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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“We continue to have the highest level of economic inactivity in the whole UK and we are supposed to have a strategy, but it is sitting on a shelf, totally unfunded and unfunded by an Executive that can find £500 million to supplement benefits but no money to encourage a strategy to get people who are economically inactive into work. Does that not say everything about this miserable, failed Executive?”
“So, I suggest to the Minister that she should look seriously at the possibility of putting into the Bill an enabling clause so that it does not become stale and out of date and can instead be kept up to date.”
“The Minister referred to the very small number of instances of use of the farm loss payment, but perhaps she will tell us just what that number is. Does she agree that the real problem is the unrealistic requirement for a total loss of every last blade of grass before you get a farm loss payment? <BR /> <BR />On a point raised by Mr Cochrane-Watson, the Bill is good in bringing us up to date, but would it not benefit from an enabling clause so that, in future, it could be kept up to date? We would not need fresh legislation, maybe every 10 or 15 years, to update the rates if, by secondary legislation, they could be updated much more frequently.”
“The Minister said that there have been very few instances of drawdown of farm loss payments. I suspect that that is because the premise for a farm loss payment is that you have to lose the whole farm. You can effectively lose your farm business by losing 50%, 60% or 70% of your land, but you have not technically lost your farm business. I think that, if there was a gap in the law, it was that failure to adequately recognise the devastating impact that extensive land take had — though it left you with something, it effectively destroyed your farm. Therefore, I think that the direction of examination might have been more towards how we could make the farm loss payment more accessible, more realistic and more appropriate for those who de facto lose their farm, though they are left with an acre or two.”
“I suspect that some of my constituents, not in any churlish sense but naturally, will say that it is a pity that this did not come along in time for the A26 extension, because presently, of course, those necessary works proceed and land has been taken on the old rates. <BR /> <BR />I would have to say that, if there has been any churlishness, it has been on the part of the Department in terms of the ancillary accommodation works, the belligerent refusal of necessary underpasses — I think of one case in particular — and the mindset about providing adequate access to a particularly prominent business on that route. I hope that those yet to receive the treatment on the A6 and the A5 will not have the same experience. <BR /> <BR />One of the things that the Bill proposes, of course, is the removal of the farm loss payments.”
“On a point of order, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. The Speaker's Office has been very helpful from time to time about seeking to bring pressure on Executive Departments that fail to answer questions expeditiously. May I ask for help again in respect of four questions on the subject of NAMA, which have been outstanding for six months? The questions are AQW 48466/11-16, AQW 48465/11-16, AQW 48291/11-16 and AQW 48288/11-16. It would be appreciated if the Speaker's Office could again exhort OFMDFM and DFP to answer the questions tabled.”
“If, at a point during an Assembly, specific circumstances arise and a party, by leaving the Executive, qualifies on the formula of comprising 8% of the House, why should it not be able to form an opposition? I think that those in the House with a vested interest have tried to sustain as much as they can of the failing structures of the House by forcing parties to make their choice at the beginning and wanting them to hear the revving engines of the chauffeur-driven cars before they decide whether they really want to be in opposition. <BR /> <BR />I commend Mr McCallister for his tenacity and for the progress that he has made. I, of course, wish that the Bill had been more comprehensive and had reached more into the very basis of democratising the House, but so far, so good.”
“<BR /> <BR />It continues to be wrong that if a party leaves the Executive during the course of an Assembly, as the Ulster Unionist Party did in this Assembly, it cannot form an opposition. Who knows what that party is going to do in the next one? It obviously does not know because it has been ducking and diving on that issue for some time. The issue that took it out of the Executive seems to have been long since forgotten, whether or not it goes back.”
“<BR /> <BR />It is no surprise that if you say to an electorate that it can elect any sort of Government provided that it, as of right, contains certain parties, you diminish the electoral process and many people ask themselves, "What is the point?". If the Bill begins to dismantle some of the very ugly scaffolding of the Belfast Agreement, then it serves a purpose in that regard. I trust that it will be the start of that. I also welcome the fact that while the ink was barely dry on the misnamed Fresh Start, the Bill and the support that it garnered as it moved through the House has, in fact, bypassed one of the weaker aspects of that and has, somewhat, liberated the circumstances in which an opposition can be formed; that is to the good.”
