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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“Other parties seem to have accepted that we cannot continue with a model of government that looks so dysfunctional that even the head of the Administration has to refer to it as dysfunctional. These are all things that have to be addressed.”
“However, that, I suspect, is something for the parties that qualify to get to. <BR /> <BR />Once you reduce the number of Departments and whether you like it or not, you change the dynamic of how many parties might qualify for government. If the election results were exactly the same as in 2011, with nine Departments, Alliance would not be a party of government in the sense that it would not qualify under d'Hondt in the current arrangements. That is a change. <BR /> <BR />My Bill is in Committee at the minute, but I have set out in it some of the issues around unitary government and collective responsibility. Some of what is in this Bill and was agreed in 'A Fresh Start' does not go far enough, but it starts to move us down a certain road.”
“You will have heard me say before that we do not have genuine power-sharing; we have shared-out power. If going to nine Departments helps us to genuinely share power, that is the challenge. Not only do we need a clear direction on where the Government want to go, but there is an onus on political parties to start to work and think about what they want the Government to do. What do they want from whatever Departments or Executive there are and what do they want in a Programme for Government? <BR /> <BR />I welcome some of the things in 'A Fresh Start'. I welcome some of the changes to the Departments that we are debating today. I also welcome the idea that you would negotiate at the start. It is the wrong way round in 'A Fresh Start': you have to declare that you want to take up your position in the Government before entering negotiations.”
“Whether it is six, nine 12, they have to get to the point at which, as Mr Attwood put it, they look as though they are in power, not just in office, and able to exercise the Departments in a collective manner. That has bedevilled the process almost from when we began with these devolved institutions in 1998, from collapse through to the St Andrews Agreement, where there was almost a trial run at stopping what the DUP termed the end of solo runs by Ministers. <BR /> <BR />That comes back to how we share power here.”
“I listened intently to Mr McIlveen's story, and, when he talked about being on the journey, it reminded me of what I have often said about the Executive. The old adage is this: if you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. The Executive have never quite looked as though they have had that purpose and direction, and, if they were to come to a fork in the road, to use Mr McIlveen's analogy, they would not know what direction to go in. To deal with it, they would probably form a commission or hope that Westminster or somewhere else would come in and make the decision for them. From listening to many Members in the debate, I can see that that demands almost a culture change for our Executive, whatever the number of Departments happens to be.”
“Does the Member accept that, yes, you will save money in the categories he is talking about, but it will be quite a small amount, unless you have a much larger reduction in the overall number of civil servants?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will desist from it until the later debate. I think that there are good points for the coming debate. Those are the reasons why I am against the executive arm of our Government using the legislative branch as a rubber stamp to get its business through. This is not the way. It does not lead to good legislation and does not make an Executive or Assembly look functional when we desperately need public confidence in our Executive and our Assembly.”
“Mr Speaker, I was about to remind the Member of your earlier ruling and guidance on this, and I certainly will take up Mr Lyttle in the later debate on those issues. His earlier comments that, because it is simple, we are almost going to accelerate it to improve the scrutiny process raises the question of why we do not accelerate every Bill.”
“I will give way in a second. <BR /> <BR />Other Bills are going through this place through the normal process. We could have had the Bill one month or even two months ago. There was nothing to stop that, even if it had been ready immediately after the Fresh Start Agreement.”
“<BR /> <BR />We get legislative consent motions — one of them was defeated yesterday — and we did our entire welfare reform via a legislative consent motion, which seemed to be a most bizarre way of dealing with it and of building in mitigation measures. Now we are asked to accelerate this Bill. This is not the way that we should do our business.”
“To be fair to the Executive and those who drew them up, they looked on the face of it to be reasonably sensible changes. They were announced on 2 March, but no legislation progressed. The argument that there was political disagreement around it did not stop us continuing to make the argument about welfare reform, and it did not stop Ministers bringing forward a Budget that was based on the Stormont House Agreement. It did not stop all those things happening. Now we are being asked to put through by accelerated passage what some might say is a relatively simple Bill that is not contentious, but it has far-reaching consequences and that goes to the heart of the way the Executive work and the way they treat the legislative arm here.”
“Looking at what we are being asked to do today on accelerated passage, I note that colleagues have set out the history of this issue. I remember that, in May 2011, DEL's going was discussed, that it was going to happen in October 2011 and that the following March at the end of the financial year would be the best time to do it. Minister Farry did not know how long he would get to be Minister. The main debate on that ended up being about the injustice of Alliance having two Ministers, rather than what the model was going to be and whether it was fit for purpose. <BR /> <BR />Suddenly today, we are faced with accelerated passage. We had a deal on 23 December, almost a year ago, and we knew what the nine Departments would look like.”
