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.”
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“Being in government has to be about much more than the car and the photo opportunity. Minister Foster, who spoke a few minutes ago, has the privilege of having a dedicated website, 'Arlene Foster holding things'. Being a Minister has to be much more than that. It should bring with it an enormous opportunity to change things and improve the lives of our citizens, but it must also carry a huge weight of responsibility of being in government and having to make tough and unpopular decisions at times. It requires a Programme for Government that means something. It requires that, if, after negotiations at Stormont House or Stormont Castle, you reach an agreement, you stick to it. Yet, what I have heard from a list of contributors, predominantly from the SDLP, is that we should have more negotiations.”
“There are 64,000 empty school places and £2 million a week in fines for not doing welfare reform. We have 21 special advisers, which is more than the total number in Scotland and Wales, at a cost of £2 million a year. I will put that in perspective: the education fund is set at £2 million a year. That is stuff that would make a difference to the lives of our citizens and help to break the cycle of poverty.”
“<BR /> <BR />As to the point about valuing the money held in trust, the mantra and the only policy I hear from Sinn Féin and the SDLP is that the Brits should give us more cash. If they gave us more money, we would do even less with it. We would reform nothing. We would not do public sector reform, and we would not do Transforming Your Care or anything else. We certainly would not do welfare reform. Look at the litany of examples of waste. Look at Transforming Your Care, a decade for local government reform and a decade for very limited educational reform. There is also the £700 million that we are borrowing for a voluntary exit scheme. Had we put a recruitment freeze on the Civil Service four years ago at the start of the mandate, we could have avoided that.”
“The Northern Ireland Executive would do well to live up to even some of those basic principles. For example, on the point of living within our means, we get about £9·6 billion of a subvention from the Treasury with no charges, no efficiencies, and we do not have to worry about collecting any revenues. We get sent that from Treasury. That is our cut from the Barnett consequentials, our block grant and a benefit from being in the Union. <BR /> <BR />You hear all this other talk from Sinn Féin. I agree with many of the Members who have spoken, including Ms Sugden, that, with Sinn Féin, it has much more to do with Dublin and the politics there, with a Dáil election due within the year. It is to do with all those things.”
“Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said:”
“Will the Minister detail the exact funding available to his Enabling Success strategy and, in particular, to the part of it dealing with learning disabilities? Does he agree that, if it is an unfunded strategy, it might well do little to help the economically inactive and is in danger of becoming another unfulfilled Executive promise?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for his analysis; he is trailblazing. Does he accept that, although he voted against the 2007-2011 Programme for Government, he took up office? He is now a Minister in an Executive that do not really have a Programme for Government. Does he not think that it is vital that, when you form a Government, you have a negotiated and agreed Programme for Government and collective Cabinet responsibility? That would go a long way to taking the fear out of who holds the Justice Ministry. Will he give an undertaking now that neither he nor any Alliance Member will take the Justice Ministry in 2016 if they do not agree with the Programme for Government?”
“— on the edge of being bankrupt and looking increasing politically exhausted and out of time.”
“You set this in the context of a debate for which the lead party in the Government of Northern Ireland tables this ridiculous motion, which is almost as silly as the one that Sinn Féin tabled last week when we had a debate on the block grant. We table these ridiculous motions as government parties, and these are the choices that you, your Executive colleagues and the Assembly are making. It is not setting Northern Ireland on a sound basis to have good governance. There is no purpose and no direction, and the Executive are very nearly —”
“The Member knows full well that £275 million of public money goes in. He knows that there is no Barnett consequential for that. He knows that that comes out of health, education, skills and every other area of government. That is a choice that the Executive and Assembly have made. If the Assembly and Executive cannot prove, before they raise any more money, that they can solve problems like St Mary's, like welfare and like the crises in housing, health and education, where there are 65,000 empty desks, why would anyone want to give this Executive a penny piece more? You are almost financially bankrupt now. We may not even be able to do our Budget by June or the early part of the summer because of welfare reform. We are giving away £2 million a week, and he still expects that this is purely about water charging.”
