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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“It was activated by the First Minister and deputy First Minister signing it off under emergency procedures, and then the Executive were told that it had been done. There was not even consultation within the Executive about the proposal; indeed, there was not even consultation in the DUP about the proposal. The members were simply told, "This is it. Suck it up". Not only was there an absence of consultation with the public and with stakeholders; according to some press, the only stakeholder the Minister met on the issue was the LGBT community. No one else had the opportunity to bend her ear about the issue. I make fundamental objection to her coming to the House today with a proposition that has been rushed and that she is attempting to push through the House without due process, never mind an equality impact assessment or anything else.”
“No, the Member would not. I make no secret of that, but I am legitimately entitled to object to the farce that the process has turned into. I would have liked a consultation. I would like to have heard what Mr Storey's Caleb Foundation said about the proposal. I would like to have heard what various Churches that many Members belong to and that still preach that homosexuality is a sin thought of the proposal. The elders of some of those Churches sit in the House. Certainly, I would like to have known what, in consultation, they thought of validating homosexuality by virtue of pardons. We are not to be given that opportunity — maybe that is why — because this is something that the powers that be in the House want to rush through. <BR /> <BR />This proposal did not even come to the Executive.”
“<BR /> <BR />The process by which we got here — the rush to get here — is very informative. We have a Standing Order — Standing Order 42A — that says that there is a stipulated, prescribed process for passing and getting to the point of passing a legislative consent motion. It requires the laying of a legislative consent memorandum, and it requires that to be laid within 10 days of the clause it wants to activate becoming part of the Bill. In this case, it seems that the relevant clause only became part of the Bill on 9 November in the House of Lords, yet the legislative consent memorandum was issued on 7 November. Such was the haste and the rush, we could not even wait for our own processes on this issue. There are many reasons in terms of the process —”
“Yet, here we are today with a totally novel proposition to grant pardons for obsolete criminal offences and there has not been one iota of consultation on the matter. Then we compound that by saying, "In fact, we are so unconcerned about the issue, we will pass over the legislative function to Westminster". We are so disinterested, we are not even going to consider it ourselves. <BR /> <BR />A legislative consent motion is and always should be a serious matter. It is the House saying to all and sundry, "We are passing up our opportunity to legislate about something and gifting it to Westminster". When you do that without even consulting on the issue, it is all the more stark. When you do it in respect of an anticipated clause in a Bill that was not even in the Bill when it was published, it gets even more ridiculous.”
“What we are doing today, in granting a pardon for obsolete criminal offences, is without precedent, making it all the more remarkable that we have arrived at this rushed position without any consultation. <BR /> <BR />The House and the Executive like to pretend that they are big on consultation and like to consider what public opinion and stakeholders have to say on an issue; indeed, if you go to the NI Direct website, you will read many platitudes about public consultation. It says:”
“I say that on the strength of an answer from the Minister when I asked her to detail on how many occasions a pardon in legislation in Northern Ireland had been provided for in respect of obsolete criminal offences. The answer was very clear:”
“In moving the amendment, as is clear from it, I am wholly supportive of the first three measures in the legislative consent motion but totally opposed to the fourth component. In essence, in addressing the issue, my opposition probably falls under three interrelated headings. First, there is the process deployed to get us to the point that we are at. Secondly, there is the principle involved in what we have been asked to do. Thirdly, there is the active discrimination involved in what we are being asked to do. As I work my way through those, I begin with the process. <BR /> <BR />The House needs to come to terms with the novelty of what we are doing today. Never in the history of this jurisdiction has legislation been used to give retrospective pardons.”
“Further to my point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for that advice. I am bound by and do accept your ruling, Mr Speaker, but, at some appropriate point, I think that the House would benefit from some guidance in the light of that ruling as to what then Standing Order 42A(11)(a)(ii) actually means and what purpose it serves because it appears to say that, until the amendment has been made to the Bill that the legislative consent motion wishes to bring in, the memorandum cannot be laid. What is the meaning then of Standing Order 42A(11)(a)(ii)?”
“Indeed, it is not right, but it has not been right for a very long time. What expectation is there that this promise to deal with the situation will be any more successful than the DUP's last promise to deal with it? Seven and a half years ago, in May 2009, Mr Robinson had a headline, "Robinson vows to axe 'quango waste'". He talked about a bonfire of quangos, and it came to nothing because they turned into a vehicle for patronage.”
“When the Minister says that the £280 million spend on neighbourhood renewal has produced some narrowing of the gap between those areas and the rest of the Province but that they remain some way behind, can one infer that, despite some good schemes, overall there has been disappointment with the outcomes of neighbourhood renewal and that it does need fixed? Will he tell us whether the Department has done a comparative costing in terms of delivery centrally as opposed to delivery locally through the councils?”
