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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“On the timeline for the hybrid closed-loop system, do I discern from the Minister's answer that it is pretty long term, that he is waiting to see what is happening in GB and that he may take refuge in a phased roll-out? There is not a lot of comfort in that for people who are waiting day upon day for such help, is there?”
“Given that Casement Park costs are now out of control, at £308 million with a derisory 5% GAA contribution, is it fiscally responsible to include it any longer in a Programme for Government, particularly given the high level of need in health and education?”
“<BR /> <BR />I fear that your concerns in that regard are misplaced, Mr O'Toole, but if you have any concerns about when Sinn Féin reach the point of saying, "Mission accomplished" and therefore the end of any role for this institution — you probably do not have such concerns and nor does your sister nationalist party, Alliance — you probably have reason for them. You probably do not, however, because you are all, of course, on the same trajectory with the protocol and its implementers.”
“It is quite clear from some recent Sinn Féin declarations that, as soon as it arrives there, Stormont is over — it is gone. <BR /> <BR />I reassure you, Mr O'Toole, that, from my knowledge of what I observe from these Benches, in the main, the happy band of the DUP will not rediscover its principles or pull down the protocol-implementing institutions. My goodness, you have only to look at the glee and delight of the deputy First Minister as she troops around the publicity stunts with the First Minister as her unelected lady-in-waiting. Be assured that the DUP, having enthroned Sinn Féin, is very unlikely to return to the principles that, rightly, took it out of the House two years ago and the dispensing of which, shamefully, brought it back in a month ago.”
“Let's have change". The motivation is very suspect indeed. <BR /> <BR />We heard from Mr O'Toole about his worry that the institutions might collapse again. Mr O'Toole, do not worry about those in the DUP leadership. They have been captured. They are now protocol implementers and acceptors of the Irish Sea border and of the fact that we are governed by foreign laws that we do not make and cannot change. Do not get too concerned about whether the DUP will ever rediscover its principles. Under the current leadership, you can rest assured that there is no chance of that. <BR /> <BR />You might, if it bothered you, be more worried about Sinn Féin because, for its leadership, it is not about making Northern Ireland work. It is about having a stepping stone and getting within touching distance of its goal.”
“Since I first came to the House, I have repeatedly pointed out the unworkability of mandatory coalition. Every time I did, the most ardent defenders of Belfast Agreement devolution were from the SDLP. It was the holy grail; it could not be touched; it was perfect; it was the ideal for us all. Those who dared to question it were some sort of outcast from the past. Yet here we are today and, lo and behold, the SDLP calls for change. Mind you, the motivation is very suspect, because, so long as the mechanisms of mandatory coalition were about protecting the interests of nationalism as the minority, those mechanisms were, indeed, the holy grail. However, the moment that nationalism is in the ascendancy in the House and it might be unionists who need whatever protection there is, forget about it. The call has been, "Let's have reform.”
“The Minister will not exercise the revenue-raising powers that she has at present, yet she demands more fiscal powers. In that rush to spend other people's money, should she not reflect today on the Audit Office's report and its damning indictment of the local incapacity to control expenditure, particularly the incapacity of her predecessor to do so?”
“Those are all fine words, Minister. In terms of renewing the fleet, in times past we had a decommissioning scheme: is that part of your thinking?”
“Of course, Iceland has had the great advantage of not being in the EU for the past 50 years and being able to grow its industry. Indeed, I served on the Fisheries Committee in the European Parliament for many years. I happen to know that the fishing industries in Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, all of which are outside the EU, flourished and grew because they were not subject to the crucifying restraints of the common fisheries policy. Now is the time to liberate our fishing industry and give it the growth and momentum that it has been starved of for so long, so that we can have the full benefit of what that industry can do.”
“Will it, again, be the hapless fishermen who is put upon by further needless bureaucracy? Will it be the fishermen and boat owners who will be impeded in that way?”
