Debate contribution: Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Paula Bradshaw on 13 May 2025.

MLA

Ms Paula Bradshaw

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

13 May 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Assembly Members (Remuneration Board) Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4947587

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I will make a few remarks, having sat on the Ad Hoc Committee, to respond to the amendments. I do not intend to repeat what I said at Second Stage about the general principles of the Bill. Our Committee amendment for the inclusion of the word "Independent" is entirely sensible and provides clarity and confirmation of the separation of its purpose from the Assembly Commission and MLAs in setting pay.

Indeed, that is in line with what the Independent Remuneration Board of the Senedd in Wales and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority in Westminster have done. The Assembly Commission's amendment Nos 6 and 7, in providing for an order to tidy up the process for dealing with temporary appointments to the board, are fine. I understand Mr Carroll's thinking behind amendment No 2. During our deliberations, I raised the issue of the remuneration board's having regard to the current financial circumstances in Northern Ireland, as I am conscious of the impact of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis on our constituents. That issue was discussed, and the Committee agreed that the best approach would be to include that suggestion for the remuneration board in the report, which is what has happened. I will stay with Mr Carroll's amendments. I will not support amendment No 8. In the spirit of what I have just said, I wish that he had come before the Ad Hoc Committee to speak to his proposal for a new clause for trade —.

Pardon?

OK. Go ahead.

Had you made a substantive submission, that would have prompted —.

No, that is how it works, Gerry. You have been here long enough to know how such things work.

Apologies, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker.

I was just clarifying that we would have invited Mr Carroll to come before the Committee and that I would have welcomed the opportunity to talk about trade union involvement through consultation and engagement with the board. To have two trade union members on the board would be excessive, but we could have looked at including a recommendation that the remuneration board explicitly engage with and consult trade union representatives as part of its deliberations. As the Member knows, clause 6 includes a catch-all provision to consult:

"any other persons the Board thinks appropriate",

and I strongly suspect that trade unions will be on its list of consultees. Likewise, my opinion on Mr Gaston's new clause 7A, "Duty to consult", is that the remit of the aforementioned catch-all provision is sufficiently wide to allow the remuneration board to consult whomever, they feel, it is necessary to consult and, further, does not preclude them from consulting whomever they wish, should they deem it necessary to do so. I will return to clause 3 and the provision for the remuneration board to "have regard to the salaries" of Members of other legislatures on these islands. It is worth bearing in mind that that is a sensible starting point for benchmarking. In our evidence, the Committee was advised that other legislatures' remuneration boards have regard to other institutions' salaries. That is standard practice, so we would not be an outlier in doing that. I would be interested to know what Mr Carroll and Mr Gaston would see as an alternative approach by which clarity and transparency could be provided on how the remuneration board members arrived at their final recommendation or recommendations on pay. I will put that another way: what other paid roles in the public sector, private sector or community and voluntary sector could it benchmark against, given the unique role that we play as legislators? I was not going to speak to amendment No 4 — I was going to brush past it — but I ask Mr Gaston what his justification is for seeking to remove the reference to the Dáil and the Seanad. When I read the amendment, I thought, "Is that sectarian in nature?", and I would welcome his explanation when he gets —.

When you get to your feet, I will give way.

No, because you made an entirely inappropriate point of order earlier. You can address that.

I wondered —.

I wondered whether he had tabled that amendment on a sectarian basis. I will return to my point about benchmarking. There is a narrative that MLAs have fewer responsibilities than Members of other regional Assemblies across these islands. That is simply not the case, as is shown in research that the Assembly's Research and Information Service (RaISe) provided to the Ad Hoc Committee. Yes, there are variations in devolved responsibilities, but to imply that we have a lesser workload is false. We did not look at the responsibilities of the legislators elected to the regional Assemblies across these islands, as it was not our responsibility to do so. It will be up to the remuneration board to look at that issue in detail as part of its deliberations. Mr Gaston's amendment Nos 5 and 13 are superfluous and have, I suspect, been proposed for no other reason than to make political points about the Windsor framework and our exit from the EU in order to direct them at the DUP and put it on the spot about whether it will support them.

I record my appreciation of the staff of the Ad Hoc Committee for their efficiency and effectiveness in supporting us with our Committee packs every week and organising the evidence sessions with the Assembly Commission and representatives of different legislative bodies and others. It is worth repeating that at no time did the Committee discuss salary levels or other technical issues to dictate the deliberations of the remuneration board other than in making the suggestion that I referenced about having regard to local financial circumstances. Our focus was entirely on ensuring that the Bill provides the legislative framework to enable the Clerk of the Assembly to take forward the appointment of the board and provide support for its work.

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

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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