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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“In its response to specific clauses in the Bill, the PHA states:”
“The Public Health Agency (PHA), in its correspondence of 9 December last, was clear. The letter from its chief executive states:”
“Rather, it pertains to the fact that we are embracing an extra 17% availability in a sector that causes huge harm. Of course it is right to say that our present legislation is significantly out of date and not fit for purpose. It is therefore most disappointing that, in those circumstances, the Bill fails to advance any meaningful protection for those who suffer as a result of gambling and who will now suffer more because of its further liberalisation. <BR /> <BR />It is not as if the Committee and others were without evidence on the matter.”
“<BR /> <BR />When I approach such a Bill, which contains no provisions to set out a strategy or to seek to regulate gambling for those who face gambling harms, I find it very disappointing, and very striking, that the first and foremost thing that it does is to widen the availability of betting shop gambling across the Province, in that it will make gambling a seven-day-a-week opportunity. At a stroke, it will increase access levels by 17%. That is the Bill's most detrimental aspect. <BR /> <BR />It is only through proper regulation and proper control, not through the liberalising of gambling laws, that we stand any chance of tackling the issue. Clauses 2 and 6 throw open the gates of every day to betting shop facilities, and that is why I am indicating my opposition to them. That opposition is not a sabbatarian issue.”
“My continuing disappointment with this legislation is that, although it is acknowledged that there is an invasive and disturbing level of gambling addiction in Northern Ireland, the Bill does nothing to address it. The Bill came to the House without even a public health assessment of its impact having been done. We have a rising tide of oppressive gambling addiction that puts a huge cost on various services. It also visits immense hardship on many families, because, like any addiction, it affects not just the person addicted but the household and family in which that person lives. Undoubtedly, there are many men and women whose addiction to gambling is inflicting huge difficulties, costs, anguish and hardship on their family.”
“The Minister says that the power exists but has not been much used: maybe that speaks to the fact that it is not much needed in such cases. The Minister wants to jump to the conclusion of saying, "We dispense with discretion; we just make a mandatory order". She is, with respect, incorrect when she says that the judge can admit anyone whom he wants. The judge can admit only the people listed in new article 27A(2)(a) to (f). It is not open; it is an absolute exclusion order against open justice. That is what it is in every case, even where it is not needed. The balance is wrong.”
“Is that not how it should be, that if it is not in the interests of justice or the public interest, you should not be closing down the courts or hiding behind closed doors and it should be in public? Is that not the right test, rather than this blanket thing where we say, "Oh well, we will just take all these cases and have no regard to their individual circumstances", and have no case-by-case inspection, and say, "We, not the court, will decree that we are going to impose a mandatory blanket ban on public justice"? Do not do it.”
“What is so fundamentally wrong is that we strip out that discretion and that case-by-case examination, and we impose a one-size-does-not-fit-all mandatory block on ever having a public hearing for those types of offences. In doing that, we do no service to the criminal justice system, which has been built up over so many years to command respect. Rather, we invite disrespect for that very system. <BR /> <BR />I say to the House that that is why, in a very modest amendment No 9, I am saying pause and insert into clause 15 that very simple article 6-compliant provision that, on a case-by-case basis the judge shall decide whether it is in the interests of justice or the public interest. If it is, he issues his exclusion order; if it is not, he does not issue it.”
“I understand that the Minister might be embarrassed by the question, "Is there is something to hide in this process?". I am suggesting that there is something to hide in this process and why you might not want it to be in a public court. We have now reached the absurd position where in many of those criminal trials, your hands are tied behind your back in cross-examination. You can only ask the questions that the judge allows you to ask, and you cannot follow the evidence in the questioning. Maybe there is a reason why, therefore, some people would not like that to be subject to public examination. If that is the case, all the more shame for these propositions. <BR /> <BR />The fundamental point is this: any case may well deserve evidence to be taken in private, and that facility already exists.”