“Sinn Féin stands exposed as anti-democratic in its approaches to democratic institutions by virtue of the stance it has taken in this House. <BR /> <BR />Likewise, of course, some in the Committee who were, perhaps, ashamed of following their Committee stance in the full glare of debate in this House, also sought to kill off the Bill and refused to support its clause-by-clause analysis. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that some progress has been made with the Bill and I trust that this will be the beginning of the building and re-establishment of due democratic process within these institutions. If these institutions ever want to recapture public alignment and connection, then they need to be based on the sustaining and growing of democratic norms rather than their suppression.”
“It is also interesting that the party that in the Assembly during the course of Mr McCallister's Bill has done most to try to derail it, namely Sinn Féin, after its failure to attain its ambitions in the Southern election, falling significantly short of what it hoped to attain, has as the height of its ambition now in the Irish Republic to form the opposition. Yet, in this House, on every vote on this Bill, it has sought to deny even the right to have an opposition. What it preaches and what it wants to practise elsewhere on this island, it seeks to strangle at birth in Northern Ireland and seeks to deny even the very beginnings of an opposition with the very faltering steps that this Bill seeks to take in that direction.”
“<BR /> <BR />There is no suggestion whatsoever that the public should not be allowed to vote a party out of government; indeed, many used that option when they voted a couple of days ago. There is no suggestion whatsoever that there should not be a robust place for opposition, nor that any party should have an as-of-right place in government in that arrangement. Yet here, within the arrangements of the Belfast Agreement, we maintain that hideous position that the electorate are simply told that there are as-of-right places for parties in government — the very antithesis of due democratic process.”
“I commend the sponsor of the Bill for his tenacious pursuit of the issue. Despite many obstacles and attempts to derail all and everything to do with his Bill, he has salvaged and maintained some semblance of the Bill, although by no means all of it. It was never a Bill that was in the terms that I personally would have written because it still maintains at the very heart of our structures the poison that spreads the disconnect between these institutions, including this House, and the public, namely the continuing outrageous provision of as-of-right places for anyone in government. There has just been an election in the Irish Republic, and, of course, there was a bit of an object lesson in how democratic processes can work.”
“I understand and acknowledge that, to date, there has been self-regulation. However, the Bill was, perhaps, an opportunity to take it beyond self-regulation and make sure that there would be no slipping back on that, particularly bearing in mind that the primary sponsors of Ulster Rugby are drinks companies and, therefore, the perpetual pressure from the sponsors is to maximise sales. In those circumstances, might it not have been more prudent to have within the Bill the sort of self-regulation protection that we are now going to have to rely on, in the hope that it continues?”
“Yes, there is an undertaking, which is mentioned in the Committee's report, that there should be a consultative committee that includes residents' representatives. Ulster Rugby has gone on record to say it is amenable to that, but there is no statutory requirement for it. That lasts only as long as Ulster Rugby wishes. I think that, too, is perhaps a deficiency in the Bill. <BR />Those are my concerns about how this Bill has been fleshed out and where it takes us. I think that the concerns of the residents have not been copper-fastened in the manner in which they perhaps ought to have to been.”
“If that is correct, there would be no reason why, in consequence, the licence could not have been restricted to the days of such events. If it will only apply to events, why do we need to legislate for something over and above and beyond that? That is what we are doing. <BR /> <BR />The further point that I want to make is that we heard evidence from affected residents. Apart from, perhaps, making some sympathetic noises to those residents, in the end, the Bill is essentially in the form that caused their concern in the first place.”
“At Second Stage, the Member indicated a greater flexibility than is manifested in the amendments, in that she said that she was receptive to ideas such as putting a restraint on the licence on the occasions when stadia were being used for junior events; but that does not appear at all in the Bill. I regret that there was no support for my suggestion at the Committee that this needed to be in the Bill. <BR /> <BR />The purpose is to create licences to facilitate sporting events, and I am also disappointed that there was no attempt to restrict the licence from a 365-day a year licence to one in which the stadia are actually in use for those purposes. What we have created is a year-round licence for the stadia rather than one for the occasions when they are thought to be necessary and required. I am also —”
“I would certainly need a lot of persuading that the amendment is more restrictive. It seems to be more inviting of travel in a variety of directions rather than being more restrictive. <BR /> <BR />I suppose that the fundamental point I was making was that not only does it make changes that were never flagged up, but it flies in the face of quite extensive presentation to, and consultation with, the Committee. It surprises me that, if these were issues that would ultimately manifest themselves in amendments, then the Member was not aware of them at the point when she was engaged with the Committee and has left it until this point, having persuaded us of option 3 in her original proposals, and has come forward with a different amendment. <BR /> <BR />I want to move on to other aspects of the Bill.”
