DUP education minister Michelle McIlveen is raising the school uniform grant for low-income households by 20 per cent, at a cost of £1 million.
While a welcome short-term measure, this spectacularly misses the long-term point.
Uniforms are too often an exclusive racket and the trend for branded PE kits can easily double costs. This is all happening in breach of Department of Education guidance, which specifies that uniforms, including PE kits, should be affordable, available from a wide range of suppliers and leave no family feeling “excluded from being able to select a particular school because of the cost”.
One of the ironies of our so-called grammar school ethos is the value it places in uniform rules that wilfully defy authority.
Although uniforms are not regulated by law in Northern Ireland, legislation was passed in England last year giving guidance on costs statutory effect. Wales did not even need to pass a law to do the same in 2019: it used a general power in an existing education act to give boards of governors an order.
The Department of Education needs to grow a spine and take this matter in hand.
**
The Independent Neurology Inquiry has published a devastating report into the mishandling of Dr Michael Watt, the consultant whose malpractice led to the largest patient recall in UK history. The report makes 76 recommendations to the Belfast Health Trust, the Department of Health and other regulatory bodies. Initial signs are not promising that lessons will be learned.
Dr Cathy Jack, chief executive of the Belfast Trust since 2014, apologised to patients but added that “one doctor does not reflect the entirety of the 21,000 staff in the Belfast Trust today”.
Nobody has claimed otherwise, least of all the inquiry. What it found is that one doctor was left to engage in over a decade of malpractice because 21,000 colleagues were unable to stop him, despite repeatedly trying to do so, due in large part to the systemic and cultural failings of the organisation over which Dr Jack presides.
**
For all its faults, the proposed British bill of rights would not breach the Good Friday Agreement if enacted in its present draft. The UK would remain a member of the European Convention on Human Rights and the convention rights would still be enacted in Northern Ireland law, accessible through domestic courts and the European Court at Strasbourg, as the agreement requires.
However, the bill would change how the rights system operates by allowing UK courts to diverge from Strasbourg.
Divergence would always be downwards: the bill forbids UK courts from expanding the protection of a right beyond what judges are certain Strasbourg would do in the same case.
While that is not a breach of the Agreement either, merely branding the system as more British is enough to make it politically contentious here.
**
The Northern Ireland Civil Service is advertising 2,814 vacancies, according to an assembly written answer from Sinn Féin finance minister Conor Murphy.
It currently employs around 23,000 people, so 12 per cent of posts are unfilled.
In 2015, the civil service ran a very expensive voluntary exit scheme with the aim of reducing headcount by 10 per cent. This was considered a major political achievement, central to a cross-party agreement to cut the number of Stormont departments, trim down administrative costs and rebalance the economy. The Department of Finance still has a page on its website boasting that 2,990 civil servants took the package, saving £87 million a year.
What was it all for, if almost exactly the same number of people need to hired back?
**
Claims and counter-claims are flying over the impact of the protocol on Northern Ireland’s economy.
Definitive conclusions remain elusive due to the range of factors involved, the limitations of statistics and the fact much of the protocol has yet to be implemented. But one objective political observation can be made: it has become a feature of unionism to insist Northern Ireland is an economic basket case and a feature of nationalism to insist it is an economic miracle. This can only be adding to the general sense of bewilderment.
Further confusion is arising over the definition of ‘negotiation’. Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney says the UK must “return to the negotiating table”, yet European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic insists the EU “will not renegotiate the protocol”.
As so often with Northern Ireland, this is a needless row over semantics. Article 13 of the protocol allows any part of it to be superseded by “any subsequent agreement”.
In other words, negotiation can renegotiate the protocol without having to renegotiate the protocol.
**
Consultancy firms normally jump at a public contract but Derry and Strabane council has discovered one area they will not touch.
Last year, councillors demanded an investigation into “reports of widespread nepotism, poor governance and recruitment procedures in the community sector”.
The council’s in-house audit team said it lacked the necessary resources so a procurement exercise was undertaken, offering a contract to review the accounts and hiring of all community groups in Derry city in receipt of council funding over the preceding five years.
It has emerged that no tender submissions for this were received, not even from PriceWatersideCoopers.
