Steve Aiken
South Antrim · Ulster Unionist Party · Northern Ireland
“I thank the Minister for his statement. Minister, as well as the move to reduce the cost to the Assembly of vacant non-domestic properties and to increase liability so that we will not have so many vacant properties, you will be aware of the Dilapidation Bill and of the conversations that have been taking place in Wales and Scotland about…”
“Instead, that most dysfunctional Department, under the most inept Sinn Féin Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly and a series of grossly over-superannuated permanent secretaries, gave the money back.”
“We know that her Department spends more on legal cases, fighting judicial reviews and being chastised by judges for legal ineptitude and on vesting land and ripping out hedges and fencing and then trying to unvest it and paying even more money to put back the fences and hedges that it took out.”
“We can hardly blame the current permanent secretary, as she has just taken up her post, but, surely, her predecessors must bear some accountability or responsibility, especially considering the senior civil servants' salary scale of between £146,000 and £163,000, with, of course, their taxpayer-funded pension contribution of 34·2% — £218,…”
“It must be said that £181·3 million is a lot of taxpayers' hard-earned money. It is money that is raised from local commuters, vehicle owners, farmers, local businesses, logistics companies and, above all, our constituents — those vital people whom we are elected to represent.”
“The Minister will be aware that, under the public appointments guide published by the Executive Office, it is clear that she is supposed to take independent advice before appointing board members. What independent advice did she receive, particularly about the board members selected?”
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“It was to remove the limit of €150 per consignment that was applied to the deemed supplier and related administrative provisions. <BR /> <BR />Members will be aware that our Chancellor, in the recent Budget, had set out to follow suit, with the United Kingdom deciding to remove similar low-value import relief on goods worth £135 or less from March 2029. Members will note that originally the UK date was displaced by one year from the EU customs code proposals after HM Treasury had discussions with the European authorities.”
“along with SEC(2023) 198 and the opinions of the regulatory scrutiny board, the assessment board and the impact assessment. <BR /> <BR />Those regulations are absolutely germane to what we are talking about. They initially set out EU revenue-raising customs proposals in e-commerce that were to apply from 1 March 2028. The changes ruled that the duty relief regulation exemption from customs duty for consignments valued under €150 amended the combined nomenclature, which is to say that it changed the definition of existing goods, packaging requirements, digital registration and coding. That was to allow for non-excise goods to be imported without identifying tariff classification, customs value and origin, which are subject to customs duty.”
“Madam Principal Deputy Speaker, you will be glad to know that I will talk about the motion and about parcels. <BR /> <BR />Unless Members sit on the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, they may not be aware of EU regulation 2023/258 and its annex, which is a:”
“Thank you very much indeed, deputy First Minister. I declare an interest as a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA) Committee A. I note from your statement that there were discussions about energy security and cybersecurity. When you had the opportunity, did you raise the concerns that many have expressed about the Irish Government's lack of security in looking after our critical national infrastructure, which includes cables, gas pipelines and particularly our cyber-links?”
“<BR /> <BR />The motion tries to push dual market access while ignoring the benefits of the reduced tariffs that we achieve by being part of the United Kingdom; pushes for a nugatory EU quango office in Belfast, thereby failing to recognise the damages that trade divergence has created; and ignores the need for a more positive approach to reduce red tape in our internal market. Those are ample reasons for not supporting the motion.”
“No, I will not. I have given way once. <BR /> <BR />Lord Murphy's recommendations have been accepted in full by Whitehall. Unsurprisingly, they do not include an impractical EU office in Belfast. Instead, the report recognises the very real difficulties that companies across the United Kingdom have in trading across our part of the Irish Sea. Lord Murphy proposed a multimillion pound clearing house facility to reduce the challenges presented by the Irish Sea border. That recommendation, and the push to do something practical about it, is what we should be debating.”
“No, I have given way once. <BR /> <BR />It is significant that business organisations such as the FSB and the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry have recognised the reality of the situation. They are no longer saying that the Windsor framework is working whilst complaining privately to the Government and HMRC about the damage that it is doing to their businesses. They are now openly making their concerns heard. My noble friend Lord Murphy picked up on those concerns in his recent report on the workings of the framework.”
“It is nearly as if Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance do not wish to acknowledge the real advantage: it comes with a lot less administrative and regulatory baggage than the Windsor framework. They also ignore our largest market: the rest of our nation. That market has been chilled by the Windsor framework. It cannot and will not ever be compared, in value and volume, with the short-term North/South trade distortions, many of which are due to the rerouting of logistics traffic and how it is managed. <BR /> <BR />It is significant —.”
