Jim Allister
North Antrim · Traditional Unionist Voice · Northern Ireland
“<BR /> <BR />Last week, a 'News Letter' editorial rightly drew attention to the fact that there is a chorus of demand that it is up to the British Government to pay for that, but no pressure whatsoever on the GAA — the primary beneficiary — which still persists that its contribution will be a miserly £15 million.”
“Public money, we are constantly told, is in short supply and scarce. I am sure that it is, and will continue to be so. Yet, while many in the House pay lip service to the need to prioritise health, there seems to be a majority here who would prioritise public spending on a sporting facility, namely Casement Park.”
“That editorial stated that the DUP "should make clear" its view on the Casement Park costs. Yet, yesterday, we had the launch of the DUP manifesto and not a mention of Casement Park. We have a Minister — Minister Lyons — who has ruled out clawback for non-GAA use of that stadium.”
“Therefore, the Minister comes to the House with a proposal that, effectively, has been written in Brussels, because it tells us how much we can give to our fishing industry in Northern Ireland.”
“The Minister told us that this is a scheme under the Fisheries Act, which it is, whereby all the devolved regions and England and Wales can make their own provision.”
“Rather than removing the green lane, the introduction of the new customs border arrangements will further advance the development of the green lane, thereby helping to make the Irish Sea border and our alienation from the rest of the UK more firmly established.”
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“Insult is added by the fact, as has been referred to by others, that schools such as Carrick Primary School in Lurgan and Harryville in Ballymena, which the Minister recently visited, that are supremely integrated but do not have it above the door are second-class citizens. That is the purpose of the Bill — to make them second-class in education — and that is what it will do.”
“It is about creating a hierarchy in education in which at the top of the pile for preferential treatment and statutory support is one sector and one sector only, and that will feed down into detriment to others. That is the intent; that is the clear purpose of the Bill. I come to Mr Buckley's point: faced with that and knowing that and being unhappy with that direction of travel and knowing that that is the certain destination of the Bill, if there is an emergency cord that you can pull to stop it but you refuse to pull it, there is not much point in talking about being opposed to something. That is what it comes down to. <BR /> <BR />I say to the House that we are about to take a retrograde step. We will bin any concept of equality in the education sector and replace it with supremacy for one sector.”
“That is why she and others in the House who voted down Mr Butler's amendment are plainly on the side of creating detriment to others. During the various debates on the Bill, that was the test of the question, "Is this about creating detriment to others, or is it not?". By voting down that amendment, the sponsor, Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Greens all demonstrated that they were in the business of creating the very detriment that that amendment would have prevented. That is why it can be said with utmost authority that the Bill will create detriment to others and is intended to do so. If it was not, it would have been so amended. The fact that it was not is confirmation of that. That is the purpose.”
“It is a sad reflection of woke politics. <BR /> <BR />Let us be clear: the Bill is intended to and will, to the detriment of others, provide privilege. The Alliance Party talks much about equality, yet here it is spawning inequality. Here is that party saying, "We want to create an unequal, uneven playing field, because we want to give a special place — a supreme place — to one sector". That is the purpose, intent and effect of the Bill. The sponsor intervened to say that Mr Butler's amendment would have done more than he claimed. Why, then, did the sponsor not table an amendment to the amendment, if it was going wrong? She had the opportunity to table an amendment to Mr Butler's amendment, but she did not, because she did not want anything that would impede the supremacy, the privilege, the special status, the special advantage.”
“In voting against that, the House was voting to permit that which causes detriment to other education sectors and rejecting the protection that would have prevented that. No Member can stand to their feet in the House and say that they do not support that which is capable of providing elevation and supremacy to the detriment of others if they voted down the very amendment that would have prevented that.”
“If it was not intended to be so, the House had the perfect opportunity at Further Consideration Stage to put in place something that would have stultified and prevented that: Mr Butler's amendment, which was referred to recently. Let us read that amendment:”
“When something like that — a statutory obligation "to encourage, facilitate and support" — is unique to one sector, that sector is placed above all others. That, undoubtedly, is the purpose and intent of the sponsor and of the Bill. Whether it was or was not, that will be the outworking of the Bill. <BR /> <BR />Those who have tried to gainsay what the controlled sector representative bodies and the CCMS, who were not important enough to be consulted, have to say are trying to kick up dust to conceal the reality that they are absolutely right: there is elevation, there is supremacy and there is preference in the Bill, and it is for one sector and one sector only.”
