'Scrutiny is not misogyny' - Unionists hit out at Alliance and SF over attitude to questioning witnesses at Stormont

Paula Bradshaw – who chairs the Executive Office (TEO) committee – said that a witness had been “personally attacked” after she faced questions on public commentary in the past.

Sinn Fein accused DUP and TUV MLAs of being “misogynists” over their questioning of the deputy director of Relatives for Justice Andree Murphy.

Both parties have hit back, with the DUP’s Phillip Brett saying scrutiny is not misogyny, but “democracy in action”. The TUV’s Timothy Gaston says that the “glossing over” controversial matters is a “dereliction of duty”.

It is the latest in a series of disputes on the TEO committee over what level of questioning witnesses should expect.

Mr Gaston has been involved in repeated clashes with Ms Bradshaw over how the committee should be conducted. The Alliance MLA previously accused him of “badgering a witness” when he was questioning the First Minister Michelle O’Neill over a child safeguarding scandal involving her party in 2024.

His comment that the TEO chair should “breathe” resulted in a complaint which led to a two day ban from the Assembly. The standards report found that the TUV MLA had undermined the chair’s authority.

Sinn Fein’s Emma Sheerin and Paula Bradshaw previously criticised Mr Gaston for questioning a witness’s “lived experience” – with the Alliance politician saying she was “never going to challenge” an individual giving testimony.

That related to the TUV MLA asking a witness to back up his claims that organisations – including the Housing Executive – were guilty of institutional racism.

Ms Bradshaw also branded his questioning of a policy officer from the Age NI charity over its transgender policy as “inappropriate” – and apologised on behalf of the committee.

This week, Mr Gaston and the DUP’s Phillip Brett challenged Andree Murphy on public statements she had made as a newspaper columnist.

Mr Brett raised an article written by Ms Murphy which he described as “grossly inappropriate”, in which she said the actions “of the DUP and the Orange Order this week tell of a unique local psychosis of being at once deeply insecure and at the same time incredible (sic) arrogant. How lovely to have a homegrown disorder”.

Mr Brett said he is a member of both – and doesn’t “have any disorder.”

He told the News Letter “MLAs are elected to scrutinise. That is not an optional extra, it is a core function of democratic accountability. Scrutiny requires asking questions, sometimes difficult questions, but always in a respectful and proper manner”.

He said it is “both reasonable and necessary for elected representatives to question assertions made in the public domain, particularly when those assertions cast aspersions on large sections of the community.

“Attempts by Sinn Fein and Alliance Party members to reframe legitimate scrutiny as misogyny are deeply concerning. Robust questioning of witnesses is not intimidation, nor is it disrespect. It is the mechanism by which committees test evidence and challenge claims”.

Mr Gaston said it is the job of MLAs to interrogate witnesses “in order to ensure that public policy and the fashion in which they seek to shape it stands up to scrutiny. That is such a basic point that it wouldn’t need to be said in any legislature worthy of the name”

“In this instance, we had a witness before the committee who made no secret of the fact that she draws no distinction between an innocent victim blown up while going about their lawful daily business and the murdered blown up by their own bomb. She suggested that the victims’ pension scheme was flawed because it excluded people like the bomber who accidentally killed himself while setting out to murder others.

“That is not a position which I accept and I will not be told not to articulate that view”, he said.