Alex Attwood
West Belfast · Social Democratic and Labour Party · Northern Ireland
“I certainly do not take away from the contribution being made by the judiciary in Northern Ireland to framing a society that upholds the right principles and applies human rights standards across the board without fear or favour. <BR /> <BR />There are two issues with bail. One is police bail, which nobody has commented on so far.”
“Whatever it is, it is a flip-flop. It is trying to cover your tracks. It is having said to people that everything was all right when things were not all right. People saw through it.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. When I was housing Minister in 2010-11, I conducted a fundamental review of the Housing Executive. It was based upon a number of principles, including protecting the institution of the Housing Executive, its legacy and name.”
“What world have you been living in for the last two or three months? <BR /> <BR />That is why Mr Agnew is right to say that there will be anger. There will be anger at the DUP on the day that a public inquiry is established into RHI, belatedly endorsed by Sinn Féin because it had no place else to turn.”
“He accepted a point from me and then said, "Well, actually, since that time the then deputy First Minister has been looking at the matter." Is it not curious that 18 months ago, despite NAMA, despite Red Sky, despite ransom strips — and, for all we know, people might have even known about RHI then — Sinn Féin, despite all that evidence, s…”
“Sorry, apologies. <BR /> <BR />I agree completely with Mr Agnew who said, in his opening remarks, that there was a need for an independent open process to investigate ministerial conduct, not least given recent events, and that there will be public anger if the motion is not passed.”
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“For reasons that the Minister will know, I was not party to some of that over the last short while, but I would like to be party to it over the next short while. This is only one example, but moving the right to independent advice from a point of guidance to a point of regulation would be helpful. However, I have to say to the Minister that the comments that he made on the bedroom tax only confirmed our worst fears and did not give us any more reassurance. The Minister will recall that, during Consideration Stage and Further Consideration Stage, Mr Agnew, other Members, and the SDLP questioned the Minister on the bedroom tax. I remind the Minister what he said during Further Consideration Stage on Tuesday 24 February:”
“I welcome that, although a statutory right to independent legal advice is always the position of strength, because it guarantees it in primary law. The Minister is proposing that there be some sense of guarantee in guidance. Guidance is very important, and I have always argued that it is very important. That was a lesson taught to me by Eileen Evason when she advised DSD in my time in that Department. <BR /> <BR />It is very important, but it is less than primary legislation and less than regulation. I will say this to the Minister: in the conversations that we are going to have to have, we are not walking off this pitch. We will stay on this pitch and will have some further conversations.”
“Do we not have a responsibility to ourselves and to all those who are subject to public funds, whether it is welfare or otherwise, to say, "We need to see the colour of all that to make our best judgements about all this"? It is a very simple commonsensical political point, and I ask the Minister and his party, even in these latter hours of the debate, to consider that. <BR /> <BR />I want to make three other points. I missed the Minister's very early remarks, so I apologise if I am picking up some of this wrong. I acknowledge that the Minister appears to have moved further in a positive way on independent advice for those who are on welfare benefits and who may be looking for universal credit. As I understand it, and I stand to be corrected on this, guidance will be issued.”
“I suggest to the Minister that that is at the core of this debate. Whilst you can try to legislate for what the situation was, despite the disputes ever since over Stormont House, is it not a precautionary position and one of strength to ask about the authority of all that when the carpet will be pulled from under all of us with welfare and the Budget? That is not speculation; it is in the parliamentary diary at Westminster. There will be a Chancellor's statement on, I believe, 8 July. He is not hiding what he is going to do. He may be coy about some of its scale, but he is not hiding it.”
“Whatever the dispute might be, if that was the understanding at the end of December, it is now five months later, and that is the SDLP's best understanding of where DWP, the Treasury and the British Prime Minister now intend to go. <BR /> <BR />What is the point in the Executive, on the one hand, giving money to support those in welfare need when, on the other hand, the British Government have plans for the Budget and welfare to take much more money away from us when it comes to those who are subject to public funding or welfare support? You begin to wonder what the point is in trying to negotiate and get a position of strength, even though it was not all the strength that we thought it should be, when we end up in a situation five months later in which that is the scale and speed of London's proposals for the Budget and for welfare.”
