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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“This is the departmental version; we supported the private Member's version too. We want the consultation to proceed, and we hope that the subordinate legislation on that will come forward sooner rather than later.”
“I have submitted a detailed response to the live consultation on that, which primarily reflects the views of traders in my constituency. <BR /> <BR />Window displays are useful, and they can take the bad look off dereliction. Anything that allows people to use those spaces creatively to mitigate the effects of empty premises is welcome. In my previous job, we used empty shop fronts for exhibitions and so on, and that can be done, whether it is other businesses, voluntary groups or anything that can enhance the area. However, we do not want to overplay the Potemkin village aspect of things; we need entrepreneurship and real vibrancy back on our high streets. Just covering up dereliction is not something that we want to do, but it is useful. <BR /> <BR />We also fully support the community and amateur sports club provision.”
“I thank the Minister for his introduction. We have a long day in front of us, so I will not labour the points. There are about 20 Bills, I think, going through at various stages, and if we did not give this one accelerated passage, it would not make it through. It is a good Bill. They are good provisions, and we support them, but I do not think we should overuse the accelerated passage tool. Some of the blame for its current use has to be placed with the dysfunction that has characterised the Assembly for much of the mandate. <BR /> <BR />We welcome the provisions. There are wider issues about our rating scheme. It is the one tool that we have, and we use it a lot. We are in danger of rating schemes becoming illegitimate. When there are so many exemptions, other people are picking up the slack and it loses some legitimacy.”
“I add my congratulations to the First Minister. It is an exciting appointment for Northern Ireland, and I wish you well. <BR /> <BR />Having a strategy is not a silver bullet. We have a child poverty strategy, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that child poverty is on the increase here. Can you confirm whether a specific and coherent anti-poverty strategy will be produced as part of the next Programme for Government?”
“Yes, I will. I will do it by 1.00 pm. The balance of flexibility is not an excuse for exploitation. We welcome everything else in the Bill, and we think that we could get some of those minor provisions. We are not saying that it should be banned — we appreciate that it has its use — but we should take the worst aspects out for those who are bearing the brunt of it.”
“You give anybody who has done 12 weeks' work on a zero-hours contract the right to a contract based on that average time; you end the provision that people can require an employee to work with just one employer; and you end the misuse where people are working basically regular hours on a regular contract for a long time but are being denied that contract and basically —”
“You cannot have a family. They are fundamentally anti-family, with the degradation of good, decent employment that we see through things like zero-hour contracts. You cannot access formal childcare, you cannot plan for childcare or looking after an elderly parent, and you cannot really train for a better job when you do not know whether you are in or out one day or the other. <BR /> <BR />When I was doing my research for that Bill a few years ago, there were thousands of these contracts in Northern Ireland, and we know that they have grown, but, basically, there should be a few smaller provisions that do not strip them out entirely.”
“I think that we should, and I am about to suggest some specific amendments. I do not think that we want to be in the business of outlawing them. As I said, there are situations where they can work, but you can ameliorate their very worst aspects. <BR /> <BR />I am not an expert on how quickly Bills move through, and, as I said, we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We do not want to lose the good things that are in the Bill. That is why I do not really understand why no movement has been made on zero-hours contracts, through this Bill or generally through the Executive. I will propose very briefly some ways that we might take the sting out of them — and the sting has to be taken out. It always bemuses me that family values are seen as a preserve of the right. Zero-hours contracts are a very right-wing tool.”
“It is important that we look at that aspect.”
“<BR /> <BR />Of course, the arrangement will suit some people, such as students or retirees who do not have fixed outgoings and maybe can be a bit more flexible with their time. I appreciate the appeal for employers: it allows maximum flexibility to respond to demand and minimise risk, and is that not what the free market is all about? You can exploit whatever is out there, whether it is raw or human potential. However, we see the price of that being paid by the increasingly precarious layer of workers who, in the main, are probably women and earning around £500 per month. It is a way for unscrupulous employers to, in some cases, avoid paying them properly and giving them other employment rights. As others have suggested, it is a way that unscrupulous Governments, if they so choose, could mask underemployment rates and unemployment rates.”
