Mike Nesbitt
Strangford · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“Think public service, wisdom, generosity and courtesy. Think integrity, insight and curiosity, the lack of which is a key criticism of the two public inquiry reports of recent days.”
“I spoke during Members' statements earlier about the untimely passing of the Western Trust's chair, Dr Tom Frawley CBE. I repeat my condolences to his family, his friends and his many admirers.”
“I absolutely share the Member's ambition to see people living in the community. The trusts provide a range of evidence-informed programmes for individuals who are awaiting assessment. For children and young people, early intervention teams deliver proactive needs-led programmes that are neurodiversity-affirming and trauma-informed.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Western Trust has assured me that it has undertaken a comprehensive early engagement exercise with stakeholders, involving all political parties, local businesses, service users, community groups, the Patient and Client Council (PCC), local media, community planning partners and Departments, including mine and D…”
“The role played by social workers in delivering safeguarding and family support interventions is complex and challenging. The work frequently pivots on multidisciplinary collaboration, with parents and carers positioned as partners in the formulation and delivery of safeguarding and support plans.”
“I fully recognise the impact of the current delays on individuals and families. The situation has arisen due to a combination of factors, including funding that falls short of objectively assessed need and previously missed opportunities to reform health and social care delivery.”
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“Mr Speaker, at the risk of annoying you, may I refer briefly to the MOT question? My car went through a test and retest in Newtownards in recent days, and the professionalism, friendliness and willingness to help of the staff at Jubilee Road need to be recorded as exemplary. <BR /> <BR />My question is about connectivity and Belfast City Airport. What can the Minister and her colleague the Minister for the Economy do to help the City Airport survive this latest challenge with the collapse of Stobart Air.”
“I thank the Minister for coming to the House in such an open and transparent manner. In his judgement, Justice Horner said that officials had committed "a manifest error". Can the Minister inform the House of the potential implications for those officials and for the officials who, RHI-style, did not take any minutes of a crucial meeting in September 2015 and, indeed, the implications for the centre of procurement excellence, given the failure to perform such a basic function as minute taking?”
“I know that a question has been posed for the Minister in his response today: I look forward to that. That is one of the important issues that the Committee can look at as we enter the scrutiny stage of the Bill's progress. As for today, the Ulster Unionist Party is more than happy to support the Bill.”
“I am also taken — I am sympathetic and empathetic to it — by the Chair's idea that we need to look at miscarriages. I look forward to drilling into the implications of that and whether we should amend the Bill accordingly. <BR /> <BR />The only other concern that I have is the idea of a 26-week qualifying period. The Minister said that that is simply consistent with other statutory entitlements, but, as we all agree that suffering the loss of a young child is of unspeakable pain for a parent, is there not a logic that says that that is compounded if you are just into a new job, working in an alien environment in which you have no friends or support network? Perhaps you are more exposed to the pain of bereavement in those circumstances than in any other.”
“I support the Bill. I have not been party to any of the briefings, debates or discussions in Committee to date, but I look forward to Committee Stage. I am more than happy to support the principle of the Bill. It is absolutely right that we level up the rights of parents here with those of parents in the rest of the United Kingdom. I take the point that has been made by some, including Mr Stalford, that we need an exact definition of "parent". It needs to go beyond biological parenting. When I was a child, when the school wrote to our household, the letter always started, "Dear parent/guardian". That was a long time ago and the language has changed, so we need to nail it down, which we are more than capable of doing at Committee Stage.”
“I thank the Minister for that answer, and I join you, Deputy Speaker, in wishing him well in his new role, important as it is. <BR /> <BR />The Minister will be aware that Stobart Air was to be replaced in 2022 by Emerald Airways. Is there any possibility of advancing that company taking over the routes? If so, we need to know whether it has an air operator certificate and a lease on a sufficient number of planes to occupy the routes. Can you address those issues, please, Minister?”
“The Minister has been consistent in welcoming cooperation, be it from Ireland, Great Britain or further afield, if it improves patient outcomes. Will he update the House on the dual registration issue, please?”
“Mr Aiken has promised a pub crawl for former leaders of unionist parties. I can say only that the critics of your successor as leader of the DUP would say to Mr Aiken at this point, "We're going to need a bigger pub".”