“I make that point because, on 18 April, every political representative in south and west Belfast got a letter from the Trussell Trust saying that it wanted the cooperation of the political representatives in those areas to help it to communicate and give people access to its south-west Belfast food bank, touching on areas from Twinbrook and Dunmurry to Andersonstown, the Monagh bypass, the Upper Springfield Road, the lower Falls to the Spires shopping centre and all places in between. What we are about to face in the scale and speed of further welfare reform is captured in all that, yet we are being asked to sign off on something from Stormont House, whatever the dispute might be about the details. When it comes to welfare, you begin to wonder whether the Stormont House Agreement is worth the paper it is written on.”
“Other proposals suggest that those eligible for carer's allowance could be hit by restricting those eligible for universal credit and so on, concluding with this comment from a newspaper article:”
“— yes, you know what I am going to say — that I introduced as Minister to try to stop profiteering by landlords in the private sector were not subject to the bedroom tax, as Sinn Féin and Mr Wilson tried to claim at Consideration Stage and Further Consideration Stage. Potentially, DWP and the Treasury have plans to apply it to categories of renters other than social housing tenants. The plans also suggest the abolition of statutory maternity pay or alternative proposals to get employers to contribute more to the cost of statutory pay. <BR /> <BR />Other leaked documents refer to cutting disability benefits, DLA, PIP and attendance allowance and stating that they would no longer be tax-free.”
“The Government could short-circuit so many of the welfare reform proposals that they are clearly intent on imposing by putting in place welfare limits in London and Northern Ireland that say, "You work within that financial threshold". That would drive a coach and horses through any financial envelope that the Minister had been able to secure in the Stormont House proposals. The plans leaked in that memo also suggest that savings could be found by increasing the bedroom tax by applying it to categories of renters other than just social housing tenants. That point confirms that the changes —”
“I will stand up and say that it is not me, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. Perhaps others want to declare an interest in that matter. <BR /> <BR />What will be the scale of that if it transpires? <BR /> <BR />Thirdly, papers leaked to 'The Guardian' within the past few weeks warn that the £120 billion-a-year legal cap on welfare spending could lead to extremely controversial cuts to benefits. The Minister will be aware that, during the Stormont House negotiations, Mark Durkan repeatedly warned about how London would use its welfare cap there and the notional welfare cap in Northern Ireland to cap welfare spend going forward.”
“Given the scale of unfunded commitments that are measured by £5 billion in tax breaks and a reduction in inheritance tax, I would be very cautious about believing that a reduction of the benefits cap to £23,000 is even the limit of the Chancellor and DWP's ambitions. Secondly — again, this has been talked about in the public domain — those under the age of 21 who are claiming jobseeker's allowance will be barred from claiming housing benefit. What will be the consequences of that? That could be 42 days away. What will be the consequences of so many —”
“Whatever the views of the Minister, the DUP and other parties are on the content or even the integrity of the Stormont House Agreement, I think that what I am about to outline will deliver a withering blow to whatever was agreed at Stormont House unless we all box cleverly and maximise a position of strength when it comes to the Tory Government. <BR /> <BR />This is what informed sources are now saying is the scale of what the Chancellor, the Treasury and Downing Street are about to propose. First, they are saying that the annual benefits cap — some of this is in the public domain — will be reduced from £26,000 to £23,000 a year.”
“I thank the Member for that intervention. I acknowledge his further words today and the words that he conveyed to my family over recent days. <BR /> <BR />I will deal with that point fully in a moment, but I want him to consider, because he is the welfare Minister, and he will be the Northern Ireland welfare reform Minister, what is now being scoped out in the public and media domains for what the next phase of welfare reform will look like. According to a lot of sources, it has eight or nine different features.”