“Has the Minister now reached the logical position that, when we exit the EU, he cannot — nor can anyone — reasonably expect more from the Treasury than what the Chancellor has said it will do: until we exit the EU, it will underwrite approved schemes but that, after that watershed, no such assurance can be given because there will be nothing to assure?”
“At the meeting or elsewhere, did the Minister encounter any recognition by the Republic of Ireland that, if they were to permit the EU to erect a hard border — it will be their choice — by the imposition of average CAP tariffs of up to 18%, the biggest loser would be the Irish Republic because of the loss that would then result to its biggest market — GB — and that there would, in fact, be immense opportunity for the agri-food industry in Northern Ireland to fill that gap? Is there recognition by Dublin that they need to protect themselves by ensuring that those in the EU do not insist on a hard border, given that they seem to be the only people talking about one?”
“I bring the Minister back to the small business empowerment zones and express my disappointment that his approach to pilots is so Belfast-centric. There is not a single rural town included, and, although the issues may be slightly different, the pilot may be beneficial there, too. I think of a town like Ballymoney, which has been ravaged by dereliction. What does a small business empowerment zone actually mean? There is no substance here about it. Is it rates exemption? Will he clarify that? On rural issues, will he confirm that he is not minded to disturb agricultural rates? Can that be taken as a given?”
“Whatever the hyperbole coming from the talking shop in Armagh, it is clear that the Executive is a house divided on the most seminal issue of our day. The First Minister accepts and supports the reality of Brexit: the deputy First Minister grasps at every straw to try to thwart the will of the people and seeks to talk up the nonsense of special status. I ask the deputy First Minister again the question that he did not answer yesterday, so that we know who is chasing their tail: has he any support from his partner in government for the notion that, post Brexit, there will be a status for Northern Ireland that dilutes our leaving vis-à-vis the rest of the United Kingdom?”
“I ask you to rule that it will not therefore be possible on Monday to debate that aspect of the legislative consent motion.”
“So, I respectfully suggest that that aspect of the legislative consent motion is not compatible with the very prescribed and specific procedure in Standing Order 42A.”
“<BR /> <BR />It is my understanding that the aspect of the Policing and Crime Bill which imports, in respect of Northern Ireland, pardons for former criminal offences, only became part of the Bill on 9 November by amendment in the House of Lords, yet the legislative consent motion memorandum was issued and is dated and was laid on 7 November and, therefore, I respectfully submit, is void in that respect because you cannot prejudge or presume the content until it is part of the Bill. Since the legislative consent motion then triggers the referral to the Committee — and if the memorandum which triggers that is itself void — then the reference is void, and the timeline, whereby, within five days of that report, you can debate it, is voided.”
“Mr Speaker, I wish to raise a point of order about the viability of a portion of our business next Monday. I apologise that the issue is quite complex and, therefore, ask for some forbearance. I will deal with the point as succinctly as I can. <BR /> <BR />On Monday, we are due to discuss a legislative consent motion pertaining to the Policing and Crime Bill. One of the components of the Policing and Crime Bill that that consent motion seeks approval for is that referred to as pardons for obsolete criminal offences. Our Standing Order 42A has a very prescribed process for how you get to the point of a legislative consent motion. It requires the laying of a memorandum, but that memorandum can only be triggered by the event which imports into the Bill that portion that you wish to apply by legislative consent motion.”
“The Member suggested that I had misled the House, I think. May I refer him to the latest resource accounts of the Department for 2015-16? On page 136 and page 139, where the figure is repeated, the total EU aid and single farm payment and other EU programme income for 2015-16 is a grand total of £258 million, £231 million of it in respect of single farm payment and area aids. Far from the suggestion that it is £349 million, the latest figure is £258 million. The question is this: why does the motion exaggerate?”
“Is this not a mess of the Executive's own making because of their rejection of open competition in the appointment of lead partners? On the question of whether it is a slush fund, can we have an audit of how many paramilitary convicts are on the SIF payroll, including from the deputy First Minister's IRA fold?”
“Happily, the deputy First Minister is helpless when it comes to stopping the United Kingdom from leaving the EU. Let me ask him this straight: has he any approval from his partner in the Government, the DUP, for a status for Northern Ireland that would dilute our leaving in comparison with the rest of the United Kingdom?”