“On Friday, like everybody else, I saw Mrs Foster be the exact opposite of angry as she sang Sinatra to Gareth Gordon. It reminded me of when I bumped into her in the corridor upstairs not long after I stood down as Ulster Unionist Party leader. She said, "Look, there is a man for whom the weight of the world has just been lifted off his shoulders". I hope that it is the same for you, Mrs Foster, because, whatever our differences down the years, public service is what we agree on, and you have given supreme public service. <BR /> <BR />I wish you well for the future as you open a new chapter, and, indeed, I believe, as you write some chapters. I will look forward to reading your book as much as I hope you look forward to reading mine. In the meantime, of course, we have a pub crawl to look forward to.”
“I also recall, not long after I was first elected here, being on the radio, criticising the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment. Suddenly, I was not alone, because joining by phone from the back of her ministerial car was Mrs Foster, admonishing me and defending her Department. Figuring out that the best form of defence was attack, I suggested that I was getting somewhere because she was so angry. That was followed by a pause that was long enough for the programme host to wonder whether we had lost the line to Fermanagh. We had not. Mrs Foster replied — and, may I say, in a tone that you could not accuse of lacking in malice — by saying that that was not her being angry, and that, furthermore, I did not want to risk my luck by making her angry.”
“I believe that Mrs Foster and I first met on a trip to London in 1998. UTV took a number of critics to Downing Street to debate the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement with Tony Blair. At dinner afterwards, I said to Mrs Foster, "I understand that you have been tipped as a potential leader of the Ulster Unionist Party". She smiled sweetly at me and said, "Not after tonight".”
“I beg to introduce the Defamation Bill [NIA Bill 25/17-22], which is a Bill to amend the law of defamation.”
“I thank the Minister. I am sure that he is aware that it is the third-highest oversubscribed school in the area after Lagan College and Saintfield. It has been up to 88% oversubscribed in recent years, yet its admission number is a mere 68 and its largest temporary variation in recent years was a mere four. Does the Member support, either as Minister or as a local MLA, the school's desire to move from an enrolment of 350 to 500 and to have a sixth form centre? Importantly, will he work with me to ensure that the development plan proposing a mid-Down integrated school does not harm Saintfield High School?”
“What steps is the Minister's Department taking to ensure that hospitality outlets can source product from local agri-food and drinks organisations? For example, is there a dedicated website? Are there meet-and-greet events to ensure that hospitality outlets are aware of what they can source locally?”
“Engagement is key, whatever your constitutional preference. <BR /> <BR />The point has been made about why the devolved Administrations were not consulted. Let me give you a theory. I will speculate that the Secretary of State and his advisers looked at 'New Decade, New Approach' and saw a commitment to appoint a panel of experts to advise the Ad Hoc Committee on a Bill of Rights, which has now met for over a year and still awaits the appointment of that panel of experts. Maybe he concluded that consulting the Executive Office would be the political equivalent of putting it into a cosmic black hole from which nothing, not even light, ever emerges.”
“That will be measured in a variety of ways, including by the quality of our public services and by attracting inward investment from the United States, which, I think we can all agree, is no bad thing. <BR /> <BR />Mr Buckley says that perhaps the problem here is that republicans have had it all their own way for too long. I gently suggest to Mr Buckley that we also need to examine unionism and put a mirror up to ourselves, because, if we do what we have done before, such as when Ian Paisley and Jim Molyneaux cancelled their trip to America in February 1994 because Gerry Adams had been granted a visa to appear at the same conference, we cannot then turn round and accuse the White House of being green in its Irish politics. We could, but, frankly, that would be bonkers, because we have to have a presence.”
“The only problem that I have with that is that what we have here is a consociational arrangement for government, and I have to accept that, on some days, I will be represented by a republican, on other days, by a member of the nationalist community, and, sometimes, by a member of the DUP. I will leave it to your imagination to figure out which I would find least agreeable. <BR /> <BR />Mr Ringland supports the Union, as do the UK Government, in just the same way that the Government of Ireland supports constitutional change. I do not believe that needs to be an issue, because, whatever your constitutional preference, surely what we need to do is make Northern Ireland work.”
