Debate contribution: Display of Flags and Emblems Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 14 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Display of Flags and Emblems Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5686246
Read the official Assembly record
Text
A worthy objective is no substitute for workable law. There is some nobility in the objective of Ms Bradshaw's private Member's Bill. We have too many flags. Often, those flags are too tattered. We have too many areas that are demarcated by individuals. We have the scandal that, all these years after the Belfast Agreement — not that it was ever an excuse before it — we have, across Northern Ireland, murals, emblems and flags of terrorist organisations, and nobody wants to take them down. The PSNI, with all its might and resources, will not take them down. The Royal Ulster Constabulary, when it was backed up by the entire British military through Operation Banner, did not take the flags down because of the potential for public disorder, because the flags might have been booby-trapped and because it knew that, as soon as it took one flag down, another would go straight back up. The Alliance Party, in its wisdom, thinks that it is appropriate to put the entire burden of dealing with this issue in the hands of civil servants from the Department for Infrastructure. I do not know what the men and women of DFI have done wrong to deserve being given that absolute duty — and it is a duty. We have to be clear: the reason that the Alliance Party and Ms Bradshaw could not put the obligation on the PSNI is that the PSNI cannot be operationally directed in law. No law can tell the PSNI that it "shall do this" or " shall do that", so the Alliance Party has said, "DFI must do it". Of course, the proposed legislation says that the Department may ask the PSNI to support it and that the PSNI can, within its rights, say no. The fundamental flaw in the Alliance Party's Bill is that it would create an absolute duty for DFI to discharge but provides no reliable means for DFI to discharge that duty. It is, simply, madness. The Bill is not clear. In fact, Ms Bradshaw, the proponent of the Bill, set herself three tests for the Bill: is it clear; is it fair; and is it enforceable? In all three tests, the Bill falls at the first hurdle. Indeed, as regards the very first line of the Bill at clause 1, it seemed to come as a shock to the proposer that the obligation to remove flags or emblems from public property extends beyond property owned by the Department for Infrastructure. It is astonishing: this is an attempt to create criminal law that puts an absolute duty on DFI to act, and the sponsor of the Bill does not understand its very first clause. I am afraid that it goes from bad to worse. We then get into the fact that DFI would have the obligation to act and the test that DFI would have to apply would simply be its own opinion. DFI's opinion that the flag must come down does not have to be reasonable. The Bill is silent on how the Department should come to the conclusion that something is offensive or antagonistic. Of course, in criminal law, there is a series of tests for that, but the DFI would not be applying those; it would simply be applying its own opinion. What evidence would be required? Whose view would count? How would vexatious, orchestrated complaints be differentiated from genuine complaints in the community? The Bill does not say. A future code might, but a future code is no cure for the absence of any clarity in the Bill in the first place. We then get on to Ms Bradshaw's second test: is it fair? Demonstrably, it is not fair. Clause 1 potentially groups terrorist flags and emblems with sporting ones. Ms Bradshaw jumped up and objected on that point, but her objection was not warranted, because clause 1 is very clear that it applies to terrorist flags plus any other flag that is, in the opinion of the Department, "intimidatory", "threatening" or:
" likely to stir up hatred, or arouse fear".
The national flag could come under those criteria. There is no firewall in the legislation between terrorist flags and sporting flags. Even the mother of all Parliaments, our sovereign Parliament, makes certain that terrorist flags are dealt with only in the Terrorism Act 2000, but, oh no, that is not good enough for Ms Bradshaw. She has fused simple sporting emblems and cultural flags with grotesque terrorist flags. On a further point on fairness, clause 3 concerns a voluntary notification system. We know how that works in Northern Ireland: the compliant will be catalogued whilst the criminals and intimidators will simply ignore it. At the heart of the Bill is the fact that, in our country, there are flags and emblems to do with people who murdered our citizens, yet the people who will engage with the legislation are the law-abiding majority. They will go to their laptop and type in details of what they want to do and why they want to do it to celebrate or commemorate this or that, and the ghouls who cause us problems will simply ignore it. We will punish the compliant and, as ever, ignore those who are the problem.