“Will the Member comment on the misinformation and gross exaggeration in the motion, which claims that approximately £350 million each year comes to farmers from CAP? If whoever drafted the motion had troubled to walk into the Business Office and pick up the resource accounts of the Department, he would have discovered that, for the latest year, 2015-16, the figure is £258 million. Why is the motion trading exaggerations and misinformation?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Would it be of assistance if guidance was given to Members that their membership of the steering committees under the social investment fund should be declared on the Register of Members' Interests?”
“Therefore, I encourage the Minister to be bold in advancing the scheme and mainstreaming the funding so that it has certainty and can progress to attain the ends in even greater form to what it has already attained.”
“<BR /> <BR />One of the most distressing and saddening things for anyone who has any relationship with education is to see kids pass through the system, knowing that they are not taking the best out of it, maybe not being encouraged from home and elsewhere to take the best out of it, and not achieving their full potential — in fact, becoming alienated from the education system, whereas education should be the door to the world for all of us. It is by going through that door and experiencing it that we move on to greater things and make a really worthwhile contribution to society. Trying to capture a sector of our kids who are lagging behind can only be a good thing.”
“When you think that the commitment to each nurture unit was of the order of £70,000, and that multiples of that are often spent with little apparent effect, it seems to be giving a good return for the spend. It is not that hard to establish it. It obviously needs a room kitted out, a teacher and probably a classroom assistant but, after that, its demands are relatively modest. Therefore, I would be very supportive of the idea of expanding that provision within the mainstream. That can only be positive.”
“I am relying almost more on the anecdotal evidence that I hear from my constituents than on the very positive report from Queen's University. <BR /> <BR />One of the criticisms — it is not to do with the delivery of the project and those who deliver it — is to do with the drip feed nature of the funding. It was delivered under Delivering Social Change. The Department of Education was just the conduit for passing on the money, meaning it had to wait for the release of the money from OFMDFM, as it then was, and then it passed it on. That drip feed is the core problem with going forward with the project and putting it on a stable footing. We are not talking about a lot of money.”
“I think that it has been most successful, where it has been allowed to operate, in reaching out to those in greatest need. <BR /> <BR />In my constituency, we sadly only have one nurture project, at Harryville Primary School. We have some adjacent ones. There is a very successful one at Ballycraigy Primary School, and there is quite a good one at Harpur's Hill in Coleraine. It seems that these projects have been successful in inducing in the kids better behaviour, more interest in school — some may be coming from a background where that is not overly encouraged — and, indeed, interest in the joys of education through improving their reading capacity and all those things. So the pilot schemes that have taken place, from what I hear of them, appear to have been quite good.”
“Unaccustomed as I am to commending government projects, I have to say that my experience of the nurture project is very positive.”
“I trust that this statement means that the Minister has got over his hissy fit of scaremongering about this project. The Chancellor has been very clear. He said that he will promise to underwrite EU funding for all projects signed off before Brexit. He could not do anything more, and yet the Minister said in his statement:”
“Why, on the very morning after another BBC 'Spotlight' exposure of paramilitary links to an office on the Shankill Road, did the Minister think it appropriate to visit that office and be photographed with at least one paramilitary figure?”
“If the Minister heard this morning's BBC interview by Kevin Magee with a UDA member, she will be in no doubt as to the iron grip that these hideous organisations have on the community. Does she accept that the Executive's job of breaking that grip is made more difficult by pandering to those organisations? Does she accept that siphoning money to pay chief executives of other organisations, to individuals who are actually key paramilitaries or community workers, compounds the supposed attempt to deal with these organisations?”
“Can the Minister expand on what he was suggesting about the 20 mph limit? Is he minded to make that easier to attain? There are many rural schools — I was thinking recently of the Diamond Primary School near Cullybackey — where that is an issue, yet there seems to be a funding blockage.”
“Does the Member recognise that saying something is temporary is a wheeze by the Government to avoid consultation? When a permanent closure is proposed, there is a formal consultation process; when they dress it up as temporary, they avoid that. That is what happened at the City Hospital and at Lagan Valley.”
“Indeed, where is the rural proofing in Bengoa's report? Did he ever even consult with rural interests? So, I fear that all of that is feeding into a reduction and diminishing of services for many of my constituents who live in rural areas.”
“In other words, "We are going to make the change, then we will consult with the rural communities, and then we will finalise the change.". Where is the embedding that was promised by this Minister in respect of rural proofing?”
