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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“It was built in to give protection while we built up a process and moved from conflict to consensus, and it is a clear abuse of that and the workings of this Assembly. It reflects badly not only on the Executive but on each and every one of us in here. <BR /> <BR />I want to speak about some of the issues around the amendments. If we were to believe the rhetoric of Sinn Féin, we would say that we are going to spend some £565 million over the next five to six years. Of course, that is a huge financial burden that we are looking at taking on. We listened in the Budget debate to the Finance Minister, who constantly warns us that we are entering a very difficult budgetary period. Not only this year but right the way down the line up to at least 2020, we will be in difficult times.”
“Even if you were to table petitions of concern on these amendments against your other government colleagues, why, when the Government of Northern Ireland has an in-built majority of 102, do you necessarily pick on Steven Agnew, one lowly independent Member, and his amendments? Mr Wilson gave us a brief glimpse of the Green Party manifesto, but I suspect that the Speaker would rule me out of order if I were to listen to too much of Mr Wilson. <BR /> <BR />This makes our Executive look like a pinball machine, with nobody quite sure what direction it is going in or what direction it is going to fire off into next. That is why we cannot allow this to continue. Using the petition of concern is an anti-democratic measure.”
“To the other parties that are in the Government, I say this: why are you still there? Why are you tabling amendments? Why are you voting against something? <BR /> <BR />Why are there so many petitions of concern if the DUP has the confidence of its other Executive partners, particularly Sinn Féin? You have the numbers. You have the majority in the House. Therefore, in all of these amendments, you do not need a petition of concern. We had a petition of concern from Sinn Féin and the SDLP yesterday against Mr Allister's amendment when the amendment was voted down by something like 96 to two. Why oh why are we using petitions of concern in this instance? With the Education Bill, we had 10 of them against even Mr Agnew when the Assembly naturally found its place after debate. There is no need to go about our business in that way.”
“That is why they need to change. <BR /> <BR />No meaningful ideas are coming through here, apart from what Westminster are making the Executive do. They are making them do welfare reform, which they would not do without Westminster pushing them into it. They would not do public-sector reform in any guise without Westminster pushing them down that road. I have no idea what the Executive would do, what they stand for or what direction they will take, so they are not fit for purpose. You have an Executive in which two parties now agree on welfare reform, but the other three parties are out there voting against the Budget. I will say this to the Alliance Party today: well done on acting like part of the Government for today. I am not sure how long it will last, but well done today on acting as part of the Government.”
“Just when I thought that the Assembly or the Executive could not get any worse than the debate on the Education Bill when we had 10 petitions of concern, or when we had some 50 petitions of concerns from unionism, if you like, from 1998, we now have almost 50 in the one day. That is outdoing even yourselves. <BR /> <BR />To cap it all off, we have Mr Wilson telling us, effectively, that he has done us all a great favour; he has saved the Executive and the Assembly from the arduous task of sorting out what they might want to do: "We will save you all that bother; we will do the petitions of concern on your behalf". What it points to is the dysfunctionality of the Executive. The First Minister is absolutely right, and every day the Assembly proves just how right he is: an Executive and an Assembly that are dysfunctional.”
“<BR /> <BR />I said before in the Chamber that people who signed up for things at Stormont House, whether it is an agreement on the Budget or on welfare reform at the castle, and then go round to Stormont House to present a united front as the Government of Northern Ireland, suddenly find themselves in the new year, and the shine has gone off it, and they think that maybe they should not have signed up for that and should have held out for a better deal. That is not how the Executive should work, because that does not provide for good or stable government. <BR /> <BR />We have an Executive without a Programme for Government or any meaningful policy ideas beyond corporation tax. They have no sense of direction, and that is deeply regrettable. So many amendments in this group have petitions of concern.”
