John McCallister
South Down · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“She did whatever needed to be done and nothing seemed to be too much trouble or too difficult for her to overcome. <BR /> <BR />It was very much to her credit that she was able to work and find a solution to an issue that, as we go forward, will allow us to look at different things.”
“Sometimes, one of the downsides of being in politics is that social media exposes all our lives to some really quite harsh and unkind things. I certainly am delighted that things have improved in that regard, not only with getting the Bill passed but with your father's health improving.”
“Like colleagues, I welcome the Final Stage of the Licensing Bill. Following on from Mr Ross, it is a shame that Mrs Cochrane is standing down because we could desperately do with her back here to continue the reform of our licensing laws, although that is looking like quite a big job for anybody to take on.”
“It would have been such a shame to have to have him removed on his last day. <BR /> <BR />Mr Speaker, I will begin by paying tribute to you and the respect agenda you have set in your time in the Speaker's office.”
“<BR /> <BR />In this term, I am particularly proud of the private Member's Bill to reform the way that the Assembly does its business, and I hope that the messages from all of the political parties seem to be that there is a will to have a much more collective and cohesive Executive on the other side of an election.”
“While there is partly a disappointment in some regards about what the Assembly and Executive have achieved, the one thing that they have achieved is to have got people talking from very different and difficult backgrounds. As Mr Hamilton said, it is much better having a robust debate in here than division on our streets.”
The complete record
Every one of 975 lines we hold for John McCallister, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 11 of 20.
“We would reduce health inequalities and lower dramatically the differences in life expectancy in parts of the Member's constituency and between the constituencies of West Belfast and South Belfast. <BR /> <BR />That is what this Executive and a Government that actually cared about the citizens whom they represent and govern would be doing, not defending the status quo and saying that we need more money. We had record levels of public spending in the early part of this century, yet where were all the indications going on our poverty levels? Were we widening or reducing the gap? According to Mr Agnew, the gap in Northern Ireland is wider than other parts of the UK, yet, somehow, we are in the process of destroying our government and these institutions to defend a system that has not delivered the remotest success.”
“I do not know whether it is just me or whether other people find it a little inconsistent in that the SDLP, Sinn Féin and Mr Agnew are fighting so hard to save the welfare system, yet Mr Attwood, quite rightly, highlights that we have the worst levels of poverty, the highest levels of economic inactivity, the biggest health inequalities and some of the highest levels of educational underachievement in the United Kingdom. Why are we defending a system that has delivered nothing but failure? Surely, if this Executive, or any elected Executive, wanted to do anything, the absolute key would be reforming and delivering better public services, better education, better outcomes and earlier intervention for our people.”
“Her entire Budget is based on getting the £700 million for the voluntary exit scheme, £200 million of it for this year, and the other support for infrastructure projects, which is £100 million built into this year. There is also the flexibility on asset sales so that that money can be used to repay the £100 million emergency loan and the £114 million on welfare. <BR /> <BR />I come back to the great defence that people have put up of our welfare system.”
“The sooner all members of the Executive and all parties in the Executive realise that, the better off we will be. <BR />We can keep kicking the can down the road. When, initially, the petition of concern threatened the Welfare Reform Bill, there was no mention of 8 July being a problem to us because we did not know that. The argument was that welfare reform was wrong, having spent some 11 weeks up to 23 December and agreed something and disagreed to it on 24 December, when it fell apart. People were reserving their position on it. I forget quite what the phrase was that Mr Attwood used when I asked him, but it was that they agreed to the good bits and disagreed with the bad bits. Either they agreed to it all or they did not. I do not know which it is, and that is the Minister's fundamental problem.”
“I am grateful to Mr Agnew for his point. As I said before, I have no issue with you challenging them. However, as I pointed out last week, Nicola Sturgeon is not collapsing the Scottish Parliament and Carwyn Jones is not bringing down the Welsh Government, but we are in crisis. I have no difficulty with the three of us — Mr Agnew, Mr Allister and me — voting against the Budget, as I expect us to do this evening, but we are not in government. I do not enjoy the trappings of office, such as the Škoda, and I do not carry the responsibility of being in government. I am a humble Back-Bencher trying to throw out some ideas. Of course, challenge the Government; have as many rows with the UK Government as you want, but you will still have to live within your means.”
“Like an election or something. You mean like the one that we had in May? The Conservatives won. Under the system that we use, they are the elected Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . They are in charge of tackling a massive public spending gap, an even larger public-sector debt and the national debt.”