“I think this is a very clever move. It is the business equivalent of the reverse takeover, when the smaller organisation makes the move. Rather than waiting to see what Joe Biden's Administration will do, the Northern Ireland Office has gone first. I applaud it for that imaginative thinking. <BR /> <BR />I should also declare an interest in that Trevor Ringland and I were colleagues during the 2010 general election campaign. I wondered whether that would be the elephant in the room, but Mr Sheehan said quite clearly that he does not want a unionist representing him.”
“The fact is that the pandemic has presented us with unprecedented challenges; in fact, it has upset the balance that we cherish between freedom of assembly — the right to get together — and other rights, such as the right to protest. Everybody who has spoken about the regulations from time to time in the House has made it clear that, while they support the regulations, they do so reluctantly because of the impact that they have on that fine balance. Perhaps the best thing that we as an Assembly can do, therefore, is to acknowledge what has happened, with there being no prosecutions, look to see whether there are lessons to be learned and move on — to use the current phrase — to build back better.”
“Does that not raise the question of whether there is a systemic problem in the PSNI or, indeed, in the criminal justice system? In my role on the Policing Board, I am certainly struck by the relationship between the Chief Constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions. That was perhaps signalled in the letter that Mr Herron wrote to Mr Byrne on 2 April about one particular funeral that seemed to highlight certain tensions or perhaps differences in the interpretation of the COVID regulations. <BR /> <BR />It seems to me that the interpretation of the regulations is key to what is going on here. Is there a right answer to dealing with the pandemic? Probably not. A huge number of judgement calls have to be made by organisations such as the police and by individuals such as the Chief Constable.”
“I declare an interest as a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board. I thank Mr Carroll for bringing the Matter of the Day to the House. <BR /> <BR />It seems to me that, over the last 50 years, the police, be it the RUC or the Police Service of Northern Ireland, have come under constant scrutiny, criticism and censure for the way in which they have policed just about every aspect of human life. Over the last 18 months, however, it strikes me, every time that they have come under public scrutiny, it has been about an incident related to the COVID regulations, be it funerals, the anniversary event at Sean Graham's bookmakers on the Ormeau Road, the swimmers at Helen's Bay — the so-called Helen's Baywatch — or, indeed, the Black Lives Matter protests.”
“Minister, for clarity, I understand that Van Morrison is scheduled to appear at the Europa Hotel over four nights starting on 10 June. Are you saying that, if there is an appropriate risk assessment, those concerts can go ahead? Asking for a friend.”
“Given that the coronavirus restrictions are renewed every three weeks through the Executive Office, can the Minister confirm whether, if there is no First Minister or deputy First Minister, those restrictions and regulations will fall?”
“To add a little balance, perhaps, to Mr Sheehan's framing of his question, does the Minister agree that tarring and feathering, so-called punishment beatings, the detonation of no-warning car bombs, the abduction, torture and killing of people and the hiding of their bodies — the so-called disappeared — and murder all represent gross human rights abuses?”
“If the Minister agrees with those statements, as I do, why has that not happened yet?”
“I, too, welcome the report and congratulate Dr Purdy, Jackie Redpath and the rest of the team. Some reports are revelatory, others are confirmatory. I believe that this one falls into the latter category. I am interested in:”
“— changed their mind about the Stormont House Agreement legacy proposals, but, again, that is probably a debate for another day.”
“There is also legal aid. Compared with any other region of the United Kingdom, our spend on legal aid is disproportionate. We therefore have huge questions to answer about the Department of Justice's budget for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and what we ask that police service to deliver. <BR /> <BR />Reference has been made to the legacy agreements from the Stormont House Agreement. I put on record once again, because some people fail to grasp this, that not every party in the House signed up to those legacy proposals. The Ulster Unionist Party did not. Let us remember that it appears that the United Kingdom Government have also —”
“The need for the task force will not go away this financial year; it will be with us for some years to come. We have to start to address those issues. <BR /> <BR />The point is made in this Budget that a lot of the services from the Department of Justice, such as policing, prisons and the rest, are demand-led, but we can look at certain areas in which to make savings and recalibrate the way in which we spend the budget. We have a segregated prison regime for paramilitary prisoners. Why do we do that? We call them criminals when they are outside prison, and then we allow them to be paramilitary leaders when they are in prison. It comes not only at a financial cost but at a cost to society's perception.”
