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 15 of 20.
“We have a Minister who wanted to bring forward a Bill. He brought forward this Bill and is doing his level best to move it forward. <BR /> <BR />What many of us want to hear is that this Bill, and this Minister, speaks for the Executive of Northern Ireland — the entire Executive, including the Minister of Health — and that the Bill will have a coordinated role to play so that we do not always have to depend on people such as Mr Agnew to bring forward separate legislation to make sure that Departments talk to one another and work together to deliver the best outcomes for children.”
“The Assembly's approach to autism is that the Minister financially supports a centre for autism in Middletown. My understanding, from the previous time that the issue was discussed, is that the Department of Health does not contribute to the centre financially, does not use it and does not buy in any services from it, and neither, I think, does DEL, although I am happy if the Ministers want to correct me. <BR /> <BR />There is no sense of coordination in the Northern Ireland Government's policy on getting support for autism. Is it the centre at Middletown, or is it whatever the Department of Health, DEL or the Department of Education wants? There is no coordinated approach, and, sadly, what is lacking so much across government is that we do not have a government approach to dealing with special educational needs.”
“I hope that the Minister is prepared to take that suggestion on board and look at it, and, if amendments come to mind, to go back to the Minister of Health and other Ministers and say that he wants to come here as an Executive Minister promoting an Executive policy to improve outcomes and the lives of children. That is what is at stake here. We need that coordination and those early diagnoses, and we need to get the support in. That needs to be done in, as I said, a coordinated way, and to be done across the board. In welcoming the Bill, I very much hope that it does that. When I look at some of the failings in the systems that we have at the minute, I am not always seeing those linkages. <BR /> <BR />Autism has been mentioned by colleagues.”
“<BR /> <BR />Health is particularly important because, as has been pointed out and the Minister will, no doubt, be aware, Health, in a number of cases, may also be the lead Department in government that touches the lives of children before Education even comes on the scene. If we are serious about early intervention, early diagnosis and having places, statements and support in place for children, we will need Health to be at the table. We will need it, in some cases, identifying that and flagging the issue up with the education system before the child has even entered school. That is what a joined-up system would look like.”
“Everyone in the Executive and the Assembly should hang their heads in shame that we lost a facility of that quality because we could not coordinate government properly. <BR /> <BR />It probably comes back to the need for Mr Agnew's Bill to come forward. If we are struggling to get the linkages made between the Departments of Health and Education at this level in the legislation, we come to the point that Mr Agnew has been making, not only in his Bill but earlier in the debate, that it is high time that we had that level of cooperation and coordination between Departments when it comes to children.”
“It goes to the core of all that is wrong with this Executive. We had a very stark reminder of that in the last 24 hours, where we have no sense of collective purpose or vision. That is my concern around the aspects of health in the Bill. Can we link in to other health issues, such as speech and language therapy? <BR /> <BR />A few years ago, we lost the brilliant I CAN facility in Ballynahinch Primary School because it fell between two stools. Health stood ready to put speech and language therapists into it, Education was putting money into the board and the board decided to spend it somewhere else. We lost that facility and lost the services and the work that was being done to deliver speech and language programmes for children.”
“<BR /> <BR />Colleagues touched on other parts of the Bill. Of particular concern to the Assembly is how we make sure that health and social care buys into it. The Minister will probably respond by saying that he cannot bring legislation that puts a statutory duty on another Department. If that is the case, surely the Bill, which has been approved by the Executive, should have been worked on with the Minister of Health and the Department of Health and had buy-in from other Departments as to how we develop those services. That applies not just to Health, I suspect. <BR /> <BR />Mr Swann's earlier contribution around how we extend provision past the age of 19 would also encompass the role of DEL. How do you make that mean something, and how do you get other Departments to buy into it?”