“Three years ago, I brought a motion to Belfast City Council asking that that organisation, as one of the major employers in the city, do not use them, and I am glad that that was successful. Three years on, we have not made any progress in the wider legislative framework. People will be aware that, effectively, a zero-hours contract creates an on-call arrangement between the employer and the employee but does not necessarily provide work and, in some cases, locks the employee into work for just that company. The concept has been around for a long time — men used to come back from the shipyard without having got any work — and abuse of it has been around for a long time. People have been looking for any reason or no reason at all to withdraw hours as a punishment, and it very much limits the ability to assert other employee rights.”
“We and the stakeholders are pleased that it looks like it will get through, but, if you were being critical, it could be seen as a bit limited given how long it has been in the pipeline. I only picked this issue up this week — obviously, Pat Ramsey was leading on it before the break — so I do not know if it is a departmental or Executive oversight that we have not dealt with zero-hours contracts, but they have not been meaningfully addressed. While they might come in through amendments, something this big should not be dealt with in emergency amendments. Indeed, it would probably derail the Bill and all the other good stuff that we all want to get through in this mandate. <BR /> <BR />Zero-hours contracts are undermining decent work. Mr Flanagan said that they were one of the big employment issues of our time, and they are.”
“We do not want to have a situation where a legitimate appellant cannot have a satisfactory outcome to their case. If I understand the Minister correctly, the framework for allowing for fees will not be used. That is useful, because it would price out, in particular, those who do not have union representation, which, statistically, is likely to be younger workers and those in the private sector. It is also, as, I think, Mr Flanagan outlined, the layers of complexity in a case if you cite a number of issues or, indeed, if you cite a number of people that could, in theory, accumulate thousands of pounds in deposits. That would not be good, and it was good to get clarity that that is not the case. <BR /> <BR />It is all good stuff.”
“Given the stress, time and, in the case of the employer in particular, cost around those tribunals, it is right that people can get an early and fairly solid assessment that is not just an opinion on the merits or otherwise of their case and save everybody a lot of time and effort. With all of the new legislation around employment over the last years and decades, particularly from Europe, it is inevitable that that has become quite legalistic. We are broadly comfortable with the changes in the terminology around that, in the knowledge that there will be guidance and so on provided, particularly for vulnerable employees. <BR /> <BR />While we do not want to overburden employers, you always have to remember that, if something takes the burden away from the employers, it almost necessarily makes it a little bit onerous.”
“<BR /> <BR />All of the additional guidance on issues around managing staff, conduct and discipline is also good, particularly for smaller companies that do not have a full-time human resources department and all the polices, codes and so on. The fact that people can fairly and legally manage an employee situation or extricate themselves from that if it is really not working is welcome, without necessarily tipping us into tribunal situations. <BR /> <BR />We also cautiously welcome but want more detail on the creation of the conciliation function and the neutral assessment within the Labour Relations Agency. It appears that some of those conversations and the consultation have produced valuable outcomes. I know that the Labour Relations Agency now has a round-table and stuff dealing with that.”
“The issue around the good faith motivation is complex and may need a little more exploration. We do not want a situation where we discourage someone from making a disclosure that is in the public interest. Yes, we want to know that their motivation is right, but at the same time we do not want to lose that information. <BR /> <BR />We think it is very positive that the mandatory consultation on redundancies has not been cut to 45 days. Employers of that size — over 100 employees — often sustain a large community in employment. For that to disappear in six weeks without a lot of consultation could be absolutely devastating. It is right that that time is protected. Again, that is one of the issues where the balance between capital and labour would have swung very strongly in the wrong direction.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am keen to get out of here for lunch and be finished up, so I intend to wrap up. I know that a lot of the issues have been explored at length. There is a lot of the Bill that we welcome and, I know, most stakeholders welcome. It is important that it all gets through. As we have talked about, there is that balance to be struck between flexibility for employers and the rights of employees. I think that is done reasonably well in the Bill, but there are omissions, primarily around zero-hour contracts. I will come back to those. <BR /> <BR />The measures on public interest disclosures and whistle-blowing are certainly good, because the discrimination and disadvantage that people have experienced has not always been top down from their boss. It is appropriate that that provision is extended to someone's colleagues.”