“<BR /> <BR />That causes me to ask this question: what is it that we are trying to hide? Maybe there are things to hide. The Gillen review, which so many in the House are so unquestioningly besotted with, has launched some staggering attacks on our traditional criminal justice values. Do Members realise that, in many serious criminal charges, your barrister, if you are the accused, is only allowed to ask questions of the accuser that the judge has approved? I can tell you that cross-examination is not something to be scripted; it is answer-led. Cross-examination goes where the answers lead it. That is how you sift the evidence. That is how you sort the wheat from the chaff. By asking the questions, whatever answer you get usually leads to another question, and, eventually, if the truth is not being told —”
“I can think of only one occasion in that time — it is such a rare eventuality — on which there was an application to hear fresh evidence. Appellate courts are not courts in which evidence is heard in public. Appellate courts are courts in which matters of law are argued and where the evidence previously given in the Crown Court, if it is a Crown Court appeal, will be sifted, assessed and evaluated, but there are virtually no circumstances in which individuals are called to the witness box to give evidence in an appellate court. It will be the dry, musty stuff of arguing what particular cases mean and arguing about legal authorities, yet the Minister comes to the House and says, "Ban those too. Shut the public out of that as well." That is way beyond where we need to be.”
“Of course there will be circumstances, many of them turning on the needs of victims, in which it is right, proper and necessary to have evidence heard in a non-public setting. That provision already exists and will always be necessary, but it can never be necessary to wantonly make that, not on a case-by-case basis but universally, the mandatory requirement. That is the folly of clause 15: it seeks to make that which should be subjected in every case to a case-by-case decision subject to a blanket situation in which there is no discretion in the court. <BR /> <BR />Then, we have the ludicrous situation whereby the Minister wants to carry that forward into the appellate courts. I have spent many's the long and arduous day in our appellate courts in my lifetime.”
“Secrecy and behind-closed-doors justice do not embed in the public mind, or contribute to, confidence in our courts. <BR /> <BR />Let me quote another case, which, maybe not surprisingly, was taken against Russia. We might think about that given what we are trying to do here. In the case of Chaushev and Others v Russia, the European Court of Human Rights criticised the Russian authorities, finding that they did not provide sufficient reasoning to demonstrate that the closure of a court was necessary. In other words, they did not demonstrate why it was necessary to do it behind closed doors. The House is inviting our courts to follow exactly the same course, whereby they will not have to demonstrate why it is necessary to lock and bolt the doors and why it is necessary to exclude public justice.”
“That might be an uncomfortable reality, but that is an essential adjunct to having a fair criminal justice system. That is why it is there. <BR /> <BR />Many courts have been called on to adjudicate on the issue of excluding the public from a court. The European Court of Human Rights has given many judgements on the matter. I will refer to only two of them. In the cases of B v the United Kingdom and P v the United Kingdom, the court said that it is a right to equality before the courts to have a fair trial. It said:”
“If it is not in the interests of justice, that is for a court to decide. That is why my amendment states that, if a court decides that it is in the interests of justice, an exclusion order will flow from that decision. If the picture that the Minister paints is the correct picture in any given case, the provision therefore already exists. Indeed, it does not even need clause 15, because, as long ago as the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1999, we have a provision whereby evidence by a court can be required to be given in private. It has been there for 23 years. It already exists in law, but we wish in this House, apparently, to supersede article 6 of the European Convention. It might be an uncomfortable reality that article 6 is, in fact, accused-specific, with the interests of the accused put front and centre.”
“Well, their rights were no less than the rights of any other individual, yet, today, some of them, according to their spokesperson, will vote for mandatory exclusion orders, with no thought given to the interests of justice and no thought given to the discretion of the court. They will vote just to slap on a mandatory exclusion order.”