“It is not baselined, and it is not in next year's budget or in the budget the year after that or the year after that. If it costs £5 million for 100 new officers, in order to get to 7,500, we are missing £34·8 million. We are nearly £35 million shy. <BR /> <BR />It is not just in recruitment that we have that issue. The paramilitary crime task force is currently £5·8 million short of target. Nobody is saying that that money will not be found through the likes of June monitoring, but, again, it is not baselined. Is that acceptable for such an important work stream to tackle terrorism and paramilitary criminality? We have seen that recently in the north-west, and part of the plan for the paramilitary crime task force is to open a new unit in the north-west, yet the funding is not there in the baseline.”
“<BR /> <BR />Specifically, we have a commitment that we all recognise in New Decade, New Approach to increase the headcount of the Police Service of Northern Ireland from 7,000 to 7,500. You will also note that NDNA puts no timescale on that transformation. In this budgetary year, the plan is to get from 7,000 to 7,100. That will be funded not through baseline but through Barnett consequentials. It costs £9·8 million just to maintain the status quo of the 7,000 figure, because of the churn of retirements, injury on duty and all the rest. <BR /> <BR />It will cost £2·5 million in recruitment to get the extra 100 officers, and the annual cost will be £5 million. If you add the churn of £9·8 million to the annual £5 million, you have £14·8 million, which we do not have.”
“<BR /> <BR />I think that we can all agree that, if people are getting to a Friday with more money in their back pockets, with a good sense of their own mental health and well-being and with a feeling that they have an equal shot at success as the next person, they can transform our economy, and our economy can transform them and their lives. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker. That was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party. <BR /> <BR />As this point, I declare an interest as a member of the Policing Board because I want to talk about what the Budget says about the policing budget. Quite disturbingly, it admits that the funding requirements far outweigh the Department of Justice budget allocation and, therefore, the extent to which the priorities of the Department of Justice can be met.”
“The other big issue that the Minister and I agree on is the need to bring forward a prosperity agenda for the citizens of this country. I am most obliged to my party leader, Doug Beattie, who, today, has asked me to become the party spokesman on the economy, which is a role that I fulfilled when I first joined the Assembly 10 year ago. My theme will be a prosperity agenda, with more people getting out of bed with a sense of purpose, with a worthwhile job to be done and with the assurance that people like the Minister of Finance and the Minister for the Economy have their backs.”
“It is nice to see a bit of passion being injected into a Budget debate. I am sorry to say that I missed the Minister's opening remarks. I imagine that I would agree with some of the trends mentioned and the high-level remarks made. I agree, for example, that we need multi-year Budgets, which many Members mentioned during the debate. It is high time that we removed the toxic uncertainty that accompanies 12-month Budgets and the negative impact that they have on the ability to deliver services. <BR /> <BR />I am sure that the Minister agrees with me on the need to better coordinate the Budget with the Programme for Government, which was another theme of the debate. Going forward, there may be a third issue to be locked in: a Northern Ireland-specific bill of rights. Of course, that is a debate for another day.”
“As recorded by nidirect, there are 337 electric-charging points across Northern Ireland. Anecdotally, I have been told that up to half of those are not working at any given time. Can the Minister confirm that and also that, as it appears, there are none in the Strangford constituency?”
“I welcome the Chief Constable's saying that he will now try to rebuild confidence in the community. As members of the Policing Board, we all have a duty to weigh in behind him. The community deserves it, and the officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland deserve it too.”
“Can we take part in whatever criminality we want on the streets of Belfast and, when the police come, just give them a steely look and they will back off?”
“Where is the paper trail that records the communications between the funeral organisers and the PSNI? The problem with the lack of such a paper trail is that many people will suspect that the trade-off was very simple and that the PSNI said to the funeral organisers, "Promise us that there will be no volley of shots and no beret or gloves on that coffin and we will back off. We will effectively surrender the streets of west Belfast to the republican movement". <BR /> <BR />There is evidence in the report of an inspector who was in a vehicle that did not stop at any time because it would have been "interpreted as provocative". He stated:”
“I hear the criticism that the regulations were confusing, but I also remember the gold commander coming to the Policing Board in April and saying that he and his team were clear about the regulations. <BR /> <BR />HMICFRS stated that those three priorities are a matter of "moral and political" judgement. Politically, I understand that, with policing, there is a balance to be found and a choice to be made between upholding the letter of the law and maintaining the peace. You do not send policemen in riot gear into the middle of a funeral. I get that, but you negotiate beforehand. The problem is that there is no proper paper trail. Do you know what it reminds me of, Mr Speaker? RHI. Remember that Sir Patrick Coghlin told us that it was government by Post-it notes.”
