Basil McCrea
Lagan Valley · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“I carried on that work on the all-party group on science and technology, and, when I am gone from this place, I hope that those who are still here will take up the challenge of science and technology, because that is where the jobs are and that is where the future is.”
“I rise for the last time to address the Assembly. I thank the people of Lagan Valley for the privilege of representing them over the past nine years. It seems like only yesterday that I first got here, awestruck by the names on the doors of people that I had seen only on television, and, yet, here we are.”
“— what matters is to have the courage to go on. I will go on. I will leave this place with my head high, with my colours flying, with my dignity intact and with all conviction about what is good for Northern Ireland. In conclusion, two roads diverged in the woods, and I took the road less travelled. That has made all the difference.”
“Despite the heckling from the man in front of me, I shall ask a question of the Minister in two parts. First, would the Minister care to tell us what was his personal favourite of the many events at the Northern Ireland Science Festival?”
“I am grateful to the Member for the explanation, and I have no doubt that her efforts to draft the amendment were well-intentioned. Maybe she can help me on this, if it has come up in the discussions.”
“Actually, when I read it, I understood it to be the other way round. However, I am happy that it is a more general stance and is not limited to single acts. <BR /> <BR />As regards amendment No 2, I approached the concept in a sympathetic manner, but I am not convinced that we can properly define an imbalance of power.”
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Every one of 747 lines we hold for Basil McCrea, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 13 of 15.
“I was Chair of the Committee for Employment and Learning when we were looking at this issue, and I think that that is the right way forward. That is how you get people back into work: quality intervention on a personal basis. <BR /> <BR />When Derbyshire County Council was looking at its emergency financial assistance, it had an average of 1,300 applications per month — up by 500 as a result of benefit sanctions. That shows that you are just transferring the problem. What it comes down to is that sanctions are not suitable for those with mental health issues, and Northern Ireland, as we all know, has the highest number of DLA claimants for mental health issues of any part of the United Kingdom. <BR /> <BR />I am sure that the Minister does not want to hear this, but I am going to pay him a compliment.”
“He pointed to a general lack of understanding around sanctions, both among people who had not noticed being sanctioned — so there is not much of a deterrent there if you do not notice — and those who felt they had been sanctioned when, in fact, their benefits had been changed because of a change in circumstances. In other words, nobody really understood what the sanctions network was doing. <BR /> <BR />He reported that there was little evidence to suggest that sanctions were effective in moving people into work. In fact, a strong relationship between the claimant and adviser was the most effective factor in getting people back into work. That is why I went to Ingeus, which is close by here, and looked at the efforts that people were making to get a strong bond between people that said, "Let's find a way of getting into work".”
“Mr Attwood had obviously read Matthew Oakley's contribution and the minutes of the Work and Pensions Select Committee. I also had a look at some of those things, and here are the points that I took out of it. <BR /> <BR />I do not know if Mr Attwood said this already but Oakley, in July 2014, noted the problems and the lack of resources to fully explain sanctions in general and when someone was facing sanctions to their benefits. The problems with the IT resources represented a significant hurdle. They stopped people from getting the benefits that they were due.”
“I am also dismayed at the lack of opportunity for them to get a job. There has got to be something more that we can do. I am worried about the ever-increasing cost of benefits, the drain on our health and social services, and all the other issues, such as the incessant demand for more and more housing, "Just give it to me. I deserve it, but I am not able to make a contribution.". <BR /> <BR />That is the image that many have about people who are on benefits. However, I then look at the evidence and ask whether it is right that we try to change and reform the welfare system so that we encourage and help people to get a job, and I think that is right. How do we break the cycle of dependency? <BR /> <BR />When I look at sanctions, I am not so sure that they work.”
“That is the art of politics, and that is what we have to accept. <BR /> <BR />I have questions to ask, and this is going to sound a little strange, given that I am not sure that sanctions actually work. Let me say some things that, I think, people think but do not say. I fundamentally believe in the need for welfare reform. I look at certain areas of our society and am tired that they are subsisting; they are going through the motions of living, but they are not really living. I am frustrated by their lack of ambition. What about this idea of going out and getting a job? They have no notion of going out and getting a job.”
“There was some miscommunication in parties about what they had agreed to the day before, and that was unhelpful. I will even say that some of the amendments that were put forward were rushed. I am voting consistently on the Bill because I think that there is a need for a five-party agreement and that whatever the agreement is, that is what we should go forward on with a united front. <BR /> <BR />Mr Fra McCann very kindly apologised for not allowing me an intervention, and I gratefully accepted his comments. I wanted to say that I found it useful to understand why there was a change in Sinn Féin and the Committee's position from three years to 18 months. Mr Agnew may be right that 18 months is not enough, but the really interesting thing is that there is agreement and that is why we have reached a compromise.”