“That is something that I am sure many colleagues have had to deal with at times. There is almost an emphasis on protecting a budget line and people say, "We are not going to pay for that". It can almost become a bartering match between the school and the education board as to who pays for what; who buys what support; how many hours a classroom assistant is required for, if that is the appropriate course of action; how much time is bought in and who should pay for it. When we put a duty on the authority to deliver, that is something that I want to see. I want to make sure that those lines become very much about delivering outcomes for the child and not defending budget lines. Too often, this place has been mainly about defending budget lines and not about delivering real support for a child.”
“It is at least refreshing that we are here debating legislation and that there is not yet a petition of concern in sight, although I warn the Minister that it is early stages. It is useful to think that we might have some legislation that might form a useful, strategic, streamlined and coordinated approach in dealing with helping to find the right services to help support children with special educational needs. <BR /> <BR />I turn to clauses 2 and 3, and my concerns come from experience of dealing with constituency issues. How do we get a joined-up approach between the board of the new Education Authority and boards of governors or schools?”
“I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is a shining example of a policy that was working. Does the Minister share my regret that the council has now backed away from that?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for his replies. Does he agree that Banbridge District Council, which went onto a monthly bin trial and showed a 35% increase in recyclables, a 35% decrease in the amount going into black bins and a 120% increase over Christmas —”
“I welcome the Minister's response so far. Does he have accurate information on the number of zero-hours contracts through choice or necessity? Does he agree that the best way to eliminate zero-hours contracts would be to build a well-educated workforce and extend opportunities in a knowledge-based economy?”
“As a parent, I would be inclined to want to go to wherever the best care is on offer. The Minister may confirm that children with certain conditions will still have to go to Birmingham or London because the surgery is so complex. <BR /> <BR />A theme throughout the statement and questions has been that one of the reasons that Dublin has become a viable option is because of the improved infrastructure leading from places like south Down and linking to the main Belfast-Dublin corridor, and the improvements to the road. What contact has the Minister had, and what work has he and his Department done, with the Department for Regional Development to link other centres and improve our road network to make sure that our hospital network is much more open and accessible to a broader range of people? It is vitally important that that takes place.”
“<BR /> <BR />That is why I sometimes get slightly frustrated when I read very well intentioned motions from the Committee. It is an important subject for the Committee to acknowledge and to look at, but we are at the point where we need to actually take action and see whether the Minister can now tell us that we have dramatically improved our STEM subjects in the last eight years. Are we getting more of our students interested? Are we putting more people through? Are we creating the economic conditions for that to flourish and develop at the other end, or are we exporting most of them to other parts of the UK or indeed other parts of the world? That is something of which we have to make sure, and I want to hear from the Minister whether we are achieving any of that, rather than just the well-intentioned words.”
“That is something, yet when you come to look at what action we have taken or whether we have improved Northern Ireland's game particularly in this area, I am not so sure that we have. We are still training too many people for law and teaching. We have an entire debate around teacher training places, and some people are happy that we have saved St Mary's and Stranmillis, but at what cost? Is there a cost in the number of university places? Is there a cost in the number of further education places? Is there a cost in the number of experts we could have brought in to look at IT and STEM subjects? All those things we could have done, could have looked at and could have changed, but we have not made the bold decisions that somehow are needed to address this.”
“I just have a few remarks about this. I take some of the points from earlier in the debate about coding. Mr McGlone made points around how we get kids and young people interested in that earlier. I will be interested in the Minister's response. Now we are doing an A level on IT and computing, but have we the expertise to deliver that across the board? My experience in my constituency is that we do not. Are there other options for lifting the skills of our teachers and the staff who are needed to deliver this? Are there models online that we should look to be able to do that and to extend those choices? <BR /> <BR />I too hear much talk about STEM. For the entire almost eight years that I have been a Member of the House, probably not a year has gone by when we have not debated this subject or something very close to it.”
“I welcome the Minister's commitment to cut the time from 26 to 20 weeks. He will be aware that I wrote to him recently about a constituent, and the broad context of that was whether he was now prepared to say that he will accept statements from other parts of the UK? Would that not help to streamline the process, rather than repeating it? Will he now give a commitment to accept statements from all constituent parts of the UK?”