“You cannot have a system that continues to do that. <BR /> <BR />Let us buy ourselves a wee bit more road, kick the can down, and maybe we will make it through to October. Maybe it will be January, maybe it will be February and maybe, goodness knows, we might make it to March. By then, the Dáil election will be out of the way — phew — and we will be ready for our own election. That is no way to do things. <BR /> <BR />The problem is that some of the parties here have to look at what they are fighting and who they think they having that fight with. They are primarily having it with the newly elected Government of the United Kingdom. Last week, the Minister said:”
“You have to have some semblance of agreement. As Mr Allister rightly pointed out, we do not have any cohesiveness, and there is not a modicum of discretion when you are in discussions with each other. For Ministers, it is a case of who can get off their chest first who said what, who agreed with the Secretary of State and who did what. That is no way to run an Administration. <BR /> <BR />It is telling that the Secretary of State has to be there to try to guide the Executive. Either the Executive function like a Government, or they do not deserve to exist. There is nothing more fundamental to that than a Budget process. The Budget should have been signed up to by all the parties instead of being pushed by the DUP, which dared its colleagues to vote it down. The SDLP was happy to oblige, despite being happy to remain in government.”
“A few recurring themes in our welfare debate and Budget debate are interwoven. One is the idea that we should have more negotiations or somehow find another way. Either the Executive deliver on what they agreed at Stormont House, or they cannot deliver on anything. <BR /> <BR />Mr McCrea talked about elections not changing anything. They will not change anything in this House, but the only elections that would change things would be Dáil elections, because Sinn Féin might finally get off the hook and start to move on some of these issues. <BR /> <BR />I want to take issue with some of Mr Attwood's points — namely, the consistent idea that you can stay locked and trapped in the Government and oppose everything from within. You cannot be both in government and in opposition: you have to be in one or the other.”
“I did get one compliment about my speech at Second Stage. Although my speech was longer than Alex Attwood's, someone said to me that it just felt shorter than his. That was the one compliment I got for my speech. I will be brief. I got most of it off my chest last Wednesday, so I feel that I need to regurgitate only 80% of it.”
“I have a couple of points. The first question is for the Minister. In her winding-up speech on this issue at the previous debate, she quoted from Dickens. It was more just an inquiry to see whether something has turned up this week. If nothing has turned up, we are still where we were last week.”
“The Executive sending a Minister to stand up to and negotiate with the UK Government seems absolutely bizarre when they cannot even negotiate with themselves. I ask him to address some of those points? <BR /> <BR />Early intervention is the key. We are now eight years after devolution. Sinn Féin has had the education portfolio for about 10 of the past 15 years, yet we still have those figures that the Member has just read out. That is where the failure lies.”
“I am grateful to the Member for giving way. I have a few points to make. I hear his talk about the figures in health. I constantly talked about early intervention throughout our welfare and Budget debates. He will know that I think that we were wrong to go down the track of giving away £564 when we should have been looking at earlier interventions to address the very issues that he has talked about. <BR /> <BR />In the earlier part of his speech, the Member talked about the SDLP consistently voting against the Budget. Does he think that that position is consistent with being in government? Given the points that he has made, does he now support the Stormont House Agreement, or is it in tatters? Why is he is talking about the integrity of the agreement as if it is some precious document, when it is clearly in ruins?”
“I remind the Member that we do not have a charge to visit a GP, thanks to the National Health Service and money from Westminster.”
“By the time it came back in a stable form, I was a 35-year-old Member of it, so I do not say it lightly. At some point we have to stop running to big brother at the British or Irish Governments saying that we need more money. We cannot give in to all the threats of "Oh, this will happen, the deputy First Minister will resign." We have to say that enough is enough.”
“Sadly for people in Northern Ireland, some here today seem more comfortable with the character of opposition — a harum-scarum opposition — than with the responsibility of government. <BR /> <BR />Although I am committed to devolution, I have less of an ideological problem than all the parties down this side of the House with Tory direct rule Ministers coming in and sorting out our problems. Quite frankly, if the Assembly and Executive cannot rise to meet the challenges before us and deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, then this place does not deserve to exist. I do not say that lightly. I know the consequences that it could have. People could say that you could get rid of devolution for a few weeks. I constantly remind people that I was a 6-week-old baby when this place collapsed in March 1972.”