“I will take the opportunity to make a comment that I was going to open with. The Chairperson, rather uncharitably, I feel, had a go at me. In answer to Mr Humphrey's question, I have been here for every vote in this debate and I stayed until 10.00 pm last night to watch it. I did not contribute to the debate because, frankly, there are some people, and we all know it, who think that the level of your contribution should be measured by the length of your speech or by the number of amendments as opposed to the quality of your argument. I chose to intervene where I thought I could make a difference, but I got the benefit of listening to the debate as others will have heard it. <BR /> <BR />I pay tribute to the fact that there is an agreement, but the debate became fractious and confusing.”
“I am voting absolutely with the Executive on this because it is good that, when you tackle a serious issue such as this, there has been five-party agreement. I accept that I am not in it, but it is the right way to go forward. <BR /> <BR />Therefore, I was surprised that the number of amendments that came through seemed to undermine that. That is why I have not been supporting the amendments, even though I might have some belief in the points that people are trying to put forward.”
“I would like to have seen whether there was a completely different way of approaching non-compliance to see whether taking people's money away actually does anything. This is the point that I wanted to make to the Chairperson, but he did not wish to engage with me. What is the difference between three years and 18 months? If you can make it for 18 months, you can make it for three years. There is something wrong in that logic. <BR /> <BR />The debate has been quite interesting in illuminating that there has been an agreement. I am in favour of the agreement that has been reached here. Mr Humphrey said that he has had to reach for his tablets because he has seen me in the Lobby with him several times. It is a genuine point.”
“I wanted to speak to this set of amendments because I heard the same Radio 4 programme, and it prompted me to do a bit of investigation around whether sanctions actually work. I think that it was said in that programme that you were more likely to lose your benefits than you were to find a job. It revealed one telling thing, which I said already in response to Mr Swann: the most vulnerable in our society are the ones who fail a lot of the tests, because either they do not understand properly or they do not get the proper information. Those who are determined to take advantage of our good nature do so with a certain amount of imagination and innovation, and they are particularly difficult to deal with.”
“This is on the issue that I wanted to develop earlier about whether sanctions are actually effective. The Member talked about DWP, the Oakley report, presumably, and all those issues. The most vulnerable in our society fall foul of sanctions because they do not know how to go through them, yet the most cute and clever people know how to get round them. I would have preferred to see a way of dealing with people other than taking money from them, because I do not know how you live for 18 months with no money.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Would you care to rule that the Member is speaking on behalf of the Committee? He mentioned certain issues relating to opposition to clause 26 and then said that he was going to talk no further about them. I would have thought that it was perfectly reasonable for me to ask for more explanation on the part of the Committee, not as a Member, and that it would be entirely in order to ask those questions.”
“The Minister is very kind. I follow up on a point you made. You appeared to say to Mr Allister that you are minded to reduce the period from three years to 18 months because of the Stormont House Agreement. Are you therefore surprised that, certainly in the group that I am looking at, there is opposition to clause 26? I would have thought that, if there was general agreement, you would not expect that? Is that a surprise to you?”
“It is a Committee's role to scrutinise — he cannot be expected to do it all — but we can do that only if we get the information in a timely manner. That has not been happening to date.”
“I take his point about it being for the Committee to scrutinise and ask specific questions. However, the City of Culture legacy capital bid of £2·8 million, which in DCAL's spend was quite significant, was nearly going through on the nod. It was just brought through as, "Yes, we have allocated some money here. It is capital, and a good thing for the City of Culture legacy". Only when you drilled down were you able to find out that it was for the purchase of minibuses and various other things. It was a catch-all, and I implore the Minister — he referred to Mr Cree in this matter — to recognise that it is quite difficult to be of help to him if we do not get information in full detail and on time.”
“Will the Minister comment on the Ulster Bank survey that has just come out, which shows that there is pressure on a number of our industrial sectors, including manufacturing, construction and retail; that it is only in the service sector that are we showing any real growth; and that therefore we have to find ways to encourage the broad-based recovery of our economy?”
“I really hope that you will treat my questions with respect and that you will try to answer them, because it will be to your advantage if we can explain to the electorate of Northern Ireland how we move money about for the betterment of all people.”
“<BR /> <BR />When it comes to having a look at this information, I do not know how many times we have had debates in the House, coming from the Committee for Finance and Personnel and from other Members here, saying that we need greater transparency, we need information in a timely fashion and we need to have a system where we can really understand what is going on, because, as the Minister said, the fiscal position is likely to tighten over the coming years, and one of the best predictors that we have about our future performance is how we performed in the past. Minister, on the basis of the information here, if we had had more time, I think that the questions would have been a lot harder.”
