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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“Does the Minister agree that there needs to be certainty, not doubt, in respect of the proposed hosting of the British Open, not least because the R&A might read Hansard and might look at events in the North and begin to wonder whether it is coming or not. Is there not a need to tie this down so that, whatever the budgetary situation in the life of the next mandate, the funding package promised to Royal Portrush and R&A is guaranteed?”
“— with the security agency and policing in the past? I ask those questions to represent our concerns.”
“Does that or does that not mean that all agents involved in that activity will be subject to PSNI requirements? If the PSNI says that they are vetoed, will that mean vetoed, rather than vetoed to a degree? Paragraph 25 is the elephant in the room. Is it credible in this day and age for a Home Secretary, by order, to say that the NCA shall deal with counterterrorism, that there is no role for the Executive or the Policing Board in the North, with all our experience —”
“By having proper accountability, you have the mechanisms to ensure that, when the community has doubts, it can have confidence and, when the community has confidence, it provides information and intelligence to the crime agencies, including the NCA. <BR /> <BR />Paragraph 13 of the Minister's paper says that the Police Service, by giving agreement to operations, becomes accountable to the board for that activity. Does that or does that not mean that all the board's accountability mechanisms — public sessions, private sessions, special committees, section 59 and section 60 requests and all the other arrangements of policing that the SDLP negotiated — will be in place in respect of the NCA? Paragraph 10 of the paper says that the NCA will be required to secure the agreement of the PSNI prior to commencing covert investigations.”
“I was not aware of that ruling. I will check the Speaker's rulings, as I have tended to do. <BR /> <BR />Let me deal with the issue of the SDLP approach. When it was right to move on policing because the accountability threshold was sufficient, we moved on policing. Why is accountability so important? It is not technical, which is how Mr Givan referred to it. Accountability is the method of ensuring that an organisation accounts for its practices. In that moment, you win community confidence. Any police officer, NCA official or anybody involved in crime enforcement will tell you that community intelligence is at the heart of good attacks on crime.”
“You might laugh. I will give way to you if you have any questions.”
“He knows why. That Member knows why. <BR /> <BR />Yet the police knew nothing about it. The Serious Organised Crime Agency knew nothing about it. It was not on the radar of the organisation that David Ford chairs, namely the Organised Crime Task Force. Nobody knew about the biggest waste dump in the history of these islands. So we have asked the NCA this: convince us that those responsible for that — the organised crime on the island of Ireland — will never again be able to get away with something like that. Show us that all those private arrangements that SOCA enters into — probably not many — are approved by the High Court and that that will become the rule of thumb of the NCA. That is the way to deal with organised crime — by going after all of those involved and ensuring that there are no no-go zones when it comes to organised crime.”
“Not to you. I will give way to other people.”
“Whilst he did not realise it, Mr Poots has just made my argument. He went on and on — rightly — about illegal fuel dumps. He said, "Sign up to the NCA, because that will deal with it." Explain, then, why, despite the efforts of the PSNI, SOCA and other agencies on this island, virtually nobody has ever been before a criminal court in relation to such matters? If you want us to support the NCA, it has a responsibility to us — to everybody — to prove that it will go after fuel launderers. <BR /> <BR />The biggest waste dump in the history of these islands lies two miles outside Derry, on top of the River Faughan. Those responsible for it got £50 million out of that dump. It will cost £110 million to clean it up, and that is independent of any leachate that is likely to gush into the River Faughan and the River Foyle, and yet —”
“For the record, the Haass proposals said that the new arrangements would be accountable to the Police Ombudsman and the Policing Board. We opposed that, because we believed that the new arrangements proposed under Haass should have their own, separate accountability mechanisms. So, yes, we did make the argument. Maybe on those occasions you were not listening very carefully.”