“I get an extra minute, do I, Deputy Speaker? Thank you. <BR /> <BR />It will be no surprise to people here that I voted to remain in the European Union. Brexit was an absolute disaster. It is what it is, however, and that is where we are. There is an opportunity, however, particularly with the US tariff deal. There are also opportunities with India and other markets. Given the present state of the world, those are areas with which we would not have had appropriate tariff deals had we not been outside the European Union. <BR /> <BR />Going back to the US tariff deals, many of us will be aware that our friends in the Oireachtas see them as making the Republic of Ireland uncompetitive.”
“Of course I do. I do not think that that is any surprise to anybody —.”
“The Windsor framework brings more, not less, regulation; more cost, not less: nothing that would be facilitated or ameliorated by having an EU office in Belfast, EU observer status or any other moves until a full, UK-EU reset is completed. <BR /> <BR />The more observant among you will have noticed that the motion talks about "dual market access". That ignores — probably conveniently for the anti-Trump Sinn Féin — the fact that, with Northern Ireland being an integral part of the United Kingdom, we have advantageous tariff arrangements with the United States. Those tariff arrangements are more amenable for what is one of our largest markets, particularly for pharma, aerospace, defence and agribusiness. Arrangements —.”
“I oppose the motion. There will be no surprise there. The motion not only flies in the face of the reality of the situation that affects our economy, our farmers and our consumers but seeks to reinforce the falsehood that the Windsor framework in some way affords us any advantages. I declare an interest: I sit on the Democratic Scrutiny Committee. After two years of being sentenced to sit on the most incurious Committee in the Assembly, I can categorically state, on the basis of the evidence that we see and the thousands of pages of EU regulations, directives, proposals, alignments, explanatory memorandums and all the rest, that the only thing that the Windsor framework facilitates is millions of pounds of additional bureaucratic burden. The costs are already close to £1 billion for Northern Ireland alone.”
“I thank the Member for giving way. I do not know whether she was with us when the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee went to Brussels and tried to get a conversation going with the European Commission. It was reluctant to talk to us. Why does she think that opening an EU office would make things any better here?”
“Thank you very much indeed for your statement, Minister. You talked about financial transactions capital, which is being provided on a net basis. According to your statement, that will mean that we will no longer need to make repayments to the Treasury. The Treasury rules still state, however, that, unlike traditional grants, FTC must be repaid and is intended to generate a financial return. The rules have not changed, as far as I understand. Will the Minister therefore publish the advice that his Department received on what seems to be a significant change in UK Government policy, especially since, being no longer a loan but a grant, it may run into EU state aid rules?”
“There is no such thing as Northern Ireland having no long-term strategic implications. The most important thing is that Northern Ireland is strategically important to NATO, the United Kingdom and the United States.”
“<BR /> <BR />Another important aspect is how we dealt with the awful situation of the shadow fleet and the ship that came from Venezuela. All Members should thank the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary for their work on the high seas to stop the Bella 1 or the Marinera or whatever they are calling the ship now. It was a potential environmental disaster, and the fact that we were able to prevent such a disaster and stop the ship from getting back to Russia says something important about the strategic position of Northern Ireland. I, for one, was very pleased to see that the United States Navy and the US Air Force were able to use Aldergrove as a diversionary airfield during that difficult operation. It demonstrates yet again the strategic importance of Northern Ireland.”
“Instead, he doubled down and made the situation worse in Venezuela. <BR /> <BR />This as an abject lesson for anyone who believes in socialist, Thirty-two Counties wonder areas — or Narnias. Venezuela should be one of the richest countries. It was one of the richest places in South America. It has one of the largest amounts of resources in oil, gas, gold and silver. Anybody who understands Venezuela knows that, before Chávez and Maduro destroyed it, it was a vibrant country. It was one of the leaders in the region and an area that was becoming one of the leaders of South America. It was being talked about in the same way as Brazil, but let us see what happened: in Venezuela, there is starvation, a lack of jobs and no human rights. If that is what socialist republics are about, you can count me out.”
“Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to everybody in the Assembly. <BR /> <BR />Anybody who witnessed the Sinn Féin demonstration at the US embassy in Dublin and the Venezuelan counter-demonstration will know that the latter made it very clear that President Maduro's demise is very much welcomed by Venezuelans, who were subject to his tyranny for far too long. One of the key questions is this: what was the United States doing, and was it just a one-off act by the United States president? Anybody who has been looking at what has been going on in Venezuela and the wider region for the past year would have seen that there was an enormous diplomatic effort and push to try to get Maduro to move offside. It was made very clear to him that he would be given Ofpra status. He was expected to take it, but he did not.”