“We have a Health Minister who has claimed that there is not enough money to deliver, having said in a previous mandate that health was nearly overfunded and too well looked after. Yet, Transforming Your Care has stalled. Three and a half years after Transforming Your Care was announced, it has stalled. It is going nowhere and is delivering nothing. There is no money to make it happen. That is another Executive policy that has gone by the wayside.”
“Although I have no ideological difficulty with a charge for water or with paying for it through my rates, my big difficulty is that I would not give this politically exhausted Executive one penny piece more, because they will not reform anything. They are exhausted and have no purpose, no direction and no idea where they are going or what they want to do in any policy area. <BR /> <BR />You can take any example, whether it is topping up welfare with £565 million while slashing early years funding or slashing funding to the environment from the Mourne Heritage Trust to the Causeway Coast. Where is the joined-up thinking in government? We have an Executive who are giving that away and want to cut corporation tax, at a cost of over £300 million, while still slashing the skills budget. Where is the consistency in Executive policies?”
“Well, Mr Clarke is admitting that this is entirely about the East Belfast campaign instead of being about how we seriously deliver water or public services in Northern Ireland and how we pay for them. <BR /> <BR />How do we avoid EU infractions or other legal action? How do we look at models of governance? Should we change the model of Northern Ireland Water? Should it be clear on a rates bill that we are all contributing to water? The Finance Minister constantly repeats the idea that we are the region in the UK with the lowest household charges, yet we get £2,000 more to spend per head of population from the rest of the UK — and still it is not enough.”
“I look right through all of the Executive's policies, and we have this motion set against the backdrop of a general election in which two parties are in an electoral alliance. They have a pact, and then they are attacking each over water and various policies —”
“Motions like this are inclined to remind me of Ian Paisley Junior's demands for £1 billion as the price for supporting a new Government or Sinn Féin's demands for maybe £1·5 billion for Northern Ireland. When I look at this motion, I know instinctively that it is fiscally reckless Ulster nationalism. I look at the United Kingdom in the midst of a general election and the pressure coming from Scottish nationalists, Welsh nationalists, Irish nationalists and now Ulster nationalists. It is not a good place for our country to be in that it is only about money. <BR /> <BR />In opening the debate, Mr Clarke rightly said that someone should pay for the water. Absolutely, but in his view that someone should be in the south of England, not in Northern Ireland. He does not want us to pay for anything.”
“<BR /> <BR />All these factors are very relevant, but we must continue to drive the figure down, reminding ourselves that, if we were at the same level as the rest of the country, £30 million to £37 million — a huge sum of money — could be reinvested and redirected into other services, so there is a huge gain to be got. We also have to remember and look at the issues of stress and mental health. Quite rightly, mental health is the biggest disability we have, and we have to look at the workplace practices that lead to stress and mental health issues, because, as a general rule, work is good for people's mental and physical health. It is a positive thing, and those are some of the factors that we need to look at, Mr Speaker. On that, thank you.”
“One huge issue is the number of females in the public sector, who often must balance work with family life and caring responsibilities, whether for children or an older family member or parent. That can all have a huge impact on how we manage, and we need more flexibility at times in the workplace, as I know from my family experience. We have just finished six weeks of chickenpox with three children and having to find a place for them, since they could not go to their childminder during that period. You either rely on grandparents to help out or else one of the parents has to take a day off. That flexibility needs to be built in because it can be very difficult for any of us to manage, and those in the public sector are no different.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thought that you were introducing me as the Minister. I will not detain the Minister for too long; I just have a couple of points to make. <BR /> <BR />The Minister is usually keen to stress how difficult a financial period we face, and there is a huge financial gain for the public service in putting in place a better process and making sure that we are doing all we can. As colleagues have mentioned, it will take a partnership approach to drill down, look at best practice and see what needs to change. Also, as Mrs Cochrane mentioned, we have to look at early interventions where possible, whether it is physiotherapy or access to the types of services that return people to full health more quickly and get them back to work, or partially back to work. All those factors need to be taken into account.”