“I thank the Minister for her answers to date. I agree with others that the flags protocol is being widely ignored in many places. In my constituency, paramilitary flags fly on many lamp posts, including on main thoroughfares. I share your view that DRD is probably not the appropriate lead agency on that, but, in the absence of a regulatory framework, it is in charge. Can you comment on the fact that, last month, my colleague Councillor Declan Boyle was ordered to immediately remove posters that he had erected on lamp posts relating to a spate of burglaries and why the same prompt action is not taken on flags, particularly paramilitary flags?”
“I thank the Minister for his answer. I think that you will understand the frustrations of ordinary junior doctors, particularly given the swifter resolution of this issue in Scotland and Wales. You will be aware that, as well as their safety concerns, junior doctors are worried about the impact that this issue will have on recruitment. In light of George Osborne's autumn statement and the announcement on nursing bursaries and the potential loss of that subvention for student nurses, can you outline what plans your Department has to address that issue and prevent it from exacerbating an already acute nursing shortage?”
“It is probably the most cost-effective and effective engine for social mobility that we have at our disposal, so I hope that we will continue to fund it and other part-time education to the level required and taking account of the expertise and the understanding of the needs of students who follow that course.”
“<BR /> <BR />As a former student of the Open University, I single it out as an institution that is very much in tune with the needs of part-time learners. It recognises that education is not just for the young and that it has benefits throughout life. I want to reflect on the imagination of people such as Michael Young and Jennie Lee, who created the Open University. Jennie Lee's husband, of course, created the National Health Service, which was, I think, the most imaginative and beneficial project anywhere for the betterment of a wider population. The Open University, which is, I think, in its fiftieth year, can be ranked at that level as well.”
“<BR /> <BR />Elsewhere and here, people are sounding alarms about the impact of changes to fees and loan eligibility, especially the Open University, which is, I think it fair to say, the absolute expert in part-time higher education. Its UK vice chancellor has warned that policies are discouraging workers from upgrading their skills. One useful proposal that, hopefully, the Assembly can pick up is an amendment to the criteria for loans. The current criteria mean that people studying for a qualification at the same level as one they already have are not eligible, and that might drive people away from further education. An amendment across the water means that, if it is a STEM subject or one with an obvious economic benefit, people will be eligible for a loan, if not funding.”
“<BR /> <BR />I had a very positive part-time experience at Queen's and the Open University. However, the general feedback in reports that I have read by part-time students highlights the need to ensure that their specific needs are prioritised and that they are not just fitting in around the infrastructure and structures designed for school-leavers and young people. There should be specific mechanisms and targets for part-time students, and, to that end, we support calls for a bespoke higher education strategy for Northern Ireland, particularly to ensure that, when DEL goes, this issue is not lost, ending up in the wider black hole of governance here.”
“I know that others will agree with me on corporation tax. We would be fools to think that it will be a silver bullet, if, at the same time, we do not invest in infrastructure and education. <BR /> <BR />I outlined some of the reasons why people are in higher education, and most, as others said, tend to be mature students with the sort of caring and work responsibilities that you might expect. Others just do not want to leave the employment market, and the majority of them simply could not afford to go full-time. <BR /> <BR />The benefits are numerous and clear. Higher education makes a substantial difference to people's skills and employment opportunities, and we should not ignore the personal fulfilment and confidence that result from it, as well as the benefits to our economy as a whole.”
“That experience of cobbling together just enough for a deadline or a good excuse when you miss a deadline has certainly held me in good stead for being a member of this body, as, I am sure, has been the case for Mr Swann. <BR /> <BR />At the macro level, further and higher education is clearly an economic issue that ensures that our population has access to the skills and knowledge that we need to attract meaningful 21st-century jobs to Northern Ireland and to ensure that people here can compete. In that context, it is concerning if we are disinvesting in further and higher education at a time when all other jurisdictions on these islands are going in the opposite direction.”
“As somebody who completed her primary degree and a master's part-time, I am glad to support the motion on behalf of the SDLP, particularly my colleague Pat Ramsey, who I know has done a lot of campaigning on the issue but cannot be here today. <BR /> <BR />Learning is certainly a lifelong journey, and people find themselves in part-time higher education later in life for a lot of reasons. Members outlined some of those, which might include the need to upskill or a career change. In my case, when I was 18, I knew everything, and it was not until my mid 20s that I started to notice a few small gaps in my knowledge and was able to go back and fill them in. I can say from personal experience that, as Mr Swann said, it is a hard road for people to balance part-time study with family and work commitments.”