“My concern is how you manage that. I have constantly warned that I did not want this to turn into another Patten, where you end up having to use that large amount of money but will not end up with the pay bill reduction of half a billion pounds that you need to pay for it. Instead, you will end up with a brain drain or will bring people back in because you have lost the necessary expertise and experience. Those are my real concerns about this.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He quoted some of his written answer to me, and I will give him some more of it:”
“At a time when we are committed to spending £565 million on welfare reform, there is also the possible cost of a reduction in corporation tax of £325 million and our borrowing money from the Treasury for the voluntary exit scheme. Much more thought needs to be put into those things. A plan needs to be drawn up as to how we take 20,000 workers out of the public sector over the next four years. That is a mammoth task and something that Northern Ireland has not experienced before. It is alarming that this reform is being pushed by Westminster onto a reluctant Executive that have no key plan for how they will deliver it.”
“However, I find alarming your comments that this is not strategic workforce planning. I find it alarming that, in your answer to me, you say that you have to take out 2,400 staff. However, you have no strategic plan as to how we do that and how we ensure against a brain drain from the Civil Service. The age profile is likely to be lower. What will that lead to? Can we manage if there is a huge brain drain and a severe lack of experience in the Civil Service? <BR /> <BR />An Audit Office report on the UK Government's response to this in 2010 said that you would need to manage it. There were some good points made about how a Government and how DFP should be managing it. That is still my huge concern about the voluntary exit scheme.”
“As I said in the debate on welfare reform, we should be looking at a Budget and collective government and all of it joining up. How are you growing an economy? How will you make people less dependent on welfare? Where will the lead come from? If we go down the road of corporation tax, that will tend to help the better educated, not those trapped on benefits. That is where I want to see joined-up government and where I want us to move to. <BR /> <BR />The Minister will know that I put some questions to him on the voluntary exit scheme, and I have replies from him about it. Minister, I have to say that my concern still stands that you are not going to publish the business case for the voluntary exit scheme. The necessity here is to reduce the pay bill; that is fine.”
“That is what reduces the credibility of the Assembly and the Executive if people agree a Programme for Government. <BR /> <BR />Although the Minister has done enough to get a Budget over the line to take us to the end of this mandate, we cannot come back here — whoever is returned, and whatever the new Executive look like after the 2016 election — and have another term. In 2011, this term was promised to be the term of delivery. We cannot come back to this place and do the same again. That is why reform of this institution is vital. <BR /> <BR />My constant criticisms of the Budget, and in the previous debate on welfare reform, are that we give the impression that we are making these reforms only because Westminster has put us in the position where we have to and we have kicked the can down the road for so long.”
“I was going to point out to Mr McNarry before he left that I agreed with some of his points attacking other parties. It was probably slightly bizarre that he was keen, and has been for a number of years, to do a deal with the same party he is attacking. He may have even wanted to be the unity candidate in South Belfast as recently as last week. <BR /> <BR />I will say several things that I have said throughout the Budget debate. You need to get to a point where you have collective Cabinet government. We badly need to reform this place so that the Minister and other Ministers can get to a point where they can deliver on policy agendas. My views on having an opposition here are well known, but we need to have people who are either in Government or in opposition, and not doing a bit of both.”
“We are not doing it because we have a better plan". <BR /> <BR />We could have changed welfare if we had wanted to. We could have done something different. We could have tackled this a number of years ago. When Mr Attwood was Social Development Minister, he could have done something different. He could have invented something different in welfare, but there is no policy-driven agenda here. We are only doing it because we are being forced to do it due to the economic realities that we are in. You have to come back to the principle of this, which is that work should pay. You cannot have families on benefits who are significantly better off than a working family with an above average salary.”