“but forget it, because we know better. Clause 15 contains the mandatory imposition of an exclusion direction. Do not worry about special circumstances. Do not worry about the interests of justice. Let us just make it the law that, in all cases, there shall be an exclusion order. I say this to the House, even to those Members who came in with their preordained ideas and read from their pre-prepared script: are you really comfortable with excluding from our courts the least shred of discretion on the issue of whether there should be an exclusion order? <BR /> <BR />There are Members of this House who have been accused in criminal courts. I am sure that, when they were, they were very jealous and precious of their right to a fair trial.”
“Article 6 of the European Convention might well state:”
“What are we doing in the Bill? We are taking it on ourselves, in clause 15, to take away from the court the decision of what is in the interests of justice. We in the Assembly will decide that we will impose a blanket, mandatory ban on public justice in any case involving some of the specified criminal offences. That is what clause 15 says:”
“It is not, "in the opinion of the Assembly or the legislator". It is:”
“It does not say, "everyone except those charged with a heinous sex crime". It says:”
“It is not a script of accident or flippancy; it is a script that beds down — beds in — fundamental principles that are supposed to shape and ensconce the very things that, we say, we hold dear in respect of criminal justice. We, of course, are a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. What does it have to say? It says:”
“Our criminal justice system has evolved over centuries. There was a time when an accused person was not allowed to cross-examine his or her accuser. There was a time when justice was administered in secret, behind closed doors. There are good reasons why, over the decades and centuries, we have moved away from those starting points. My anxiety is that some are tempted to move back to elements of those dark ages. <BR /> <BR />As our society and the wider Western society fine-tuned its attitude to criminal justice, there evolved, in due course, the European Convention on Human Rights. Some people like to quote it a lot. I will quote and major upon article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
“When the House debates criminal justice and the processes pertaining to it, we are dealing with one of the most solemn issues that we, as legislators, can deal with. We are dealing with the framework within which society can take that most extreme of steps: robbing a citizen of their liberty. Therefore, no one should approach the processes and procedures of criminal justice in a flippant or ill-considered manner.”
“Does the Member think that article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights is biased?”
“The Human Rights Commission, reflecting the basic provisions of article 6 of the ECHR, is saying to the House, "Take it on a case-by-case basis". However, the Minister is saying to the House, "Impose a blanket ban, with no regard to case-to-case needs". Surely that is draconian beyond description.”
“The Minister will be aware that article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees an individual a fair trial and a public hearing, with exceptions for cases in which there is a determination that there should not be a public hearing. When the Human Rights Commission gave evidence to the Committee, it was very clear:”
“Despite the Minister's grandstanding, we have been here before. That was not for one year, but three, during which we did not even have a Finance Minister, courtesy of Sinn Féin's politics. Does the Minister not recognise, although he cannot admit it, that we would not be in this position but for the imposition of the iniquitous protocol? If people want to get angry, let them get angry with the protocol.”
“Mr Speaker, now that the last of the COVID regulations are to be lifted, when will the House return to normality in terms of full membership being able to attend and restoring our normal voting patterns? When will that happen?”
“In the future, I trust that that will happen so that there might be the semblance and reality of some fairness in the investigative and adjudication processes touching on complaints under local government standards.”
“It is quite clear, from recommendation 22, that it has long been required that there needs to be a separation of that dual role. There need to be separate roles for investigator and adjudicator. The adjudicator must have the independent status that the present Local Government Commissioner for Standards, under the Office of the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman, cannot have, because she is already the investigator. It might seem so elementary as to be quite shocking that, in 2022, we are only now talking about this. If that reform alone is made, it will be significant and worthwhile. Although, of course, it will take an amendment to the current legislation.”
“We have had this absurd position in Northern Ireland for local government standards, whereby, when a complaint is made against a councillor, the Local Government Commissioner for Standards, under the Office of the Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman, both investigates and adjudicates. It is an absurd arrangement, whereby that office both prosecutes and is judge in cause. That is wholly untenable. <BR /> <BR />When we took evidence some time ago, I asked the office how many cases it had ever lost. Members will not be surprised to hear that the answer was none. The office prosecutes to itself. What chance therefore has a councillor when moved against by an office that has the luxury of not just forming and bringing the prosecution, but deciding the value of it in determining it?”
