Farce as NI’s sweeping pandemic restrictions won’t be debated by Assembly until days before they expire

The law which has seen hospitality businesses closed for four weeks and schools closed for two weeks and a host of other activities banned was signed into law by Executive ministers on October 16.

However, despite the Assembly having plenty of free time to debate the law, and despite the profound significance of the legislation, the Executive has refused to allow the legislature to do its job of scrutinising the legislation by debating it and voting on whether it should be the law at all.On Monday, the Assembly sat for just five and a half hours due to the lack of business on the order paper.

Last night, after the News Letter asked Assembly Speaker Alex Maskey questions about the issue, his officials revealed that the legislation will finally be debated next Monday - just four days before the restrictions will end.

However, the Assembly said that the Speaker had asked about “the possibility of the regulations being brought forward at an earlier point” but it was essentially for the Executive to decide.

The Executive last night refused to say why it is refusing to allow the legislature to undertake meaningful scrutiny of its actions until it was too late for them to be altered in any way.

The News Letter asked The Executive Office, which is run by Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill, if it could give any good reason why it was refusing to allow democratic scrutiny of its actions.

The department did not even respond to the question.

Similarly, the Department of Health refused to comment on why the issue was not being brought to the legislature.

For months, backbench MLAs have expressed concern at how they are being prevented from doing their jobs by meaningfully scrutinising the Executive’s pandemic restrictions because they are becoming law but then not being brought to the Assembly for many weeks.

Last month this newspaper asked the First Minister and the Finance Minister about the issue and both agreed that the Assembly should be able to scrutinise the regulations – but the legislation is still not coming immediately to the Assembly.

The News Letter asked Mr Maskey if he was content for the Assembly to be in the farcical position where it is only debating restrictions after they have been replaced by new laws – which themselves are often not debated until they have been superseded by new laws  

In a lengthy statement, the Assembly responded by saying: “The Speaker is very keen on scrutiny being conducted by the Assembly in a timely way.

“However, in relation to the COVID-19 regulations, the Speaker has to take account of a number of important factors.

“Firstly, the Assembly voted to give the Department of Health the ability to introduce the regulations in this way in an emergency situation.

“Secondly, it is a key point that scrutiny is not only conducted on the floor of the Assembly Chamber.

“Assembly procedures require the relevant Committee and the Examiner of Statutory Rules to have a role in scrutinising the regulations prior to any debate in the Assembly.

“The Speaker has engaged directly with ministers for a number of months on the importance of coming to the Assembly to make a statement when new changes are first announced precisely because this provides an earlier opportunity for ministers to take questions from members and to provide clarification.”

The Assembly said Mr Maskey welcomed the fact that the First Minister had come to the Assembly to chamber to announce the new restrictions last month – even though MLAs were unable to debate or vote on them.

The Assembly added: “Ultimately, the timing of when legislation is brought forward is a matter for the Executive. The Speaker and other members, including at the Business Committee, have raised the possibility of the regulations being brought forward at an earlier point and ministers have committed to consider this.

“Following a request from the Executive to the Business Committee, a further debate on regulations requiring Assembly consideration is scheduled on Monday 9 November.”

In his statement last night, Assembly Speaker Alex Maskey defended what is going on by pointing to the regulations being scrutinised by the assembly’s Health Committee.

However, that committee has not yet done so — more than two and a half weeks after the regulations started.

The committee is due to consider the regulations for the first time tomorrow – with just 15 minutes set aside to do so. That means that even if the committee was to find a huge problem in how the regulations were drafted, or was to decide to oppose them entirely, the law would already have been in force for weeks.

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