“Most of us could sign up to the broad principles of welfare reform, which are that work should always pay. No family or couple should be disadvantaged by going into the employment market and back into work only to find that they are worse off. On that basis, I welcome the fact that, after almost two years, the Bill is now back, and we are debating the amendments today. It is, however, unfortunate that, while we are debating the amendments, there is not much chance of a different outcome for the Bill. We can engage and be well intentioned in tabling the amendments and debating them, but the petition of concern has effectively killed off any prospect of any change. It points to something important for the Executive.”
“Those are the challenges that face the Minister and the Executive. No matter how well-intentioned, the challenge is to get a coherent purpose and direction to the Executive while it continues in being for the next 14 or 15 months.”
“The Equality Commission challenged that and forced the council to run a public consultation and vote on it again.”
“On Mr Allister's amendment in relation to the Equality Commission, I would probably prefer to see us moving more like our colleagues across the water and have equality and human rights commissions merged into one entity. I know that junior Minister Bell may be bringing forward legislation about the good relations part of the Community Relations Council (CRC) moving into the Equality Commission. Although I disagree with the Equality Commission's decision on the Ashers bakery case, we start to move and change things like this at our peril or by acting on a whim. I remind Members that at times we have agreed. Others have agreed with the Equality Commission, perhaps on the wearing of the poppy, and certainly over the naming of the Raymond McCreesh park in Newry.”
“I am happy to. I think that, on more than one occasion, he has heard me talking about this. I have said that you need to get to a collective Cabinet Government. You need a Cabinet and an Executive that actually stand for something and which have purpose, direction and meaning. Mr Lyttle is putting out suggestions. I have already accepted that I would agree with some of them, if the Executive could prove that they could use money wisely; but he is part of the problem as long as he sits in that Executive. He sits in it and votes against the Budget. You cannot do that. In trying to normalise democracy, you cannot take those two positions. You cannot ride two horses at once without getting a bad injury.”
“Whether it is the St Mary's and Stranmillis debate, the building of the A5 or whatever it happens to be, there is not a collective will from this Executive to deliver on anything. <BR /> <BR />That is where the struggle is and where he comes into difficulty. That is where the First Minister is right when he says that this is dysfunctional. That is why you have the Alliance criticising but putting off its difficult decision to leave the Executive. It is why the SDLP criticises and stays in the Executive. It is why the UUP criticises and stays in the Executive. Until they all decide that we have had enough of this or that we can have an alternative vision, we will struggle on with that.”
“Two or three parties in the Executive are against this reform and that reform, and three parties are against the Budget. All of those things keep on repeating and making this place look like a dysfunctional Executive and Assembly. <BR /> <BR />That is the core of our problem. It is why this Minister will struggle to deliver. I believe the Minister and that he is genuine and sincere when he says that he wants to see public sector reform. Sometimes, I take issue with him in that he is maybe only doing it because of pressure from the UK Government, but, setting that aside, I think that he is sincere in wanting to change the way that public services are delivered. He will struggle, because every time that any Minister goes to do something, there is a sectoral interest or a party interest that gets in the way.”
“It needs to face up to that, and only it can decide that for itself. I suspect that the Minister would happily help it to come to that decision, and others are in the same position. <BR /> <BR />I listened to Alex Attwood talk about the model of councils and the difficulty and pressures that that is putting on development. He explained why he disagrees with the model and why we should have gone for 15. Was he not the Minister when some of the legislation was starting to be brought in? Was it not his successor and party colleague who completed that task? Where is that collective responsibility? Until we get to some sort of united vision from this Executive, we will struggle to do any of the reforms that the Minister has talked about to make local government mean something and function.”
“<BR /> <BR />I move to some of the other issues raised during the debate. Mr Lyttle talked extensively about almost a black hole in the Department for Regional Development with regard to water charging and how we might move forward. To be fair to the Alliance Party, the reality is that some of these issues, whether water, prescriptions or changes in tuition fees, should be on the table. I said at the last Budget debate that I would have no difficulty in considering issues like that but that I want to know and to have the confidence that this Administration has the ability to spend money wisely and has a coherent direction and purpose to use any additional money from taxes or charges on the ratepayers. There is one difficult decision that the Alliance Party has put off, and that is the decision on when to leave this Executive.”