“Thank you. You will maybe get in now, Mr McCarthy. I just wanted to ask the Member whether she does not consider the £9·6 billion per year subvention as an investment. What about the Minister's point about £100 million effectively wasted on welfare reform or on fines? Who is paying the most for that? Is it not, surely, the most vulnerable?”
“— against cuts to early years and early intervention. That was a huge blow to those services.”
“— in welfare and the public sector. If we had put a recruitment freeze in the Civil Service, you would already have the 12% instead of us having to borrow £700 million to do it. Those are as much your cuts. I also spoke in Kilkeel —”
“I agree with that but, as Mr McKinney was shouting, it is your Budget. You voted for it. Check the record; I voted against it. <BR /> <BR />The point is that the problems with our Budget are very often made in Northern Ireland. The Minister could possibly have his Budget blown apart by June because of the £2 million a week in fines due to welfare reform not being delivered on. We also have 65,000 empty school desks, a lack of reform in education and Transforming Your Care has stalled. The only reform that the Administration are doing is reform that has been effectively forced on it by the Government —”
“I am happy to take an intervention at this stage.”
“<BR /> <BR />We signed up for welfare reform. Other colleagues have talked about civic society buying into that. We had the Make it Work campaign come up to the Stormont House Agreement talks. When people saw what Make it Work really looked like, they all ran for cover. Suddenly, it was a case of, "Hang on, maybe we don't want to make it work as well as that." That included parties that are in the Government. We have Sinn Féin, which signed up to welfare reform. We debated it, were making progress with it, and things were going very nicely until they got a bit nervous because they had not read the small print or something properly, and there was a row —”
“I will let the Minister work out how much that would have been off our block grant. <BR /> <BR />There seems to be an idea that you can keep asking for more and more, and that more money is always the answer. When you are part of a union, you have to take some of the hits. The Executive boast that we have the lowest household charges anywhere in the UK. As Mr Cree pointed out, we have the highest levels of public spending in the UK. Those situations cannot be balanced with endless talk of more and more money. <BR /> <BR />There are no ideas coming from the Government. Corporation tax is, effectively, the only thing in the tank. They want to cut corporation tax and, as Mr Allister said, the hope is that all this investment will come in. That might be good, positive and could help us to grow, but not when we are cutting our skills budget.”
“The Minister will probably know the Barnett consequential better than I, but if the Tory and Lib Dem Government happen to be re-elected by promising year-on-year increases in health spending by up to £8 billion until 2020, the consequential will be somewhere in the region of £230 million to £240 million. The very fact that a future UK government could protect health and education, amounting to 60%-plus of our Budget, is the kind of thing that has shielded this Executive from the real ravages of austerity. <BR /> <BR />I remember a previous debate on the Budget when Mr Nesbitt gave some figures about UK debt. I reminded the House that the Republic of Ireland had reduced its spending by some €30 billion, the equivalent of 18% of GDP. If the UK had to reduce public spending at the same level, that would have equated to £500 billion.”
“That is where Sinn Féin is now stuck. On the one hand, it talks about criticising big business, but then it is cutting corporation tax. It talks about the block grant, the cost and price of the Union and austerity and of how evil the Tories and Tory cuts are. Did it watch the leader of the Labour Party, who is hoping to be prime minister of our country in a few weeks, trying to sell himself as a man who will be fiscally responsible? There were no promises of reckless spending but of trying to buy in to a triple-lock. <BR /> <BR />As part of the coalition agreement, the Tories in 2010 — the Minister may wish to allude to this — ring-fenced and protected health spending. We get a Barnett consequential for that. That made a big difference to what happened.”
“I have to say that this is one of those completely bizarre motions that a party — a party of government — brings. I am surprised at others supporting it. When I first read the motion, I was reminded of Neil Kinnock's remarks when he turned to address militants in his own party. This is what he said:”
“I am grateful to the Member. As I have pointed out before in these debates, corporation tax cuts have a long way to trickle down before they reach people on benefits and welfare — the people Sinn Féin says that it wants to help. Does the Member agree with that?”
“— and pluralist, but take the need for a certificate out of the equation altogether.”