“We want to go and fight on something that may be on 'The Stephen Nolan Show' or on the news or whatever. This is about reconciling the expenditure that we planned to make, not just one year ago, with where we have actually ended up. Frankly, the swings are really quite exceptional.”
“It may well be — the Minister will, no doubt, come back and tell me this — that all of this is taken care of in the Departments for which I am not on a scrutinising Committee and by the Committee for Finance and Personnel. Nevertheless, we seem, in this House, to focus on minutiae. The debate put forward about Ashers or the sums of money in that amendment actually pale into insignificance when you look at the amount of money that we are being asked to put aside. We do not, in this House, get into enough detail to really hold the Minister of Finance to account. I am not saying for one minute that he is not doing a good job; he set out in his opening statement how difficult the financial position has been and what he has had to do, but most of it has just passed us by, because it is far too easy to play the politics of optics.”
“I thought that DCAL had suffered a real shock when it lost £63 million, but it appears that DRD was able to better that. <BR /> <BR />The real issue is how we provide proper control if we are asked to reconcile those figures. Those are huge capital swings.”
“That is a really significant uplift. Is that part of the baseline figures, is that sustainable and is it part of the money that has been obtained from the Westminster Government as part of the Stormont House talks? Is that sustainable, or are we going to see draconian cuts in our health revenue budgets? There have been reports on this, and I wonder what it will mean for our baseline figures. We obviously have to do something with the reconciliation. <BR /> <BR />Whilst I am on the subject of figures that are circa £100 million here and £100 million there, as the saying goes, with £100 million here and £100 million there, when you add them up, pretty soon you are talking about real money. They are really significant sums of money. DRD has a capital reduction from £506 million to £401 million: that is draconian.”
“I know: we'll go and buy something". I am not sure that we are getting real value for money on this. This is my opportunity to ask about the reconciliation, and that is one question that I put to you. <BR /> <BR />Equally, I heard in the Minister's opening speech about the need to give extra funding to the Department of Health in comparison with the Main Estimates. I look at this starting with the easier bit about capital. Capital actually fell from a projected spend of £233 million to £220 million, a loss of £13 million. It seems strange that Health is unable to spend the capital that has been allocated to it, given that we put such a priority on it. I have no detail on this, because I am not in the Department, but, against that, the resource expenditure has increased from £4,660 million to £4,754 million.”
“<BR /> <BR />I want to move off the specific issue of DCAL and look at a reconciliation between the Main Estimates and the spring Supplementary Estimates. A number of figures jump out. Well, actually, they do not really jump out. You have to look at them to see what they mean, because a number here and there does not seem to make that much difference, but it is actually quite large. Why, for example, did we start off in the Minister's Department — DFP — with the Main Estimates proposing capital expenditure of £21 million and end up spending £55 million, an uplift of some £30 million? Presumably that is part of the value-for-money purchasing of properties or some sort of thing. The Minister will have the opportunity to deal with that issue, but one could be forgiven for thinking that you said, "What are we going to do with £30 million?”
“I am also struck by some of the things that have come through as capital bids. Capital bids for something called "City of Culture legacy" come up repeatedly in the Committee, and I had to ask for details on it. I am fully supportive of the City of Culture and all the good work that has gone on up there, but what exactly was the capital expenditure for, and how did we manage to roll in £2·8 million? It turns out that that will include the provision for the tales of the North Coast Sports Village, a boxing programme worth £2·14 million and other projects in the north-west that amount to £675,000. In other words, things get lumped together under a "legacy for the City of Culture" that, frankly, might bear a bit more investigation. So much of what is in the figures makes it difficult to work out what is going on.”
“The proposed reductions in budgets or in the monitoring rounds do not reflect that point.”
“Obviously, some of that will be to do with the difficulties with Casement Park, but the response to the June monitoring round declares an easement for the stadiums amounting to £35 million, which is only half of the subsequent easement. The point that I am making is this: it seems difficult to hold an intelligent discussion on this when we cannot get proper information in a timely fashion. <BR /> <BR />I did not get a chance to talk about it in other debates, because time did not permit, but I will take the opportunity here as a member of the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure to say that, when we talk about looking forward for money on account, I do not think that we have had the proper argument about the value that culture, arts and leisure have for our society.”