“We are effectively voting in money that will keep the wheels of government turning with no real Programme for Government or it being extended. What are our targets? Where are we going with any of this? We have money under the Stormont House Agreement coming for shared education with no great vision as to what exactly that will look like or be. We have a voluntary exit scheme, and the Minister will be aware that, at the last Budget debate, I proposed that the Minister should publish a plan on what he is going to do, and I would still like that. That would include what he is going to do if, in this Budget term, he does not achieve his target or does not draw down that entire £200 million in this period. There are all types of questions around this Budget and the direction and where we are going in collective Government.”
“<BR /> <BR />Far from it being the price of being in the Union, it was a blessing to be in it and to have that tax base of £60 million, that population and that part in one of the largest economies in the world. I say to colleagues and to the Minister's party that, sometimes when they put pressure on and somehow think that more should be coming from Westminster or that with more money coming we should be spending more and then claiming that we are a low-tax Assembly, that that, somehow, is almost not being in the real world of recognising where the money is coming from. <BR /> <BR />Some of the points that I would like to raise in the debate are around how the Minister gets that collective response for the Executive and how they get that shared vision.”
“I have been here for a good part of the debate. I listened to Mr Sammy Wilson's points, and it is important to remind Members and to remind the House that, if it were not for the subvention coming from Westminster, we would have real financial problems. The idea from Sinn Féin that somehow austerity is the price of being in the Union makes us all think what real austerity would have been like in the Republic of Ireland and what it has had to endure in the last number of years that we have been largely shielded from, at times when health spending has been protected and when, in UK terms, more money has been given to education, and we have had Barnett consequentials out of that. That is a very different position to be in from that faced by our friends in the Republic of Ireland during the last seven or eight years.”
“I am grateful to the Member for giving way, and, overall, I agree with the thrust of his point, which will be no surprise to him. I remember Michaela Boyle making a point in the Budget debate that austerity was somehow the price of being in the Union. I thought that it was an absolutely ridiculous point. However, I took issue with him when he was the Finance Minister, and I take issue with the current Minister, that the Assembly is somehow a low-tax Assembly. We are virtually a no-tax Assembly.”
“In his reply, the Minister quite rightly mentioned the importance of ensuring that through the main education system and into the FE sector. Will he comment on what measures are in place in colleges and through his Department? What support is there for young people on government-supported work schemes to make sure that they too are protected from any form of bullying or harassment, including homophobic bullying?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. She, quite rightly, identified issues about cash flow. I also draw her attention to an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority into banking. Has she had any input into that, given the importance of the agrifood sector in Northern Ireland? If not, will she endeavour to do so?”
“— on the basis that the Minister will be fit to deliver public sector reform.”
“— with the parties and demanded that public sector reform had to happen. In the meantime, we are borrowing and mortgaging. On a rate that we do not know what we are paying for it, we are mortgaging our children's futures —”
“That is why the UK Government stood very firm —”
“Minister Hamilton is trying it now with the public sector reform division, but he has no way of delivering on any of the issues. Some 20,000 public sector workers are to go, all to be done by voluntary redundancies, with no open strategy as to how that will be achieved. What will be the consequences if it is not achieved? That is the problem that the Minister will face. How will he get into that? Without any collective buy-in, when this Minister or any other hits any difficult decision, parties will defend their own Budget lines rather than defend the outcome. <BR /> <BR />What do we hear when Minister Farry talks about the challenges in teacher training? We hear about the need to defend St Mary's University College, and the sectarian card is immediately played. That will continue until we run out of road.”