“I want us to make it easier for schools to change ethos or sector if there is a genuine demand from local people. There is an opportunity in the forthcoming Bill to do that. It is a much better opportunity than trailing our feet and hoping that a single equality Bill will somehow deliver the answer. We can protect and defend a faith/ethos education and make it more diverse —”
“There are other Catholic schools in which a large percentage of the pupils are from a non-Catholic background, or, indeed, from no religious background. Parents are opting for those schools because their ethos is right. We should surely be able to get that right. We have an opportunity to amend the Minister's Bill and to make decisions. We need to go much further than the changes that the Minister has been suggesting. <BR /> <BR />What are some of the changes that I would like to see made? I would like an education system that incentivises ethos schools to look at other issues and to increase their intake of children from different backgrounds. I also want to change regulations for governing bodies so that schools and board of governors have a more diverse background.”
“<BR /> <BR />Take, for example, Liverpool. There are shared schools there between the Church of England and Roman Catholic faiths. There are also Anglican schools, where the majority of pupils are actually from a Muslim background.”
“They need to articulate in detail why they oppose such a change. <BR /> <BR />I will take several of the points, Mr Deputy Speaker. Sinn Féin claims to want an Ireland of equals; it claims to be the party of equality. Why then would it be opposed to changing this? I take Mr Ramsey's point on the value of faith/ethos education entirely. I get that, and I buy into it. I look at schools and results from other parts of the UK; I look at parts of England and Wales where they have shared schools and where they have faith/ethos schools that are outperforming other schools. That is something that we want, but that does not require an individual certificate. As Members opposite and, indeed, Mr Kinahan pointed out, a special certificate is not required if you are teaching science, maths or English. That is where the difference is.”
“<BR /> <BR />Ensuring that more children from different backgrounds are able to learn together every day is vital for the future of our society and economy. I firmly believe that that can be done whilst maintaining those different sectors' rights to teach according to a certain ethos. That is why I have been so disappointed in the Minister's draft shared education Bill. In my view, it is almost taking minimalist to a new level in its lack of ambition. <BR /> <BR />I believe that the real debate about shared education must be on the issues such as those we are debating today, because I fully support the motion and, indeed, the amendment from the Alliance Party. Removing the exemption in fair employment law would, in my view, be a progressive move. There is a challenge to those who claim to want a shared future and genuine equality.”
“I welcome the debate and congratulate Mr Kinahan on tabling today's motion. One of the most important things to remember about this debate, and one of the reasons why I am disappointed that there is no ministerial response, is that, for me, it is about shared education. It is much wider than just the aspects of what Mr Kinahan has in his motion, and there ought to be a ministerial response from the Department on it. That is why I brought amendments forward to the Education Bill around a duty to promote shared education and why I have said repeatedly that it cannot simply be about bussing children between different schools. It must be about making sectors within our education system more open, more pluralist and more reflective of society.”
“I welcome the junior Minister's responses. I have consistently made the case in this Chamber about the need for early intervention and those strategies that address child poverty in particular. <BR /> <BR />Does the junior Minister agree that those are the places where government and this Executive should focus? What cost will there be if we do not move on welfare reform? Can he keep some of those programmes going? Are the programmes that he has outlined not a better use of money than squandering it on paying penalties to Treasury?”
“I do not think so. The Member should know that Presbyterians are far too freethinking to be told what each and every one of us should think. <BR /> <BR />Returning to the wider debate, the drive for the Bill that Mr Givan has talked about could lead —”
“I warn Members, and I say this as a member of the Presbyterian Church and someone who is from a faith background: a recent UK-wide poll of religious attitudes revealed that, to two thirds of British people, religion is a negative concept and is considered to be doing more harm than good. There is a perception that religion produces division, sets people against one another and discriminates against women and gay people. As someone from a faith background, I think that it is of huge damage to faith communities that that is the perception across our United Kingdom. <BR /> <BR />Very often the forerunners to the DUP talked against home rule as next to Rome rule, yet most support for the DUP for this Bill comes from the Roman Catholic Church. How things have changed over the past 100 years.”
