previous Education Minister was there as well. He is a sizeable man, as we know, and was advised by the caretaker not to go into two of the buildings, because he would probably go through the floor. Other people, I must say, advised him to go into the same buildings for a different reason, but that is by the way. <BR /> <BR />We are maintaining schools that probably should be closed or, preferably, merged, but we are still having to pay money to maintain them. That is an unnecessary drain on our resources, and it is affecting our ability to proceed with capital builds in education.”
“<BR /> <BR />I am afraid that I might repeat one or two things that I said yesterday, but I think that a lot of people have done so, so I will not be embarrassed. <BR /> <BR />Like a lot of others, I will start off with education. I have just spent nine years on the Education Committee; I have now been released and placed on the Justice Committee. I must confess that, in those nine years, I did not see much of what I could call progress in any aspect of our education system. I certainly could not see it in the schools estate. I could see some improvement at the top end of our results spectrum, but not much at the bottom end. Apparently, we still have 70,000 empty desks in our schools. On that basis, we must have schools that we do not need. <BR /> <BR />We have schools operating out of Portakabins.”