“Particularly when we come to a Bill's Final Stage, it is not the warm, woolly words of the sponsor or any supporter of the Bill that matter. It is not the explanatory memorandum that matters. It is the hard, cold text of the final version of the Bill that matters, and that is what we need to judge today. If we do that honestly, there is no escaping the reality that the Bill is about putting one sector of education above all others and on a different footing. It is about supremacy, because there is no other sector for which there will be a statutory duty "to encourage, facilitate and support". That will be the benchmark against which every action or inaction on integrated education will be judged, and it will be the ripe harvest of judicial review territory. It is unique to one sector.”
“Is the Member surprised that the Bill sponsor does not seem to know her own Bill? Her last intervention is totally contradicted by clause 1(3), which says that subsections (1) and (2), which provide for her new definition of integrated education, "apply for the purposes of" the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989. The very thing that she denied to the Member is there in black and white.”
“Is that not the very territory that takes the Bill into the creation of supremacy for one sector over another? Is there another sector where there is a statutory duty to "encourage, facilitate and support"? There is not. The Member knows that. The only sector with that statutory duty will be the integrated sector. Therein lies the supremacy that the Member is trying to create for that sector to the disadvantage of others. That is confirmed by the fact that she voted down the amendment to ensure that there would be no adverse financial consequences for other sectors.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. Does his Department have an estimate of the extent of herd reduction that the Bill will produce?”
“By rejecting amendment No 17, the House made up my mind on the Bill. Therefore, I will not vote for it.”
“I have no difficulty in accepting Mr Chestnutt's observations about climate change, but the Member who intervened obviously has, because Mr Chestnutt was one of those who argued loudest that we should not go beyond the Climate Change Committee's recommendations of 82% — something that Mr McAleer was deaf to, that he voted against, that he insisted on rejecting. I take no lectures about the leadership of the farmers' union and its view from Mr McAleer, who demonstrably indicated that he rejected the primary advice by rushing headlong into voting for the contribution to the decimation of farming that the Bill represents. <BR /> <BR />I am quite clear: amendment No 17 was a litmus test not just of whether we supported farming but of whether the Bill was ever worthy of support.”
“<BR /> <BR />I said in the last debate that amendment No 17 was the litmus test of whether the House was on the side of or against farming. Alliance, the SDLP, Sinn Féin and the Greens clearly declared themselves against farming interests by voting down amendment No 17. That was the litmus test for me. It is also the litmus test for the Bill.”
“Judging by current conditions, it is unlikely to be able to make anything like the contribution that it has hitherto made, yet it is in those circumstances that the House is saying to Northern Ireland, which produces food to feed 10 million people, "We're going to impose restrictions on you so that you produce less". That is in a context where the world needs more, and we are going to do it because we are all signed up to this wokeism about climate change. I really do say this to the House: it is wrong-headed, particularly now in the circumstances that the situation in Ukraine has created. Now, we are going to compound that by impinging upon production in agriculture in this Province. That I cannot and will not support.”
“2) Bill certainly started off better than Clare Bailey's Bill, but whether it has ended up much better is very debatable. It is a flawed piece of legislation because, the methane concession apart, it embraces the net zero ambition — or compulsion, indeed — by 2050. Inevitably, even with the methane concession, it will harm our key agriculture industry. There will be herd reduction because of the Bill; herd reduction that will be voted for by virtually everyone in the Assembly, and that is at a time when food production in the world has never been more perilous. <BR /> <BR />If someone is looking for a code red alert, they will find it in Ukraine in respect of food production. Where is Ukraine going to be, this year and in future years, as a producer of the vital wheat and cereal that helps to feed much of the world?”
“I have no difficulty with issues pertaining to making our planet as pristine as we can. That is sensible, right and necessary. I have no difficulty with reducing harmful emissions as much as we can, and I have no difficulty with issues pertaining to clean energy. My goodness, I represent North Antrim, where we have Wrightbus as the lead in the magnificent work that is being done on hydrogen-fuelled buses. Where I do have difficulty and what I dissent from is the woke consensus that man can change the climate. Of course, we all should aspire to leave this planet in pristine condition and a better position than we found it, but to suggest that puny man can, by himself, change the climate is, I think, something that has been swept along by a tide of obsession and hysteria that does not bear scrutiny. <BR /> <BR />The Climate Change (No.”