“<BR /> <BR />I think that it is very much work that the Committee can, and should, undertake to see what changes or amendments need to be brought forward. Certainly, from my perspective, I support the Bill and encourage others to do so to see that it completes its Second Stage.”
“In some ways, it probably feeds into Mr Allister's point that a much wider review of the entire licensing system needs to be done at some point. There needs to be the political will to deal with that and address the issues of licensing. <BR /> <BR />I commend Mrs Cochrane for bringing this piece of legislation to address fairly specific issues at this time. Given the time frames involved, I think it was very worthwhile to carry out the consultation that she outlined in order to deal with some of the concerns and issues about how you might put conditions on a licence; indeed how you might address some of the issues around 11.00 pm or 1.00 am and whether it would be permissible on some occasions to be 1.00 am.”
“First, I want to congratulate Mrs Cochrane on bringing the Bill to this stage. From listening to the debate, it certainly seems that there is wide support for its principles at least and that it merits further consideration by the Committee, indeed to answer some of the concerns of Members. I apologise to her because I cannot stay to listen to her winding-up speech. I wanted to be here to contribute in a very small way by saying that I, like colleagues, support the broad principles of what the Bill seeks to achieve and wants to do. It is important. <BR /> <BR />Mr Beggs made the point that it does seem to be somewhat strange that we have arrived at a situation in which a business model like the Kingspan Stadium at Ravenhill is reliant on an occasional licence for which it must constantly apply. It is a strange set of circumstances.”
“I raised this issue with the Minister before, and he will know that planning is one of the powers devolved to councils that has caused some of the biggest problems, particularly in my area. Does he agree that it is time that he and his Executive colleagues set a target for planning decisions to be made?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. She will know that one of the big blockages in succession planning on farms is the conacre system, which causes problems with land mobility as well as succession planning. How does she see her Department addressing that issue? How would she drive forward any change in culture or in the way that system works?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Sorry for being momentarily distracted. <BR /> <BR />I welcome the Minister's reply and the fact that he is looking at the issue. He will know that I have raised with him in private the point about when a family's circumstances change. Should we move to a model more like the one in the rest of the country, whereby housing allocation is reviewed after a set time? I think that, in other parts of the country, it is reviewed after seven years. Should we not look at and give serious consideration to a model that looks at changes in circumstances but does not necessarily seek to remove people from social houses, and consider whether the current model is most appropriate model for housing allocation, given the stresses on it?”
“Like colleagues, I wish the First Minister well. He was nothing but courteous in his dealings with me, which I appreciated very much. I wish him and his family well in his retirement. <BR /> <BR />The First Minister no doubt knows the impact that instability has and the difficulty of promoting Northern Ireland internationally when there is instability. Does he agree that we cannot go through another mandate with an Executive that have such instability and that are at odds with themselves?”
“However, this approach — the legislative consent motion — represents a complete dereliction of our duties as Members of a legislative Assembly.”
“Now, £40 million more has been allocated, but that is the price that we have paid for this level of negotiation and the feeling that we are somehow going into battle with the Tories. The Tories do not seem to have blinked on this. It is up to others to decide who blinked, but I do not think that it was the Tories. <BR /> <BR />I regret that I will not vote with the Minister on the legislative consent motion this evening, as it is asking too much of me and my colleagues as Members. He has the numbers to get it through anyway, so I am sure that he is not too worried, but, on the principles of welfare, I would be more supportive of his approach and what he negotiated originally and some of the safeguards.”
“I am grateful to Mr Dickson for that, and I agree entirely. There is a perverse logic to the idea that you can take money out of hospitals and not affect the vulnerable and the sick. Once you take it out of health and social care, bearing it in mind that our health and social care services are completely linked, you can hit very vulnerable people. In fact, I often suggest that, when you attack the health budget the things that tend to be dropped are what you might call the "softer services". That could mean a bigger waiting list for domiciliary care or somebody not getting their physiotherapy within an appropriate timescale. All those things are affected. <BR /> <BR />Our health service has been driven into crisis, with a huge waiting list.”