“Minister, from doing my maths, I see that the health pay shortfall is now about £140 million, despite the £109 million overspend that you agreed with the Health Minister. The resource allocation in this monitoring round is far short of the £100 million that the Health Minister was told in October was available; that was reiterated in the media by the First Minister. Is Health really the priority of the Northern Ireland Executive?”
“The motion and the amendment are, therefore, a farce. We will not support them in any way, and neither should any party that believes in the peace settlement that was laid out in 1998. Unconstitutional and majoritarian stunts will achieve absolutely nothing — not here, not in London and definitely not in Brussels.”
“<BR /> <BR />As the Connolly House drafters know full well, the EU is very legalistic. The European Parliament observer status is granted only to accession states. That rule is clearly laid out in rule 13 of the rules of procedure of the European Parliament. The Irish MEPs made a particularly clumsy attempt to have the EU follow on behind in recognising that the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom should be changed. This will come as no surprise, but, on the basis of a calculation made in Brussels between keeping the most capable military power in Europe engaged in European security or throwing a Bonio to the biggest freeloaders and tax evaders on the continent, that is not going to happen.”
“As a party, however, we welcome moves by our Government to develop ever-closer relationships with the European Union, not because we believe that we are heading back to full EU membership — that is not going to happen — but primarily because we need to deal with the absurdity of the self-imposed Irish Sea border. On the back of the actions of those who would rather rigorously implement decisions that most other EU nations privately ignore, that border is increasingly morphing into a trade, regulation, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS), digital and, should the ridiculous idea of digital ID cards come to fruition, identity border. However, the motion does not seek to address those issues. It is a farcical attempt by Sinn Féin to undermine the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and further the united Ireland agenda.”
“No. <BR /> <BR />The unattainable chimera of EU observer status will not change that. We already have a report before us from Lord Murphy that makes it clear that we need to beef up our capacity, including giving more staff to the Northern Ireland Office in Brussels, our Departments and the Assembly. The Ulster Unionist Party made those recommendations on page 16 of his report. If we act on those, we would at least improve awareness and be able to try to intervene earlier. <BR /> <BR />The motion calls for us to apply for accession state observer status in the EU, because, bizarrely, some believe that a united Ireland within the next few years is credible or even possible. That is precisely what the motion implies.”
“Indeed, we are on the record as saying that our wish was for the United Kingdom to stay and give leadership to Europe, as we all faced the multiple challenges of Putin's war in Europe, the growth of China and an increasingly disengaged United States. Rather than it being the best of both worlds, with the UK-USA tariff agreement, the EU single market and the UK internal market, even the most myopic can see that we are suffering the worst of at least two of those three worlds.”
“The Ulster Unionist Party opposes this unconstitutional motion and the amendment. I shall outline our reasons for doing so. <BR /> <BR />There is no doubt that the decision by all the people of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union has had far-ranging and highly disruptive consequences not only here but across Europe. The predictions of slower growth, loss of global influence, the undermining of our existing treaties and the potential large-scale impact on Northern Ireland and our unique position, as laid out by the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, that our party made as part of our case to remain — the only unionist party to have done so — have been borne out.”
“I know that it is not your particular responsibility, Minister, but, because you are looking at Civil Service reform, I will put this question to you. I have been waiting for well over a month for a response from the Senior Civil Service about how it sets its criteria for bonus payments, and I would like to know whether the terms of reference look at measures of effectiveness. It comes under your Department, so can you inform me whether there is any indication that the Senior Civil Service is progressing at pace towards providing an answer, or are we just allowing it to set the agenda?”
“Minister, one of the big issues about discretionary spending is that it tends to disappear into the arm's-length bodies (ALBs), and one of the biggest issues that we have is controlling and seeing what is in the ALBs. Has any progress been made on having more openness and transparency on ALBs? That would be a real issue to the Minister as well as to Ministers.”
“I hope that you are able to say the same thing about other Ministers as we go forward.”
“That must be fundamental to the three-year budgeting process. Ministers need to say loudly and clearly what their measures of effectiveness will be and how they will determine whether the money is going to be spent effectively. We need to do that and demonstrate to the people of Northern Ireland that we have spent the money that we have properly. If we do not have the money, we need to be in a position where we can say how we will raise the extra revenue or how we will get better at spending the money that we have. <BR /> <BR />That brings me to the end of my remarks. As a final point, the three-year budgeting process is where we need to be. We will find out a lot more tomorrow, and, hopefully, that will give us a framework to look forward to. Minister, thank you once again for your kind words about the Health Minister.”