“The Member says "do something right". Why, then, did she do something wrong by increasing the accessibility of gambling, which is the primary product of the Bill?”
“It seems that, despite all of the platitudes and politically correct words about the scourge of gambling, the net effect of the Bill is to increase accessibility and thereby compound the problem. For that reason, it is not a Bill that I can support.”
“Even if it is correct that there was not time to adequately deal with the many issues flowing from online gambling, that does not explain why the primary effect of the Bill is to liberalise the laws in respect of betting shops. We all know of the huge health implications and difficulties of addiction. We have just had quoted to us the figure of 40,000, which is the number of people with serious gambling issues in Northern Ireland, and many more are on that road, yet the primary effect of the Bill is to maximise the availability of gambling by increasing weekly accessibility by 17%. The extra opening hours are feeding the addiction, so I struggle to understand the priorities of the Minister in this case.”
“If the Member wishes to get a solution, that is the territory that he needs to look at. <BR /> <BR />As regards the Budget, I reiterate this point: either it is the proper control mechanism that we post it to be; or it is something that we think is just routine and to be nodded through. Sure it is only £24·5 billion, anyhow. Really? To say, "It does not matter. We do not need to have control over the headroom; we can just hand it away", is truly shocking from a Minister who thinks that a Budget is only a routine matter. It is anything but.”
“Institutions that have been denuded of the power to make fundamental laws affecting our economy and trade by virtue of the fact that they have been subjugated to foreign control are not institutions worthy of that name. Anyone who thinks that they can simply carry on as if the protocol has not robbed this legislative Assembly of powers over key functions is deluded. The Member and the other rigorous implementers who want to hand control to a foreign place need to look at themselves and at where we are proceeding to. There cannot be a functioning Executive or institutions so long as we are subjugated by the ill-gotten sovereignty taken by the EU over Northern Ireland. The answer lies in the EU giving up that ill-gotten sovereignty and restoring the sovereignty where it should lie for those matters.”
“In a moment. <BR /> <BR />With that runaway headroom of £181 million, we are saying to Departments that we are not interested in holding them to account and that we are not interested in accountability. We are saying that they can spend as they will and that we will not restrict them or place their spending within any limits. That comes from a Minister who says, "What about it?" He tells us that a Budget Bill is only a routine matter. It is not a routine matter; it is the fundamental control mechanism of any Assembly over any Executive spending. I find that careless attitude to public money utterly appalling.”
“The key phrase is "within the limits authorised".”
“In that answer, "this" is the headroom. A Budget Bill is anything but a routine matter. If that is the fiscal attitude to the spending of public money, it is little wonder that we are in the deteriorating situation that we are in. The Budget Bill is the fundamental control mechanism. I need go no further than the explanatory and financial memorandum that comes with the Budget Bill. Let me read paragraph 3:”
“In the case of this Budget Bill, however, we are saying, "Here is your allocation, and here is £181 million on top of that. We don't really care how you spend that. We're not going to hold you accountable for it". That is an absurd situation for the Minister to have brought us to. I have never heard of there being headroom of £181 million in a Budget. <BR /> <BR />I asked the Minister a question for written answer — AQW 30168/17-22 — about the £181 million. In his answer, he said something that I found utterly astounding:”
“At times, we need to remind ourselves what a Budget Bill is. It is primarily the Assembly's essential control mechanism in respect of Departments and arm's-length bodies. It is the mechanism by which we, the elected representatives, give authority to those Departments to spend money. That is our money: public money. A Budget is therefore a critical accountability and control mechanism. <BR /> <BR />That brings me to my primary point. Astoundingly, we have built into the Budget Bill headroom of £181 million, in respect of which there is no accountability to the Assembly. The way in which a Budget should work is that you say to an individual Department or body that you control, "Here is your allocation. Based on the calculation, this is what you are getting, and this is why you are getting it".”
“I do. I think that it is a more sensible time period.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I also shouted for the amendment.”
