Debate contribution: Executive Reform

Debate contribution by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 4 March 2024.

MLA

Ms Paula Bradshaw

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

4 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Executive Reform

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4254097

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Unlike the previous Member to speak, we, in the Alliance Party, are delighted that this is the first topic chosen for debate on Opposition day, as it reflects an Alliance Party policy and priority of long-standing. We will, of course, support the motion. I welcome the Opposition to this discussion. To emphasise just how long-standing our party's position on meaningful reform is, I have here a document called 'Agenda for Democracy' that we, in the Alliance Party, published 20 years ago today. It is remarkable how prophetic that was, given that it was published even before the St Andrews Agreement. It sought fundamental revisions, not quick fixes. The quick fixes since, as the proposer will agree, have only made things worse.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Principal Deputy Speaker. You obviously were not a Member then. The issue at that time was that we were renegotiating to get us back. We called for a recall many times. We took things forward. However, the argument that you had with the UK Government over those two years could not be solved in this Chamber. Shame on you and shame on your party for the impact that that had on our public sector, which has seen a decline. For you to hold the whole country to ransom over your party issue is absolutely shameful. We will feel the effects of that for generations.

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I was responding directly to the comments. Some parts of our 'Agenda for Democracy' document have actually been implemented, including those parts on the reduction in the number of Departments and the devolution of justice. The document is still relevant as it sought an Executive to be founded, like almost any other Government in the democratic world, through negotiation and compromise. Taking into account our particular circumstances, the idea was that any coalition should be able to take office provided that it had the support of a weighted majority in the Assembly, which would ensure that it was inclusive. Twenty years on, that idea's time has come. It would remove a single party's ability to wield an all-destructive veto, which we saw over the past two years, and parties would be entitled to opt out of the Government but not entitled to force others to opt out too. Weighted majority voting, ensuring not only an inclusive Government but a genuine choice for the electorate, would also enable the abolition of communal designation. Even back in 2004, that was seen as a crude form of institutionalised sectarianism. In 2024, it is entirely inappropriate for the modern, post-agreement Northern Ireland in which we live and in which people are choosing even more often to step beyond the old dividing lines when making choices in schooling, leisure activities and, indeed, the polling booth. The point is that designations do not just mean that cross-community votes, whether arising from the application of a petition of concern or otherwise, take a crudely sectarian form where other votes are deemed to count for less, with the result that people opting to vote neither unionist nor nationalist are blatantly discriminated against. It is not right that the electorate who vote for the Alliance Party are, effectively, disenfranchised on important votes. Those votes also mean that the institutions do not function in a manner befitting the post-agreement electorate. My party colleagues will come back to much of this, but I want to turn to another issue that we raised in our 2022 manifesto. As in many other policy documents, that has a fundamental recognition that our system of government relies, perhaps too much, on allocating every policy area to a particular Department and too little on a genuine sense of collective interest and collective responsibility. It is on the First Minister and deputy First Minister, and the Executive Office, to look at that because we see far too much silo working in the Assembly and in Departments. What is required, therefore, is recognition from all of us, including those who tabled the motion, that there were flaws in the original agreement and that a review mechanism was built into it that was meant to iron those issues out but rarely did. We need to remove crude sectarian vetoes. That is objectively undeniable, but we also need to ensure that the institutions operate in a way that is befitting of the entire society that they are supposed to represent, and we need to move beyond those silos.

743 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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