“What do we say to the people whose friends and family members have lost their lives on that road because of our inefficiency in spending money and being able to do that? I will make a rather sad projection: we will spend much more on administration, legal fees, planning, replanning and judicial reviews before we get to the point of completing it. The cost will probably be closer to, God forbid, £175 million before we do. <BR /> <BR />We have said this before: we need to spend the money that we have properly. Sooner or later, we will have to have the appropriate debate and come clean to the people of Northern Ireland that we have to raise revenue in some places. Before we do that, we are going to have to show that we can spend the money that we have properly. We need to be able to demonstrate that.”
“In the Minister's remarks when he considers this debate, I wonder whether, when we start looking at the future long-term programmes that there are going to be over the next three years, we can get the Fiscal Council, in some measure, to mark the homework of not just the Executive as a whole but the Departments. One of the things that we need to look at is measures of effectiveness. That is one of the reasons why we will be supporting the amendment. There is a very clear issue: are we getting value for money for public services from the money that we have? It is clear that we are not good at spending money in places. The A5 is an example. It is an absolute disgrace that that road has not already been built. We have spent close to £150 million, maybe more, on the A5 so far, yet not one square metre of tarmac has been laid.”
“It is important that the Health Minister has already identified that he wants to make an early representation of what the public-sector pay award is going to be in the three-year budgeting cycle. All Ministers should commit to doing that. Looking at that and putting public-sector pay first as a benchmark is something that our public-sector workers will think is important: the Northern Ireland Executive are putting them first. It also starts to put a strong fiscal framework on what we are looking at in the next three years. <BR /> <BR />Having mentioned the fiscal framework, I will talk about the Fiscal Council.”
“As well as setting an example, it delivers a message to other Departments: if our biggest-spending Department, and the one that the Executive and the Programme for Government clearly acknowledge has the most pressures, can achieve those sorts of efficiencies, what are the other Departments doing? Bearing in mind that we are looking at budgeting for what we plan to do over the next three years, it also shows that a degree of foresight and being able to look at your future budgeting plans and how you look towards those things is an appropriate level to do that. <BR /> <BR />The Health Minister has made it clear that his priority is public-sector pay. Public-sector pay is important because, if you do not have any workers, you will not have a health service, a police service, a prison service or any teachers.”
“First, I apologise and correct the record: in my remarks earlier, I should have referred to the Putin apologists Sinn Féin MEPs Lynn Boylan and Kathleen Funchion rather than Maria Walsh. Thank you very much indeed, Linda, for picking that up. I will contact Maria and point out my failure. The point remains, however. <BR /> <BR />I thank the Finance Minister for his recent remarks about the Health Minister and how the Health Department has managed to find over £400 million of efficiencies. As the Finance Minister pointed out, that is an example to all Departments across Northern Ireland's government about their ability to find the necessary efficiencies that they have to in order to make sure that we have appropriate budgeting as we move forward.”
“<BR /> <BR />Right now, a "Peace for our time" moment is being confected. History tells us what happens when the aggressor is appeased. Let us hope that the supportive rhetoric from the vast majority of right-minded nations, particularly those in the European Union that are standing fast, such as the Republic of Ireland, is followed up with resolute action to defend the Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Failure to do so will be catastrophic not just for the citizens of Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Lviv but for all of us. Slava Ukraini.”
“<BR /> <BR />Either way, the full-scale war in Europe has now reached the point at which both sides have reached a bloodstained stalemate in the bloodlands. It is a war of ferocity and savagery that has received little coverage, as a world obsessed by 60-second storylines and deliberately distracted by antisemitic tropes and wokeism ignores the plight of the Ukraine. That is ironic, because the Ukraine is fighting our wars for us. If Ukraine is forced into capitulation, the Baltic states, Poland and other countries, including us, will be next. We know that because, just as he told us that he would take Ukraine, Putin has told us that he will take his Russia into Europe. An outright liar about many things, he takes a remarkably consistent approach to telling his truth about that.”
“It is now 11 years since the West first turned a blind eye to Putin's aggression against the Ukraine. In February and March 2014, his little green men invaded Crimea. In April of that year, Putin annexed Crimea and increased his military presence in the Donbas, again with minimal response from the West. We have talked of the parallels with the mid-1930s on both sides of the argument, from well-informed observers such as Timothy Snyder, who wrote the seminal history of eastern Europe — his aptly named book 'Bloodlands' — to the rather less informed musings of the current Irish president and of Sinn Féin MEPs such as Maria Walsh, whose Putinesque view of the world is mirrored only by fellow travellers in Iran, North Korea, China and that paragon of democracy, Venezuela.”
“Sorry. In that case, I do not have a question for you, First Minister.”
“My apologies, Mr Speaker. I did not think that I was down for a question.”
