Claire Hanna
South Belfast · Social Democratic and Labour Party · Northern Ireland
“I thank the Minister for his answers so far and for the announcement of the inquiry. In common with other Opposition parties, we have been calling for a long number of weeks for an inquiry under the 2005 Act. I am glad of the acknowledgement of that.”
“My question was about a contingency or plan B, as the challenge was entirely foreseeable. Has the Minister given any thought to publishing an anonymised list? Such a list could contain some geographical detail, the date, the output and the payment, so that we can get a sense of the levels of applicants that are credible and not credible.”
“— it is so important we let the people who have put all those qualities into the public discourse know they have been validated and that the redress they are entitled to is delivered to them.”
“I thank all those who have spoken. Like others, I attended the launch of the report on Friday and have spent some time since reading it. I think that, for everybody there, it was a very difficult few hours — even for those of us who did not live through those experiences.”
“<BR /> <BR />Colin McGrath, when moving the motion, referred to the appalling shooting last night of a public servant and member of the PSNI as an illustration of what we have failed to eliminate and what we are definitely not returning to, but, as we said, that opportunity has been squandered.”
“<BR /> <BR />Colin McGrath made the point that, despite the disappointment and the stop and start of progress, if we found ourselves 20 years back, we would still push to try and deliver the Good Friday Agreement, because the fact is the that core analysis of John Hume's three strands still stands.”
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“People may put faith in the views of Dr David Capper, for example, in the School of Law at Queen's, who specialises in contract law and who expressed scepticism — that is putting it very mildly — at the view that the proposals can be implemented in a way that is zero cost. He also, you may be aware, expressed the opinion on Radio Ulster at the weekend, after studying the regulations, that regulation 33(p), which provides that subsidies should not be used to:”
“There is a lot more to read in that, but I will leave that to Members if they need some light relief later. Either those parties were spinning the public a line eight weeks ago when they wrote that or they are doing it now, because both cannot be true. The party that designed this disastrous scheme has, we are led to believe, designed a good mitigation, but it looks like it is on the back of the envelope to everybody else. It leaves us with the choice between an £85,000 per day bleed indefinitely, if this place falls and we do not have another opportunity to fix it, and the potential cost of legal challenges, as well as all the cost of the very belated investigations. <BR /> <BR />In this scenario, I think you will understand that people are a bit reluctant to trust those who designed the flawed scheme to design the fix.”
“If I am including the Chair, do I include your three party colleagues who were also on the Committee and who did not do that? I think the fundamental point is that very little information came out of the Executive at the time. Clearly, the evidence trail will show — this is why we are not scared of a public inquiry — that the information was within the Executive, or the two main parties of the Executive, from February and that now it is all about throwing shapes. <BR /> <BR />Eight weeks ago today, the Fresh Start anniversary puff piece was published in the daily newspapers. It reads:”
“That is one of very many questions I and other Members will have, even if sticking plasters are put over some of the problems we are storing up for further down the line. I think the issue is characteristic of the lack of good governance and transparency in this Executive. The exclusion of other voices led to this being a two-party Executive because other people were not in the loop. While I have no doubt it is the party across the Chamber that designed the scheme and probably had most of the information, it is fair to say that it was not effectively held to account by its government partners, as would appear to be the case with NAMA, the social investment fund and the suppression of information on Brexit.”
“I think that is a fundamental problem. We are trying to fix a dreadful governance problem with even worse governance here. I think it is exactly the lack of good governance —”
“Despite the problem being in their domain for so long, these very limited proposals have come forward. Understandably, there is a pressure of time, but there is no scrutiny being applied. We are given to understand, by the evidence given in the Economy Committee today, that, in the form it is in now, 99% of this plan was circulated on Monday last week. Why is it that it was sent to the Examiner of Statutory Rules only after 5.00 pm on Friday, when that person, who is the anchor of good legislation, would then necessarily not have access to the legal opinion and costing support required? Why is that the case? We are having to park all sorts of scrutiny here, but that fundamental point will lead some to believe that people do not want this to be scrutinised.”
“That is a very fundamental point, and, as I said, in the online information wars of people trying to cover up and spread the blame, it is very clear. Anybody who has been told that the issue was the Opposition voting for that scheme should read the Hansard report of Monday 15 February. Read the transcript of that debate, and it will become very clear who knew what and when, and it will be very clear why parties are writhing and twisting over a full inquiry into this. They fear the question: what did you know and when? This side of the House does not fear that question.”
“I thank the Member for her points. People are taking a position on this issue a little bit too late, unfortunately. For the record, I want to nail one of the lines that is being pushed out. The post-truth parties are spinning that the Opposition parties voting to keep the scheme open in February was the problem. They do not say whether that makes us entirely culpable or whether some of that blame was shared. For the record, we did vote for the amended scheme. We voted for the scheme that we should have had in the first place, which was about environmental protection. That point is clearly lost on or completely irrelevant to the party opposite, which rigged the scheme in the way that it did here. That damage was being covered up at the time. In fact, the scheme was being sold as just too successful and a victim of its own success.”