“It is fine to sign up and agree to that, but I have simply been trying to articulate the point that those two halves are not quite adding up to a whole. <BR /> <BR />I am just not seeing where the joined-upness of the Executive is coming from. That is the problem. Your economic strategies and policies should be linking in with what you are doing on welfare. You would hope that it might be easier to start to fill the gap at a time when the economy has returned to growth, but I am not convinced that we are going to find it. Every time that I have asked Ministers, particularly the Finance Minister, about public-sector reform and welfare reform, I am told, "We are literally doing both of them only because the Tories are making us do them. We are not doing it because we think that it is the right thing to do.”
“As usual, I am grateful to Mr Flanagan. In an earlier intervention, he suggested that £30,000 was the subsistence level. I accept his point that £72 a week would be a very low subsistence level if you are struggling on £30,000. In a way, I am encouraged slightly that the Member is starting to see some of the arguments that I have been making: that you need to look at welfare reform in the round of your other policies around the economy. Are you going to grow? Are you going to create skills? What about issues around the living wage and minimum wage? How do we encourage companies that can afford to pay the living wage to do so? What do we do? What about the public sector? We are entering into a phase in which we are borrowing £700 million to pay off 20,000 public-sector workers. You are in agreement with that. You have signed up for that.”
“Thankfully, our overall unemployment levels have dropped, but gutting those budgets to do this may not be the best way of helping people. That is something that I look forward to hearing about in the Minister's response. Throughout all of this, that has been the part that has worried me the most. Where is the joined-upness of government to create, grow and build an economy, give people skills and create jobs for them to go into and get off benefits?”
“You have to come back to the question of why the constituencies with the worst profiles have been the same for 30 and 40 years. What are we not doing? If our original welfare system was so good, we would not be having this debate, and we would not have constituencies that are failing the people who live in them. They have no ability to get education. The schools are not good enough. Health inequalities are there. I am simply pointing out to you that gutting budgets such as those for health, for education and for employment and learning to pay for amendment No 22 may not add up to a coherent, consistent policy for growing an economy. That is the point that I am making. <BR /> <BR />I know that we have a terrible problem with youth unemployment.”
“There are two things to say on that. If you are on £70-odd a week for 50 weeks, that is £3,500 a year. It is a long way shy of the £30,000 that 6,500 families are on. The very point that I have been making throughout is the point that Mr McGlone seems to have missed. There are people who are on jobseeker's allowance whom we want to get into work and skill up. We are not going to do that by gutting our skills budget, by having a row over St Mary's and Stranmillis or by having no idea of where the Government's economic policy is going. <BR /> <BR />If you look at the amendments, including the open-ended amendment No 22 that sets out where the policy is going, the way that you are going to change that and go where Mr McGlone wants you to go is by investing in your skills and by raising the standard of every school.”
“Perhaps someone like Mr Attwood will get up and say whether he sees us needing another £560 million after 2021.”
“I take his point on that, but is he seriously telling me that he could not take me to anybody in west Belfast whom he thinks could not get a job? Whether there are jobs there for them to go to, I do not see where Sinn Féin and the SDLP want to create that social mobility so that people get out, get a job and work. I can also assure him that I have no intention of running for the Conservative Party in South Down. <BR /> <BR />At the very core welfare reform was making work pay. If we cannot do that, or if we have watered down welfare reform so much with this £560 million, have Sinn Féin and the SDLP managed to turn the Bill on its head? Is work now not going to pay, or are we going to keep topping up? Where will the off switch be for that £560 million?”
“I am happy to take the Member up on his very kind invitation to visit west Belfast. The points at the start of his intervention were about the legacy of the Troubles and mental health problems. Let us face it: the largest proportion of disability we have is in mental health. His point about legacy issues was well made.”
“<BR />I am not convinced that the solution is to write what is, effectively, a blank cheque for £565 million at present — but who knows whether we will have to keep writing these cheques? — on the strength of a not terribly detailed amendment on how the money will be spent. Mr Beggs asked whether we would hit the highest total of £130 million in 2018-19. Why would we expect that figure to fall after that? What will change? Mr Attwood, you wanted to make an intervention. Sorry, I had to remind you there.”