“All of those issues were being raised, such was the crisis — the self-made crisis; a crisis made in Stormont — that we imposed on ourselves. That these issues could not be sorted out is something that we should all be deeply ashamed of. Considering that we have been negotiating on welfare issues for three years or more —”
“It is regrettable that we do not have the courage as legislators elected by people in Northern Ireland to make the legislative changes to their benefit or, indeed, explain the changes that we have had to make. That is a retrograde step. <BR /> <BR />As I said, I would like to have been in a position to support the Minister on welfare, because I am acutely aware of the impact that this has had on our Budget and, indeed, on Northern Ireland's image around the world. Effectively, we almost threw ourselves off the fiscal cliff. We nearly crashed our system by getting to the point of running it into the ground. A few months ago, questions were put to the Minister about whether he would even have the money to pay certain benefits by this time of the year and whether we would be fit to pay farmers single farm payments at this time of the year.”
“It is in the legislative consent motion. I am not suggesting that you are handing the money back, but the legislative mechanisms that you will use to spend the money are in the legislative consent motion. That is what you are being asked to sign up to. That is why I am so surprised that you and your colleagues are so supportive of this approach. The Minister could have brought his Welfare Reform Bill back on 26 November. He could have gone for accelerated passage or for a normal six-week Committee Stage given the fact that the Bill had been through all the scrutiny, and we would have had time to deal with the issues. We are now giving them to a much busier legislature to deal with, mainly, I have to say, because you do not want your hands anywhere near this.”
“I am grateful for the intervention, Mr Speaker. The second half of the legislative consent motion proposes for the Assembly's approval:”
“<BR /> <BR />I would like to have been in the position to support the Minister today in the changes that he needed to make to welfare. I was and still am very sceptical about offering up such a large sum of money — over £0·5 billion — for mitigation measures when we are not sure what exactly we will do. Are we going to use the money just to breach a welfare cap or to invest in social mobility, aspiration and skills to break the cycle? Is that where we are going with this? I would like to see much more detail on that, rather than giving all that money back to Westminster to decide. It is too much to give back. We should have been shaping this policy.”
“The fact that we now have to set up a fiscal responsibility watchdog or unit and maybe go through a few years' probation to see whether we can get our house in order and our Budget back into line to the approval of Treasury is not exactly setting us up for getting our hands on more of the levers of fiscal power. <BR /> <BR />I am amazed at people making the argument that they want to take on the Tory Government. When you read the document, it sounds like the Tories did not move that far on many issues: "You can mitigate welfare cuts, but you have to take it out of your block grant. You can devolve corporation tax, but you will take it out of your block grant". Those are choices that the Executive and Assembly have and should make.”
“You would do it only when you could prove that you can manage what you have.”
“The devolved regional Assembly that is the Northern Ireland Assembly is giving powers back to Westminster to fix our mess because we have not been able to get our act together. We have kicked the can so far down the road that we have run out of road. What message does that send out about the functionality and fitness for government of some parties here? That, to me, seems a surprising climbdown and change of direction. Sinn Féin has moved from a position of wanting more powers for the Assembly. Alex Maskey talked about getting our hands on more fiscal levers. That is an outcome that I would agree with. I would love to see the Assembly have more fiscal levers, but you would seek those only when you had reformed the Assembly and the Executive and the way in which they work.”
“I want to see good governance and the Government acting and looking like they are a Government and not being at sixes and sevens on every issue, with part of the Government for something and another part of it against. However, when Sinn Féin lectures us about the importance of the institutions working, I point out that, on 26 May, one of the lead parties in Government signed a petition of concern effectively to torpedo their own Government's policy. Once you added the welfare bit and the mitigation measures, it became Northern Ireland Executive policy. Sinn Féin torpedoed its own Administration's policy, yet we are lectured on making the institutions work. <BR /> <BR />I want to see the institutions work, and that is why I have to say that I am absolutely amazed at an all-Ireland, Irish republican party giving power back.”
“They were a wee bit like their heroes in Greece, who were going to take on the EU and the German Chancellor and do all manner of things. They were going to sort things out, tackle austerity and be anti-austerity. It was all good stuff that made great headlines. What has Sinn Féin come back with? A deal that ends two years earlier than was intended originally. Yes, there is a bit more money to it, but we have no idea what we are to do at the end of the four years. Are we creating a bigger cliff for people to fall off? Are we creating something that this Executive or a future one cannot sustain? Is that what we are doing? When our health service next hits crisis after crisis, what will happen? <BR /> <BR />Of course, I, like any Member here, want to see the institutions work.”
“There was great hope that Labour was going to win the election and that we would have a different Government — the evil coalition Government would be gone. However, that did not happen. As Minister Foster put it, if only we had some way of testing public opinion — oh aye, such as a general election. And the Tories won that. <BR /> <BR />I, as have many Members, have said repeatedly to Sinn Féin that the Tories are the elected Government of the United Kingdom. I may not like it, Sinn Féin may not like it and people in the DUP may not like it, but they are the elected Government of the United Kingdom. The Tories won the election, but still, at the end of May, Sinn Féin was going to do all manner of things: take on the Tories and battle with them.”
