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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“Commitments to reduce child poverty, as I said, were not met, and no strategy exists. At least you have not done what they did in London, where, when they were not meeting their targets, they changed the target halfway through. Hopefully, that will not happen. We missed the target to reduce serious crime; again, this document makes no mention of the elephant in the room of paramilitarism and organised crime. How, without agreeing to tackle that, are you going to move that forward? <BR /> <BR />You failed to develop the Maze prison site and Desertcreat and other major projects. On the environment, the Executive failed to meet their commitments to provide retrospective energy efficiency in public-sector housing. Indeed, while the housing target on building new build was met, we know that that has not met the need that is out there.”
“Yes, the Member does remember it, because miraculously it was announced, after no movement for four years, 10 minutes before the election. Suddenly, we announced that a tiny portion of that money was going to those places. We know that there is need out there, but we think that that should have been open to all the organisations that have ideas and skills for solving problems, not for special pet projects that get a wee tap on the shoulder, telling them that they are eligible to apply for it. <BR /> <BR />Looking at the last Programme for Government, as I said, we see that targets do not always mean that you are going to do anything. I understand that almost half of the 82 pledges were not met, despite the free year that was tacked on by the Secretary of State.”
“<BR /> <BR />In the last mandate, a lot of themes were not adequately progressed, and consultations and reports and workshops went into OFMDFM, the place where ideas went to die, and very little came out. The international strategy, the racial equality strategy and the sexual orientation strategy were all literally years late. Legislation passed as a result of the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 obliged the Executive to produce an anti-poverty strategy, but, last June, Justice Treacy found that you were in breach of that requirement, and still, there is nothing included in this document.”
“People are not sure whether this just an exercise in saying, "We asked your opinion, it is your Programme for Government" when there are any future problems. <BR /> <BR />It is also likely that, in a difficult funding climate, a lot of organisations are going to struggle to find the resources to put together a comprehensive response, but in the culture of this Executive, where much-needed social change money was siphoned off into the invite-only social investment fund, it is going to take a lot of courage for organisations to come out and say that, in fact, the emperor is not wearing any clothes and to point out the holes in your document.”
“Less than six months ago, in Fresh Start, you reduced the statutory minimum consultation period from 12 weeks to eight weeks, and we have had no update since the Stormont House talks on the compact advisory panel that was to replace the Civic Forum model that was allowed to fall. <BR /> <BR />Of course, it is useful for coalface organisations to have their opportunity to shape and refine the Programme for Government, but there has to be something for them to respond to. No organisation is going to disagree with a single one of the fine aspirations in this document, but we do not know what methodology is going to be used to decide which of those ideas are going to be taken and whether that is going to bring any clarity, rather than just reflect the broad range of opinions that we know are out there.”
“We also acknowledge that having a target does not always mean anything. The last Executive had a target, which they met, to produce a shared future strategy, and, right enough, a shared future did not magically appear because they were written down. Scotland also uses the framework, and it has worked well, but, with respect, this is not Scotland. That was a one-party Government that had made transparency and cross-cutting their political culture and which does not have the same silo mentality, political baggage and departmental fiefdoms that this Assembly has become known for. <BR /> <BR />We are certainly not against public consultation either, though you can understand that people are a little bit cynical.”
“<BR /> <BR />The rash of private Member's Bills and no-day-named motions that have gone in in the opening days of the mandate show very clearly that even members of the parties in the Government know that a lot of these issues are not going to turn up in the programme. If the issues that we raised during the negotiation, and which the Executive have now tacked on, were sufficiently important, can they now help us understand why, when we asked for that detail, we were accused of prickliness and misunderstanding the process? We are not against the outcomes-based concept. Most people are not, and, in fact, we welcome it. It is just about the lack of detail coming on the back of such a poor record of delivery over the last couple of mandates.”
“Let me clarify: we did not vote for Fresh Start, so we are not bound by the process, but the very task of amending the primary legislation to provide for 14 days instead of the previous window gave a very clear indication that that was supposed to be a serious and substantial negotiation window. In good faith, we told third-sector organisations to get their ideas in because this was going to be a substantial negotiation window. As my colleague Alex Attwood has outlined, this is not just an outcomes-based document. You will see in all the PSs that have been added, post the discussion document from last week, that it now suddenly mentions: North/South institutions, regional imbalance and investment, victims and historical abuse. These are the things that, in the two weeks after the election, we were saying needed to be there but were not.”