“If we send out the message today that we are going to go quietly when it comes to the scale of what the Chancellor is proposing — he is proposing to get the pain up front rather than later when his tax relief begins to kick in — then we are letting down not only people on welfare, but we are letting people down. They will all suffer the consequences of the scale of that.”
“That will send the message to London that, when it comes down to it, that is what the Assembly does in a moment of a crisis when people are talking up the potential collapse of the Executive. That is something that Sinn Féin relied upon as its defence for putting through what it called the best possible Budget in November of last year and in January. The collapse of the institutions was their protection, as they saw it, for putting through the worst austerity Budget that we have seen in this part of this island since 2011. <BR /> <BR />Is it not time to take time out, Minister, and to say, "Let's not move. Let's gather ourselves and see who our allies are. Let's then go to London."?”
“Change that to unprotected Northern Ireland Departments such as Justice, Agriculture and social security, which will have been cut by a third, once inflation has been taken into account. <BR /> <BR />That is why the SDLP says to all parties in the Chamber that, given the scale of what the Chancellor has begun to put into the public record and public domain, given that we are 42 days from the scale of all that, which could result in a reduction of one third in unprotected Departments in the Northern Ireland Executive, and given the scale of all that upon all the people who are reliant upon those moneys, be it in the public sector or those in the private sector who are reliant on public contracts, is it not time to stop for a moment and not force through the Welfare Reform Bill?”
“During the election campaign, the Conservatives refused to detail where the cuts would be made, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that child benefit and disability allowances would inevitably have to be looked at. <BR /> <BR />By the time the spending squeeze is over in 2017-18, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that — wait for this — the budgets of unprotected Whitehall Departments such as Justice, Transport and the Home Office, will have been cut by a third, once inflation has been taken into account. What does that mean for our Justice Department, or for the Minister's Department, or the Agriculture Department of Michelle, after her contribution to the welfare debate?”
“He then indicated that the Conservative Party, in its election manifesto, said that it would adopt a three-pronged approach to deficit reduction in the current Parliament: £13 billion of departmental spending cuts, £12 billion in welfare cuts and £5 billion of extra revenue from a crackdown on tax avoided. Treasury sources say the expectation was that the savings would be found from day-to-day running costs — from the pound in the pocket of each person who is in work or out of work — rather than from capital projects. Osborne will use his second Budget of 2015, the one later this year, to outline how he intends to shave about 10% off the £120 billion slice of the welfare budget that is not spent on pensioners.”
“After the election of the coalition Government, the Chancellor went to the House of Commons with an emergency Budget in June. At Further Consideration Stage, I said in the Chamber that there would be a replay of that strategy. Last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the CBI that, when it comes to his emergency Budget in June, there is going to be a replay of what happened in 2011. Osborne told the annual dinner of the employers' organisation that:”
“<BR /> <BR />People say that we do not know what London will propose. I understand that, in meetings held last week, which I was unable to attend, the Minister of Finance and Personnel indicated that she and other parties are unsighted when it comes to what will be proposed in the Budget on 8 July. If we are unsighted, we should listen very closely to what the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the CBI in London last week. Here we are, 42 days from the emergency Budget, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, last Wednesday, put up in lights what he will propose. It appears that the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Greg Hands, has started to ask Departments whether they can find ways of trimming their 2015-16 plans to fast-track a proposed three-year squeeze. <BR /> <BR />We have bitter experience of that from 2011.”
“Otherwise, if you send the message to London today that that is where we are on welfare, the DUP may as well raise their hands for the Queen's speech and for the Chancellor's emergency Budget on 8 July, because you will be saying to London, Minister — I speak through you, Mr Deputy Speaker — that when it comes to it, a party in Northern Ireland will swallow whatever they propose, be it on welfare reform to date, welfare reform over the next three years or the Budget proposals that are going to come in the next 42 days. This is the moment to join with Nicola Sturgeon and say that, whilst good work has been done in mitigating some of the welfare reforms, we want to see the full colour of London's proposals when it comes to welfare and Budget changes, for the reasons that I am now going to outline.”