“So, when it comes to the inquiry in London, whilst we welcome the words of the Home Secretary in respect of what might or might not be made available to it, we put down a word of caution, because we have had our own bitter experience in the last number of days, never mind over a long number of years, of the state, when it comes to issues of national security, denying people access to all information on all the individuals in a way that standards of due process require. However, subject to that caveat, we in the SDLP believe, as it appears all other Members do, that the right place for the Kincora issues to be interrogated in all their scale is through the inquiry being convened by Justice Woolf in London. In that regard, we welcome the motion.”
“We endorse the need for full accountability and disclosure with all appropriate powers to compel witnesses and documents in respect of the inquiry. While I note and welcome what the Home Secretary said about the Woolf inquiry — that there would be access to all government papers and that the inquiry could become a full public inquiry in the fullness of time if necessary — I put down a word of caution due to what we know from this jurisdiction. Only last week, a case in the High Court confirmed that important papers that were meant to be released to an ongoing inquest were destroyed. Here we have an example where a court in this part of these islands was to have access to important state documents, yet those state documents were destroyed in advance of them being released to the inquest.”
“It is remiss of us, in a debate like this, not to name the other issues that need to be addressed by our Government. Those issues are: compensation for victims and survivors where there continues to be uncertainty; how there shall be an inquiry into victims of clerical abuse outside institutions and whether that does or does not fall within the Hart inquiry; and the other victims in our society who were abused by organisations not of the state but of the paramilitaries and who must be acknowledged and have their needs addressed. <BR /> <BR />The SDLP endorses the proposal in the motion, which is that, given the limitations that Judge Hart has named in relation to his inquiry, the appropriate vehicle for inquiry into what happened in Kincora should be the Home Secretary's inquiry in London.”
“I, too, welcome the tabling of the motion by Mrs Cochrane and her colleagues as well as their work, with that of many other politicians, to raise this issue in all appropriate places. In doing so, I also want to acknowledge, first and foremost, the victims and survivors, individually and through organisations like Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse (SAVIA), Amnesty International and others, which continue to campaign for truth, accountability and acknowledgement because, in this phase of our history, the measure of our democracy and the standard of our Government should be the primacy of the needs of victims and survivors of institutional abuse, abuse outside institutions or the history of this part of the world. <BR /> <BR />In opening my remarks, I want to make three comments.”
“Whilst you are not ruling anything in or out, what is your view on the previous proposal from Queen's University, which was essentially a land grab of the Stranmillis site and more to do with development and less with education? What is your view of the comments made by the board of governors of Stranmillis to the Employment and Learning Committee in this place a couple of weeks ago, when they said that they had proposals with St Mary's? Many of the staff at Stranmillis College have said that they know nothing about those proposals.”
“In any case, when that welfare reform was going forward — we should all learn from the excesses of that welfare reform — we built into the legislation not these procedural advantages that the Minister has negotiated but hard mitigation for our citizens, especially those in need. <BR /> <BR />I welcome Sinn Féin to the SDLP position. They would not sign a petition of concern at Second Stage. They went to the Sinn Féin ard-chomhairle and could not get agreement on the Robinson/McGuinness package. I invite Sinn Féin to support us now in the negotiations that we are about to have with London.”
“Will the Member agree that, when I was Minister for Social Development, in complete breach of the ministerial code, I unilaterally would not table regulations that imposed hardship on our citizens? Not only would I not agree to it, I at least went and told Lord Freud the DWP Minister that I was not going to do it. Do you know what happened, Mr Deputy Speaker? Nothing happened. Even though I unilaterally decided to break parity and to refuse to table regulations, neither Treasury nor DWP ever took one bean from the Northern Ireland Budget, never mind impose any other penalties.”
“<BR /> <BR />If there is anything that we should be doing, given that the First Minister now agrees with the SDLP that we need to have negotiations, it is preparing for those negotiations and preparing for the abolition of the bedroom tax. If it is not the abolition of the bedroom tax, it is that the bedroom tax is imposed on no citizen, no tenant, future or present, in Northern Ireland on the far side of that negotiation. That is the position of strength, and the DUP have misled, in my view, the people of Northern Ireland in that statement from Peter Robinson in the 'Belfast Telegraph'.”