“We use these public services, we raise our families here and we want this to work as well. We can be very clear that we are not going to be wreckers, outside the process in opposition. We do not have a big bogeyman out the door, or a hand that we are going to overplay for years. We are not going to spend the next five years taking free kicks, like the opposition parties do in the South. <BR /> <BR />We campaigned, in the run-up to the election, on the basis that we would use the new Fresh Start-created14-day window to get some of our ideas in there, and we stuck to that as far as possible. It became very clear, very quickly, that there was to be no partnership and next to no detail. I see that the Alliance Party has taken some issue with our criticism of the process.”
“Madam Speaker, congratulations to you in your new role and to all those Members who have made very good maiden speeches. I was brought back briefly to Belfast City Council during Christopher's maiden speech and he will know that, coming from that Chamber and having small children, that is the first and last time for a while that he will speak for seven minutes without being interrupted. <BR /> <BR />I am glad, too, to have the opportunity to speak on the Programme for Government, which will be the guiding framework for Northern Ireland for the next five years and which, obviously, all of us want to work. There has been a lot of prickliness from the Executive parties about our decision to go into opposition, but I think we can be clear that we all live here.”
“I thank the member for her answers. Will she advise whether the Commission staff who are involved have had any opportunity to appeal the judgement that was made about their activity on social media?”
“Can the Minister advise when a new assessment will be given and what further actions might be taken to facilitate workers in south Belfast and further afield who are trying to get to work in the city centre?”
“I thank the Minister for that very comprehensive answer. She will be aware that this is a pressing issue, not just for those of us who live in south Belfast and use those roads every day, but as she says, it is a wider commuter corridor including from the Saintfield Road. I appreciate the efforts by the Department, including the work on bus and cycle transport. Ultimately, we need to get more cars off the road to reduce congestion, but I think that those speeds — I believe that, in 2013, it was the slowest road in Belfast, and I do not imagine that it has improved greatly for drivers —”
“I thank the Minister for his answer. I appreciate that there were delays with the commission and so on, but reform is clearly in the public interest. Indeed, a survey of people with a specific interest in that field found that they overwhelmingly — plus-90% — thought that the law should have been reformed. Will the Minister outline the reasons why the law was not changed through a legislative consent motion in 2012 when it was changed across the water? Were there any reasons why the then Finance and Personnel Minister —”
“I thank the Minister for her answer. How have the recent announcement on renewables obligation certificates and the early closure of the renewable heat incentives impacted on farms that would have sought that funding, particularly in relation to their energy costs?”
“Has her Department applied for money in INTERREG's latest open call, which is worth a potential £30 million to Northern Ireland for cross-border transport? Are there any specific cross-border transport projects that she feels might be at risk in the event of a Brexit?”
“I thank the Minister for his responses. I am glad you are enjoying the consultation responses. I have been reading some of them, and one disparity that people have noticed is between the rates bill for businesses here and comparable businesses across the water in Scotland, where many do not pay rates at all, and in the Republic, where a hotel, for example, might pay about a third of the rate it would pay here. What is the Minister's assessment of that differential, and is there anything that might be done to support traders here?”
“Do you intend this provision to be in place in the next mandate; ie this May? If so, will that be reflected by amendments in the legislation going through Westminster?”
“I am sure that you have other points to respond to. Does the Minister agree that, as I said, one Committee session is not sufficient to provide scrutiny? The Member asked for alternatives. We have proposed one, and, if you check the record, you will see that it was not to remove £800,000 from the victims and survivors fund. I pointed out that OFMDFM's bloated £14 million administration fund was more than that provided for victims and survivors in total and said that that is the fund from which we hope you will take money to put into childcare. Does the Minister agree that it is not appropriate for us to provide this scrutiny live in the Chamber just before the Budget is being voted on and that it would have been more appropriate to provide that level of detail for all sections of the Budget?”
“That is exactly the point. The House's job is to scrutinise the Budget. My point is that you have given us almost nothing to scrutinise. You have rushed this through. We appreciate that there were reasons for the rushing through. I gave the potted, disappointing life story of the Budget, but, in many cases, there has been one Committee session for each Department. I have referred to the allocation for Education and the total lack of scrutiny. We are not able to scrutinise the priorities that you are setting out, because you have not set them out. Despite the ideas that parties will set out in their manifestos, they will not present an alternative because you basically have not given us your opening gambit on it. That is the point. I have finished.”
