Debate contribution: School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Pat Sheehan on 15 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Pat Sheehan

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

15 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

School Uniforms (Guidelines and Allowances) Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5099810

Read the official Assembly record

Text

First, I want to touch on an issue that the Education Minister raised during his contribution. He said that the Assembly had passed flawed legislation. That may well be true, but it is also true of every other legislature in the world. Nothing will always be perfect. We will do our best to make sure that it is. Sometimes, the Assembly might fail. It has not failed often. The Minister also said that he was not a legal expert; nor are members of the Committee. We took advice. All of us approached this on the basis that we wanted to do something to help hard-pressed families and parents who, sometimes, spend exorbitant amounts of money on school uniforms; not for every school but for some schools. We set about trying to shape the legislation by producing amendments that mean that the legislation would do exactly what we want it to do. In that sense, we were prescriptive, but it was not the Committee on its own. I am not a legal expert, and I do not think that the Chair is either, but we brought in legal experts to advise us, and they were not just from the Assembly. The commissioner from the Human Rights Commission came in and gave us legal advice. We took legal advice from them and from drafters in the Bill Office. We are not making it up. We did not wake up one morning and say, "I have a great idea. Let's use this formula of words". It was all done with advice. On occasions when we were not exactly sure that the advice was right, we asked the Bill Clerk to look at it again. On some occasions, that happened. We came at this in the right frame of mind. We know what we want, and we know what we want the legislation to achieve.

The difficulty is that, even today, the Minister appears to be disingenuous on a number of issues, including the guidelines. Officials in the Department were working on guidelines from as far back as when the Bill was first introduced, yet the Minister says that the guidelines follow the proposed legislation. Officials were working away on them. They told us that they would be ready within a week. They told us, "Do not worry about amendments. As soon as you see the guidelines, you will know that there is no need for an amendment". So, what were the officials doing? By the way, I am not blaming the officials. I have no doubt whatsoever that they were instructed from above to say that — no doubt whatsoever. The Minister was also disingenuous today when he said that it is an Executive Bill, as if it is not his Bill. The Minister has been around this place long enough to know that the procedure is that the Executive give approval for Bills to go ahead but that, to coin a phrase, the Executive are not across every jot and tittle of Bills that come through. If you were true to your word, you would never amend any Bill that comes through the Executive because, as far as you are concerned, "That's it. The Executive have approved it". My difficulty is that you are sitting here being disingenuous about aspects of the process to bring forward legislation. That is a fact.

Sinn Féin will support all the amendments in the group. I will take the opportunity to speak briefly to amendment Nos 2, 3, 6 and 7. Amendment No 2 changes "may" to "must". Without that, the Department could dodge issuing guidelines altogether. With it, the Department will have a duty and families cannot be left in limbo. This is an opportunity for us, as MLAs, whatever we think about the legislation, to say clearly that, at the very least, guidelines will be issued. Whether they are good enough guidelines is another matter. Amendment No 3 requires consultation with:

"pupils and their parents or guardians".

That is common sense. Pupils wear the uniforms, and parents pay for them: it is only right that they should have a voice in those matters and, more importantly, that their voices be heard. Amendment No 6 is one of the strongest affordability measures. It ensures that uniform items are available from at least one non-exclusive retailer, breaking the monopoly of school-appointed suppliers. We all know that some schools have sweetheart deals with suppliers and get a kickback from those. That is one of the things that the Committee focused on. We wanted to end that practice because, while the school may benefit from a sweetheart deal, the people who suffer are the parents who have to pay for it. We did not rule out schools being able to keep contracts if they can prove value for money. It was raised with us that there might be only one supplier in some rural areas but the contract that a school has with that supplier might provide value for money. If that is the case, and the school can prove that there is value for money, there is no obstacle to it. Amendment No 7 requires schools to publish contract details annually. Transparency will shine a light on sweetheart deals and monopolies. If a deal is genuinely value for money, no one should have anything to fear. Amendment No 13 tidies up commencement provisions. It is minor but necessary for clarity. As my colleague Cathy Mason said in relation to the previous group of amendments, we need to look at the wider context. We are being asked to debate the Bill without having seen the draft guidelines, which, we are being told, will make this work. Perhaps, at some stage in the future, we will get clarity on whether the guidelines follow the legislation, or whether they were being worked on and, for some reason, a decision was made not to show them to the Committee. We were promised sight of them months ago. I voted in favour of shortening the Committee scrutiny stage when the Minister asked us to, but I was wrong to do so. I think that the Minister was trying to rush things through, without giving due consideration to all the issues. He was concerned about getting this through as quickly as possible. At that time, we accepted his bona fides in all that, but I am not so sure that we would accept them now. Asking people to blindly trust the Minister and his Department is no longer going to work. Frankly, families cannot afford to trust the Minister on this issue. That is why we worked with others to try to table amendments that were prescriptive and would ensure that affordability, equality, comfort and practicality were built into the legislation. We have missed an opportunity. We could have had proposals that would have allowed girls to wear trousers, allowed generic clothing, permitted the use of sew-on crests and so on.

Go raibh maith agat arís, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Of course

I am dealing with

the amendments that were discussed in —.

I am trying to get it out of my way. I will reiterate my point. There were proposals in the amendments that would have allowed girls to wear trousers, which is an issue of equality; allowed parents to buy generic clothing; permitted the use of sew-on crests; and guaranteed adjustments for pupils with disabilities. Unfortunately, none of those amendments was accepted. In my view, that was to the detriment of the Bill, but we will support the group 2 amendments.

1,259 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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