“I do not believe that that is the only scenario that faces the Chamber this afternoon, and I will outline why. If you think it is, you should pull the Bill, and tell London to put its welfare penalties where they should be: in the bin. Tell London that we will now join with Nicola Sturgeon and our colleagues in Wales, and say to them, in terms of what is proposed on 8 July, that we want mitigations, changes, amendments, revisions and protections for our people.”
“I think that there is a long path in the 42 days between now and the emergency Budget. There is some path to travel between now and then. Either immediately before recess or possibly even after it, the Assembly can convene again and come back to the Chamber to pass a Budget, if it is the wish of the parties. A lot of water will flow under a lot of bridges between now and then, and, in that context, we can do more in respect of welfare reform as it is and, potentially, do more in respect of welfare reform and the Budget proposals that are going to emanate from London over the next 42 days.”
“So, whatever the context was — I will give way to the Minister in a moment — in Stormont House, at Consideration Stage or Further Consideration Stage, let us not bury our head in the sand about the context that exists in these days after 7 May and in the 42-day run-up to the emergency Budget in July.”
“Before 7 May, it was anticipated that either the Tories or Labour would require the support of other parties, which would be a constraint on some of the worst ambitions of either party if it were to lead the London Government. Before 7 May, no party was going to have an overall majority. Now, after 7 May, that is changed. As one commentator put it, when talking about George Osborne:”
“Whatever the dispute around Stormont House, whatever the issues around the protection of claimants and whatever the responses in the Chamber to the SDLP and Green Party amendments at Consideration and Further Consideration Stage, an environment exists now that is different from the one that existed at any time since Stormont House. Sammy Wilson said that people here should not bury their head in the sand on welfare. I suggest that, if he wants to make that argument, it applies equally that nobody in the Chamber should bury their head in the sand when it comes to the changed environment that exists at the end of May, compared with any time up to 7 May and after Stormont House. Before 7 May, it was anticipated that there would be a hung Parliament.”
“Whatever the dispute about some of the detail, some of the principles were good. Nobody in this party will deny that or say that the principles that informed welfare mitigation, which the Minister brought forward further to Stormont House, were bad. The principles were good, and they are principles that could apply to other jurisdictions in Britain, including the Scottish jurisdiction, to supplement the multiple schemes that they have already introduced to mitigate welfare reform. <BR /> <BR />Mr Principal Deputy Speaker, I want to make a broader point. It was touched on in a number of contributions, but I think that it needs further detail.”
“Before Question Time, I was about to respond to comments made by Mr Wilson. He said in passing that, maybe, I should go and join the Scottish nationalists. I think that it is more the case that we should be like them, not join them by going over there. Everybody now knows, not just the likes of me, and I have been making the argument for a long time, that Swinney, Sturgeon, Salmond and the rest are the most effective Government on these islands. They are a very effective electoral and political machine, and we should be as close to them as we can on issues of common interest in order to maximise our impact on the thinking of the Conservative Government in London. <BR /> <BR />The Scottish Government may be leaders in so many ways, but they could learn some things from here about welfare mitigation.”
“The architect of welfare reform and welfare cuts is now arguing with his own Government that they need to slow it down, even in his terms.”
“That proposal was rejected during the Consideration Stage and the Further Consideration Stage of the Welfare Reform Bill in the Chamber only a matter of weeks ago when the opportunity for us, collectively, to interrogate welfare reform was available. We will live to regret that. Why? Because of the scale of what is about to hit us when it comes to welfare reform, even to the point where the welfare reform Minister in London, Iain Duncan Smith, briefed the papers over the weekend to say that he is trying to resist the British Government's imposition of £12 billion more welfare reform cuts. Iain Duncan Smith is telling the Treasury that that is too far, too fast.”
“<BR /> <BR />Mr Allister, what the Northern Ireland Assembly did not recognise, unlike Scotland, was that welfare was so important that it created a dedicated welfare committee. As the anoraks in the Chamber will know, one of the committees regularly covered by the Parliament channel is the Welfare Reform Committee of the Scottish Parliament. That programme recognises that that Government and that Parliament put in place mechanisms to drill down on what is happening on welfare to try to protect the Scottish people.”