“Many of us have heard this great line from colleagues whose party sits on the Executive: "It is different for our Minister, who does great work in the Executive. Imagine what it would be like if they were not there? Our Minister does great work in DOE or Justice or Regional Development". I am sure that they might do bits and pieces of good things, but that is not at all the challenge that faces them. It is about getting a collective strategic approach and a Programme for Government that means something and that every Minister puts their shoulder to the wheel to deliver. <BR /> <BR />The Finance Minister has to have some way of delivering on the public sector reform agenda. Mr McNarry pointed out that he has tried this, and his predecessors in Finance have tried it, right back to when Peter Robinson was Finance Minister with PEDU.”
“<BR /> <BR />As I said, at no point have I heard any semblance of collective responsibility from anyone in the Executive or from any member of a party in the Executive. I happily say that I felt one of the best contributions to be that of Judith Cochrane of the Alliance Party, who made the case that we might need to look at revenue raising and that we needed this reform. However, again, it comes back to the fact that the Alliance Party is in the Executive, so it is part of this almighty mess. The Alliance Party was at the Stormont House negotiations, and it still sits on the Executive. <BR /> <BR />There are parties in the Executive that feel that they are minority parties, not properly loved, cared for, nurtured or listened to. They delude themselves and do themselves a great disservice.”
“When we have some of that and we have Transforming Your Care, we then hear from the Chair of the Health Committee that it seems to have stalled and we are looking to the OECD and Sir Liam Donaldson doing a review. I listened to colleagues talking about that right throughout. Consider Mr Allister's point about the debt burden that the Executive will now carry. I listened to Mr Ó Muilleoir's maiden speech, in which he congratulated the Greeks. The thing that we will have most in common with the Greeks is that they are the most indebted country in Europe and we will be the most indebted part of the United Kingdom. Is that something that we have the ability to sustain? Have we the collective Cabinet-style responsibility that we need to drive the reforms that the Minister talks about?”
“Most of the comments during the debate have been directed at the Executive and are demanding that we have some strategic direction. I agree with many of those calls, but the difficulty you have with that and that, I suspect, the Minister has is that he has no way of making any of that happen. He has no control over it. He is not in the position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer or some all-powerful government body so that he can coordinate government policy or put pressure on Departments to spend. That is the problem that the Minister has when he goes to deliver any of this. <BR /> <BR />We hear calls from the various parties about strategic plans and strategic direction.”
“I am grateful to the Minister and encouraged by some of his response. No doubt he will want to spread the cycling revolution out beyond urban areas. Does he agree that it might be time to look at shifting the investment decisions for cycling and other non-motorised forms of transport from just assessing past or current use to possibly building in growth potential? <BR /> <BR />Will the Minister also reflect on the two-metre minimum standard width for footpaths? Does he feel that that puts walkers and families off using them? Will he look at reviewing that standard throughout Northern Ireland?”
“I am grateful to the Minister. There are many great examples in my constituency of where contact with the police in helping to address issues like antisocial behaviour has been vital. I wish that the Minister would at least give his commitment to and support for the continuation of that to make sure that it stays as a priority for the police.”
“In his response today, I would like the Minister to prove to me that he and his Executive colleagues have that purpose and direction.”
“The bottom line is that the First Minister is right when he describes the Executive as dysfunctional. He is right to say that it is dysfunctional, when we have members of the Executive agreeing to things in Stormont House and then voting against them and we hear people speaking out of both sides of their mouth at the one time. That does not build courage and confidence out there with the public. The people need to hear about the difficult choices, but they also need to be sure that the Executive and the Finance Minister have a plan to deal with them. <BR /> <BR />I know that the Minister has been keen on quotations. He quoted Churchill, and one of his opening remarks was about JFK. I will use a JFK quotation back to him:”
“We look at corporation tax and at what Allstate NI's Bro McFerran said:”
“Absolutely. The Member makes a very valid point, which I am coming to. <BR /> <BR />We are faced with a situation in which 5% of tax is raised locally, there is £10 billion of annual deficit with the rest of the UK and £2,000 more per head is spent in Northern Ireland. However, we still sound as if we want to reform only because there is pressure from the evil Tories. We have been very generously looked after by our fellow UK taxpayers, yet we still think that it is not enough. We would not have reform if we were not being forced into it. Therefore, why would anyone have the confidence to believe that we can manage the level of borrowing that we are heading towards? <BR /> <BR />We look to see whether there are any plans or strategies from the Minister and his colleagues to close the economic productivity gap.”