“We have to remember that the peace process is over and that it was successful. It is now time to govern. I remind colleagues of Danny Kennedy's words:”
“No matter what our constitutional preference is, this place has to be made to work. As a unionist, I want it to work and to be a full, integral part of the UK. As Irish nationalists or republicans, you have to make this place work to make sure that you look as though you are fit ever to be in a sovereign Government in the future. Either way, we have to make this place work for the people of Northern Ireland, whom we are sent here to represent. <BR /> <BR />As a committed devolutionist, I say to them that I, like many, am absolutely fed up with Sinn Féin and the SDLP's stance on the issue. Many people have long since switched off on what is happening at Stormont. The little boy has cried wolf way too often. This is not only a crisis: it is a proper crisis and a real crisis. We have to move away from that.”
“We are not cherishing people equally when we trap them in poverty and trap them in west Belfast. We should be using very wisely the £2,000 a head of extra spending that we get and creating an equality of opportunity for people that people can see. We must look at reforming this place. We must look at reforming the petition of concern mechanism. I want to see the Assembly doing that. I want the Assembly and Executive to have the maximum powers that they can have to maximise the benefits of being in the Union. I want all those ideals for the Assembly and Executive, but those ideals can happen only when people realise that they are in government. <BR /> <BR />The big challenge for Sinn Féin and the SDLP is to decide whether they want to reform Northern Ireland and whether they want Northern Ireland to work.”
“Peter Robinson set up the performance and efficiency delivery unit (PEDU), which Simon Hamilton subsumed into the public sector reform division, yet we have no way of getting any Departments to engage with it. <BR /> <BR />I believe in devolution. I believe in this place. I would like to see this place be a bastion of hope, with policy ideas coming out of it and reform that lifts the standard, tackles educational underachievement, economic inactivity and our productivity gap. Our productivity has remained stagnant for many years. I want to be involved in a democracy that has politics of aspiration, that wants social mobility and that wants all our people, not just those in South Down but across Northern Ireland, to do well and succeed. It is almost like the old Sinn Féin mantra from the proclamation about:”
“In concluding, I say to Members that I believe passionately in devolution. As I said earlier, I voted yes in 1998. Is there frustration? There is bound to be enormous frustration in parties in and out of government that want to do things to help people but are blocked at every turn. I accept and respect everyone's mandate to be here. I have no difficulty with the concept of power-sharing. What I do have difficulty with is what we have at the minute, which is shared-out power and, effectively, little fiefdoms, where people are king on their own patch. I suspect that, when the DUP first selected the Department of Finance, it was hoping that it would be much more like the Treasury in London, with much more overarching power to reform other Departments and to help to guide that reform.”
“The Department of Finance, in a previous monitoring round, had to give £63 million to the Department of Education, because that was the only way in which to get Sinn Féin to agree, yet there is no semblance of reform. That is how bad our system is at the minute. The only model that Sinn Féin looks to is the Greek model.”
“I have looked at some of the failings of the Executive and where we have lost money. We spent £53 million on a training college for the police and the Fire and Rescue Service that now looks as if it is not going to happen. Is the A5 road going to happen or not? That is £60 million-plus. The Maze/Long Kesh site involves £18 million of EU money. The Narrow Water bridge involves £14·5 million. For education reform, we managed to get something — the lowest common denominator available. Local government reform looks as though it is having enormous teething problems. Planning seems to have almost ground to a halt. In education, we still have 64,000 empty places.”
“Take the report of the Human Rights Commission on health. It talked about the need for Departments to move on with Transforming Your Care, on commissioning and other changes, setting the value on human rights and charting a constructive course ahead. However, Transforming Your Care, by all accounts, three and a half years in and three Ministers later, is going nowhere. <BR /> <BR />We have this system of government that allows people to be in government and opposition at the same time. We can vote for a Budget and go to a picket line in Newry all in the one day. Thankfully, on that occasion, Mickey Brady was asked to leave the picket line, but this coalition of irresponsibility, particularly on this side of the House, cannot be allowed to continue.”
“We need to change the way our schools are run, engage kids early on in their education and engage those kids' parents in education. All educators will tell you that they could walk into a house and know by the number of books there how well a child will do in school. I suspect that this is not a problem for the Minister's kids or mine: their parents are reading to them at home and taking an interest in their education. That is not happening in some of our families, and there is nothing compassionate about a welfare, education or health system that ignores that reality. <BR /> <BR />There is a seven-year difference in life expectancy in parts of Belfast. There is nothing compassionate in that. This Administration should embark on these and many other reforms and make sure that they deliver.”