“I am happy for the Member to read Hansard. At no point have I suggested, or tabled any amendments to suggest, that we should scrap our welfare system. I recognise that there are people who need welfare, and I recognise that there are people who have such profound disabilities that they will never be able to work. It is right, proper and good that we have a safety net that catches people, because the last thing any of us want is to go back to a situation in which the cracks in the pavement are so wide that too many people are falling through them. However, there are some who are caught between not being able to afford childcare and others who get a job but lose their benefits at such a rate that it is not worth their while working. Does he not accept that there are people trapped on welfare?”
“I very much regret that, because we are putting in a considerable amount of resource while cutting our skills budget and training, and taking away the very things that could create wealth and jobs and get people out of poverty. <BR /> <BR />In an intervention, Mr Maskey challenged the idea that there are 800 families in West Belfast on £30,000 compared with 250 in North Antrim. What are the differences in those constituencies? Why are we not using this money to address inequalities in education, health, training and skills and trying to break the generational cycle of people being trapped in poverty and benefit dependency? I do not see that in the amendments.”
“<BR /> <BR />Am I seeing a coherent, collective government at one, wanting to make work pay and with a strategy to grow the economy and build a private sector that can create jobs and wealth and get people out, or are we seeing the Sinn Féin and SDLP approach of trapping people in poverty and limiting that social mobility whereby people have to stay in poverty and trapped on welfare in constituencies like West Belfast? <BR /> <BR />We have moved away from the idea of social and physical mobility in Northern Ireland, when education was a great way out of poverty. When Sinn Féin talks about using education, driving down inequalities in education and tackling disadvantage, where does that tie in with what is in the Bill and the amendments? Does that make sense? Is that linked up? I am not seeing the joined-upness of the Executive approach.”
“<BR /> <BR />The only reason there is a difference between me and him over the Bill is because he wants to stay in the Executive, and I am happy to be away from it. To be fair to him, he is acting like a responsible member of the Government and sticking to his agreement — unlike others — but at least he is sticking to it, and that is the only difference. He is putting off the inevitable. <BR /> <BR />If I picked the Member up correctly, the questions that Mr Allister and I are raising are quite legitimate: namely, what is the long-term plan? There is a divergence in the Chamber and the Executive on where these amendments are taking us and on economic policy.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I agree with the Member's point on teacher training. <BR /> <BR />I do not think that Mr Allister or I were suggesting that we push people off the edge and into poverty. If the Member is saying that that is what we are suggesting, the only difference between us is that we are talking about doing it today, and he wants to do it in six years' time when the money runs out. <BR /> <BR />Is he telling me that it is £565 million for the next six years, when we will review it, and, if we need to throw another £560 million at it to keep these amendments alive, we will do it, and another £560 million for the five or six years after that? Is that what he is saying? It comes back to the debate on whether or not the bedroom tax is being implemented.”
“I will in a second. We are looking at things like pupil premiums. We had the chance to do stuff when we had Barnett consequentials from free school meals in England. It just seemed to drift into the general Budget. We could have targeted that in the areas of worst need. <BR />I agree entirely with the point on childcare provision because, as the father of three young children, I know the cost of childcare. I know the difficulty of getting childcare. We need to address that, but the childcare strategy is in disarray, and no money is being allocated to it. I would like to have seen or heard more detail on that from the Minister.”
“All the evidence suggests that if you cut corporation tax, those with the best education will benefit most. We are driving forward a bigger state of inequality in society. I do not think that that is something that we should support. <BR /> <BR />Sinn Féin seems to be advocating that we effectively turn welfare reform on its head, trapping more people in poverty, instead of looking at how we get early intervention. We have talked for years about that. How do we really make early intervention work? How do we upstream the interventions and stop families getting into difficulties and being trapped; generations of people who have never worked or held a job? That is not something that we as an Assembly, the Minister or his Executive colleagues should support.”
