Debate contribution: Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Ms Kate Nicholl on .
- MLA
- Ms Kate Nicholl
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 8 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5674506
Read the official Assembly record
Text
A Bill's Second Stage is about its principles, and I could not agree more with that principle, not just on regional balance but on any issue. I go back to the point about separate legal entities. We know that we operate in silos and that there are issues. The issues to which we are trying to find policy solutions require cross-departmental working, but, when you have budget constraints and operate as separate entities, that affects the ability to work together and jointly come up with solutions. It is not even about working together but about understanding what the policy solution is. So often we look at what is happening in a different area or are inspired by different legislation, but, if we had full datasets and were able to see the pattern of what is happening now and what will happen, we could solve all the biggest things that we are trying to grapple with. We could certainly solve the issues with public services, though maybe not the wider identity ones and things like that. When it comes to what we fund, data is so important. The other point is linked to how to measure regional balance. Clause 7 mentions "regions" and "sub-regions". The Bill sponsor talked a little bit about this, but are "sub-regions" at the level of cities, towns, constituencies, district electoral areas (DEAs) or individual wards? It will be interesting to get into the detail of the definition.
There is another point that I will make, although I have not made any notes on it. My colleague talked about the North/South element of regional balance. Everyone in Alliance is sick of hearing me say this, but, when I was Mayor of Belfast, one of the things that I was most proud of was that, when my good friend Andy Burnham, who is now the Prime Minister — he is a big fan of your Bill, Sinéad — was Mayor of Greater Manchester, he, Steve Rotheram, the Lord Mayor of Dublin and I came together to look at how we could collaborate on green technology. Unfortunately, that happened during purdah, so it did not get the coverage that it should have done, but it will be in Hansard, so people will know about it. There was something really inspiring, post Brexit, about four regions of these islands coming together to work on an issue that mattered. We went to see Catagen, and we were really impressed with what was happening with Translink and its hydrogen buses. I wonder whether we could look at having something in the Bill that is not just about regional balance but about regional cooperation. When it comes to flexibility, working together and working with councils, which are listed in the Bill as playing their part, there could be something really powerful included about how we cooperate as regions. There will perhaps be things that Dublin and Liverpool have more in common, for example. It is about how we can work together, because achieving regional balance across the islands will be important. The Bill is really exciting. It is what we should be talking about, and I am looking forward to getting into the details of it, so I am happy to support it at Second Stage.
543 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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