“Recently, we had DEFRA make an agreement to allow Irish fishing vessels into the Rockall waters, which is to their advantage, but we did not have a quid pro quo of arguing and attaining access for Northern Ireland fishing boats into the six to 12 miles of Irish-controlled waters. That is another failure in respect of our fishing industry. <BR /> <BR />We are in a situation where, if ever an industry needed to be liberated to find growth and the potential to expand in the way that it could, fishing is that industry. However, I fear that, instead, the latest threat to our industry will come under the banner of the green agenda. I heard Mr Blair talk about all the things that need to be done, but I do not hear any talk about the costs of doing that in the industry. Who will pay those bills?”
“— he would see that it was the common fisheries policy that crucified our fishing industry and left it in the poor state that it is in. That is indisputable when you compare how we were then with what we are now. <BR /> <BR />Other matters affect our fishing industry. We have had the voisinage agreement for some years. It was unimplemented for many years in respect of our rights to fish in Irish waters. I heard the Sinn Féin representative talk about our all-Ireland fishing. Sorry, but we still have a prohibition on boats from Northern Ireland fishing in the six to 12 miles of Irish waters. Why? Because of that agreement and the failure to fully address those issues.”
“If the Member had been listening, he would have heard, "Before EU membership, things were so much better". If he would take off his rose-tinted glasses —”
“<BR /> <BR />Now that we have left the EU, we still have the problem of the protocol, because, historically, a lot of fishing boats fishing in the Irish Sea out of Kilkeel, Portavogie or Ardglass would have landed their catch at, say, Whitehaven, and carried on fishing. When they do that today, they now transport the catch back by lorry and have to pass through the Irish Sea border, further impeding the free passage, free commerce and free trade that catching fish in British waters should give rise to. That is a continuing hurdle and burden. We also have —.”
“The sad truth is that our fishing industry has not been able to attain its full potential for over 50 years. It is no coincidence that those 50 years have, essentially, been the period of our membership of the EU. The EU's common fisheries policy has crucified our fishing industry with punitive quotas and needless bureaucracy and is constantly on the back of fishermen. I am told and have no reason to doubt that, before we joined the EU, in Kilkeel harbour, when the fishing fleet was in, you could walk from one side of the harbour to the other across the decks of the boats. Today, when the fishing fleet is in, it is a few boats straggling up each side. That is a clear manifestation of how much our fishing industry has been denuded by the common fisheries policy.”
“If the costing is of the order of £460 million per annum running up to 2030, that is in excess of £2·5 billion. Can the Minister tell us whether there has been any budgeting for any of that that he is aware of?”
“Those are now the cuts of the Sinn Féin Finance Minister. Since we adopted the Budget, it is now the budgetary approach of the Executive, so it is time to own up to that. It is time to face that. If something is to be done about it, the responsibility now lies with those who are promoting the motion. Let us see whether the budget cuts continue, or will they now be blamed in perpetuity on someone else? You to have to man up. You have to own up to what is now your own budgetary situation.”
“It is easy to say that we have to do more, but we have to set that in the context of realising that there are certain restricting realities, particularly when dealing with the criminal justice system. Yes, let us make it as easy and as straightforward as we can, but we cannot contradict the fundamentals of the proof system and the justice system. <BR /> <BR />The final thing that I want to say is that the motion:”
“Máiría Cahill. <BR /> <BR />We then come to the House and talk about misogyny and victim blaming, yet we have a motion from a party from which all the matters that I have read out originate. The hypocrisy of that needs to be addressed. <BR /> <BR />It is clear that these are difficult issues. I have seen them from a side that other Members probably have not, which is through the courts. Yes, it is necessary to protect witnesses and to hedge around them all the assistance that there is, but, at the end of the day, our system is a criminal justice system, if justice is to be attained. As a criminal justice system, it requires the rights not just of the victim, which are very important, but of others to be observed, and cross-examination cannot be dispensed with in a criminal jurisdiction.”
