Steve Aiken: ‘Aspects of Stormont governance are institutionally corrupt and require radical reform’

Incoming Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken had said that he is concerned that aspects of Stormont are “institutionally corrupt” and require radical reform.

In comments which would have been unthinkable for many leaders of the UUP, given that it was the party which built and single-handedly governed Northern Ireland for most of its existence, the former Royal Navy nuclear submarine commander used the word “corruption” when discussing his concerns about the governance of Northern Ireland.

After he left the Royal Navy in 2011, Mr Aiken headed up the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce. In that role, he said that he had encouraged a company which had operations in both Scotland and the Republic of Ireland to expand into Northern Ireland.

Mr Aiken told the News Letter: “The guy who was a very senior executive - I obviously won’t mention the company’s name - just said: ‘Northern Ireland is corrupt’.

“I said ‘what do you mean, it’s corrupt?’

Mr Aiken said that the man had then gone on to outline in some detail a series of concerns about how some in Stormont interacted with some businesses.

Mr Aiken said: “I was thinking ‘No, no. This is Britain, this doesn’t happen in Britain; this is not how we do business’. And then I had that sense that something was broken in Northern Ireland...I started getting the sense that something was fundamentally broken in Northern Ireland, which made me sad because even though I’ve spent 30 years away at sea in the Navy and doing various things I’ve always had my home in Northern Ireland, my eldest kids and now my youngest kids have been educated in Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland has got so many advantages going for it.”

Mr Aiken said that what he had heard over the intervening years had left him “quite concerned” that there was “institutional corruption” within aspects of Northern Irish society.

However, Mr Aiken made clear that he was staunchly unionist and, despite voting remain in the EU referendum, he was totally opposed to a border poll.

The Ballyclare man said that after leaving the Navy he lived in Dublin and loved both the city and Irish people. However, he said that his eyes were opened by the high taxes, health insurance charges, huge rent and childcare costs and infrastructure problems in areas such as water treatment which resulted in water periodically having to be boiled before drinking.

• Background information on Steve Aiken

Steve Aiken, whose father was a trade union official, said that his own politics were “one nation Labour or even one nation centrist Conservativeism”.

Mr Aiken is not a member of any of the loyal orders - although he is Freemason.

Mr Aiken said he was “very supportive of the loyal orders” and attends the Twelfth. Although Mike Nesbitt was the first UUP leader not to be a member of the Orange Order when he was elected in 2012, Mr Aiken’s unopposed ascent to the UUP leadership is further evidence of the weakened influence of the loyal orders within unionism. It would once have been unthinkable for a UUP leader not to have been a member of the Orange Order.

Mr Aiken said that there is a “climate emergency” and “we will be pushing to get to a point in Northern Ireland where we’re zero net carbon by 2035”

Mr Aiken, who is a member of the Church of Ireland, is married with two young children and two grown-up children. He is a member of the board of Christian Aid Ireland.

• The final part of this interview, covering matters such as the Irish language, is in Tuesday’s print edition and will be put online later

• First part of interview: Aiken rules out standing aside for Dodds