“Given the current instability, as the Invest NI team go out not knowing whether we are setting corporation tax, that record will be very difficult to maintain, especially if we do not get our skills base right. <BR /> <BR />I come back to welfare and say to Michaela Boyle and her colleagues that there is nothing compassionate about trapping people in poverty. There is nothing compassionate about trapping people on benefits for the rest of their lives and condemning the next generation to low educational attainment, poverty and benefits. <BR /> <BR />A report is out on the job of work that needs to be done in Protestant working-class areas. We have a job of work to do in all areas where underachievement is being presided over by the Education Minister.”
“I listened to and read some of Michaela Boyle's advice to the House. She talked about a no-growth austerity agenda from Westminster. The no-growth agenda in Westminster has left the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7. It has created some 1·7 million jobs. I want this Administration to be involved in that type of reform for Northern Ireland. <BR /> <BR />We were successful last year in attracting inward investment. Per capita, we had the highest rate of inward investment in any part of the UK, which is to the credit of Invest NI and the Minister in her previous role for going out and selling Northern Ireland as a place to invest.”
“We are running this place into the ground while waiting for a Dáil election to happen. That is an intolerable place for any Administration and partners in the Government to be in: to just sit and, effectively, fiddle while Rome burns. That is what we are doing. We cannot be allowed to continue with that. <BR /> <BR />Looking broadly at some of the issues, I think that it is important to remind colleagues that the reason why the Committee does not have a lot of choice about accelerated passage of the Budget Bill is simply because, until we reform our Budget process, there is not a pile of choice left for Members as to how they do that.”
“If the stories are right, Transport NI is down to 35 litres of fuel to drive around with. At least we can comfort ourselves in knowing that Transport NI's depots are in great shape at the minute. There is not a weed or a bit of dust blowing around them. <BR /> <BR />Mr Ross is in his place, but there is no sign of anyone wanting to have a debate about what we want the state to look like, what role we expect it to take, or what services we expect it to deliver. There is no sign of any part of government moving into that realm. All anyone talks about is taking on the Conservative Government. Sinn Féin might be uncomfortable because it has had to vote against water charges in the South. It does not even want a debate with the Minister about revenue raising up here.”
“If we look at all the sectors and all the choices that we face, there is no sign that Sinn Féin, or the SDLP for that matter, are up to making any of the difficult decisions. <BR /> <BR />Minister Farry had the Executive against him on St Mary's College. Look at Ulster University. Our universities are now faced with several options: they can cut numbers; they can increase fees, if the Assembly would let them; or they can try to get more money from the Department for Employment and Learning. Those are the choices that this Executive and Assembly should realistically be making. <BR /> <BR />People talk about DRD and street lighting, and I know, as a constituency representative, that Transport NI seems to have effectively stopped. I do not know how other colleagues feel about getting anything done.”
“The idea that we are somehow going to negotiate our way out of this is just no good. <BR /> <BR />When it comes to tax-varying powers, of course, you could include things like air passenger duty (APD). The Chair of the Committee knows about regional disparities. Air passenger duty has hurt the growth of the regional economy. That is a debate that I would love the Minister to have when she goes to London. I would like to see her tying in not just with the Scots and the Welsh but with the Conservative idea to create a northern powerhouse. Places like Manchester and Newcastle are being disadvantaged as well. That is an area where the Minister can go and challenge the thinking of the Government and how it is disadvantaging the growth of regional economies. That is something that we should be looking at.”
“That happened with some of Sinn Féin and the SDLP's political heroes, such as when militant Labour ran Liverpool City Council into the ground, or Ken Livingstone at the Greater London Council, to the point that Mrs Thatcher abolished it. You have a responsibility. We would not let councils behave in the way that this Assembly is now behaving. We would have to step in and stop them at some point. <BR /> <BR />We have a Minister who is faced with a dilemma as to at what point enough is enough. At what point do we question the mitigation measures and how we move them on? At what point does the permanent secretary take over? At what point does the Treasury step in and ignore all the threats that it will collapse the institution and bring down the peace process and all the doom and gloom? We need to move beyond that.”
