Editorial: Executive ministers should follow Gordon Lyons' lead on the influence of lobby groups

The decision by Stormont’s communities minister to keep lobby groups at arms length from public policy is a welcome move that should be replicated across government in Northern Ireland.

As reported in today’s News Letter, the DUP’s ​Gordon Lyons has scrapped so-called ‘co-design’ groups, who will no longer be involved in ongoing equality strategies on issues such as poverty, gender and sexuality.

While government should of course listen to various perspectives – and particularly from groups with direct experience – the idea of allowing them to essentially co-author public policy quickly runs into trouble. This has never been clearer than on the influence of the LGBTQ lobby, whose demand for what they deem trans rights has had a huge impact on women, particularly their right to single sex spaces.

Ministers are neither elected nor paid to simply rubber stamp the demands of special interest groups, many of whom are explicitly political.

The Sinn Fein chair of the communities committee Colm Gildernew has in the past defended the co-design concept by saying it gives people “ownership” and a sense they “have been heard and responded to”.

Women whose voices have been ignored or dismissed by Stormont on issues such as single sex spaces would disagree. They would say, rightly, that on that issue politicians listened to establishment groups and side-lined anyone who dissented.

It is also welcome that the minister will seek out the views of these groups in future.

In few democracies do the public have such ready access to their legislators as in Northern Ireland. MLAs are better placed than anyone to write our laws, and the idea that lobby groups should help should be consigned to the past.