“If I had lost a relative or loved one, I would be appalled if we were still debating that loss in the public square 11 months on. It did not have to be like this. The funeral could have been done differently. <BR /> <BR />I declare an interest as a member of the Policing Board. Yesterday, I was there for the briefing from HMICFRS and to receive the report. The three priorities for the police were to avoid "serious disorder", to avoid the trappings of paramilitaries and:”
“I thank the Minister for the answer. ExcludedNI would be interested to know, with regard to the COVID restrictions business support scheme (CRBSS) part B, when her Department intends to release payments for the period beginning 31 March.”
“Will the Minister clarify whether she is saying that there is no budget for the subregional stadia programme in the current financial year? If that is the case, when does she expect that money to be freed up?”
“Will the Minister give an update on her thinking on the merits of allowing those convicted of terrorist offences to continue to serve their sentences in segregated regimes? To be clear, that is to do with the merits for society, not for those prisoners.”
“We had to be selected to stand for office and be picked by the electorate at the election. <BR /> <BR />There is merit in looking at it again, but this debate is too narrow.”
“If we could only step back and look at the full jigsaw, we would probably find how we want to recalibrate and reconfigure it. <BR /> <BR />I would love to support the motion or the amendment, but I am afraid that I can do neither. I was tempted by the amendment, but the time frame is not realistic. <BR /> <BR />We also need to think about social mobility, as that is part of the debate. Was it not the late, great John Hume who said that it was the 11-plus that allowed him to be socially mobile? <BR /> <BR />There is merit in selection. Would a school select its choir by saying that the first 50 children through the school gate on Monday morning were the choir? Would you select your Gaelic football team, Association football team or rugby football team from a ballot? No, there is selection in life. We know that.”
“Should we not think about the fact that, inside every child, there are multiple intelligences and that one can spark the other? <BR /> <BR />When it comes to selection, I remember the late Gerry Burns. It must be over 20 years ago that Martin McGuinness commissioned him to look at the issue. As part of that research, the Department of Education conducted what it claimed was the biggest public opinion survey that we had ever undertaken in this country. It was a household survey. I do not have the results to hand, but I remember that a significant majority of parents were in favour of academic selection. Equally, however, a very large majority of parents were against the 11-plus. They wanted something better and fairer. However, I have not heard that fairer/better alternative in the debate.”
“It rained so hard that the playing pitches were flooded and, for something to do, the teachers sent us on a cross-country run. It turned out that I could run. I was challenged that if I could do so well out there, could I not find a classroom in which I could do a bit better than twenty-third out of 24. That was the first time that a teacher or adult gave me a reason to believe that my natural place in life might not be twenty-third out of 24. That transformed me, and I left school with an Irish schools athletics vest and a ticket to a fairly famous university. <BR /> <BR />Was that because it was a grammar school or was it because it was a school that realised that there are multiple intelligences? Do we not put too much emphasis on one intelligence, which we call "academic"?”
“I have always believed that there is a spark of ability, creativity and talent inside every child. It is our job, and that of parents and teachers, to create the circumstances in which the child can find that spark and develop it. A lot of my thinking is influenced by the writings and thoughts of the late, great Ken Robinson, a professor of creativity, who talked about the "element" in children. <BR /> <BR />When I went to post-primary school, I did so, in the language of the day, as a dunce. That is how I was regarded. In any academic test, you could guarantee that I would come twenty-third out of 24 in the classroom. My peers and teachers had written me off. I suspect, although they were too polite to say so, that my parents had written me off too. Do you know what changed everything? A wet Wednesday afternoon.”
“We send children to school at the age of four and hope that they will stay there until 16, 17 or 18. We need to take a bigger look at what we are trying to achieve for our children.”
“That one second could have been his most famous intervention of all time. <BR /> <BR />I stand both as a grammar-school boy, from a grammar school in east Belfast, which seems to be the centre of the academic universe for this debate, and as the current chair of a board of governors of a non-selective post-primary school in my constituency. I have seen both sides of the argument. It seems that we are discussing just one small piece in a very large jigsaw.”