“That is borne out by the notorious response of she who is now the First Minister:”
“They are certainly misogynistic. They are certainly victim blaming. They are the words of Gerry Adams to Máiría Cahill, a young woman who reported to senior Sinn Féin figures her repeated rape and abuse by a prominent IRA man and was then subjected to a kangaroo court by that party and organisation and made to confront her abuser. In the words of Máiría Cahill:”
“This has been an important and indisputably necessary debate, in which significant and essential things have been said in the motion, particularly in regard to femicide, and in many of the speeches. One of the issues touched on by Ms Hunter, for example, was victim blaming. Others talked about misogyny, and so they should. However, the proposers of the motion need to take a long, hard look at their organisation. Where on the spectrum of victim blaming would these words appear:”
“— continue to be diminished and violated. Those whose mission it is to dismantle the Union will rightly say —”
“Our Supreme Court, in clear terms, because of the supremacy afforded in law to the protocol, because it establishes a continuing Irish sea border and because of the foreign EU law that it submits Northern Ireland to, has held that article 6 of the Acts of Union is in suspension. Nothing in the dud Donaldson deal reverses one word of that: article 6 remains in suspension. Yet, because of that, we continue to have a country partitioned by a customs and regulatory border, subject to foreign law and subject to a foreign court. Thereby, the Acts of Union, despite the deception of the humble address —”
“I say "deceit" because the deal that it celebrates confirms the suspension of the very article 6 that it references.”
“As part of the dud deal that brought the DUP back into the Executive, today, in the House of Commons, one of the DUP's fig leaves — what is grandly called a "humble address" — will be promoted. It is build around a flagrant deceit, a deceit that, in the words of that humble address, includes:”
“It seems that others prioritise funding for Casement Park over even health. If the Minister had even a fraction of the cash that is to be splashed on the A5 and Casement Park, could he more than generously meet the junior doctors' claims? Given the haemorrhaging of junior doctors away from Northern Ireland, are there other incentives, as well as extra pay, that he could provide to them to ensure that we retain those whom we train?”
“This is what they serve up to us tonight. It is little wonder that a minority of us refuse to vote for such a thing.”
“No, he came to the House to address the Finance Minister and his other Executive colleagues with bids for his Department. That is the classic dysfunctionalism of the Executive. We are only beginning to see it, and we will see it more and more as Ministers make their siloed presentations. <BR /> <BR />This all comes down to a Budget that has locked in the cuts to date. The title deeds of those cuts have thereby been transferred from the wicked Secretary of State to the Finance Minister of Sinn Féin. That is where the ownership now lies, and that is where it will lie going forward. When public-sector workers and others find disappointment in what they are given and when our schools continue to be short of finance, let us put the blame where it belongs: on this Executive and on Sinn Féin in particular, who hold all the key economic posts.”
“In fact, the less money you have, the better, because the more you can blame the Brits. That is the mentality of the Minister and her party in the House. <BR /> <BR />As we go forward, we will see more of the dysfunctionalism of the Executive. Indeed, we had a classic example of that last week, when the Education Minister came to the House to make his first statement. We may have been in the Chamber, but the Minister was not talking to us: he was making a presentation — a plea — to his Executive colleagues, including the Finance Minister. He set out that he needed £500 million or £600 million — I cannot remember exactly — to fix certain things. He did not come to make an announcement that, "This is what I've got, this is what I'm going to do with it and this is how I'm going to fix things", as you would expect from an Executive Minister.”
“The House committed itself, in its folly, to all sorts of expenditure arising from a target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, with a reduction in net emissions of at least 48% by 2030. A climate change commissioner has to be appointed, a public body has to be set up to scrutinise changes, and something else called a "Just Transition Commission" has to be established. That will all cost a phenomenal amount of money. Where was the negotiation to get that money? Where is that money coming from? It is all very well to say — we had this so much at the end of the last Assembly — "Let's push through all of these populist measures and populist private Members' Bills, but never cost them or worry where the money will come from." Of course, that is the typical Sinn Féin approach.”
“The Fiscal Council has told you and anyone would have known that there is a cliff edge to that £3·3 billion. This is an Executive who are trying to blame everyone but themselves, when they are the people who bought into this. If they did not have enough money and if that mattered to them, why are they here? They would have been holding out. Some of them, of course, would be here for no money — £3, never mind £3 billion, would have done them, such was their anxiety to be here and to take ownership of Tory austerity, as they do tonight. <BR /> <BR />Then, we look at the challenges coming down the road. A former Finance Minister of the House tells us in today's 'Belfast News Letter', that the Climate Change Act that the House previously approved will impose a charge of £2·3 billion. Was any of that factored into those wonderful negotiations?”