“That is a much wider embrace than the Bill as originally drafted. The removal of the threshold inevitably has that consequence.”
“I hear what the Member is saying, but it is quite clear that the Bill, as originally drafted, and the amendments, as originally intended, maintained an infrastructure that set certain thresholds that have now been removed. It has now been gifted to the Department to be as flexible as it wishes, with the language now simply being diminished to that which it considers to be:”
“Yet, we find that, at Consideration Stage, that qualifying criterion has been removed, with apparently little, if any, notice. We also find that the qualifying criterion of 8,000 permanent seats has been removed. So, what we have now is a much broader embracing amendment than any ever notified to, or discussed by, the Committee.”
“In speaking to the amendments, I want to begin with amendment No 2. In various presentations to the Committee, the sponsor of the Bill spoke at length about clause 2 and, in fact, proffered the Committee three different options as to how she proposed to amend clause 2, indicating that the third of those options was her preference. Yet we find today that the amendment tabled is a different option altogether; it is not one of the three that was tabled to the Committee. It is different in a number of significant ways in that it removes from the Bill any reference to a qualifying stadium being "a regional or national stadium", which was, of course, the primary premise of the need for this legislation: that we are dealing with regional or national stadia.”
“Will you also tell the police what you did?”
“If that is so, perhaps the deputy First Minister will answer the question. Will he, as an officer commanding in the IRA, lead by example and give information to the information retrieval commission, if it is to afford any hope to the many innocent victims of his IRA?”
“Leaving aside the novelty of the deputy First Minister and Sinn Féin campaigning on a "Brits in" platform, does he at least acknowledge the fact that every penny that we receive from Europe is just some of our own money coming back to us, because we in this nation — the United Kingdom — are a huge net contributor?”
“I do not disagree. I am not for one moment attacking the integrity of religious charities; I simply make the point that they should be subject to the same general law requirement as everyone else. I am not saying that, because someone was once convicted of something inappropriate, they are for ever barred from a useful life as a trustee. Section 86 does not say that because it applies only to unspent convictions. <BR /> <BR />The Church has nothing to fear from the application of section 86. What is it that it fears? I am sure it is not for the appointing of people of that ilk. I think it was a misinformed objection believing that the Charity Commission could remove their trustees, when it cannot. The essence of applying section 86 to everyone will create no bogeymen and no fear, I would have thought, for any religious charity.”
“The issue is the one that I sought to crystallise: is it right or wrong that the qualifications of a trustee should be the same across the board and that you should not enter an arena that says that the only charity that you can be a trustee of if you are a convict is a religious charity. I just find that impossible to get my head around.”
“Yes, the Assembly Commission is on my mind for other reasons, I suspect. I would not wish to associate the Charity Commission with any misdeeds whatever. I readily correct each and every reference. If I inadvertently said "Assembly Commission", I of course intended to say "Charity Commission". <BR /> <BR />I understand the point that Mr Dickson is making, but, in the real world, the person who is going forward to be a Presbyterian Church minister is unlikely to have an unspent criminal conviction. Therefore, it is a bit of a straw man. Equally, in the case of someone being made bankrupt, bankruptcies can be discharged and there are facilities and arrangements for that. There are straw men being set up in the debate.”
“I think that the Churches were misinformed about what they thought they needed to ask for. It is clear from their submission that they thought that the consequence of this was that the Assembly Commission could remove trustees. They were obviously misinformed about that because, as section 34 does not apply, the Assembly Commission cannot remove trustees. That was a false fear. It is simply a matter of whoever is setting up a charity and seeking to avail themselves of the advantages of it — there are financial advantages to being a charity — accepting the law of the land, whether it is about the forms you have to fill in or the qualifications of a trustee. That is not too much to ask.”
“That is the state saying what you must do. Here is the state saying, "And this is the state's expectation of the qualifications of a trustee". I do not see what is wrong with the state saying that.”