“I endorse the recommendations in the report. As a member of the Committee, I am familiar with the changes that need to be made. It is particularly important that, for the Audit Office, we move to having an independent board with a statutory function. That will very much add to the credibility of that very important office. <BR /> <BR />I join other Members in wishing Mr Kieran Donnelly a happy retirement, since it is fast approaching, and I look forward to his successor picking up the reins. <BR /> <BR />One point in the report that I want to spend a moment on is recommendation 22.”
“<BR /> <BR />I am quite content that the report and the Committee ran into the sand, and I am not at all surprised that it did. At the end of the day, it was being driven by some who have anything but respect for the most basic human right of all.”
“It is nations, not regions, that have bills of rights. I leave aside the whole debate about whether it is suited to our constitutional framework: I do not think it is, but that is another debate. A bill of rights speaks to a uniformity across a constitutional and political entity of rights that should be respected. It has no regional perspective or ownership. It is of national significance, and therefore I do not believe that we need or should have a Northern Ireland bill of rights. <BR /> <BR />We have a United Kingdom Human Rights Act, and that is the proper ambit and facility for addressing these issues. That is the correct facility. This idea that you would have a regionalised bill of rights is, to my mind, a constitutional nonsense.”
“Those who say that loudest are those who have spent their political careers refusing to condemn the most fundamental breach of human rights: the right to life. The very people who have twisted, turned, equivocated and used weasel words to avoid condemning those who took innocent life come to the House and parade themselves as those who want and believe in rights — such hypocrisy. <BR /> <BR />Of course, my fundamental position is this: a bill of rights speaks to a national position.”
“The report speaks to me of the absolute sham and farce that 'New Decade, New Approach' was. It was supposedly the new beginning, the new approach. This debate speaks to just what a fraudulent suggestion that was. 'New Decade, New Approach' was nothing short of a vehicle of convenience to get the Executive parties back into the Executive. There was no agreement about very much, other than that they wanted to be back, with the ministerial limos, the salaries and the titles. It turned out, not for the first time, to be a vehicle with no engine. It did not even splutter to a standstill; it never got started. Such a farce, and the report personifies that. The Committee laboured for months and did not deliver so much as a mouse. <BR /> <BR />There are some in the House who tell us that we must have a bill of rights.”
“Last week, I was grateful to have the opportunity to lead a delegation of caravan owners to meet the working group, and found that to be a constructive exercise. Can I suggest to the Minister that the easiest and most efficient way to give security of tenure and basic rights to holiday caravan owners is to extend the protections that already exist in Part 1 of the Caravans Act to holiday caravanners as well?”
“Further to that point of order, I have to accept what you say, but, in these debates, I very often find that the most useful moment is when one is able to ask the Minister who is winding up to clarify a certain point. If we are to be denied that opportunity, the debate will be the poorer for it.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek clarification that is more likely to be relevant when the Minister comes to sum up. The Minister is addressing us remotely: is there a facility to intervene on him?”
“Yet, today, some will talk loudly about human rights but will be prepared to trample into the ground the right of the people of Northern Ireland to be governed by the laws that we make in our own nation. I want to call out the hypocrisy of that. <BR /> <BR />I hear talk about a landing zone for a settlement on the protocol. Any landing zone that keeps Northern Ireland in that position — subject to a foreign single market for goods, customs code and VAT regime — is not a landing zone that can deliver what we need. The ill-gotten sovereignty of the EU over Northern Ireland must be abandoned if the matter is ever to be progressed: nothing else will do.”