“No, I do not. Let us be clear. I hear all the time in the House about Tory austerity and the terrible Brits who do these terrible things to us. As has been pointed out tonight, this is a Budget that builds in those cuts. They are now Sinn Féin cuts. Sinn Féin is now taking ownership of the denuding of our education service, our health service and everything that goes with it. Let us have a bit of honesty about where we are. <BR /> <BR />There is no point in the First Minister and deputy First Minister speaking in front of impressionable four-year-olds in a playschool and equally impressionable BBC journalists, beating their chests and saying, "We'll not have water rates. We'll not increase rates. We'll not do this. We'll not do anything", when they accepted the very deal where the rubber will hit the road.”
“<BR /> <BR />Yet, here we are, back in Stormont, on the foot of a package that Members accepted as the way forward. They bought the package. I am sure that we are all familiar with the Latin phrase, "caveat emptor" — let the buyer beware. Did they? No. They bought £3·3 billion as the way of getting the keys to the House, and they are not through the door before they are demanding more and more. Of course, as I said, that is the only purpose for which some of them exist, because they could never acknowledge that being a part of the United Kingdom is financially beneficial or anything like it. You have to own what you bought into.”
“I commend Mr McCrossan for his compelling speech. I look forward to, in a few minutes' time, holding the "No" door open for him as he votes against this wholly inadequate Budget. Let us see. <BR /> <BR />When I lift up the Budget Bill and turn to page 1, it is hard to escape the huge figure that appears there for our resources: £28,817,000,000 — it is good to be British, but it is never enough. That could say £38 billion, and there are Members who would demand more, particularly on the Sinn Féin Benches. They are past experts at spending everyone else's money. That is, in fact, their raison d'être, so that they can forever blame the Brits: "There is not enough money: blame the Brits". Sadly, there have been echoes of that from some on the unionist Benches. The DUP have joined in with their own Brit-bashing on the money front.”
“Will the Minister tell the House the difference between the figures in the Budget (No. 2) Act and what is in this Budget?”
“Does the Minister agree that a good start to safeguarding the fishing industry would be to deal with the outrageous situation whereby fishermen from Northern Ireland who make their catches in British waters cannot land them because they are decreed to be foreign catch? Will he address that?”
“Let me make the follow-up question clear: when the First Minister flies at public expense to, say, the St Patrick's Day celebrations in Washington, will she exploit the fact that she is travelling at public expense and abuse the office that she holds by espousing causes such as the Palestinian cause or the cause of Irish unity? Those are hardly Executive-agreed policies, or are they?”
“No, you stick to the videos. <BR /> <BR />We are not even taken under the Minister's notice in respect of where the money will be spent. It is quite appalling. <BR /> <BR />I wonder what the Comptroller and Auditor General thinks of the process, if they have been asked. I wonder how the Departments will do their end-of-year accounts, when they do not even have their expenditure lines with which to compare them. None of that seems to matter; just bulldoze it through. For that reason, I will vote against the suspension of Standing Orders, if given the opportunity to do so.”
“We are entitled to know, as the scrutineers of the Bill, where the Minister is asking us to put the money. We always could answer that question when we had the spring Supplementary Estimates. We cannot answer it today. <BR /> <BR />We then compound the situation by saying, "Let us rush it through in a day". That seems to me to show the utmost disregard for a primary function in the House, and, indeed, it diminishes and demeans the role of MLAs, who are not even taken under the Minister's notice —”
“You could, therefore, see a precise breakdown, line by line, of where the money was going in each Department and subdivision in the Departments. This Budget Bill, however, has been brought without a Supply debate and without the publication of any supporting documentation that shows where the money is to be distributed. Members are asked to debate a Bill that has just headline figures while absent from it is that which we normally would have from the Supply debate, which has been abandoned. <BR /> <BR />The provision of the expenditure lines for each Department — I hear no explanation for this – has also been abandoned. What are they? When x Department gets y tens of millions of pounds, where is that money to be spent? What is it that we are voting on, other than a global figure for each Department?”