“They were the first devolved arrangement that, on a pound-for-pound basis, mitigated the impact of the bedroom tax. When that suggestion was raised on the Floor of the Chamber, Mr Allister, through you, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker, it came from the SDLP proposal, and the response from other parties was to mitigate it only for existing and not future tenants. The ball has moved on in that regard, and I welcome that, but I will come back to the issue in my closing remarks, because I have questions to put to the Minister for Social Development arising from his opening comments where, again, I think that he created some muddle — to put it mildly — in relation to the bedroom tax.”
“I will in a second. <BR /> <BR />The other parties did as well. So we are in a constitutionally and legally different situation from London. However, this is what she then did: she did things that other parties in the Chamber took a bit of time to recognise as useful and some things that parties in the Chamber still have to recognise as useful. What does that mean? It means that the Scottish Government were the first Government to say that, on a pound-for-pound basis, they would mitigate the impact of the iniquitous bedroom tax.”
“I think that that question suggests that, on this occasion, which is a very rare occasion for Mr Allister, maybe he does not quite understand the constitutional arrangements that exist between Scotland and London and Northern Ireland and London. As I think he probably now recognises, when we negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, we negotiated that Northern Ireland would have devolved powers for welfare —”
“In one way, understandably, it was all about the moment, the Welfare Reform Bill and what it does and does not mean for the political and constitutional authority of this place. However, I do not understand that, in making those observations about the moment and the Welfare Reform Bill, he had nothing to say about the next 42 days. When Nicola Sturgeon, a few hundred miles away, has so much to say about the next 42 days, I do not understand how we can be silent on all of that, when she and so many others are speaking up.”
“She made the point, which has been proven time and time again, that austerity slows down economic recovery, and she concluded by saying London had to change their approach or lessen the impact on Scotland. <BR /> <BR />Whatever we think about welfare, if that is not a pathway for what we should be doing in the next 42 days in our engagement with the British Government, we are ill-serving not just those who are on welfare in Northern Ireland but all the people of Northern Ireland, who will live with all the consequences of what the Chancellor and the British Government intend to do in the next 42 days, the 42 weeks thereafter and the 42 months that will be the early months of the next British Government. <BR /> <BR />I have to say to Mr Campbell that I do not understand his speech.”
“<BR /> <BR />So, if we step back for just one moment and recognise that there are 42 days until the Chancellor and the British Prime Minister announce what they are going to do, it might bring, even late in this debate, a slightly different perspective that would well inform and well serve all the parties here, especially those parties that will be sitting in Westminster and will have to make calls on what the British Chancellor announces in the first week in July. <BR /> <BR />Nicola Sturgeon said that she was going to try to attack the scale and speed of austerity, work up an alternative to austerity and that she, John Swinney and her colleagues were saying to the British Prime Minister that he cannot ignore the democratic will of the Scottish people.”
“<BR /> <BR />Given the fact that the DUP attends Westminster, and I welcome that, it will have to make a decision, which is whether it puts its hands up when the Queen's speech is outlined and when the Chancellor outlines what he is going to deliver in the first months and years of this new Westminster Parliament, which is not just going to have an impact on the people on welfare in Northern Ireland and Britain but on thousands of other people in the public and private sectors, especially those elements in the private sector in Northern Ireland that are dependent on public-sector work.”
“<BR /> <BR />Whatever our views may be on welfare, we should all take a little bit of time between now and 42 days from now, when the Chancellor will announce the full scale and speed of his first austerity Budget in the lifetime of the five years of this Parliament, to assess what Cameron, the Chancellor and Iain Duncan Smith, who is curiously back in DWP, intend to do, not just to the people of England but to the people of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
“<BR /> <BR />The Scottish First Minister went to Hearts Football Club in Tynecastle stadium, and not only did she outline a business pledge with businesses and unions in Scotland and say that she wanted to enter into arrangements whereby a living wage was paid by businesses in Scotland, including Hearts Football Club, which is where they were this morning, she also outlined what their approach to the new Tory Government was going to be.”