I have clearly read the Bill in more detail than Ms Bradshaw has, because she did not know what clause 1 of her Bill actually referred to. There is no statutory right to receive notice before a flag is removed. If I have missed that, perhaps she can point out that part in the Bill that she has read and that I, too, have read. There is no duty to give reasons before removing a flag, no independent appeal and no meaningful oversight. It all comes down to DFI's opinion. The only remedy would be an expensive judicial review, but is that really accessible to Mrs Smith, who wants to fly a flag to commemorate some local event or charity? If I want to put up the flag of Liverpool Football Club when we get to the FA Cup final, as I predict we will, do I have to catalogue that and give my reasons? I can tell you this: the terrorist sympathisers will not do that. The Bill is not fair. The compliant will be catalogued, and the intimidators will be ignored. It is a recipe for endless political bias. We come to the third test: enforceability. That is where Mrs Bradshaw's private Member's Bill deserves, I am afraid, to be —.
That is duly noted, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I apologise for any hurt caused by referring to the Member as "Mrs Bradshaw". I will refer to the Bill sponsor as "Ms Bradshaw". The Bill is not enforceable. It means that DFI must act "as soon as is possible" to remove flags. As I said, it will have an absolute duty. It is not a reasonable duty. It is not that it may consider something but that it "must remove the flag". The PSNI, however, does not need to assist DFI. Let us talk about enforceability and fairness. I will pick an area off the top of my head: the Bogside. Is DFI really going to go into the Bogside and take down flags and terrorist emblems? No, but Ms Bradshaw is now giving it a legal duty to do so, to which the Police Service can simply say, "Nothing to do with us; we are not touching that with a bargepole." What is DFI to do? Should it breach its legal duty? Do we expose its officials to undue health and safety risks?
There is no offence in the Bill of putting up a flag after it has been brought down, unless I have missed it. Ms Bradshaw should know the Bill, because she has read it. I have read it too, and I have not seen that offence. We could have —.
Yes, Ms Bradshaw.
I return —
I would say that no thought has been given to the detail of how it will work. There is no offence of putting up a flag after a perhaps expensive and risky operation to take it down. What will we end up with? It will be a game of whack-a-mole. There is an offence of obstructing a member of the DFI in taking down a flag, but criminals, especially of the terrorist sort, are clever: they will sit back, let the DFI remove the flag, and, if we are spared a riot in which a DFI official gets injured, they will put the flag back up. There is no offence. It will go round and round, and where it stops nobody knows. The cost could be huge. The Bill has not been thought out. It has been designed in leafy areas over a glass of wine, not tested against the hard realities of life in Northern Ireland. Let us be clear about what will happen under the Bill. The harmless flag will come down; the terrorist flag will stay up. That is absolutely foreseeable. The compliant will be punished; the intimidators will get a veto. The DFI officials and the contractors will be in the firing line. The DFI is already under serious pressure. DFI staff will now be not only at risk of being intimidated or attacked and sparking disorder but spending their time in a game of whack-a-mole and dealing with endless flags going up and coming down instead of clearing the gullies, sorting out the roads and doing all the other things that the public need them to do. It is a recipe for disaster. Even the recent amendment to the Terrorism Act that gave the PSNI the power to seize terrorist flags left it to the PSNI's discretion, because creating an absolute legal duty to go up to the top of a flagpole and take down a flag does not sit in the real world of community dynamics, of health and safety and of complex and contested societies. Ms Bradshaw, I believe that you can see the error of this. I appeal to you to pull the Bill now. Here is a big, broad offer: I will work with the Alliance Party to produce a Bill that is competent, is common sense and can be enforced
There is a lot of laughing and giggling at the thought of DFI being put in a really difficult position. Members are laughing at me: that is fine. Here is the reality: the Bill creates expectations that it cannot meet. There is already a massive gap in the confidence of our society in this place. If the Bill passes, we will bring in a law about which people out there will get a headline that action will be taken, yet we know that action will not be taken. The compliant will be punished, and the lawbreakers will be ignored. Look at the role modelling that happens in this place. Madam Principal Deputy Speaker, I hope that you will not rule this as being not linked to the debate, but, when the First Minister goes to an illegal statue — to Bobby Sands —.
I always respect the office.
The reality is that the solution is threefold: a proper justice system that deals with the display of terrorist emblems and absolutely hammers with exemplary sentences those who put them up; the backing of the Police Service by the body politic in the Chamber to deal with terrorist flags and emblems; and a simple and workable code of practice that communities can work with to deal with the proliferation of other flags. I appeal to other Members in the House. The leader of the Opposition is an eminently educated man. I would say that, as he listens to the debate, he is thinking, "This is unworkable". People in the nicest parts of his constituency would follow the law, but people in other parts of Northern Ireland could decide just to ignore it. It could be enforced in his constituency and ignored in others.
Yes.
2,012 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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