“It appears now to be working primarily to cover its tracks and to come up with lines that will answer the queries on the doorsteps, and there will be queries. <BR /> <BR />I appreciate that the Finance Minister has made some efforts. People come to us with problems, including, for example, a broken street lamp. If we said, "I emailed and they never came back to me" or, "I phoned them last month and they did not come back to me", people would rightly tell us that we were not doing our job. That is over a broken street lamp; this is over hundreds of millions of pounds of public money, and "I asked a few questions" is not good enough.”
“At the core of this issue and of the governance omnishambles — that is the word that is best applied — is the loss to the public purse, and, of course, we are very keen to hear a coherent plan for how that flow will be stemmed. We all still have a job here in that we have to scrutinise the proposals and assess all the potential outworkings to make sure that this is a plan that will save money and not just a plan to save face, which many people will feel that it is, on the basis of the detail that we have had. <BR /> <BR />It must be pointed out how disingenuous people find the urgency being projected by the party across the Chamber in coming up with a solution to this problem now and, indeed, the outrage being projected by the party to my right, given that it is very clear that it has known about the problem for a very long time.”
“I thank the Minister for his answers so far. I welcome the initiative on tax compliance. I introduced a similar policy through Belfast City Council in 2015 with Christian Aid, and I hope that can act as a pilot for it. <BR /> <BR />Does the Minister believe that, in the context of the Executive not adequately investing in skills, education and infrastructure, thereby not creating all the conditions for jobs, his proposed corporation tax cut would represent tax justice on the principles he has laid out this afternoon?”
“Does the Member agree with me that the attempt by the DUP to cast the blame across the Chamber ignores the fact that the scheme voted for in February by the opposition was the amended scheme?”
“Yes, I agree. If the party opposite is so confident that there has been no wrongdoing, let all the facts go into the public domain. Let it be dealt with at a remove from the Assembly, and let us restore some confidence in the Assembly.”
“— restore some confidence in the Assembly. I will give way.”
“You referred to conviction without trial, but Peter Robinson set the precedent for this and the Civil Service uses the same mechanism, whereby somebody who is being investigated stands aside. This very weekend, you suspended a member of your party, pending an investigation. Take the plank out of your eye, and take the opportunity to —”
“I will not; I have a lot to get through. <BR /> <BR />The environmental aims of the scheme were completely ignored by the Department, which took it from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and made it into what has, apparently, been just a money-making scheme that has led to more environmental degradation as not just public money but the materials involved go up in smoke. The ramifications will be felt not just over the next 20 years but now, in that we were supposed to be discussing the Budget today and instead are discussing this fiasco. At a time when the Executive need more scrutiny, not less, the Opposition will not have access to the Budget figures this side of recess. <BR /> <BR />In the minds of the public, alleged cronyism and corruption are written all over this. Mrs Foster has an opportunity to restore some faith.”
“At a time when household budgets are under pressure, the sums here are horrifying, but I have heard very little about those sums from the Benches opposite. The view that, apparently, because it was London money, it was OK to squander it is really breathtaking and arrogant. Whether the money comes from London, Brussels, Washington or Belfast, somebody earned it and paid it in tax, and all taxpayers are entitled to know that their money is being fairly spent.”
“We defend the joint nature of the Executive Office, as we did when we would not listen to illegitimate preaching to the choir this morning. People will want to know that there is, indeed, a joint office and that somebody is there to prevent what really is becoming worse than the worst excesses of one-party Stormont rule in the past. If Sinn Féin believes that it is what Mr O'Dowd just said it was — corruption — and it wants to do anything other than throw shapes, it can support our motion to exclude the First Minister. If, on the long finger in the new year, it wants to build on that with an inquiry, it can do so — we will all support an inquiry — but there is no reason why it cannot support our motion.”
“The fact is that, during the in/out charade of last year, when Arlene Foster was left to guard against rogues and renegades, and, according to Peter Robinson, was there to ensure that nationalists and republicans were not able to take financial and other decisions that may be detrimental to Northern Ireland, a well-intentioned scheme was apparently being used as a ruse to make money for those who were in the know. It is clear now who the rogues and renegades are. <BR /> <BR />It is also clear which party was in the driving seat here, but we are left wondering what the other partner in government has been doing. As with NAMA and SIF, Sinn Féin has either been turning a blind eye here or has merely been along for the ride: in government but not in power.”