“However, I cannot vote on a legislative consent motion far too much of which is in blank-cheque territory. <BR /> <BR />I listened to some of the other contributions. Members of Sinn Féin talked about being elected to make a change and said that these institutions had to work. We would have been coming up to the third Christmas in a row of political crisis talks: Haass, Stormont 1 and Stormont 2. It is the third year in a row that we were approaching Christmas on a deal. We had a deal last year on welfare. That was going along very nicely until all the members of Sinn Féin went up to Derry for the ard-fheis. Suddenly, a petition of concern was threatened, and the Minister pulled the Bill. You could argue that that was maybe all very well. That was in March.”
“Where is this money coming from, and what are the downstream consequences of it? If you want to skill a population, you have to start in the early years to make sure people have the skills. <BR /> <BR />It is surprising, but Sinn Féin is almost the party of trickle-down economics. We are cutting corporation tax, but that has a long way to trickle down to people trapped on welfare who do not have the skill set to get jobs or the access to affordable childcare. All those issues are linked, and we do not seem to be addressing them in any holistic shape or form. I regret that very much. <BR /> <BR />I support some of the changes that the Minister achieved on welfare earlier on, and I would have liked to be in a position to support him and vote on the legislation.”
“Of course, we do not know at this stage what that money will be used for. <BR /> <BR />As I have said in previous welfare debates, if we were serious about changing the way that this society operates, we would invest some of that £585 million in early intervention programmes to tackle literacy and numeracy — all of the things that build up a skills base and educate the population, and all the stuff that we need to do to break the cycle for people trapped on welfare dependency. That is what we need to be doing, but we actually seem to be moving the other way and cutting early intervention to pay for some of those payments. That seems to be dramatically counter-strategic to what we want to achieve, so why are we doing that in health, education and across the board?”
“I do not think that is sustainable when hard-working families are going to be hit with tax credits and are not on that level of support. It is a worry as to what we are going to use the £585 million for. As for the bedroom tax, are we going to change our housing stock? If we are never doing the bedroom tax, is that now something that the Minister is going to put on hold? Were any changes ever going to happen? Will families be moved, as Mr Agnew asked? <BR /> <BR />We have moved from a mitigation system of £564 million over six years to £585 million over four years. What happens at the end of those four years? Will we create a bigger cliff for people on welfare to fall off, if that just stops and we move completely to the Great Britain system? What happens at that point in time?”
“That is a complete dereliction of our duties as legislators and representatives in a representative democracy. We should not be acting in this manner. It is not the way that we should proceed, because it leaves many questions unanswered — things like the issues that Mr Agnew raised about the bedroom tax. Are we doing any of the bedroom tax? Is Westminster going to legislate, then we will penalise people, then give them the money back, or are we going to continue to use our £585 million to breach welfare benefits? <BR /> <BR />I said in a previous welfare debate that the fact that we have 6,600 families in Northern Ireland on over £30,000 of welfare benefits, which is equivalent to a £40,000 salary, needs to be addressed.”
“Why are we giving this to Westminster — arguably, a significantly busier legislative body — if not to keep our fingerprints off the Bill and away from the entirety of welfare reform? It seems a bit like the issue of dealing with the past. Legislation could have been brought to the House, but we do not want to touch it and will let Westminster do something. It seems so typical of this place that, when something gets difficult, we come up with the old favourites, such as "Why not appoint a commissioner to look after that?". Recently, there has been talk that we should appoint a chief executive of the health service to keep health out of political control, almost to keep it away from democratic political control. Why not let Westminster deal with the issues, so that we can keep our hands clean?”
“I even think that bringing it back, though I am very uncomfortable with accelerated passage, would have been preferable to a legislative consent motion. <BR /> <BR />Let us look at the context of what we are asked to approve this evening: a Bill, just published, that we have not seen. As Mr Beggs pointed out in an intervention, it is a Bill that could well be amended in a way that is not to our liking or in accordance with our wishes. Of course, we do not know what proposals might come from a panel yet to be fully established. We are being asked to sign what is not quite a blank cheque — it is for £585 million — when we are unsure what we will do or how we will do it. That is a big ask for a legislative Assembly. <BR /> <BR />It is worth using the phrase "legislative Assembly". Why are we here, if not to legislate?”