“In a moment. <BR /> <BR />It is no more interfering in their affairs than saying, "Here is the procedure by which you apply to be a charity. You have to fill in this form and that form and make this declaration and that declaration".”
“I suppose that I am dealing with the principle of what is right and what is wrong. It just seems to me incongruous and wrong that you can have an unspent criminal conviction on financial matters and be a trustee of a religious charity yet cannot be a trustee of a charity that looks after animals, birds or something else if you have such a conviction. That seems to me inexplicable. Therefore, I do not understand the exercise of the Church bodies to think that, by simply making them subject to the same generalised qualifications for the appointment of trustees as everyone else, the state is in some way interfering in their affairs.”
“All that it does is say, "Here is the public expectation for any charity that wishes to be a charity and that wishes, in consequence, to avail itself of the taxation benefits of being a charity and to draw down the public money that comes with that. For any charity that wants to be in that position, here is the standard expectation of the qualifications of your trustees. It is up to you, as the religious charity, to appoint your trustees, but to appoint them as any other organisation would against the qualifications that are in section 86". <BR /> <BR />It therefore seems to me —”
“It does not, because the single section in the Charities Act 2008 that allows the Charity Commission to remove trustees already does not apply to Churches. Section 34 has been disapplied, so it is not a case of the Churches saying that it is an unconscionable interference with the running of the Churches because it allows the Charity Commission to remove trustees. It does not. That power does not exist. All that section 86 says is, "Here are the qualifications of a trustee", but it does not give the Charity Commission the right to remove any trustee of any religious order. That still lies with the Churches.”
“The Member makes an understandable point, and I recognise entirely the capacity through the grace of God for people to change, but section 76 takes account of that. In setting out the qualifications, it does not apply to spent convictions. Therefore, if a conviction is spent by virtue of the passage of time, it does not prohibit that person from being a trustee of any charity. The aspect that the Member raises, I think, is adequately covered by the protection in section 76 against a spent conviction being a barrier to being a trustee. <BR /> <BR />The real point that was brought to us by the Churches, and, clearly, they were somewhat misinformed, because they approached the Committee on the basis that that meant that the Assembly Commission, in consequence, could remove trustees.”
“That seems to me to be so incongruous as to be wrong. <BR /> <BR />What is section 86 but the qualifications of a trustee? Why should the qualifications of a trustee not be uniform across the charity sector? Why should we create a special exemption to allow someone who could not be a trustee of a children's charity or a preservation society looking after birds, or anything else, to be a trustee of a religious charity? The fact that they may be a convicted crook is pushed aside and does not matter. Is that right?”
“I wish to place on record my reservations and concerns about the proposal, as I did at the Committee. Section 86 of the Charities Act 2008 establishes the qualifications to be a trustee; that is, to be a trustee of any charity. It is no surprise that it stipulates certain restrictions, one of which is that you cannot be convicted of a relevant criminal offence. In other words, you cannot be a convicted crook and be a trustee of a charity. That, I must say, seems to me eminently right and sensible, yet the purpose and intent of the order is to exclude from that basic qualification requirement one sector of charities, namely religious charities. The purpose of what has been said comes to this: you cannot be a convicted criminal or crook and the trustee of a charity unless it is a religious charity.”
“This is a side of the EU that Europhiles like the Minister do not like to talk about: the fact that it fines us tens of millions of euros on the administration of our own money that comes back to us. On the question of the strangling bureaucracy, the EU Commission has admitted that the cost of bureaucracy — its regulations on the economies — is 4% of GDP. What does that translate into in terms of the charge on agriculture in Northern Ireland? What is 4% of the GDP, because that is the cost of regulation?”
“Will the Minister undertake to exempt from the regulations he brings those terrorists with self-inflicted injuries?”
“Whatever the obfuscation about the genesis of the proposal, the fact is that it has been adopted by the Executive and the Minister, and it is he who will bring forward the regulations to implement it. Is the Minister not ashamed that he intends to bring forward a proposal whereby a terrorist — a victim maker — who injured himself by his own hand in planting a bomb will possibly be in the position of benefiting from an extra four points in order to secure and maintain his benefits? If the Minister is not ashamed of that, he should be, because it is an obnoxious and obscene proposal.”