“Does he agree with that? Did he agree with the First Minister when he said that Labour's proposal to dump the bedroom tax was already what had been agreed in Northern Ireland when he added that DUP and Sinn Féin had proposed to remove the bedroom tax for existing tenants and give up to £30 million in hardship funds? Do you agree with that? If you agree with those comments, how do you reconcile that with what has happened in Scotland, where, from this month, no tenant, existing or future, pays the bedroom tax? How can you put it in the paper that we will have the most generous welfare system when even what you proposed on the bedroom tax and what Martin McGuinness agreed to before Gerry Adams pulled the rug from under him is less generous than what is in Scotland?”
“I will in a second. This is the time to stand and fight and not roll over. <BR /> <BR />I will give way to Mr Wilson in a second. Mr Wilson always gives the game away, and how does he do that? In my view, this was one of his most inadequate speeches. It was a rant, if that is not unparliamentary, that flew in the face of facts and evidence. Let me ask the Minister this: does he agree with what Mr Robinson said in his 'Belfast Telegraph' article of a couple of weeks ago, where he said that the reforms that were being proposed and the mitigations that might be agreed would create in Northern Ireland :”
“I will in a second. <BR /> <BR />This is the time to stand and fight, because if you roll over now, when the £12 billion of welfare cuts come between now and 2020, you will roll over then again.”
“Tell the people who will lose £750 million in benefits. Tell all the small shopkeepers who will lose the business of the people who lose those benefits. Tell those people to accept reality.”
“I know he is here, but I am going to respond to Mr Dickson's comments, because he said that the parties who opposed welfare reform were running away from the issue and had no meaningful plans or proposals. The last time I checked, the Alliance Party had a relationship with the Liberal Democrats, and the Liberal Democrats are now resiling from the bedroom tax. They are the people who are saying that there is a better plan than the bedroom tax. Even they are saying there are better proposals than the bedroom tax, yet Mr Dickson pretends to himself that somehow there is no better plan or proposal. He says that we just have to accept reality.”
“I was going to talk about Sammy Wilson's comments, but he has left, so I will come back to him.”
“Further to that point of order: not on this occasion.”
“Further to that point of order: 24 hours have passed.”
“On a point of order, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. Further to the point of order that I raised yesterday, may I inquire as to whether you have come to a judgement on that matter?”
“Thank you. Unfortunately, my argument did not prevail. Is there not a contradiction in the last point that you made, where you criticised us for being in government when we did not like some of government? Your First Minister, your leader of the DUP, has said that the institutions are not fit for purpose. Why have you not walked out of government when you yourself have declared the institutions unfit for purpose?”
“It may come as news to the Member, but in 2011, I argued that we should go into opposition.”
“— for the Scottish Government, it should be good enough for the Northern Ireland Government.”
“That led that Committee, in the early part of this year, to describe the bedroom tax as iniquitous, which, in part, informed the Scottish Government in essentially doing away with the bedroom tax in Scotland. Every tenant, existing and future, who is penalised £1 for the bedroom tax receives a benefit from the Scottish Government. If that approach is good enough —”
“Over the next period, it will become clear that people have a confidence in the Scottish Government that is lacking when it comes to this Chamber and our Government. <BR /> <BR />Consequently, we need to show more general authority, and one of the ways of showing that general authority is to learn from the Scottish Government, have an annual Budget process and a budget Committee. When it comes to the issue of welfare — in the event that that is ever resolved satisfactorily, which seems a distant hope at the moment — one of the Scottish Government's interventions has been to create a dedicated Welfare Committee to interrogate and monitor the impact of welfare reform on its citizens.”
“<BR /> <BR />Even though this comes late in the mandate, if it is a valid proposal, let us expand the forthcoming Budget of 2015-16 to incorporate the residue of this mandate to show good authority and to give to our people the hope that has been denied to them and is in sharper relief following the Scottish referendum. If one thing demonstrates the authority of the Scottish Government, it is that they are seen to know the difference between being in government and being in power. They have intervened on behalf of their citizens and earned the respect of the population. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, there are lessons that we need to learn and conclude from the authority of the Scottish Government.”