“That, of course, is exactly the position that Northern Ireland is in under the protocol. Other people's laws — foreign laws that govern the foreign single market, foreign customs code and foreign VAT regime — under which the protocol puts us are imposed on Northern Ireland with no say, no right to quibble, nor any right to change or amend. It is the very personification of colonialism at its worst. <BR /> <BR />Here we have a situation in which, because we are in that foreign single market etc, subject to the foreign laws of that foreign market, overseen by a foreign court, the people of Northern Ireland, in all those aspects of our economy, are governed by laws that we do not make and cannot change.”
“Later today, the Assembly will debate matters touching upon human rights. There will be those who will have lots to say about that, but they will be the very people who have nothing to say about EU colonialism in Northern Ireland, which is presently the biggest travesty of political rights affecting Northern Ireland. <BR /> <BR />Colonialism is often vilified as that which involves the imposition on a people of the laws, ways of life and ethos of others, whereby they are imposed upon the object or the subject.”
“If I followed that correctly, the cumulative cost appears to be approaching £10 million, which is a figure that would employ 200 nurses for a year or more. If the Minister is right — I think that he is — that much of that expenditure is unlawful by reason of not having Executive approval, does that not, in fact, mean that it is irregular spend, which would cause the accounts of the Department to be qualified? It is another illustration of squander at a time when vital services are so short of money.”
“I have two points, if I may. Surely, under all of the regulations, the power is bestowed on the Minister of Health, and, secondly, is it not correct that, given that the enabling legislation has a sunset clause, all regulations will fall upon attaining the sunset date?”
“They may go round in the coming weeks and try to hoodwink farmers into believing that they have looked after them and that there will be money for doing nothing. The farmers whom I know are not too easily hoodwinked, and they see right through this. They know what cabal of MLAs in the House has voted to decimate farming. I believe that many farmers will be none too forgiving, nor should they be.”
“<BR /> <BR />What is this money? It is totally uncosted. Nobody in the House can stand up and say what the transition fund is that they want the House to vote for. They neither know nor care, I suspect. The mentality of some is that it is up to others to produce on the financial demands that we make. Sorry: it all has to come out of a very limited pot called the block grant. Where will you take such money as will be available from? No matter how much you take, it will never make up for the devastation that the House is consciously and deliberately inflicting on the farming community: never can it make up for that. <BR /> <BR />I say this to the House: yes, some people might think that they will salve their conscience for what they are doing to farming by talking about transition funds.”
“It is no good them simply coming to the House with platitudes and saying that they will stand by farmers, when, last week, they plunged the knife into the back of farming in this country, as deep as they could plunge it. <BR /> <BR />The fatuous talk of a transition fund is just that. As I said in my intervention to Ms Bailey, it is just to salve their conscience, if they have a conscience about that matter. It is to say, "Oh, well, we're not going to leave you in the lurch. Yes, we are going to take away all your key production. Yes, we are going to reduce the amount of food that you can have. Yes, we are going to radically reduce the head of livestock that you can have. Yes, we are going to leave you struggling in an untenable and unviable way, but we are going to throw a little money at you to salve the House's conscience".”
“The phrase "just transition fund" may, on the surface, have some appeal, but the question is this: transition to what? What are we transitioning profitable, producing farmers to? If you listen to the experts, we are transitioning them to indolence, non-production and inactivity: that is, in farming terms, to failure. The House wantonly rejected the evidence last week, and the targets that the House has now set will be targets of decimation. We are transitioning to decimation. <BR /> <BR />It is all very well for Members from Sinn Féin to get up and give the sound bite that they will always stand by the farmers of Ireland, when, last week, they voted to decimate farming in Northern Ireland and, in particular, to decimate hill farming and to produce a situation in which many hill farms will cease to be viable.”
“Does the Member not blush even a little as, having spent last week pushing through and supporting the most trenchant assault that will devastate our agriculture industry, she now tries to salvage something by talking about a just transition fund? Is it anything more than conscience money from those who have devastated and will devastate our farming industry?”