“One of the problems with the article that the SDLP pointed out is that that has been tried but the EU Joint Committee refused to engage.”
“Minister, why are you breaching your obligations under annex 2 of the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol, which your party chairman, Declan Kearney, was praising earlier this afternoon, on the Euro-Mediterranean agreement on trade between the EU, the single market and Israel?”
“We need our Government to have the will to act, because, frankly, the Europeans do not really care about Northern Ireland. They want to see agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union about things such as defence. <BR /> <BR />We have an opportunity to solve the problem, and we have, in the protocol, the processes to do so. I therefore call on Labour and the Secretary of State to get off their proverbials and do something. Let them do it. More important, we support the motion.”
“I definitely agree, and I thank the Member very much for reading the last part of my speech. Principal Deputy Speaker, you will be glad to know that I will not repeat it. <BR /> <BR />There is a key point: we are fewer than 50 days from there being real problems for our agriculture sector. Our party has pointed that out for the past year, yet we have still not reached a resolution on it. Government Ministers have basically said, "Suck it up", because they want to be seen as being faithful implementers, even though it will do real damage to the Northern Ireland agriculture sector. That is unacceptable. The evidence of hard damage being done to our companies and to the UK internal market from divergence in trade is abundantly clear.”
“If there really is faith between the UK and the European Union and if the protection of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement really is central to those relations, pausing the implementation of further provisions of the EU acquis until all is solved by the UK-EU reset and the SPS community should be straightforward. The evidence of hard damage to companies —.”
“We have been told that many of our problems will be settled by the UK-EU reset, but, despite the hype last week that sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) talks were commencing, some Ministers have made it clear that it will be 2027 at the earliest before any agreement can be made. Anyone with even the faintest understanding of EU's relations with other countries will know that that is a highly ambitious timescale. <BR /> <BR />What is to be done? If the Government believe that they have been a faithful throughout, it is time to use the provisions in the protocol to stop any further damage. If our Government really believe that the EU is a faithful and not a traitor, they should activate article 16 of the protocol to protect article 6(2) on protecting our internal UK market.”
“There is a huge democratic deficit in which, despite all the Windsor framework spin, our Assembly has absolutely no say. Safeguards, such as our ability to pray against legislative consent motions pertaining to EU regulations, do not work, because we are not even informed of them in time, never mind the fact that our vote counts for nothing. The Stormont brake and the grossly misnamed Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee have failed. Lord Murphy's view on membership of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, which he gave to the Economy Committee, is well worth a read. I encourage everybody here to read it.”
“We did so because they were deeply flawed instruments that were drafted to solve UK and EU dilemmas rather than problems with Northern Ireland trade. <BR /> <BR />Northern Ireland was and remains a bargaining chip in UK-EU relations. The words "faithful implementation" are the genesis of the problem that we now face, which is the rigorous implementation of the entire acquis communautaire of the European Journal's rule book that applies, in its broadest interpretation, to Northern Ireland. It is the implementation of rules that many EU members, including our Irish neighbours, do not even bother to implement rigorously unless they are forced to. Those rules, which spread well beyond trade issues, impact on everyday life here.”
“I declare an interest, both as a member of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee and as someone opposed to then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's official recommendations, which evolved into the so-called Stormont brake. It is just a pity that Rishi Sunak and the Prime Minister after him did not listen to the rest of our party's advice. <BR /> <BR />For the avoidance of doubt to some, our party supported Remain. We voted Remain precisely because we envisaged the chaos and damage to our economy that has occurred. We pointed out time and again that Brexit was never the best of both worlds; rather, it was the worst of both systems on steroids. That is also why the UUP opposed the protocol and then the Windsor framework when it was imposed.”
“I thank the First Minister for her remarks so far. When addressing emergency planning preparedness — paragraph 23 of her statement — she talked about the ongoing engagement between the system operators, particularly when it comes to the all-island single electricity market and dealing with emergencies. Obviously, one of the biggest problems is the fact that there is no physical connection between North and South — indeed, unless the North/South interconnector is built, there never will be. Was there any discussion about the impediments to building the North/South interconnector? If there was, what are we going to do about it?”
“I have called for Translink to contact me and public representatives to discuss the matter, but it has not deigned to do so. Regrettably, it is only a matter of time before an incident occurs. It seems inexplicable that a public service provider such as Translink ignores the concerns of those on the ground. The question has to be why. I and the staff, parents, pupils and residents in the affected areas in Ballyclare would be delighted if a senior member of Translink's management would explain the rationale for that ridiculous decision or, better still, listen to common sense and revert to an arrangement that works and is safe.”