“We have no ability to have that debate here, because this Assembly and Executive, to use the First Minister's phrase, is so dysfunctional that we do not know whether it is going to pass a Budget. There is nothing more fundamental to basic governance than passing a Budget. In a normal parliamentary democracy, if a Government cannot get their Budget passed, they fall. That is just the nature of parliamentary democracy. <BR /> <BR />I want to touch on a point that Roy Beggs made in the last debate, because it is one that I feel strongly about as well. If our councils started to spend in a reckless way and could not live within their means, at some point Minister Durkan or some other Minister would have to step in and say that enough is enough.”
“I would love nothing more than to see this place being more normal. I would love to see us having the power to look at corporation tax. I would love to see us being part of the national debate about the regions and the other nations of the UK, about income tax bands or levels of income tax. At the minute, you could devolve tax-varying powers to this Assembly only if you reformed this Assembly and the way it works. It needs to be a proper place that is not just always debating and saying that we will cut corporation tax. It is strange that Sinn Féin have moved off that and said that corporation tax in unaffordable. I am not quite sure where the SDLP is on that.”
“I think that the Member misunderstood me. I am committed to the living wage. I would like to see it being paid. I am on record here as saying that. One of the things that we did on welfare which affects all the Budget was to, over the last number of years, use tax credits to subsidise low pay. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister addressing that issue in a speech earlier in the week when he was challenging tax credits. I am going from memory, so forgive me if the percentage is not accurate, but something like 14% of our welfare spend is on tax credits. We have subsidised low pay by doing that, and that should be challenged. Businesses have a responsibility to move to a living wage. He will get no argument from me on that. <BR /> <BR />He will also get no argument on how we move to tax-varying powers here.”
“We and this Executive look and feel politically exhausted. The one bit of sympathy that I have for the DUP and its Ministers is that they need a partner in government. Whether we have an opposition here or not, they need a partner in government. The electorate said it was Sinn Féin, because you won the second largest number of seats and votes in Northern Ireland. I respect your mandate and right to be in government, but you have to realise that you are in government. Nothing quite sums up the Sinn Féin attitude to being in government more than junior Minister Jennifer McCann tweeting one day that action needed to be taken on child poverty and the Government should do something. You are the Government, so do something. You are in government, so look at the responsibility that you bear.”
“The group it is most advantageous to are the lower paid. I am someone who actually supports a living wage. I have said that, yes, if companies can do it, they should be encouraged to do it, but I am not hearing any policy ideas coming back from Sinn Féin or the SDLP other than to oppose Tory welfare changes. If you want to redesign the entire welfare system, do that — I do not have a problem with your doing it — but you have to describe how you would pay for it and tell the Minister where she will find the money to keep on going at the rate at which we are going.”
“I have said before in the House that you cannot have a system in which we are paying to breach a £26,000 welfare cap, which is designed mainly, I have to say, around housing benefits for the south-east of England, not actually for Northern Ireland. In the welfare debate, we had talk of something like 6,500 families who were getting an average of £30,700. That is the equivalent of a £40,000 a year salary. You cannot justify that when some of the poorest people in society are people who are now actually in work. <BR /> <BR />I acknowledge both the coalition and the Conservative manifesto commitment to lift the income tax threshold to £12,500. That is actually a good thing because it will take people out of tax. It will lift lower-paid people completely out of the tax system — or a huge percentage of their income out of the tax system.”
“I have probably been called worse things: to say that I am slightly more sympathetic to a Conservative Government will not offend me dramatically. <BR /> <BR />The point is that we should all be supportive of some of the bases of the Conservative/Lib Dem welfare changes — it is important to remember that it was a coalition Government between 2010 and 2015 — such as making work pay. I cannot go and tell my constituents who are on the average industrial wage of £19,000 or £20,000 why we should pay their neighbour who is on benefits over £30,000. I cannot go and try to justify that to my constituent.”
“What happened at the ard-fheis up in Derry? Who knows. It changed dramatically from a Friday night speech by the deputy First Minister to a Monday morning petition of concern. At that point, something changed. Presumably, orders came from high command.”
“Of course, our entire economic strategy seems literally to be focused on Stormont House and the advantages of corporation tax. One of the difficulties that the Minister has, which even relates back to her previous role, is that we, as an Assembly and Executive, are sending Alastair Hamilton and his Invest NI team out to sell Northern Ireland as a destination, saying, "Come and invest with us." Some of the things that you need to attract inward investment are stability, good governance and a competitive tax rate and base. We look as if we are throwing all that out of the way. You could not exactly say that there has been stable government in the last three to four months. After Stormont House in the early part of year, it had rebooted the relationship between the First Minister and deputy First Minister.”