“Part of the problem with the process is a lack of transparency. At the last meeting of the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure, we were presented with tabled papers from the Clerk of the Committee for Finance and Personnel setting out some attempt at reconciling the Main Estimates with the spring Supplementary Estimates. I asked for an explanation of some of the numbers, and we tried to rush something through. However, it proved quite difficult to do the reconciliation at the time. I have questions for the Minister of Finance and Personnel that refer to the document. I note that, originally, in the Main Estimates, the proposed capital expenditure for DCAL was some £90 million, but, as we transit through the year, we manage to lose £63 million of capital expenditure. I went off and had a look at it.”
“Minister, this is part of an outworking of the arrangement that included the GAA and the IFA. Do you have any plans to extend it to rugby to see whether we can get subregional stadiums for that sport as well?”
“Minister, you seem a little frustrated in the way that this questioning is going. Do you feel that the press has unnecessarily sensationalised this issue and that, were people to be fully apprised of the matter, they would come to a different conclusion about the response of your Department and the people who work for it?”
“The Minister seems to be a trifle confused on the matter. He finished by saying that there has been a fall in the wholesale price of energy. However, that has not been passed on to consumers. Some 42% of households in Northern Ireland are living in fuel poverty, but that is because we use the 10% measure. Does the Minister think that that is the appropriate measure to use to assess fuel poverty, or should we adopt the English model? Should we be doing more to make sure that our most vulnerable people get the benefit of falling energy prices?”
“The Minister said that he is keeping abreast of things on a day and daily basis in the United Kingdom. Is he aware of evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee that you are much more likely to get sanctioned than to find a job and that, in fact, sanctions are ineffective? Would he care to give his assessment of that evidence?”
“When you get into that situation, vulnerable people are at risk. <BR /> <BR />I will conclude by saying this: some people in here have said, "Do you know what? Abuse takes place in other areas outside care homes or whatever". This is a specific area where we can and should do something. We are behind with legislation in comparison with other parts of the United Kingdom. There is a pressing need to deal with the issue, and I am quite sure that the Minister would get a lot of support if he were to bring forward legislation soon. He would have my complete support, and I will write to him again about my constituent's concerns.”
“Somebody should do something" is not acceptable. I am really interested in how we get proper legislation and how we get some overarching, coordinated body that will take responsibility for this. I have no doubt, Minister, that you are actually interested in the issue and I want to hear what you have to say, but I am telling you that my experience, on a number of occasions, is of organisations with no clear line of communication and no understanding of what is really needed to work together. A number of people come in and say, "It's not me. Let's pass the buck from one to another".”
“<BR /> <BR />While I am on the issue of how we actually record people who are guilty of abusing vulnerable adults, I wonder what the process is. Should we name and shame? I am certainly aware of reports of people who have been dismissed over various issues, but how do we communicate to other people that they should not be re-employed or should be retrained? What I see, Minister, is a chronic shortage of well-trained, well-paid staff in the sector. That is why I started this speech by saying that I agreed with Mr Poots that we need to put additional resources into this. <BR /> <BR />I am not saying that I do not recognise the pressures; we have been talking about the Budget all day. I am not saying that I do not recognise the pressures that we will have on our budget, but for us simply to stand up here and say, "Do you know what?”
“In fact, the message that I got from the Minister, dated 2 December, said that the trust's quality team had recently undertaken a review of some areas and that he was now happy. Well, I have to tell you that, had it not been for the energetic action of the woman's daughter, I am not sure that that would have been the case. Here is the point that she made: in this case, which I am only using as an example, there is one nurse and one care assistant to look after one wing. When somebody has a problem, they have to go and look after it, meaning that everybody else is left with no support. We have to find a way of calculating how much resource is required. When people bring out the minimum standards, they are not sufficient, and they have to be costed.”
“I am glad that the Minister took the opportunity to make that point. He thinks it is important. However, this is an important issue for me. I have a family member who, only this weekend, went into a nursing home in my constituency. I have also written to the Minister, as he will be aware, and I have to say I was dissatisfied with the response that came back. <BR /> <BR />I had a constituent who came to me and said that she had not been to see her mother for a short time, and, when she went in, her mother, who suffers from third-stage Parkinson's, had lost about a third of her body weight. She went through all the systems about whether there was any record of it, and they were all manual. Nobody knew how to use the computer system. When I took her to the RQIA, the response that I got back was, frankly, confused and convoluted.”
“I am not the Father of the House, but I had to get my calculator out to check whether I was in that over-65 group. I only miss it by a year or two.”