“We have to. We can have that conversation, and I am sure that the Minister will happily have it with you.”
“I have only 20 seconds, but I think that that discussion is being held. We need to have binding targets here. I will finish by quoting my favourite placard from the many I saw yesterday. It simply stated:”
“I will finish — if you want to, go on ahead, yes.”
“I will not, because I am just going to finish up. We have got to stop seeing decarbonisation as a punishment and a threat. We have to start looking at the benefits it can bring to our lifestyles and economy. Hopefully, we in the Assembly, who are probably least known for our vision and long-term thinking, can confound that view and come up with something binding here.”
“However, if you add up all the interventions on the table for adaptation, they come to something like $3 per smallholding farmer in the world. That is not enough. There needs to be substantial financial support for that. <BR /> <BR />Every month and year of delay in tackling climate change is making it harder. As others have said, it really threatens to reduce all the progress that has been made. Around the world, people are wary that politicians do not have the vision and long-term thinking beyond their next election to make the really major infrastructure and mindset shifts on this. We have got to stop seeing decarbonisation —”
“Fortunately, I think that the targets that have already been put on the table would probably produce 3°C, which is considerably higher than the 2°C we need. Even those who are not motivated to alleviate human suffering — and I am sure that everybody in the Chamber is — global security concerns mean that getting a deal in Paris has to be an absolute no-brainer. <BR /> <BR />So, these talks need to address simultaneously mitigation, reducing carbon emissions and the global temperature rise and helping people who are least able, and most vulnerable to climate shocks, to adapt. I worked in international development for 10 years before coming into the Assembly. The innovation, creativity and will are there, at low level and national level, for people to develop their economies in a more sustainable way.”
“The Member on the Benches opposite mentioned climate change as scaremongering: it is not. We are ignoring the reality in front of us. I was with Concern in Bangladesh in 2010, and up to a fifth of that country is already, at times, underwater. Hundreds of thousands of climate refugees have nowhere else to go and are living a forced nomadic lifestyle to try and stay ahead of flooding and landbank erosion. Drought and hunger are exacerbating conflict in places such as the Horn of Africa. If we look at the conflict-driven Syrian refugee crisis, we can see that this is an interconnected world. We cannot close our eyes to these issues any more, and that is another reason why this is our problem. I think those —”
“Those shocks are reducing agricultural yields, causing food price shocks and massively growing the hunger gap that many of the world's poorest people already experience.”
“I remain optimistic, but the kind of transition that we need to a lower-carbon economy will take coordinated effort and binding targets. We certainly cannot expect developing countries to jump first. <BR /> <BR />The SDLP sees climate change as a global justice issue. It is a very current issue; it is not hypothetical. As others said, those who are least responsible are already on the front line of drought, flood and other extreme weather events that are making food security a massive issue and making food chains less predictable or secure. Extreme weather hits our screen around things like a cyclone in the Philippines and hurricane Sandy. The Member has left, but I do differentiate between weather and climate, as they are very different things and should be treated in different ways.”
“I thank the Member for bringing the debate and clarifying our minds on it. I think that we are agreed that climate change is the biggest challenge facing this generation and the world today. It is not just about environmental issues; it is about poverty and global security. It is certainly welcome that the Minister is attending the summit next month. I know that since he first took up office he has worked to build the consensus that we need here for a climate Bill. <BR /> <BR />COP21 does have the ability to change how we deal with climate change. There are 160 countries coming together, representing 90% of emissions around the world and 90% of the world economy. The fact that they have already put proposals on the table is a change from business as usual.”
“— tackle poverty and drain the reservoirs before fundamentalism takes hold.”
“Trident, we are told, is an insurance policy in an uncertain world. I think that, at a cost of £167 billion, we need to be a little bit more certain. We could use that to —”
“I do not agree that it necessarily does, but those are its arguments and not mine.”
“If that were to take place, it would take place with 30-year-old planes, because the RAF has not invested in the weapons that it believes that it needs.”