“No, I will not. <BR /> <BR />The benign taxpayer here is supposed to just continue picking up the tab and becoming more and more disenfranchised. <BR /> <BR />The arrogance today is breathtaking. You may think that this is hilarious, but nobody out there is laughing at this loss of money. The defence has been to spread it about and blame it on anybody but the boss — on civil servants, the Opposition and the media — using "whataboutery", repeated versions of the story and a best defence of not being across the detail. The party that has been moaning about faceless unelected bureaucrats in Europe is apparently content to let SpAds run the show. The party that cannot even cut and paste London's scheme tells us that it has the competence to lead Northern Ireland. <BR /> <BR />This scandal represents the Executive's ineptitude and dysfunction.”
“<BR /> <BR />Not for the first time, I wonder whether the party across the Chamber cares who they make cynical when they can just trot out, as the First Minister and her colleagues have done, the old headcount lines that it is about nationalists and others ganging up on the leader of unionism while the benign —”
“It is fair to say that belief in the will and ability of the Assembly has been low in recent years, but this fiasco has turned that public frustration and dissatisfaction into anger. The First Minister has had ample opportunity over the last two weeks to restore some confidence and dignity in the institution and to instigate a thorough public inquiry to get to the root of how and why £400 million of public money is being so shamefully wasted. We want to be clear that a fudged inquiry that is set up and directed by the Executive or their proxies will not be able to get to the bottom of that scandal. Any brinkmanship about and risk to the structure, despite that deep frustration, will leave us with no possibility of getting to the bottom of it.”
“Toy soldier Dee Stitt is absolutely not that. If you will not face down that man, how can we have any confidence that you will face down hundreds of other paramilitaries?”
“— giving money to people who are consistently good examples to their communities.”
“Two decades after the ceasefires, with most people much longer out of jail than they were in, the time for rewards for good behaviour is long since over. Therefore, as much as being anything about the process, this is about the failing of the Executive to tackle paramilitarism and the out-of-date group think of co-opting the troublemakers in order to make a them a permanent part of our community infrastructure. We are supposed to be —”
“It is the character of those preferred partners that is troubling very many people. We are told that groups are in transition but with absolutely no deadline for when they are supposed to become former paramilitaries. It is true, of course, that just because you have a past does not mean that you cannot have a future, but you cannot expect to be paid to be the future while simultaneously being the past. <BR /> <BR />We all voted in 1998 for paramilitary prisoners to be reintegrated. We did not vote for the elitism and patronage that has happened since and that has elevated people above their neighbourhoods. Sending those same neighbours to those people for renewal advice and employment advice is cruel.”
“OK. My colleague Nichola Mallon has outlined our consistent concerns about the process: the lack of open tender; the consistently opaque responses of OFMDFM; and the multi-layered and unresolved conflict of interest. It is worth saying that Government contributor after Government contributor was throwing up as straw men the good projects that we have all acknowledged here and immorally using them for cover. Each one of you has failed to acknowledge the substantive concerns that have been raised by many people and that are acknowledged in the deep concern in the DUP's own amendment that it tabled. <BR /> <BR />The fact is that the flaws are not oversights in the process. They are doing exactly what, as Mr McGuinness said last month, the fund was designed to do, which is to hand money to the Executive's preferred partners.”
“I thank the Minister for his answers. Supporting People has presented a very compelling case, which has been independently verified, for saying that its budget is effectively a preventative spend and that the problems that it tackles would cost public services a lot more if it did not make its intervention. In that context, and given the fact that demand for its intervention is rising, will the Minister assure us that that service will be protected and that it will be allowed to meet that demand?”
“— throughout the world. We are happy to support the motion.”
“<BR /> <BR />Today is our opportunity to keep HIV and AIDS education, awareness and treatment on the agenda, publicly and politically; and to ensure that fundraising is undertaken for groups like Rainbow and Positive Life that are doing tremendous work by fundraising to support research into treatment — and, hopefully and potentially, vaccination — and also by providing support for people living with the diagnosis. <BR /> <BR />It is also a time to remember the millions of people who have died —”
“Despite scaremongering and misinformation, the truth is that there are only three ways to contract HIV: unprotected sex, which accounts for 95% of transmissions; sharing needles; and mother-to-child transmission. Pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs, which inhibit the virus remarkably, can minimise transition, and we support the Alliance's amendment to extend access. We hope that, in a very short time, that will become a generic and therefore much cheaper drug.”
“Since the identification of the virus in 1984, more than 35 million people have died, making it probably the most destructive pandemic in history and the major infectious killer, which has reversed progress in poverty alleviation in many other areas. Despite the scientific advantage, we do not have a cure and we do not have a vaccine. Though you have ARVs, in a global context, you are often fighting poor public health and nutrition, and the best antiretrovirals in the world are no good to you if you do not have adequate nutrition. <BR /> <BR />The good news is that people with access to effective HIV treatment can have a normal life expectancy, and some 80% of those with a diagnosis can expect to live a healthy life with the right antiretrovirals. <BR /> <BR />World AIDS Day gives us the opportunity to revisit the facts.”