“It is not often that I agree with Mr Poots, but I agree with him on this. The issue about top-ups tells the story. I have to say that many of our nursing homes are trying to make do on very scant income. One of the things that we ought to recognise is that, when you give a lot of bad publicity to nursing homes, there is no differential between the good ones and the bad ones. That actually puts fear into our community. I accept the point that he was making: that a little bit of extra money is required and that we currently do not have that money. I am also struck by the big rise predicted in the number of older people in Northern Ireland. The BBC kindly told me that the number of people over 65 will increase by a quarter by 2022.”
“I just want to ask this question, because I have followed his advice and listened to most of the debate. Where is it appropriate to make the argument about DCAL or something else? I could answer his question by saying that, for the smallest Department with only £100 million, a 10% cut is £10 million, which is a mere drop in the ocean. We would like to make that argument, and I think that we should. Where should that argument be made if we do not have the opportunity in this place?”
“It makes a nonsense of this place to say we are going to carry on burning coal, when you have only to look at the amount that we recently spent on Ballylumford. This part of Northern Ireland spent £17 million to reduce the emissions coming out of Ballylumford just to keep the lights on. <BR /> <BR />That was to do with pollutants and NOx. Read the report: coal is not good for your health. In the long term, coal is not the solution. Yes, it is cheaper, but coal is the fuel of the past. We should be investing for the future. This is a spurious argument based on electioneering, and it does not do the people of Northern Ireland any good.”
“Yes, two minutes. Thank you for all the hot air. You want to wait for a report to come out. All that I can offer you on this is that I am a chemical engineer by background, which means that I do study such things as particulates, but for this contribution I rely on National Energy Action, which some of you will know. It is a national charity that aims to eradicate fuel poverty and campaigns for greater responsibility in heating. <BR /> <BR />It provides some statistics, which I will summarise, because I do not have long. Yes, coal is cheaper, but coal is inefficient. The statistics that Mr Agnew brought out prove it. If you really want to heat your home properly, you use other fuels. Where possible, if you are really serious about fuel poverty, you also get better insulation. <BR /> <BR />Coal is cheaper; coal is also a bigger pollutant.”
“I think I have said this before, but I want to reiterate the point: I hope that this is a regeneration Bill and not just a social deprivation Bill. I see the promotion of economic activity and all the other issues. It is right that we should define those things, but it is a regeneration Bill. A rising tide lifts all boats. We want to make sure that we regenerate all areas.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. I will be brief. It is an issue, Minister, that I think requires a fair amount of deliberation. If it is regeneration we are after, you might even consider whether those councils that have large commercial rates coming in — the non-domestic rate — are advantaged in the process. I think that you will need to find a way of concentrating resources appropriately in areas that need it most.”
“Minister, just while you are on the total sum of money that you might be handing over, have you any thoughts on how you are going to allocate it? Will it be per capita? What council gets what, and what scheme do you have in mind for that?”
“Can I just follow up on that point? I hope that that is what the Bill is about. There are so many reasons in our society for people to say that they are not going to do something. I understand that everybody has an opinion and is concerned, but we need to have a central body that has the absolute — or, rather than absolute, the appropriate — power and authority to get things done. That is really what I am looking for from the Regeneration Bill. It is not about public realm, though that will be part of it; it is about how we regenerate our communities. We have plenty of areas that people say something should be done about, but it always seems to be impossible to do it. I am hoping that this Bill is going to give people the power to do something about their local communities.”
“I wonder whether guidance, as part of the legislation, is strong enough to do that, or do we have to go through the Bill line by line and say, "This is what you will use the money for" and "This is not what you will use the money for". It is a procedural way of encouraging people to do what we think they ought to do. I wonder whether the Member has any advice on how we should amend the Bill in that regard.”
“I thank the Member for giving way. I apologise for not catching your eye earlier. You will find no argument from me about people using funds that are meant for regeneration for something else, however worthy. It may be that some of the issues that you listed deserve funding, but when you take it from one pot and use it for something else, you do both a disservice. <BR /> <BR />I would like to hear my learned friend say that there must be a way of giving some latitude. In our environment, we find that there are too many reasons for people to say, "No, you can't" do something, "That's not possible" or "That can't happen". We want to encourage people to do things, but we want to encourage them to do the proper thing.”
“I am sure that the Minister has that on his agenda and that he will probably deal with it in his summing up.”
“I have to say that, at the moment, I have no confidence that the public realm is really working, that our planning thing really does urban regeneration or that we are in a position to deal with fuel poverty or any of the other areas of social deprivation. This is an interesting opportunity. It is at the early stages. I will be interested to see how it goes through Committee, and, although I am not on the Committee, I assure you that I take a considerable interest in it. <BR /> <BR />My final point is that, at some stage, we will probably have to deal with the transfer of personnel. How many of the people who currently work for the Department will go across to local government? Is there some management scheme that will enable us to deal with that?”