“It sounds great. Where did rural proofing come in the consultation that was issued on Friday? It was tucked in as a little afterthought on page 20. It was tucked in in terms in which it is quite clear that, "Yes, we will go through the motions, but we will not pay any heed", because it contains the key phrase:”
“So, devising the consultation document in those ways is geared, I suspect, to producing a stratagem of stripping out services in many hospitals. Where that concerns me the most is in respect of our rural community. This is the Minister who, when she wore the agriculture hat, brought the Rural Needs Bill to the House. She told us during the debates on that that:”
“There were those who were trying to diminish it, and the claim was, "We can't get the staff". Of course, that was rectified, because it could be rectified. However, very often, when the Government wants to do something, they set up the various criteria to fit into where they want to get to. That is why these criteria are so much about safety and about being clinician-led, as if that is the answer to everything. Most clinicians want a handy time in terms of if they can all work in the greater Belfast area then they will all choose to work in the greater Belfast area.”
“I have to say that I see, essentially, in the Bengoa report and in the consultation document of last Friday, a stratagem for stripping out services from many of our hospitals that they presently provide, and it is being done on a well-tried template. <BR /> <BR />The consultation document is a perfect example and model of this. In order to obtain the preordained outcomes of reducing and stripping out facilities in hospitals, you have to build a case — as they built, sometimes in a quite phoney way, in respect of the Belfast City Hospital emergency department for example, the closure of which was meant to be temporary but which was to avoid a consultation. The words used were "It's not safe" and "We can't get the staff". We had an experience with the Causeway Hospital in Coleraine when it was going through a dark patch.”
“There is probably no sector more afflicted with all the buzzwords that have become fashionable, like "transformation", as if that is going to cover up the failures of the past and deliver a new utopia. We have to ask more probing questions. For example, did the previous Executive lead us in the right direction of providing basic healthcare by reducing the number of hospital beds by over 10% and then being surprised at the logjams — the near traffic jams — of people on trolleys in the corridors of our hospitals? The answer to all that now is, "Let us grab some nice buzzwords like 'transformation' and 'improving outputs'", from the very people who delivered much of the shambles that we have been afflicted by in recent times.”
“Would the Minister care to look at the schedule to what became known as the Stormont Castle agreement, the one that had to be squeezed out of the Executive parties and that sets out, in tabular form, £19 million of funds for legacy inquests, £6·5 million for the new Historical Investigations Unit for overhanging HET cases, and £5 million for Police Ombudsman's cases? It is there in black and white.”
“— a hierarchy particularly inspired by engendering an opportunity for state bashing while ignoring the horrendous terror of the terrorists.”
“Pity it did not waken up at Stormont Castle when it was agreeing those figures, but better late than never. <BR /> <BR />I am very clear that, yes, it is right that individuals are entitled to the truth, but there can be no hierarchy —”
“Yet the hierarchy that has been created is that, for those who put themselves on the front line of terrorist activity, there must be legacy inquests, but for those whom they and their colleagues butchered — nothing. That is the hierarchy that has crept into this. <BR /> <BR />Therefore, the DUP is right to have vetoed the progress — if you want to call it that — on this matter until the inequality is recognised, but it was wrong at Stormont Castle to embrace the beginning of that inequality. In the Stormont Castle agreement of two years ago, it agreed £19 million a year to legacy inquests and £6·5 million to the HIU for the overhanging HET inquiries. There is a source of the inequality. That was agreed by the party that now has woken up to block the inequitable progress on this matter.”
“There are people on these Benches in this House — I am looking at some of them now — who could tell us a great deal about the innocent victims they removed from this scene of time but choose to keep those dark secrets in their heart, yet they are on the highest of horses demanding justice for those they present as the victims of the state. <BR /> <BR />Let me be very clear: I do not put on a par the eight IRA murdering men who went out to visit devastation and death in Loughgall with innocent shoppers going about their business on the Shankill Road or anywhere else, or innocent people sitting in a bar in Greysteel done to death by hideous terrorists. There is no comparison.”
“In the debate, we heard some of the one-sided exposition of demands for legacy inquests. I am not disputing the need for legacy inquests, though I am not impressed that some of those demanding the loudest are those associated with an organisation that denied to its victims not just justice but the most fundamental right of all: the right to life. <BR /> <BR />I recognise that, in making its demand — I speak of Sinn Féin — it sees within that, of course, a stratagem for state bashing. It sees within it an opportunity to validate its determined rewriting of history, hence the enthusiasm for the legacy inquest system so that it can be abused in that sense and the information garnered can be put to the ends of state bashing that it wishes to advance. The same people have nothing to tell us.”
“It is indisputable that all are entitled to the truth just as they are entitled to justice, but does not end there, because the process that delivers that has to be fair and equitable.”
“If you had listened, you would know that I have asked it.”
“Are the Minister and his colleague in the Department for Infrastructure simply trying to drag their feet to make a case against Brexit?”