“That is why the SDLP believes that, on the model of the Public Accounts Committee, we should have a dedicated budget Committee to interrogate on a week-to-week and month-to-month basis all the issues that Mr Nesbitt outlined in his speech, such as the fact that some budget commitments and policy priorities have not matured and other commitments have emerged that have created budgetary pressures for the Executive and Departments. In addition to having an annual budgetary process on the Floor of the House, we should have a dedicated budget Committee of the House to interrogate each Department's budget on the way forward.”
“Because they have an annual budgetary process, it concentrates minds and political effort in shaping that process to get the right outcomes on behalf of the citizens whom they represent. We are denied that here in Northern Ireland. If an annual budgetary process is the standard model in other jurisdictions on these islands, that is the model that we should adopt. <BR /> <BR />If we are honest with ourselves, we have to concede that, while we all sit on Committees of the House, insufficient time is spent on each Committee interrogating the budget of each Department.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. <BR /> <BR />The first point about this debate is that, whether or not it is late in the mandate, there is a need for an annual budgetary process in this Chamber to enable it to interrogate the Budget on a rolling year-to year basis. Whether the motion is passed and whether the Minister begins to reshape how we do our budgetary processes, we urge him and DFP to adopt the model used in every other jurisdiction. <BR /> <BR />If you turned on 'Morning Ireland' this morning — the premier RTÉ Radio 1 news show — you would have heard the headline story about fiscal bodies and the forthcoming budgetary decisions that the Irish Government have to take. The same headlines are in the Irish press. Over the next number of weeks, it will be the same in respect of the British Government.”
“Can I point out the inconsistency of the First Minister when he says that only welfare could bring down the institutions? It was only a matter of months ago, First Minister, that you threatened these institutions around an issue from the past, so do not be inconsistent in this Chamber today. First Minister, do you believe that the Assembly and Executive Review Committee issues about the institutions, petitions of concern and the rest are part of the negotiations that you have called for, or is the truth of it that you just want a negotiation to break parties on welfare, get corporation tax and put all the other issues like parades and the past into the long grass?”
“I ask you, as a matter of urgency, to rule on that matter.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is in relation to the comments that were made by Mr Wilson, who is on his phone at the moment. If somebody in the Chamber, in the course of a debate, commented on another political party involved in a political campaign in the following terms, referring to the SDLP's "green terror tactics", I would like to think that the Speaker would take action. During the course of the last half an hour, Mr Wilson referred to — Hansard will confirm this — the "tartan terror tactics of the SNP". I ask that you, as a matter of urgency, review the record of Hansard and rule on those comments. Those comments were made about a party that is exclusively democratic, as Mr Wilson knows because he sat in the room with it often enough in relation to issues of government and politics.”
“Finally, we should acknowledge Alex Salmond, because he created new standards for democracy, for leadership and for Governments. For all of that and for all of his colleagues in government, I think that we all owe him a lot.”
“More than any other party or Government, it has demonstrated the difference between being in government and being in power. The vote they got was recognition of that. People in our Government should draw conclusions from the power and success of what they have achieved if we are to follow likewise.”
“<BR /> <BR />The people of Scotland have forever changed the character of politics and the nature of the union. Whether it be devo max, home rule or independence in the future, the people of Scotland, by the decisions that they took and the votes that they cast, have put all of that on the radar. From our point of view, we will argue for the maximisation of devolution here, and it is the people of Scotland who have opened the doors to all of that. <BR /> <BR />We also recognise the young people of Scotland. If people who are 16 and 17 can be given the opportunity to shape the constitution of their nation, they should also have the opportunity to shape the politics and government of their nation, and that applies to all parts of these islands. <BR /> <BR />We also owe a debt of gratitude to the SNP.”