“To be absolutely clear, is the Minister saying that, contrary to what she initially told the House, which was that funding could not be released without Executive approval, it could now be released on foot of a positive response from other Ministers? If so, has she got the necessary money?”
“The real question is this: do we leave the shambles as is, or do we try to make it a little less shambolic? It will still be shambolic.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, I would never do that. The Member makes a fair point, as does Mr Pollen. The surge and urge to get things through blinds us to bad legislation. The Bill, even with the Minister's amendments, will be bad legislation. Amendment No 1 makes a dog's dinner of that clause and some others. Through the shenanigans of Sinn Féin wanting to be crowd-pleasers in West Belfast and not to be upstaged by Mr Carroll, the House has produced a veritable dog's dinner of a Bill, and you can thank Sinn Féin for that. <BR /> <BR />I despair of the progress that has been manifested here and of where we have gone in the Bill. Frankly, some of these amendments, on their own merits, are not worthy of being voted for, yet the situation that has been created by previous amendments is a shambles.”
“A Bill comes to the House; the party of the Minister who brings it to the House fires an Exocet through it; and the Minister has to come back to repair some of the damage. What an illustration of incompetence in the House on serious legislative matters. Mr Pollen was right when he made the point that bringing through so many Bills is causing great concern when they are not subject to the full rigour of scrutiny; instead, there is an urge to rush the Bills through.”
“What a tangled web Sinn Féin weaves. Spooked by Gerry Carroll, having voted for his amendments, it now comes to the House with the Bill, red-faced and embarrassed, to try to claw back a disastrous situation of its own making. It is little wonder that Mr Frew referred to "screeching brakes" and "U-turns". Today, there is veritable joyriding by Sinn Féin in West Belfast over the Bill. <BR /> <BR />It is little wonder that, a couple of days ago, the spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) sent us all an email in which he lamented the lack of scrutiny of legislation in the dying days of the Assembly. He highlighted the fact that the focus on getting as many Bills through as possible was sacrificing the quality and that it was all about quantity rather than quality. This debate is a poignant illustration of that.”
“<BR /> <BR />It is the most draconian of legislation, and, although the House will approve it, I say that it should not.”
“The Member is now making a different point. When she first intervened, she talked about holding up something that says something offensive. The Member is talking about abuse being hurled and someone being called "a murderer". If it is threatening, abusive or insulting, that is already a criminal offence. I am talking about an individual who does none of that but stands outside to demonstrate their opposition to abortion. I ask why you are criminalising that influencer. Why do you think it is necessary to go beyond those who are abusing, threatening and insulting to incorporate those who are influencers? That is what the Bill does. No one in the debate has addressed that point. I was making the point that that is compounded by the fact that it is now an absolute offence.”
“The Member says that it is offensive, abusive and harmful to quote Holy Scripture, particularly one of the Ten Commandments, and to simply say, "Thou shalt not kill". It is an appalling position to say that you cannot bear witness to the fact that it is wrong to kill. If you cannot say, "Thou shalt not kill", the corollary of that is that you should not offend anyone by telling them that they should not kill and, indeed, carry on killing. If the placard said, "Thou shalt kill", would that have been offensive? However, once it says, "Thou shalt not kill", suddenly, as an influencer, you are a criminal. That is where the legislation takes us, and that cannot be right.”
“The Member should know that, and, certainly, if she had considered the issue, she would have known that. We are in a situation where an absolute offence has been created for somebody who is a mere influencer. The question to the House is this: how can that be conscionable?”
“I do not recognise the phraseology of "reasonable defence". Unless something is specified in the relevant legislation, either the offence was committed or it was not. Some legislation — this may be what the Member is thinking of — mentions "someone without reasonable excuse". Your legislation does not say that. It does not say that someone commits an offence "if without reasonable excuse". If it did, it would be a different matter. However, the Member has created an offence that is an absolute offence. There is no reasonable excuse for being an influencer: you are a criminal, absolute. The Member need not rise to say, "You can always rely on reasonable excuse": you cannot. Unless it is in the legislation, there is no legal defence of reasonable excuse.”