“Should we not use some of this money to look at skills in those areas and to bring investment in? Should we not look at health inequality instead? He mentioned health inequalities and life expectancies — a key issue in his constituency, which has a remarkably lower life expectancy than somewhere like South Belfast. Why then are we cutting funding to the Public Health Agency? Why then are we not addressing that? Why are we not looking at that? You could actually find that we increase inequalities in society through this measure. <BR /> <BR />When we cut corporation tax — Sinn Féin is supportive of that, and that is fine — who are the families and people who will most benefit from that? Will they be the least-well-educated people in society? No.”
“We are still told that it is one of the most deprived constituencies in the United Kingdom. You have to ask why. <BR /> <BR />If we are really serious about making work pay — and, to be fair to the Minister, I believe that he probably is committed to that, but I am not sure whether he can get some of his main colleagues in Sinn Féin over the line — the last thing that we as a society want to do is trap people in poverty and on benefits. Work has to pay. Work is actually good for people. It is good for your mental health. That is why we should encourage people into work. <BR /> <BR />That is why, when we look at the commitments in amendment No 22 and why we are spending this, we have to look at and set the other context. Mr Attwood's intervention to Mr Allister was about what else we should be doing.”
“I thank Mrs Kelly for her remarks. I am not attacking any individual: I happened to say that we, this Assembly and Executive, need to decide what type of society we want. I agree entirely with her on that, but that has not been quite clear in this debate and from others in this Assembly. On one hand, we are going to fire £565 million at topping up benefits for the next six years. Your argument and those of your colleague Mr Attwood were about the state of West Belfast. This Government have been in office now for eight years. This Administration has been in office for eight years, so why is West Belfast so bad? Sinn Féin is a party that has been in control of West Belfast, with an intermittent period of the SDLP — if you add in Gerry Fitt, they have been in charge of West Belfast since 1966.”
“If £30,000 is subsistence level, should we not all be contributing to Sinn Féin MLAs? Will we not need to make sure that Mickey Brady gets elected to Westminster in May to get him up to a £67,000 salary? You cannot argue that £30,000, if that is an average, is subsistence level. I entirely accept some of your points about families. The number of children that families have is a choice and a matter for them, but you cannot argue about the figure of £30,000, which will keep on rising. At what level do you suggest we or the Minister should set the cap? Should it be £30,000, £35,000 or £40,000?”
“Yes, I am sorry; I should have given way earlier.”
“They could well be, because I have not said whether they have a family. I am simply making the point that at that stage they are, on paper, less well off than the family on benefits. That is not a position that, I suspect, even the Minister would want to take.”
“I just want to finish the point. He talked about comparing an individual's income with that of a family. I am happy to do that. A family of two partners living together, both of whom are on the Northern Ireland average wage of £19,000, have a family income of £38,000. By the time they pay their tax they are less well off than the family on benefits that receives the £30,700 that Mr Allister spoke about. That is what I am saying. That is not a system that we, as an Assembly, should be supporting. At some point, this will go down the line, whether it is next year or the year after or when the six years run out and we will be so out of kilter with the rest of the UK. Can we continue to afford it?”
“I am grateful to the Member for that intervention. I am on record here as supporting companies that can afford to pay the living wage; I would like to see them do that. The Prime Minister is on record as saying that Britain needs a pay rise, and I agree. I have made the point before in the Chamber that in many places in our welfare system we have used the tax credit system to subsidise low pay. That is not a direction of travel that we should be on; nor should we be using public funding to do that. <BR /> <BR />I agree with the Member on that, but I disagree with him on this —”
“I will in a second. <BR /> <BR />Yet, we are seriously suggesting that we should pay people in excess of £30,000 in benefit. I do not see how you will incentivise people when the other side of the Government wants to do corporation tax and get more people into work. <BR /> <BR />I am happy to give way.”