“We have been debating welfare reform not only throughout this year but over the past number of years, ever since the coalition Government introduced it. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me say — he has heard me say it before — that I agree with the broad principle of welfare reform, namely that work should pay. We need to look at how we build the aspiration of families. We do not want people to be trapped by welfare dependency, so we need to look at how we break that cycle. I believe passionately that we need to achieve all those things. <BR /> <BR />The Welfare Reform Bill was defeated on 26 May. If I am correct, you would be allowed to bring the Bill back to the Assembly six months later — on 26 November — so why was that option not explored?”
“<BR /> <BR />I do not doubt that everyone here is sincere about upping our game significantly in what we do with organ donation, and I thank Mrs Dobson for having the tenacity to introduce the Bill and to keep going with it. The Committee will work hard at it. It will get its Committee Stage, and the Committee will possibly have to work hard to keep within the six-week period. If it needs an extension, it will have to get an agreed timetable that will allow the Bill to get the detailed scrutiny required and to make sure that the process, including any amendments, changes or advice that the Department may bring, can be completed by the end of the mandate. The issue is too important for us not to make some significant progress on it. I support the Bill.”
“<BR /> <BR />The discussion and the publicity campaign on those issues should not just be a one-off if the Bill is successful but should be ongoing. As Mr Agnew pointed out, it is about looking at best practice around the world and not being afraid to challenge ourselves about what our Department, our hospitals and our units do. Can we improve, and can we put coordinators in place who can deal with that and help to increase numbers? Quite frankly, we lose too many organs where there is some discussion and the wishes of the family are unclear. We lose too many viable organs that could prove to be a life-saving donation to others. That is of huge regret to us all.”
“Were the Bill not to be amended in any way, it would probably be the only Bill that ever went through the House or the Committee process and was not amended. That is why I am very opposed to accelerated passage when Ministers propose it, because there is an expertise at times that the Committee can tap into and use to tease out the issues and, at times, address concerns. It will not address all the concerns that Mr Ross has expressed, because he is opposed to the principles of the Bill. I know, from knowing him, that his are deeply and sincerely held views. In some regards, I am probably closer to his views on the size and role of the state, but I disagree with him on this. I think that we can address some of his issues and make it easy for people to opt out.”
“It is about having the debate here, but it is most important to have that discussion at home with your family to make sure that there is absolutely no doubt about what your wishes would be. <BR /> <BR />Of course, like many colleagues here, I have met constituents and know constituents very well who have received donations or are organ donors. I know families who have been in those very difficult circumstances, and I know that it brought them some modicum of comfort that their loved one was fit to bring life, give life and extend life to others in what can only be the most horrendous circumstances that anyone would ever face. <BR /> <BR />The publicity and the debate and having that discussion around dinner tables at any time about what people's wishes would be are hugely important. That is why public debate is important.”
“Of course, as with every piece of legislation, Members have quite rightly used the usual tactics of trying to kill it by saying that it might not be compliant with human rights or that the Welsh were advised against it but ignored it. All those arguments will be made against the Bill, as we have already heard today. <BR /> <BR />In raising the issues, the Bill and the debate — not only the debates that Mrs Dobson has had over the past few years as this policy has been developed but the publicity and the public debate — have been to the good. Strangely, one of the key issues — other Members have alluded to it — is that, when you have consented to donate your organs, your family can overrule that consent.”
“I am long on record as advocating this type of approach. I would like to begin by congratulating Mrs Dobson. I know the huge volume of work that goes into bringing a private Members' Bill in normal circumstances, and one with as many challenging issues as this Bill is particularly difficult.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. The other issue that tourism faces is cuts to the arts: does he feel that that is a difficulty? While I accept that the Irish Open was a huge success at Royal County Down, the other challenge, particularly in a constituency like South Down, is growing tourism, making it sustainable, having jobs and increasing tourism spend. He needs to address all those things. How does he propose to address some of them?”
“I welcome the Bill, and I welcome the societal benefits that I very much hope will flow from it, if it is successfully passed and implemented. Thank you, Mr Speaker.”
“We will know that we have started to make a difference on this when we have achieved that. <BR /> <BR />Yes, of course, like every piece of legislation, the Bill will need amendments and changes to be made and will demand that. That is why I welcome the Minister's bringing the Bill. I also welcome the fact that he has not moved on accelerated passage and that the Bill will go through the scrutiny stage. I agree with and applaud the overall objectives of what I believe is his policy intent. It should be focused on the educational outcomes, widening choice, extending the curriculum, using our education system to truly lift all boats and get aspiration back into all communities and using education to deliver that and to deliver on skills, the economy and releasing people from the poverty trap and the trap of welfare.”