“Any campaign that arises from this motion needs to be very well designed, both to address the stigma and to give very clear prevention messages. <BR /> <BR />Before joining the Assembly, I worked in the field of international development for over a decade, including in Zambia, where there was a prevalence rate of 14% of adults living with HIV. While the figure of 800 or so diagnoses in Northern Ireland is far too high, we can take some reassurance that, with management and access to antiretrovirals (ARVs), the transmission risk is minimised. For example, mother-to-child transmission can be as low as 1%. <BR /> <BR />The World Health Organization estimates that, globally, around 34 million people live with HIV, of whom 3 million are children.”
“Organisations like the NHS and the PSNI should have active policies about how they deal with and work with people living with HIV. <BR /> <BR />While HIV and AIDS are by no means only contracted by men who have sex with men, any awareness work cannot ignore the fact that over half of diagnoses are in this category. As such, we would have supported the People Before Profit amendment, which we think had that focus.”
“<BR /> <BR />I commend the Members who brought the motion, particularly Paula Bradley, who has been a very steadfast supporter of Positive Life. I do hope that it marks a change in approach by all parties. We agree with the need to increase awareness, but this is in part increasingly a challenge because of some of the misinformation and irrationality that had been out there around things like the gay blood ban, which I am sorry continued for so long. Thankfully, with the medical advances that are out there now, a diagnosis of HIV does not have to be a life sentence any more. The prejudice and the stigma that people experience can make their life very much more difficult than it needs to be, and, as such, information about transmission methods in particular need to be raised among the public at large.”
“I am very glad to speak on this motion on behalf of the SDLP just days ahead of World AIDS Day, which is, obviously, the global opportunity to raise awareness and improve education about HIV and AIDS and to improve the lives of people who are living with the diagnosis. It is also a time for debunking stereotypes and myths that do lead to prejudice and stigmatisation. It is a good opportunity for the Assembly and the Executive to offer support to those people diagnosed in Northern Ireland and reassurance that they will have protection in law, care without discrimination, including for mental health challenges relating to their diagnosis, which I know has been lacking, and adequate sexual health facilities.”
“I thank the First Minister for her answer. She referred to the growing understanding in Europe of our unique circumstances. Is she not worried, at any level, that London will look after the south-east and that she and the deputy First Minister need to seriously agree a detailed strategy and start fighting for Northern Ireland's access to the EU single market?”
“My question has been slightly lost in translation since its submission.”
“Like many others, I think, I see this as righting a wrong of the past. Does the Member think that those acts should still be illegal?”
“I thank the Minister for his answers. I welcome the expansion of the safety zones, but the average safety zone is about 300 metres, and the mean average for a journey to school is around 1·8 km, so it will not make that much of an impact on active travel. Has the Minister given any consideration to extending the 20 mph zone in urban areas?”
“I thank the Minister for her answers. Earlier this month, the government parties voted against our motion on waiting lists because they said that the figure referred to cases and not to people. The old figures may very well have referred to people. So, on the basis of the old targets, do we know how many humans are actually waiting?”
“I was pointing out the hypocrisy of talking about streamlining and efficiency while paying Charter hundreds of thousands of pounds to manage a much more experienced delivery body.”
“to manage a much more experienced delivery body?”
“Would the Member agree that all the rhetoric about streamlining and efficiency and cutting out the middleman rings a little hollow while the Government are paying an organisation like Charter hundreds of thousands of pounds”
“I do not envy anyone who has to drive you around, with the schedule that we know you keep. Does the Minister's driver come from the pool of Civil Service drivers, and if not, why is that policy still in place?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the Minister, when the DUP publicly responds to say that he does not have its support — ironically, when my party was acknowledging its broad sympathy — to deflect his anger by making allegations against other parties and presenting tittle-tattle as fact? If he insists on taking his frustrations with the DUP out on others, would it not be better that, rather than making allegations, he named names and presented evidence?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order to ask the Minister —”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. This is our first sight of it, but there are some interesting and very sensible proposals. We will have to look at the numbers because there will be losers as well as winners, but I look forward to exploring that. <BR /> <BR />Briefly, I want to ask about lifting the domestic rates cap. As a social democrat, I support the concept of levying those most able to pay, although I would prefer it to be done through income tax. This will disproportionately affect people in my constituency, many of whom are on good but modest incomes and are paying for everything. What consideration has the Minister given to a package of convergence measures such as were put in place to address the position of those affected by a rates bump after local government reform?”
“The deputy First Minister refers to a register in which steering group members declared their interests and recused themselves from decision-making. Where and when will this register be placed in the public domain?”
“I ask the Minister what action he is taking to meet and engage with the LGBT community as he develops his departmental strategy.”