Member's statement: Executive and Assembly Accountability
Member's statement by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 10 March 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Executive and Assembly Accountability
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5436052
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Since I have been in this place, I have noted that although the people of Northern Ireland enjoy relative peace now, they do not enjoy the full prosperity and first-class public services that they deserve. That is mainly because of the rank incompetence of some people here and the incessant blaming of the Brits, as we have just heard from a Sinn Féin Member, for issues that lie directly within the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I will give you some examples that would make an episode of 'Yes, Minister' seem too far-fetched. As I said yesterday, it costs some schools hundreds of pounds to change a light bulb because of rules that prevent a caretaker working above a certain height, and schools are charged a call-out fee. Procurement is ripping off the public left, right and centre across all public services. When it should cost a school £1,000 to paint a wall, it is costing £4,000 because of rip-off procurement, but a simple trusted trader scheme could save a huge amount of money. The lack of accountability in our Executive and our Stormont Assembly is astonishing. I recently asked the Executive Office who was responsible for ensuring that the Police Ombudsman got security clearance vetting when there was an incident at her home. The Executive Office told me that it was the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice told me that it was the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has now replied to me, saying that it is the Executive Office. Round and round it goes, but where it stops nobody ever knows. Recently, I have been exposing the fact that some people owe hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Department for Communities for benefit fraud. Twenty of those people have repayment plans that are simply £1 a week. One of the debts will take 770 years to pay off. That is ludicrous. There is a Northern Ireland Audit Office report that says that the Northern Ireland Civil Service is vastly underperforming. When I asked Minister O'Dowd who is responsible for the line management of the head of the Civil Service, he replied, "I don't know". This is not a dig at hard-working, front-line civil servants, but when I asked how many members of the Civil Service, given that they have been collectively underperforming, have been marked as underperforming in the organisation, I was told that it is 24 out of 24,500, which is less than 0·01%. This is a Chamber, of course, that talks about international affairs — Gaza; Venezuela. We are supposed to talk about international affairs that affect the safety of citizens here. When there was a security briefing about how to get our citizens back home, the Minister who calls herself the First Minister for all ran for the hills. We are happy to debate international affairs that are of no relevance to the people of Northern Ireland, but when the safety of people from Northern Ireland who are living in the Middle East depended on it, some Members could not discuss those international affairs. This place needs to change urgently.
521 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.31 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.79).
- No identity-based framing was identified (0.73).
- The overall probability was low and the text did not adopt any identity-based framing.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.08 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.11 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.33 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.14 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.79 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.31 | Between thresholds |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 0.73 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.01 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.02 |
| Adopts it | 0.24 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.64 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.16 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.12 |
| Another identity-related subject | 0.05 |
| Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism | 0.03 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:09 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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