“Am I allowed back up? In any other Parliament, that is —”
“That is exactly the point. In any other Parliament, anywhere else in the world —”
“<BR /> <BR />We also expressed our dismay about the decision to spend more on redundancies and the failure to create conditions for creating jobs, as well as the failure to give security of funding on flagship projects like the A5 and the A6 and an explanation as to how those projects are going to be funded during their lifetime. I will defer. My colleagues will outline those specific projects, and I guarantee that they will be clearer than I am on the locational differences between Crawfordsburn and Castledawson in relation to that project.”
“I am open to correction, but that sounds a lot like administration, coming in an OFMDFM budget which, as we know, is quite administration-heavy; the administration budget of which, as I pointed out yesterday, has gone up, year on year. Yesterday, I also pointed out a better use for that money. Some £880,000 could support the women's centre childcare fund. Adequate childcare would unlock a lot of possibilities for families, women and working people. As I pointed out yesterday, Scotland, and even the Conservative Party in London, are providing a lot better for working families in that respect.”
“We are still not sure about the £5 million added and the £10 million off skills. You also mentioned a potential £20 million in the June monitoring round. We still do not understand why there is all of that shuffling about. If that money is for anything other than departmental use and getting used to the changes in Departments, why is it not being allocated now? <BR /> <BR />I also raised the increased funding for the Strategic Investment Board and was told that £2·5 million of it was for Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) and the Urban Villages project. In the absence of further detail, I took to Google, this afternoon, and learned that:”
“I will. I pointed out some last night, and colleagues will point them out. As I said, we are not opposed, but if you would be more specific and tell us exactly what you are spending the money on, as other Parliaments and Houses do, it would be easier to set out the alternatives. What are the big ideas? If you can tell me what the big, creative ideas in the Budget are, and provide the detail of those, it will allow us to more effectively scrutinise them. The fact is that you are giving us figures like £1·9 billion, without the detail. How can we set out the alternative without knowing what your alternative is and what exactly you are going to do with that money. <BR /> <BR />I want to pick up, briefly, a couple of the points that I raised yesterday, and which you responded to, Minister, in winding up the debate.”
“There was also the rejection of the ideas of other parties during the talks process, and then there was the presentation of the Fresh Start Agreement to parties like ours about half an hour before it was published. This Budget then followed. As I said, it is not about opposition to the money going to the various Departments. There is a lot of talk about mandates and the size and use of mandates, but it wipes out and ignores the mandates of all of the other parties.”
“<BR /> <BR />Respectfully, I think that the response to our criticism has mainly been to deflect and talk about the lack of alternatives provided by the other parties, but without the detail, all we are able to look at are the bulges and the contractions in the numbers. We are not really able to fairly scrutinise the priorities and set out alternatives, and I am not sure whether that is done intentionally. <BR /> <BR />The life story of the Budget began with the disagreement over welfare and the failure, we think, to engage with reasonable proposals; you would not have agreed with all of them, but there was a failure to even engage with them.”
“I peek over the pond quite often to see how Scotland is using devolution to its best advantage, and it makes my heart sink a wee bit when I see the fiscal opportunities over there and the missed opportunities for using devolution here. <BR /> <BR />We do not think that the spirit of power-sharing and of possibility that gets and has got Northern Ireland through bigger problems than a few Budgets is evident in this Budget. We do not think that there is, as I said, the required level of accountability. In what other Parliament would one scrutiny session per Committee be justified for a Budget of £16 billion? I highlighted particularly the deficit in the scrutiny of the Education portion of the Budget in that regard.”
“<BR /> <BR />In response to my point about that flaw yesterday, Minister, you pointed out that this is a one-year Budget to reflect the stretching of the mandate, but we do not think that that negates the overarching need to reform the budgetary process. In the Opposition Bill, we suggested a budgetary Committee, which was, inexplicably, opposed. <BR /> <BR />Suffice to say, we are not confident that this Budget has either the imagination or the detail to respond to the very many challenges that we have here, including rebuilding the economy and giving confidence to investors, not just through a cut in corporation tax, and giving confidence to young people to stay. I am glad that the Member for North Antrim is also looking across to Scotland for ideas, but I am afraid that I do not see very many of them reflected in this Budget.”