“Therefore, 5% is raised locally, and £10 billion —”
“I am sure this point will come up in the Alliance contributions. I have some sympathy with Alliance colleagues on revenue-raising proposals, but I apply one caveat to that: why would any member of the public — any of us who is a taxpayer or a ratepayer — want to sign up to paying further taxes or charges when you look at the record of delivery of this Executive? Why would you have confidence in doing that? Generally, if you are going to put a charge on something, the public will want to know that you are capable of spending that money wisely. <BR /> <BR />I also take issue with the Finance Minister's claim that we are a low-tax Assembly. We are virtually a no-tax Assembly. The only control of tax that the Minister has at the moment is over the regional rate. That accounts for something like 5% to 6% of what he spends.”
“The Budget debate goes to the core of the Executive's problem, which is a complete lack of collective responsibility or any sense of strategic direction. I ask the Minister and any members of the Executive these questions: during the Stormont House talks, did they go as one Executive to the Secretary of State with one negotiating position? Were the Executive members and party leaders involved in agreeing that around the Executive table in Stormont Castle? If they did not go as one to negotiate with the Secretary of State on Budget lines, why did they not?”
“That is why I am, rightly I think, raising the question with the Executive and the Minister of whether they have the ability to deliver on the size and scale of the public-sector reform that the Minister proposes to take on. I want to be convinced that they have. <BR /> <BR />I note that the OECD will also look at health reform. You have to ask this question: why? We are now three years into Transforming Your Care. Is it now stalled? Is it ditched? Is it over? Where is Transforming Your Care? We heard today that the Minister of Health was announcing another review under Sir Liam Donaldson. The one thing that the Assembly has been remarkably good at is reviews, but we are not good at implementing a strategy or reforming, when the challenge arises.”
“<BR /> <BR />I have to say that the Executive's record on major public-sector reform projects is woefully inadequate. We have been debating the Education and Skills Authority since the Minister and I arrived in the Chamber. We debated local government reform for eight or nine years before that, and the new councillors will only take up office shortly. Transforming Your Care has been going for three years. Then there is the rationalisation of teacher training, the shared future agenda, welfare reform, a police training college and DARD headquarters. All those policies to date have failed, stalled or been greatly diminished. At any rate, virtually no savings or improved outcomes for society have yet been realised from any of these major public-sector reform initiatives.”
“<BR /> <BR />As Ulster University's economic policy centre stated in its submission on the Budget, the Executive have still not shifted their focus from defending Budget lines to evidence-based policy that delivers outcomes for the people of Northern Ireland. I suspect that the Minister would like to go to an outcomes-based policy but struggles to get Executive colleagues and the Executive as a whole to commit to that. The public sector reform division has in some ways outsourced its work to the OECD, but that will not report back until the end of this year, which is halfway through the period in which we are supposed to be implementing a voluntary redundancy scheme. That is why I am concerned and cautious and why I want to see a published strategy accompany the Budget.”
“How do we avoid a brain drain of our top civil servants? Will we end up in a position similar to that of the police after the Patten reforms, where we have to bring people back at a much higher cost because there is a brain drain, meaning that the Department and Executive have not gathered the savings they had hoped for? Half of Departments show an increase in administrative costs in the budgetary period to date, while PEDU, which the First Minister set up when he was Finance Minister, and the public sector reform division that this Minister set up have achieved very little in the eight years that the Minister and I have been Members of the House.”