“Voting money is one of the most important things that the Assembly can do, particularly as a scrutinising Chamber. Yet here we are: one of the first acts of the Executive is to ask the Assembly to rush every fence in relation to a money Bill and not just to have a day or two's pause. The First Stage of the Budget Bill was today, and now, just over an hour later, we are invited to proceed to the important Second Stage. That seems to me to be unseemly and wholly disproportionate to the obligations on the House to properly scrutinise legislation, particularly when it comes to something as important as voting money. <BR /> <BR />The circumstances here are even more egregious, because, up until this time, with past Budget Bills, we have always had a Supply debate, in which the spring Supplementary Estimates (SSEs) were produced.”
“Following Mr O'Toole's question, I waited in vain for a DUP MLA to burst the Minister's bubble about his reaffirmation of the all-island economy, because this wonderful document suggests that all of that has been torpedoed. It seems that the DUP MLAs do not even believe their own propaganda. Does the Minister believe that the unaltered Windsor framework, with all its dimensions, aids the growth of the all-island economy? Does he further believe that the existence of the Irish Sea border, which did not even merit a mention in his statement, has the same effect by inhibiting trade from GB?”
“Of course, we have a parallel, to some extent, in the Police Ombudsman's office itself, where the Police Ombudsman continues to preside over cases against PSNI officers while she has a relevant investigation proceeding, which seems to have been quietly forgotten, into events at her home. The question is this: why is there that two-tier approach? Why is there a bye ball and reward for the high and mighty, and, for the lowly officer, there is total pursuit, even when that is unlawful pursuit?”
“The Policing Board, which failed to take any disciplinary action and failed to hold Mr Hamilton to any accountability, has now approved his secondment — his cosy, enriching secondment — to the Department of Justice. It is a vivid illustration of a two-tier approach: junior officers are relentlessly pursued, even unlawfully, as in this case, and the perpetrator is validated, rewarded and accommodated with a lucrative move to the Department of Justice. What a farce. <BR /> <BR />There was no follow-up investigation of Mr Hamilton's conduct, and no accountability was required by the Policing Board.”
“I associate myself with your remarks, Mr Speaker, and those of others on the second anniversary of the passing of Christopher Stalford. <BR /> <BR />I want to raise the issue of the privileged treatment afforded to Deputy Chief Constable Mark Hamilton, which is in striking contrast to how he treated two junior officers under his disciplinary process. Of course, the High Court has ruled that the disciplinary process that he oversaw was unlawful, and the court delivered that judgement with scathing criticism of the processes. Unsurprisingly, the Police Federation, on behalf or rank-and-file members, passed a vote of no confidence in Mr Hamilton, who then went on the sick.”
“We shall therefore have further diversion of trade as a consequence of the fact that Northern Ireland, outrageously, continues to be regarded as Union territory. Well done, Jeffrey.”
“The guidance from the Trader Support Service goes on to state that, if you are moving goods from Union territory, like Northern Ireland, to further Union territory, like the EU mainland, and you go through GB, you have to prove, by virtue of what is called "proof of Union status", that your goods came from Union territory. In order to transfer goods through GB to the EU mainland, businesses in Northern Ireland will have to demonstrate, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy that goes with that, proof of Union status. Likewise with goods coming from the EU via GB into Northern Ireland, they will have to do that. The inevitable consequence is that those who transport goods will choose simply to transport them more and more via the Republic of Ireland to avoid proof of Union status and to bring them in via the Republic of Ireland.”
“That is because, contrary to what Sir Jeffrey has said, Northern Ireland, because we continue to be under the EU's customs code, is operating on the basis that GB is a third or foreign country.”
“This week, within days of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and some of his nodding acolytes on the DUP Benches telling us that the Union had been restored, that Northern Ireland's place within it was secure and that the Irish Sea border had been removed, the Trader Support Service issued new guidance about the movement of goods to and from Northern Ireland. That new guidance expressly defines goods produced in Northern Ireland as "Union Goods": not UK Union goods, but European Union goods. It expressly declares that. It proceeds in that guidance to define Northern Ireland as EU territory.”