“I will try to be reasonably brief as well, as I know that people like to check in with their families a couple of times a week. <BR /> <BR />We outlined some of the concerns that we have at the first stage of the Budget and during the debate on the spring Estimates yesterday. I think it is worth pointing out that a symptom of the failures in the process, as I referred to yesterday, is that we have had two debates on the Budget in a couple of weeks but, at the same time, have had very little time for the Ministers to bring forward their estimates and there has been very little scrutiny of those estimates.”
“I thank the Minister for his answer. I assure Members that that was not a planted question, and neither is this one. Has the Minister's Department done a wider audit of the funding and opportunities that would be lost in the unfortunate event of a Brexit, and of how that funding shortfall or deficit would be met by departmental resources?”
“I will speak briefly on these, because we have covered them at length. Amendment No 1 is, I suppose, a softening of the previous amendment. We remain supportive of that. Amendment No 2 deals with the new clause. I will try to kill two birds with one stone and address them both. In the context of the other activities that are outlined, we think that it is compatible. In the target demographic that the Member has outlined who participate in the sport, we think that it is appropriate. There is a relevant social benefit. We will let this one fly. We think that the policy does have wings and that those clubs should get their rates cheap, cheap.”
“I thank the Minister for his answers. Minister, we know that Northern Ireland has not achieved the same success in the drawdown of European funds as, for example, the South. Will you give your assessment of why that is the case and why we are not accessing as much funding as we could?”
“However, we take on board the arguments in favour of both 80% and 100% and appreciate that some issues with state aid and so on led to the delay in the debate. Whether it is the sale of alcohol or the issue of profitability, we cannot let it stop us making progress on the general principle and purpose of the Bill. <BR /> <BR />We are very supportive of the second clause, which is about window displays, as I outlined last week. I have subsequently discovered that it is quite innovative, in that nobody else has tried it. That is good because there is a perception that we just borrow our legislation from other jurisdictions. We welcome both provisions and will support the amendment.”
“I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate. As we said at the Bill's previous stages, we are content with it receiving accelerated passage. However, we should not be in the habit of bypassing the Assembly's role. <BR /> <BR />The first clause provides the power to enhance rate relief, which we support. We will support the amendment, as we supported that provision in the private Members' Bill. I thank Mr McKay for his trailer for 'St Mungo's', which, courtesy of St Michael's Primary School PTA , is coming to south Belfast next week, so I am glad to hear that it is a good show. <BR /> <BR />If the amendment falls, at least the 80% reduction is plenty to be going on with for all the reasons that both Members who have spoken outlined. It will allow clubs to develop, and so we will support the amendment.”
“Is it in order to quote from a conversation that happened in the canteen, rather than in the Chamber? I stand by what I said: it is not balanced but is based almost entirely on borrowing. It stretches the term. In case anybody checks Hansard, let me say that that was a conversation over the cauliflower cheese.”
“I thank the Minister for his answer. The scheme has caused upset. I do not think that we can consider them new posts; they are obviously just replacement posts. The scheme will not create new employment. <BR /> <BR />After 10 years of the Minister's party holding the education portfolio, will he comment on whether young teachers in training or those who are considering teacher training have been told that they should not expect a job in the field? Can he give any advice on what work they should hope to get after their qualifications have been achieved?”
“The Northern Ireland investment fund of £100 million will not be available until the end of 2016. We want to be confident that that will be focused on social and economic good. The reinvestment and reform initiative, which was an SDLP initiative, is being treated like a credit card; it is being maxed out on borrowing. It was envisaged to be spent on infrastructure, and that is not happening. <BR /> <BR />We will not be supporting this Budget. We are not ready to give up and give in. I do not think that people would appreciate it if we did that on their behalf.”
“We have a new First Minister, and I am glad to see that, but collectively the First and deputy First Ministers, as the longest-serving Ministers in Stormont history, do not have very much to show for it and appear to have lost their fight already. <BR /> <BR />There are alternatives. HS2 across the water will have a Barnett consequential of £600 million coming our way in the next mandate. We could use that to improve infrastructure but, on the evidence of this Budget, we cannot be very confident that we will.”
“I cannot imagine a Budget that not only does not appear to invest in our children and young people but does not have any indication of what we are going to build for them in the lifetime of the Budget. The childcare provision outlined, at 12·5 hours per week, falls behind the commitment announced by the Conservatives. It is a bad state of affairs when David Cameron is looking after working families better than this Budget. Is that the best we can do? <BR /> <BR />We are asked to support a Budget that appears to have given up, designed by First Ministers who have given in. They have basically taken by rote what has come across from the Treasury; there is no influence, or no obvious influence, of devolution in what we have added. There is no imagination.”