“I am happy to have a debate with Sinn Féin, the SDLP and others in the House about the merits of a living wage. I am on record as saying that companies that can afford the living wage should consider paying it. The Prime Minister is on record as saying that the UK needs a pay rise. I quite like the idea, which the Ulster Unionists put forward in the election, that companies benefiting from a corporation tax cut would pay the living wage. That is to be welcomed.”
“Is that flexibility allowed, and should we even proceed with asset sales if there is some doubt as to whether it can be used? There is the flexibility to repay a £100 million loan from Treasury and £114 million in welfare deductions from asset sales and capital budgets. Are we now in danger, if Stormont House is not implemented, of selling off or not selling off assets because we are not sure whether we have the flexibility to repay that £214 million between the loan and welfare fines? <BR /> <BR />To continue with welfare, the figures that the Minister gave last week at Committee showed that the welfare penalty would go up to £196 million. Are more things coming down the track on 8 July, going by the Prime Minister's speech the other day in the north of England? I have said some of this before.”
“Will that go ahead? <BR /> <BR />The Minister knows my view that, had we done the recruitment freeze earlier, we could have been borrowing the £700 million to invest in other infrastructure and various projects in roads, rail, schools, hospitals and wherever it was needed, but we are where we are. The payback on it is remarkably quick if we get a managed scheme, but will it happen? <BR /> <BR />There is a contribution of up to £500 million for new capital to support shared and integrated education. That is Mr O'Dowd, and he is in the Chamber. There is £300 million for infrastructure projects, profiled over four years, with £100 million of it in 2015-16. Is that going to go? What about allowing asset sales to be retained in their entirety to allow a combination of capital and resource spending?”
“Who would sign up to that?" Everybody is running for the door. I have no idea which parties agreed to anything. They do not seem to have any idea what they agreed to or what their negotiators agreed to. We have parties that have reserved their position on it, yet every part of this Budget is based on the Stormont House Agreement. <BR /> <BR />I will just remind the House and the Minister of some of the highlights of the Stormont House Agreement. It includes up to £150 million over five years to fund bodies to deal with the past. Is that up for renewal or is that out the window? Have we lost that money? Have we lost the flexibility to use £700 million of capital borrowing to fund the voluntary exit scheme, with up to £200 million in 2015-16, the Budget year that we are debating? There is a huge reliance on that. Is that going to happen?”
“I know, Minister, you have had a tougher seven or eight years than me. For anybody who did not believe that, I thought that it was worth reading that into the record. <BR /> <BR />We have been negotiating literally from when the Minister and I were born. The SDLP grew up and was born into political negotiations, from Sunningdale, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Hume/Adams talks, the Downing Street declaration to the Good Friday Agreement. We have toured about every country home in the UK. We have done all that. We have had the Hillsborough Castle Agreement, Leeds Castle, the Weston Park talks — we have been around them all — St Andrews, Hillsborough, Stormont House and Stormont Castle, just in case the house was not enough. We have done them all, and what do we have to show for it? "Oh, no; we didn't agree to that.”
“<BR /> <BR />The other great call from Sinn Féin and the SDLP — I think that it was Dr McDonnell who made the call — was, "I have a brilliant idea for the Minister. Let us have more negotiations." I am only a couple of years younger than the Minister —”
“I agree that it should not be able to shape the Government's response. You cannot continually hark back to that and say that you are going to collapse if we do not get what we want. <BR /> <BR />Mr Attwood also spoke about wanting to create a radical middle politics. He suggested that we should join the euro, although the euro is a pretty tough old sell at the minute. I encourage the SDLP to create that radical middle and to come up with ideas. It should either participate properly in a Programme for Government and get on with being in Government, or it should get out of Government, go into opposition and give itself the breathing space to create some radical thinking. You cannot continually do both.”
“That same party was the party that the SDLP unashamedly said that they want wanted to be in government during the election campaign. Everyone down here wanted a Labour win. It is also worth stating that Mr Lewis went on to state:”
“<BR /> <BR />It is probably worth a reminder that the SDLP's other chosen party is the UK Labour Party. It is worth reading into the record of this Budget debate the words from an interview by Shadow Secretary of State Ivan Lewis MP about what people in the UK voted for, that it is democracy and that that is what happens:”