Debate contribution: Coronavirus Act 2020 (Extension of Powers to Act for the Protection of Public Health) (No. 2) Order (Northern Ireland) 2023

Debate contribution by Mr Colin McGrath on 11 March 2024.

MLA

Mr Colin McGrath

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

11 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Extension of Powers to Act for the Protection of Public Health) (No. 2) Order (Northern Ireland) 2023

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4269575

Read the official Assembly record

Text

This is a difficult motion to support. Time and time again, all of us, from all parties, stood in the Chamber when these regulations were brought forward, and we all said that they were anti-democratic and against the normal process. However, we accepted that we were in a worldwide pandemic and that the regulations were therefore necessary. We got that then. We understood what we were facing at that stage. It was quite clear. However, now, we are where we are today. It is March 2024. In around two weeks' time, it will be four years since that night when a whole raft of regulations was enacted that had a serious impact on people's freedom, their freedom of movement and their ability to gather. It seriously impacted on people's lives. Our constituents were on the phone with us and sending us emails, telling us that they did not like what was happening. The majority accepted that there was a reason for it, yet we are now in this state. In 2023, the World Health Organization downgraded the global pandemic; it is no longer a pandemic that we face. It said that it no longer qualifies as a global emergency. The question has to be this: if we are not facing a global emergency, why are we looking to extend emergency powers? Think about those powers. They mean that a decision that impacts on everybody could be taken in a room and enacted, probably that very same day, and it would be weeks before we got an opportunity to discuss it or debate it in the Chamber. It just does not feel like the right way in which to do things that, several weeks after the decision has been made and implemented and people's daily lives have been impacted on, we then get the opportunity to come to the Chamber and have that discussion. During COVID-19, Departments spent almost £5 billion on various initiatives, with almost £1·6 billion being spent by the Department of Health. If those powers were not in place and we were spending that level of money, I suspect that we would have many deliberations in the Chamber and much discussion in Committees on how that level of money would be spent. We were in a different place then, and those decisions were taken quickly as a result of having those powers. Between March 2020 and October 2022, 51 ministerial directions were issued; more than in the previous 10 years put together. We were absolutely in a different place during that time. We are not in that place now. In the Committee, we asked — the Committee Chair referred to it — why a piece of emergency legislation could not be brought to the House if it were required. We passed a Budget — spending of £28 billion — in two days. Two days is what it took. When we reflect on the period of COVID-19, we know that it took weeks to build up to the stage of needing some form of legislative cover to be able to take decisions: the World Health Organization will have referred to it as a global emergency; it will have upgraded it to a pandemic, and time will have been taken to go through that process. If that process began, I am quite sure that, here, we could get through a 24- or 48-hour process to be able to give the Executive the ability to take the decisions that they need to take. We all remember that, towards the end of the pandemic, countless people contacted us to tell us that they were not happy with how we carried out the process of short, sharp and immediate decision-making. I will finish by stating the fact that it was needed then. We do not need it now. We will get a number of weeks' lead-in time to the potential need for it again. We will have an opportunity, because the Assembly can take decisions quickly if it needs to. With that lack of information, my party finds it difficult to support the motion.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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