“He referred to the fact that, by 2050, it is likely that most nations will have sonar capacity, which will be able to detect Trident. <BR /> <BR />Major General Patrick Cordingley, the former commander of the Desert Rats, points out that, due to the funding pressures in the navy, it lacks 600 specialists. Those are exactly the sorts of people who would be required to maintain the Trident fleet, and he suggests that the proposed spend should instead probably be weighed up against ships and tanks. I have not heard a coherent plan for what it would achieve, but I suspect that the people who are arguing so passionately for the renewal of Trident are probably the same people who are arguing to bomb Syria.”
“Crispin Blunt MP, the Tory Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, commented:”
“The Member is clearly referring to the fact that, since 1968, the UK has signed a range of non-proliferation treaties, but the nuclear deterrent is a relic of Cold War politics and does not reflect the actual threat to people in the UK and civilians and citizens around the world. I am not saying that we do not have any defence spend — clearly, we do. All the experts say that you are, in fact, draining money away from things that are needed. Max Hastings, a British military affairs specialist, said that Trident is:”
“We know from our own experience that those who think that their ideology is so important that they can shoot, maim and bomb clearly have very little regard for civilian lives. The very people whom the UK and people around the world need to be protected from will not be deterred by this in any way. As we can see from Brussels in the last couple of days, when there is a clear, articulated threat, defence is now intelligence-led and followed up by boots on the street. <BR /> <BR />On nuclear proliferation, the UK has —”
“<BR /> <BR />I would love to stand here and give you a pacifist argument against Trident, but you do not have to be a pacifist to be against spending on nuclear in such a substantial way. In fact, all the experts are saying that Trident drains money away from the UK's traditional defence and military capacity. I am not saying that we do not need to spend on defence. Clearly, we do, but let us look at the global threats to the UK in the last 10 or 15 years. Did the US's substantial nuclear capacity deter Osama bin Laden in 9/11? Did Trident deter the 7/7 bombers? Did France's substantial nuclear capacity deter the horrific attacks in Paris last week? They did not. <BR /> <BR />The fact is that none of the headbangers whom we need to protect ourselves from are deterred in the slightest from this sort of spending.”
“Members outlined the cost of Trident renewal, and I will not go over those sums except to say that they are eye-watering, not least in the context of the austerity that is being applied to almost every other aspect of the UK's Budget. I have noticed that recent discussions on Trident seem to focus on the protection of the 10,000 jobs involved and the skills, as if Trident is some massive Keynesian policy. It goes without saying that, if it is about the jobs, the £167 billion that is under discussion could be far better spent on skills and investment, infrastructure, telecommunications, energy efficiency and any number of things that are not just a big military status symbol for Britain.”
“I am also not inclined to take it from Jeremy Corbyn, but the fact that a potential UK Prime Minister who is not keen to blow the world to bits by having his finger on the nuclear button is seen as such a dreadful thing is a very sad reflection on our politics.”
“<BR /> <BR />Somebody outlined to me recently the concept of the Overton window, which is that there are a certain range of policies that the public will accept as reasonable. For reasons beyond my grasp, scrapping Trident has not been in that. It has been discussed in quite a theoretical fashion, but I think that, as the detail is discussed and the numbers and the funding commitment become more of a reality, that will change. I believe that, in the last vote at Westminster, about 360 MPs voted to keep Trident. They are probably the same few hundred MPs who voted for things like the Iraq War, the consequences of which we see playing out in Syria and further afield, so I am not inclined to take foreign policy advice from those MPs.”
“The SDLP supports the motion and will oppose Trident here and particularly at Westminster, where that opposition will actually be recorded. There is some irony that in the same week that we are repatriating welfare powers, we are seeking to devolve the UK's military defence policy to this House. <BR /> <BR />I learned from our information pack that, at present, a Trident sub remains on patrol at all times and has up to 40 warheads, each with an explosive power of up to 100 kilotons — eight times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, which killed an estimated 240,000 people. These figures are almost too large for us to grasp, but it is quite clear that they fall far outside Thomas Aquinas's theory of a just war in any scenario.”
“I thank the Minister. I am sure that arts groups will welcome the consultation and will respond. The Minister might be aware of a new all-party group here to support the arts and creativity. I hope that she will accept our invitation to come along during the period of consultation so that arts groups who are represented can give feedback directly. Will the Minister explain how she will ensure that the arts will have a clear role, position and space in the next Programme for Government in the absence of a dedicated Department?”