Bid to undo nationalist block on Armed Forces Covenant pushed back for final showdown at Belfast Council
A bid to undo a nationalist block on Belfast Council accepting the Armed Forces Covenant has been pushed back to what could be the final showdown.
Earlier this year the covenant, a set of pledges providing help for veterans struggling to adjust to civilian life, was thrown out by the council by a single vote due to nationalist opposition. The DUP attempted to cancel that decision, using the council’s call-in mechanism to have it brought before a special meeting this afternoon (28th).
But that brief meeting, lasting only a little over 10 minutes, saw it sent back to the full council again for a last-ditch crunch vote that could be the final time it’s discussed.
The DUP has suggested the council mishandled its original debates over the covenant by bouncing it around different committees and the full council.
Initially put before the Standards and Business committee in November last year, the covenant was sent to the Strategic Policy and Resources committee the following month, at which point it was rejected.
That rejection was overturned and the covenant approved at full council meeting in January, sending it back to the Strategic Policy and Resources committee for an equality screening that concluded signing up would have a “minor impact”. Nationalists used that screening verdict to justify rejecting it a second time, and that was rubber-stamped by the full council in February – a vote won by just a single vote.
The DUP now argues that the Standards and Business committee shouldn’t have pushed the covenant elsewhere last year, and it also shouldn’t have been sent back to a committee in January after the full council overturned the initial refusal.
Standards and Business refused to handle the issue last November as, councillors believed, signing up to the covenant could involve making financial commitments; as a result, it was sent on.
At this afternoon’s special meeting, DUP alderman James Lawlor tried to get the covenant sent back to that original committee, arguing there were no such commitments. As legal advice received by the council was that there weren’t any obvious procedural problems with the whole saga, however, the committee didn’t debate the idea.
Instead, the covenant is to go back to the full council one last time – which could be as early as next week.