“In my amendment I note with caution the £200 million for the voluntary exit scheme because I have very limited confidence that it forms part of a strategic vision for wider public-sector reform and efficiency. I am happy for the Minister to convince me of that when he replies. <BR /> <BR />The Minister has already admitted that he does not know the terms or conditions of the interest on the loans that he is taking out and has not carried out an economic impact assessment. The Executive have ditched the policy of investing in infrastructure with a long-term economic benefit or multiplier effect for one of borrowing to make people retire or, indeed, redundant. There seems to be no wider link to a strategy for public-sector reform. What happens if the Executive do not reach their targets for voluntary redundancies?”
“I will make a few observations in opening and proposing my amendment. I welcome it that, at least, after the Stormont House Agreement, there seems to have been a rebooting of the relationship between the DUP and Sinn Féin and the First Minister and the deputy First Minister.”
“I welcome the Minister's response and his continued support. I happily put it on record that I would be delighted to bring such an amendment. Will the Minister welcome an early amendment so that he, his Department and the Committee could scrutinise it, and we get the best legislation possible?”
“It is about making sure that those strategies are coordinated, meaningful, outcomes-based and focused, so that they are not just nice strategies that read well and say, "We're going to target this". That is always what has bedevilled this Administration with their Programme for Government; it has been too highbrow and not outcomes-based. If Mr Agnew's Bill can help to add to any of that, it is worthy of consideration. It is right and proper that, in this debate on broad principles, we support that and say that it is up to the Committee to scrutinise, take evidence and see how to improve the Bill. I am happy to support the Bill. I apologise to the House that I cannot stay for all the debate, but I hope to hear junior Minister Bell's response.”
“I think that Mr Wilson raised the point about how you pool budgets. The structure that we have at the minute very much encourages that silo mentality. Breaking down that silo mentality lies at the core of Mr Agnew's Bill. We should be looking at other ways of government doing it. Can they buy in, for example, if the newly created change fund is very successful, or if investing to save was more successful? It is about making sure that those are targeted at the core areas that we want to improve. Too much of investing to save has been used to try to pay for redundancies. We know from the wider Budget debate that we are set to borrow about £700 million to make people redundant. Junior Minister Bell has been very much at the forefront of Delivering Social Change.”
“We need to see a properly constituted Programme for Government and collective Cabinet responsibility across the Executive so that, when the Executive and the Departments set their mind, everybody is putting their shoulder to the wheel. I suspect that that is what is driving and motivating Mr Agnew, particularly when it comes to children and young people: every Department that touches on the lives of children and young people should put its shoulder to the wheel and say, "It is not just up to the Department of Education to deal with this; this is our business, too. This is part of Justice, Health or DSD as well" — whatever configuration of Departments we have. It has to look like it is everybody's business if we are going to transform lives. <BR /> <BR />Budgets, the pooling of them and how you do that has been mentioned.”
“<BR /> <BR />The other area of concern was a bit of a debate between Mr Nesbitt and Mr Wilson. I agree with parts of that, and it is no surprise that I am working on my own Bill. How do we make all of government coordinate better? That will come about only with things like a Programme for Government that is outcomes-based, not one that is so high-level that it brings everyone into the tent. Of course, the challenge to Mr Nesbitt, although he is not in his place, is this: if you do not get some of that in the Programme for Government, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to not participate in government? Are you going to leave it? The difficulty is that there has to be an electoral price for that. When we talk about cooperation in Mr Agnew's Bill, we need to see that. We need to see it across government.”
“Most of the criticism that I have heard about the Bill during the debate has been over the cost elements. I suspect that, if there were better cooperation, it should reduce costs, not increase them. If there were better outcomes for children and young people, it would reduce costs, not increase them. <BR /> <BR />I have slightly more reservations about the Bill in two areas. When you legislate, making sure that a Bill contains enough flexibility, as strategies evolve and changes become very evident, and as best practice and the evidence base evolve, change and move on, to respond to that and change while always being focused on having the outcomes for children and young people — not always doing things because we have always done them — is key in any Department, never mind when we start to cooperate.”