“My concern is about the DUP calling for and pushing for a respectful and thoughtful debate, because I am not entirely sure that that sits well when members of the DUP have talked about homosexuality as an "abomination". I do not see where the respect is there. I do not see the respect when people compare homosexuality to child abuse. We could and should be having the debate very much in the language and spirit of his amendment, but I warn the DUP that using language like "abomination" is not how you have a respectful debate. <BR /> <BR />There are issues around equality and the Ashers case, and I think that we will all regret the huge damage that has been done to relationships between faith communities and LGBT communities. That has been hugely detrimental as we are almost pitting two communities against each other.”
“Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I am in the unusual position of having to agree with Mr Givan on that point. I fundamentally warn Members about signing petitions of concern when, quite clearly, the majority of the House will be against the Bill. It is not the way that we should do our business. There is a slight touch of irony in the DUP lecturing about petitions of concern, considering that it hands them out very liberally, to use a word. We should not be doing that. Look at our experiences with the last number of petitions of concern that were used. On welfare reform, the DUP put in almost 50 petitions of concern against 50 amendments. None of those were needed. The Assembly debated and found its place. That is why it is not a good way to do that. <BR /> <BR />I do not disagree with Mr Givan's amendment.”
“In this debate and even in the wider debate around Mr Givan's proposed Bill and changes that he would make, my biggest regret — Members will have heard me saying this on many occasions about many pieces of legislation — is that a petition of concern is not a good way to do our business in this place. I take Mr Allister's point that there are not firm proposals in a draft Bill that we can necessarily look at during First Reading or Second Reading, but, when that comes, I want the Assembly to have the maturity to have a debate. That is quite right. It is no great surprise to Mr Givan that I would like us to vote down what I think he is likely to bring in his legislation.”
“Can the Administration hold the line on setting regional rates policy or will pressures as a result of welfare reform, failure to move anywhere on the voluntary exit scheme, failure to draw anything down on shared education and all the other parts of the Stormont House Agreement make the Assembly limp on for the few months until June when the Minister has to come back? That is the real challenge that the Administration face. I am not sure that I can offer the Minister many answers, but let us hope that he can provide some for me.”
“We have been debating the rating package very much as if it were business as usual, even though the events of yesterday mean that the entirety of the Minister's Budget could be completely blown out of the water, rates included. If we are raising £1·1 billion in rates, I am not sure whether we will soon need to raise more to pay for welfare reform, or where that all stops. That should worry and concern us all. That uncertainty will certainly concern the people who presented to our Committee last week.”
“Smaller towns, rural communities and larger town centres have been struggling to attract people to open shops, and that has been a real difficulty and a real challenge over the last few years.”
“It certainly swings to councils to see what they can do to make sure that no one suffers excessively or no business has to close because of the burden of rates that falls on it.”
“The Minister represents a constituency that has many towns and small towns that, I have no doubt, will have been struggling over the past seven to eight years. They will have had difficulty, and they need and will continue to need the support of the Assembly and Executive. That is where the small business rate relief comes in. I welcome the fact that, for his part, with the revaluation, the Minister has taken that into account, but, as Mr Girvan said, revaluations give winners and losers. Certainly, some of the people who gave evidence to the Committee last week felt that they fell into the excessively losing side of that equation. <BR /> <BR />The Minister has probably done as much as he can to lessen that burden.”
“Like colleagues, I welcome the Minister bringing this to the House. Some bits of it, certainly, are good and welcome news. He will know of my support for the small business rate relief scheme and industrial derating. I hope that the Minister will continue with that long into the future. It is a vital link in supporting manufacturing. I would hate to see anything put manufacturing under even more pressure than it is under already. <BR /> <BR />The Minister will, no doubt, be aware that the Committee had a powerful presentation from small businesses and the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association (NIIRTA) last Wednesday about the revaluation of non-domestic rates. It was very powerful because of the figures that were involved, the size and variety of the businesses and their location in the towns and small towns.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. If he had permission from the Health Minister, could he then include it in the legislation?”
“I will be interested to hear in the Minister's reply whether he is minded to take a coordinated government approach to helping as many children as we can deal with having special educational needs, to putting in place the support that they need and to making a real difference to the lives of our children and young people.”