Sam McBride: Five things we learned at the Stormont Assembly this week (but you probably missed)

The Opposition Window

With little fanfare, but after some genuine debate, the Assembly this week made a significant step towards allowing for a more meaningful Stormont Opposition - although there was criticism that the change does not go far enough.

Although the proposal came six months later than the date stipulated in January’s New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) deal – a delay blamed on the pandemic – the Assembly decided to change its rules of business, known as standing orders, to allow a party to leave the Executive and form the official opposition with additional Assembly speaking rights and financial support.

Previously, parties had to decide immediately after an election whether to enter Opposition and if they quit the Executive would have had no additional support or speaking rights.

However, People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll opposed the proposal because it only allows parties to leave the Executive and become the Opposition for two years. He argued that parties should be free to pull out of the Executive at any point if they were unhappy.

Sinn Féin’s Linda Dillon defended the rule, saying that it was in the NDNA deal and so was “not our choice” – even though Sinn Fein and other parties have made clear they do not sign up to aspects of that deal.

The DUP’s Tom Buchanan also defended the proposal, saying: “I feel that, following an election, if parties within the Executive do not know after two years whether they want to go into opposition, it is a matter for them”.

But TUV leader Jim Allister said it was “an invitation to the two big parties to simply bide their time until the two years are up before they give way to their natural inclination to doormat the minor parties in government”.

In the end, the Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal by 80 votes to five.

Local Hospital politics

Prior to the pandemic, every Executive party endorsed the Bengoa report which - although couched in cautious language - was the latest in multiple reports backing more specialist services in more centralised hospital or other medical settings, alongside greater community care.

But the test of that support was always going to be when the first smaller hospital was to lose a service.

Comments from South Down MLA Colin McGrath in the chamber on Tuesday suggest that historic opposition to any downgrading of smaller hospitals will continue.

Presenting a petition opposing a decision at the start of the pandemic to reduce the emergency service at the Downe Hospital which has not been reversed as promised, Mr McGrath said that the original decision “was totally unfair on the rural population from my area”.

Although the decision was taken due to a lack of staff, rather than as part of a planned implementation of Bengoa, Mr McGrath’s reaction suggests that political hostility to the removal of any services from the hospital remains.

However, he raised an important point with which supporters of centralising services will have to grapple – if smaller hospitals are to lose services then the road network and the ambulance fleet will need to be improved to move patients quickly to specialist treatment centres.

Mr McGrath said that a “ludicrous and dangerous decision” meant that “the scariest part of this is that there are no new or additional resources planned for the Ambulance Service as a result of the decision. We, in the rural population, are left with the same ambulance coverage after the decision as before, only now with no emergency department at the Downe.”

Trump envoy defended

People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll criticised Arlene Foster and Declan Kearney fro meeting Donald Trump’s envoy to Northern Ireland, Mick Mulvaney, a fortnight ago.

Mr Carroll said the US President’s former chief of staff was “no friend to the vast majority of people here” and describes himself as “right-wing nutjob”.

Mrs Foster responded: “I have to take issue with the Member’s characterisation of the special envoy. Mick Mulvaney is a friend of Northern Ireland. He has been appointed to do a job. We look forward to working with him.”

Covid law scrutiny

After months of Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill announcing new pandemic restrictions or relaxations via statements live-streamed on Facebook, this week they instead went straight to the Assembly to make the announcement.

Mrs Foster’s statement yesterday (although it was leaked to this newspaper before being made) meant that the legislature was able to question her on what was happening, a process which added clarity to what is being implemented.

However, it still remains unclear when MLAs will be able to debate and vote on the legislation itself – a more significant issue.

MLA plugging leaks

Speaking of leaks, the Stormont roof has sprung several just a few years after a very expensive refurbishment.

TUV leader Jim Allister quizzed Assembly officials about an issue which he had spotted, relaying with great precision where he believed the source of the problem lay – cracking coming from where each of hundreds of stanchions are fixed.

He established that the Assembly is now attempting to get the contractor or the designer to fix it – but has not yet commenced legal proceedings.

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