“<BR /> <BR />We rely on a strong and efficient court system, through which people can see their case progressing. However, on Monday of this week, 871 cases were awaiting trial in the courts. That is 871 victims who have not had the opportunity to access justice and have the anxiety of waiting for their case to go through, and that is happening while courthouses across the North are earmarked for closure. <BR /> <BR />Most disappointingly, as well as justice and roads, you appear to have given up on children and young people. The Budget has a reduction in spending on youth services — a drop of 5·4% — and what looks like a tiny increase in resource spending for schools themselves. We do not even have a figure in the Budget for capital spending on youth and children's services next year.”
“Yes, as I say, the education cuts affect geography. I am glad that you have conceded that that is, in fact, the length of your ambition for the much-heralded road from Belfast to Derry. <BR /> <BR />It is not just in infrastructure and in roads that the Budget has given up. It has given up on the fight against criminality. Before, prison officers in Northern Ireland lived in fear of being attacked in their homes; now they live in fear of being attacked in the very prisons where they work. We have the infamy of Maghaberry being described as the worst prison ever inspected by the Chief Inspector of Prisons. We rely on an effective policing service, but ours is taking a 2% cut, while still addressing a lot of the manifestations of the past which the Executive have failed to deal with over many years and after many opportunities.”
“No, I will not, because I have a few things to get through. I have only got three minutes; maybe I will find the positives in your Budget in that time, but I do not think so. <BR /> <BR />There are other areas that they have given up on —”
“I do not think that is what people in the north-west are looking for from this Executive. We have seen it all before. I am sure that election pledges and leaflets are being designed for the north-west that talk about the road from Belfast to Derry, as they did in 2011. People have heard it all before, and this Budget does not in any way fill in the blanks on how you are going to do it.”
“I thank the Member for his intervention, which I was happy to take, as I think that it is good practice. I am glad that you brought up the A5. Look at the detail. The chronic underinvestment in education is now manifesting itself in the geography that is evident in this document. We have these seven flagship projects identified, at a cost of just over £1 billion. On my reading, there is £100 million up front for these costs: we have shown how we are paying them in the first year, but it does not take an accountant to work out that the rest has not been filled in. <BR /> <BR />You talk about the Belfast to Derry road. It is a dual carriageway from Randalstown to Crawfordsburn. That is all it is. Your ambition for the north-west extends to exactly 8·7 miles.”
“We have given up on any serious development of our infrastructure to make it fit for purpose.”
“<BR /> <BR />While seeing fit to borrow nearly three quarters of a billion pounds to kill jobs through the Civil Service redundancy scheme, the best that Sinn Féin and the DUP seem to be able to do for resource spending, tourism, employment and skills and student support is a cut of £24 million. We are borrowing to kill off jobs and taking away millions from exactly the sort of fund that is designed to create the skills and improve the infrastructure to increase those jobs. We have put a lot of eggs in the corporation tax basket, despite the fact that those rates are harmonising almost organically, and we are failing to learn the lesson that it is not just cutting corporation tax that will make the change; it is consistent investment in skills and infrastructure.”
“The challenges of 21st-century infrastructure and 21st-century jobs are just not addressed at any point in this lengthy document. <BR /> <BR />Northern Ireland has shown that we can overcome big challenges and fix big problems. We have a strength, a resilience and an approach that we go around the world talking about, but none of that spirit of creativity, resilience and possibility is evident in this document. It does not outline any serious initiative in the fight against poverty or educational underachievement or in harmonising our infrastructure with that of other jurisdictions.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of the SDLP on the Budget. However, I do not really welcome the content of it, which, I think, limits the scope of the discussion. Others have said that it is a Budget that lacks planning and serious analysis. I know that nobody reads a document like this to be entertained, but it is turgid and lacks imagination and some of the finesse that devolution should have put onto it. <BR /> <BR />There is no doubt that Northern Ireland faces the biggest challenges at the moment: challenges to fix the economy and deliver for young people so that our brightest and best minds do not have to keep leaving in the numbers that they have in the past decade. The challenge is to grow our economy and private sector to deliver the services that we need, but this Budget seems, in every sense, to have given up.”