“We also convey our best wishes to Speaker Hay. <BR /> <BR />Whatever the different views in the Chamber — that of Mr Nesbitt and others who are for the union and that of I and others who were for Scottish independence — we should first and foremost recognise the people of Scotland, the contribution that they have made and the gratitude that we owe them. The people of Scotland demonstrated the power of the democratic approach — what Alex Salmond referred to as the democratic and consented process. What they have achieved and how far they have travelled puts into sharp relief how little we have travelled because of those in our society on the state and non-state sides who, for many a long year, opposed the democratic approach and used coercion.”
“May I return to the wider conversation that you had with the Justice Minister in the South about organised crime? Given that the biggest illegal waste dump in the history of these islands was found outside your own city a couple of years ago, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker; that the police say that they did not have any intelligence or information on it; that the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the predecessor agency to the much-applauded National Crime Agency, says that it had no intelligence or information on it; that the Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF), of which you were a member, Minister, did not have any working group on it; and that those responsible got £50 million out of the illegal waste dump, can the Minister confirm what conversations he is having with the Minister in the South about organised crime, what conclusions he has come to and what actions he is taking?”
“So, I welcome the report, but we have a mountain to climb in maximising the opportunities of future EU drawdown.”
“<BR /> <BR />At one of the sessions of the Committee recently, one person who has a lot of knowledge about these matters did not know precisely what the future drawdown notionally of the Dublin Government is when it comes to the FP successor programme, Horizon 2020, which is €1·2 billion, and, based on their success with FP7, it will be close to €2 billion — €2 billion 100 miles from here. What is our hoped drawdown? Far, far less than that in comparable terms.”
“Thirdly, Mr Wilson rightly says that we have had some success and that we are going to draw down an increase of 20% over 2011-15, and that is welcome. We do not obviously know whether that is all that good compared with comparable states in Europe because the benchmarking exercise has not been fulfilled. So, subject to that caveat, this is the question: the drawdown in Dublin of FP7 up to 2014 is around €900 million, and the drawdown in Northern Ireland from FP7 will be less than €50 million. So, subject to the benchmarking exercise, with a population of four and a bit million down there and less than two million up here, there is a huge discrepancy between less than €50 million and €900 million.”
“<BR /> <BR />Secondly, we should adopt the Dublin approach to EU drawdown of funding, whereby Enterprise Ireland has staff dedicated to identifying all opportunities, and each Department and other public agencies have staff dedicated to that task as well. They have escalated that in a way that makes what we do in Northern Ireland seem quite marginal and limited. So, for all the apparent success that Mr Wilson refers to, and I will come back to that comment, compared with how Dublin manages its European outreach in European discretionary funding, we have a mountain to learn. In my view, we should just adopt the model in Dublin of Enterprise Ireland and cascade it across the systems of government in the North.”
“I do not think that that is adequate. I think that that organisation, as part of the management of the drawdown and promotion of EU funding in the North, should have representatives from the business community and the third sector generally. That is a principle that we should apply across government, not just in respect of Barroso. One of the strengths of the Scottish Government is that they second into Departments people from outside government, from business and elsewhere, who have specialist knowledge and insight, in order to maximise the ability of government to do what is needed in the interests of its people. And don't they do it well? I do not believe that a group made up of junior Ministers and senior civil servants has a gathering of all the skills necessary to maximise what we need to do.”
“As others have done, I want first to acknowledge the work of the Committee Clerks, the Commission, President Barroso and all those who went before him: Haagerup; Delors; Hume; and other MEPs who tried to put Northern Ireland closer to the centre of power in Europe. It may well be that, with the forthcoming appointment of Commissioner Hogan, if he gets the agriculture or trade brief, we will have further opportunities to be at the centre of decision-making in Europe. <BR /> <BR />The report seems to me to be a good report, but it is somewhat technocratic and descriptive. So, sourced in the report, I want to move a little bit beyond it by making the following observations. The first is this: a part of the management of all of this back here is a task force working group made up of the junior Ministers and senior civil servants.”