“When I have finished the point. The Member says to the House that she wants to create an absolute offence. Absolute offences are few and far between, and they are there for public policy reasons. For example, it is an absolute offence to drive your car without insurance. Why? To compel people to have their car insured. It does not matter if you say, "I forgot", "My wife forgot" or whatever, because there is no defence. You will put into the category of absolute offence the business of criminalising somebody who is an influencer. If that is not a step beyond what is rational and reasonable, I have no idea what is.”
“They have not opened their mouth. They have not been abusive. They have stood there. Under the Bill, that person becomes a criminal, and that is where the Bill goes far too far. <BR /> <BR />As if that were not bad enough, the Bill makes the offences absolute. One of the amendments would take out clause 6(4), which provided the defence that, if you did not know or had no reasonable way of knowing that the protected person was in a safe zone, you had not committed an offence.”
“If the Member was spat on, that was an assault. If the Member was abused, that was a breach of article 9 of the Public Order Order. If she was threatened, likewise. If she was subjected to threatening, insulting and abusive behaviour, those are offences. The people who were doing that would also be guilty of the offence of disorderly behaviour. If it was a course of conduct, it would have been harassment. <BR /> <BR />There is a multiplicity of things in the criminal calendar that deal with that situation, but the Member wants to push the limits so that the person who does none of those things and who simply stands there, maybe with, as I said, a quotation from the sixth commandment — "Thou shalt not kill" — becomes a criminal because they are an influencer. They have not spat on anyone. They have not shouted at anyone.”
“If people are shouting abuse, being violent and doing all the things that have been suggested, arrest them. Arrest them for disorderly behaviour. Arrest them under the Public Order Order. Arrest them for various offences that already exist, but do not paint as criminals everyone who, out of conscience, has a protest to make and does that legitimately and respectably. That is what the Bill does. That is the primary offence of the Bill to those who take a view about abortion that is contrary to that of its promoters. It is scandalous that the Bill would criminalise someone who legitimately holds a point of view so that they can never express it within a sanitised area, when all that they seek to do is to influence — not to be violent or abusive, just to influence — and to stand for what they stand for. The Bill will criminalise that.”
“Nobody who supports the Bill has risen to their feet to justify that. That is because it is unjustifiable. It is a step far too far in any legislation to say that, if you try to influence someone in the public sphere, you are a criminal.”
“That is a mammoth step that has been taken in these amendments, and it is anything but a tidying up. <BR /> <BR />I also noted that, in the contributions of those who are avid supporters of the Bill, no one tackled the issue of why it is necessary to include in clause 6 the wide ambit of criminalising influence. It is easy to talk about criminalising harassment, abuse and violence, of course. They already are criminalised, but the Bill, in clause 6, criminalises an influencer. Anyone who stands in silent protest, saying absolutely nothing, is nonetheless criminalised as if they are an influencer.”
“In opposing the Bill, I am absolutely not standing here to endorse — I do not tolerate that suggestion for one moment — any of the things that have been described or that have been ascribed to its opponents. <BR /> <BR />It was notable to me that the very significant step of introducing self-certification of exclusion zones and removing the role of oversight and scrutiny of that from the Department would create a situation where the operators could self-certify these zones and their extension. The sponsor of the Bill attempted to write that off as tidying up. It is nothing like tidying up; it is a fundamental departure to say in legislation that areas within 150 metres of which members of the public can be excluded can be decided on the whim of the operator, rather than, as it was in the original drafting of the Bill, by the Department.”
“In briefly winding up the debate, I want to begin by refuting absolutely the undercurrent of suggestion that to oppose the Bill is to embrace or to endorse abuse or attacks. One Member even used the phrase "violence against women". To oppose the Bill is to say very clearly to the House that existing law is such that violence against women and the abuse of women is provided for in already stipulated legislation and that this Bill is a huge assault upon fundamental rights, namely the right of expression, to the very point that the sponsor of the Bill is removing the least reference to protection of human rights, which was in the original clause 9.”
“Under the same Order, disorderly behaviour is a criminal offence, and there are other provisions regarding conditions on public gatherings. It is not just about harassment; there are multiple opportunities to deal with untoward and unsuitable behaviour.”
“Harassment, of course, is only one issue. There is the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987, which makes it an offence to use:”
“Where in clause 6 does it say that the criminality is limited to circumstances where the behaviour is likely to traumatise? It says no such thing. It is all-embracing of anything likely to have an effect of influencing, no matter how innocuous that might be.”