“— he has to say things he does not believe in. I have no idea. He is absolutely right that, today, Mr Hazzard was the emperor without clothes to say that, "Oh, we could not do that because we are very cognisant of the need for consultation", when his party, as Mr Givan points out, were the very people who were so anxious and eager to rubbish his amendments and those of others when it suited on the pretext of all that. Yes: it only adds another layer to the hypocrisy that is so self-evident here. <BR /> <BR />I say to those parties: apply your own standards of what you are on record as saying about discrimination. If you believe in them, then, overnight, withdraw the petition of concern and allow the matter to be dealt with because, patently, neither Department is willing to deal with it. Now is the time to grasp the nettle.”
“Well, I will have to take the Member's word for it that, as a Back Bencher, sometimes — and maybe he was speaking from personal experience: I do not know—”
“I certainly endorse that suggestion. If there has, allegedly, been an attempt by the Education Minister to encourage OFMDFM to deal with the issue, let us get it out into the public domain. Let us see that correspondence and the reply. Who is hiding from the issue and why? That is the question. It is a nettle that needs to be grasped. Nobody seems prepared to grasp it. When there is an attempt to grasp it in the House, the people who line up to ensure that the issue is not dealt with are the SDLP and Sinn Féin.”
“Mrs Overend is right: there has been shameful passing the parcel on the matter. I have answers from OFMDFM and the Minister of Education, each saying that it is the other's responsibility. I welcome the indication from Mr Buchanan that he and his colleagues will support the amendment, but what has the First Minister done about it? When you ask a question of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, the answer you get is this: "Well, that is for the Department of Education." When you ask the Department of Education, it says: "That is for the First Minister." What has the First Minister done to bring the matter to a head; this disgraceful, ridiculous, unedifying discrimination provision whereby teachers, and employing authorities when they employ teachers, are exempt from discrimination legislation?”
“In order to make it lawful to discriminate in the manner that article 71 permits, there had to be a derogation from the convention. Therefore, those coming from that background, having made their careers out of protestations about discrimination, to end up as those who are the defenders of discrimination, they have a lot of explaining to do. <BR /> <BR />"Pitiful" is the only word that I can think of for Mr Hazzard's attempt to explain the inexplicable. As for the SDLP spokesman, as was pointed out, he did not even go there, because he knows, I suspect, full well that it is utterly inexplicable why those who claim to be against discrimination should themselves be those determined through a petition to ensure that discrimination stands.”
“<BR /> <BR />There are politicians on the nationalist Benches who have made a career out of talking about discrimination. The walls of the Chamber have echoed for years with protestations about discrimination and about how a community, in one way or another, has been shamefully treated and hopelessly discriminated against. It is, however, those very people who, in this debate, and tomorrow, are going to protect and cement discrimination and ensure that this very modest move to chip away at discrimination is defeated. Of course, they are the same politicians who pin their colours to the European Convention on Human Rights and laud all its protections, yet article 71 can be in existence only because of a derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights.”
“Mr Swann is quite right, because we had a contribution from the SDLP in which the Member spectacularly failed to mention the amendments whatsoever, other than to say that the party was going to oppose them, without reason or rationale. <BR /> <BR />To return to the point, Mr Hazzard says, "In fact, we support the removal of article 71", but today — or tomorrow — Sinn Féin is going to veto the amendments. So intent is it on vetoing it that it is going to deploy a petition of concern. You therefore speak with no credibility whatsoever when you try to suggest to the House that, in fact, you are in favour of repealing the application of article 71, when, by your actions, you are going to guarantee that it is not repealed. Therein is the hypocrisy of the situation.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, seldom have Members from the SDLP and the Sinn Féin Benches spoke more unconvincingly out of both sides of their mouth. Mr Hazzard —”
“The Minister has confirmed that improving the safety of the junction at the Temple is the key consideration. Can she give me an assurance that the same criteria and consideration will be applied to the Woodgreen junction on the A26 in my constituency? Just 10 days ago, we had another fatality of a young person at that junction. Can we have the same safety provision there?”
“Of course, if access to justice for the people in the area really mattered to the Minister, he would not be closing the wonderful, expensively upgraded Ballymena courthouse. For all the platitudes that his actions speak towards, he could not care less about access to a courthouse for the people of Ballymena. Today, when asked how many jobs will be lost, he could not even put a figure on it. Will he at least put a figure on it so that we know?”