“From our point of view, we would like to look further at that and at a lot more, and we will come back to that. <BR /> <BR />Whilst we have been setting out our stall on welfare today, a number of Members have commented on the fact that the Scottish National Government have been setting out their stall on everything. Whilst I think that some have relied on what the Scottish Government have done today in a rather casual way, it is worth looking at what the Scottish National Party has outlined today, where it outlined it and what it was saying.”
“I express my best wishes to Peter Robinson in light of his current ill health. I hope that he makes a full recovery. <BR /> <BR />This might bring a slight smile to the Minister's face — it might be the only one in the next five or 10 minutes — but, when he was here at Further Consideration Stage, I said that, whilst there was definitely a new broom handle, it was still the same old brush. With that precedent, it seems to me that some of the Minister's opening comments, which were, maybe somewhat surprisingly, very slight — I am sure that he will correct that when he comes to the reply, which, no doubt, will last substantially longer than his opening speech — suggested that some new bristles were being attached to the old broom.”
“Finally, to be talked to in this Chamber about the denial of rights of others, when people in our society were denied rights because of the uniform they wore —”
“I say to the DUP that, in making those arguments, this is not a temporary response; it is a permanent guarantee going forward. <BR /> <BR />I express some regret about the contribution made by the proposer of the motion. We are a party that comes from the tradition of democratic dissent: it is at the heart of what was created through democratic struggle in this part of the island of Ireland after all the years of inequality. Dissent is part of our creed, and we welcome and encourage it, unlike her party. That dissent on issues of freedom of conscience means that our party allows people not to vote in favour of equal marriage. Our party upholds the right of dissent on an issue of conscience.”
“I do not completely agree with that analysis because I believe that our different backgrounds are part of the richness and diversity of this island, but I agree with the argument that the society that we have to create here and elsewhere has to be based around the "lifelines of human rights". That is the approach that the SDLP takes to this issue. Articles 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights have been interpreted judicially in relation to equal marriage, so they should be the template and the standard that we uphold. However, in so doing, I confirm the words of my colleague from Derry Mr Eastwood that recognising equal marriage can be accommodated in a way that also recognises moral tenets and the theological and faith views of many in our community.”
“The one thing that we have to conclude from all of this is that all these debates have to be informed by an approach that is about respectful relationships. Otherwise, difference is forced to the point of division, and people's rights are forced to the point of denial. <BR /> <BR />A number of years ago, I read a book that argued that the future of Ireland had to move away from what it referred to as:”
“If there is one thing that we should draw from the last two or three days, the last two or three months or the last two or three years and decades, it is this: if our society is not based on respectful relationships, we end up in a situation of not just disrespect but of division and denial. If this debate is meant to mean anything, in the context of the last number of days and in the context of all our learning over the last number of decades, it shows that, if the issue and all the other issues that crowd in on our society are not based on respectful relationships, we end up ill-serving our community and our society. You can see that across the full range of political and policy issues that we face at the moment and that we will face after the election, not least in the resolution of the parades disputes.”
“Save for Jim Wells's colleagues in the DUP, I am probably one of those who has known him, in the political world, for longest because we were at college in Queen's together 35 years ago. My sense of the man is that, just as he carried his responsibilities as Health Minister heavily, I think that, in the last couple of days, he has probably carried the issue that has arisen heavily. For those reasons, whilst I think that the decision is the right one, I convey to him and his family my personal good wishes. <BR /> <BR />I will make a number of points about this issue.”
“Returning to Mr Maginness's point, if Mr Lynch now maintains that any republican involved in fuel laundering is a criminal, would it not be very important to hear from him and his colleagues today that any republican ever involved in fuel laundering was and is a criminal?”
“The NCA and the other agencies must now demonstrate that nobody involved in that sort of activity — no one person, no organisation — whatever their background, their past or the character of their organisation is off limits.”