AN assembly recall over ‘Dáithí’s Law’ on opt-out organ donation left the DUP squirming but did not force the party to nominate a speaker. Chris Heaton-Harris, the secretary of state, can easily enact the law at Westminster and will now do so in time to start the opt-out donation on schedule. It is too obvious he held off as a tactic to humiliate the DUP.
The real significance of the recall is that it shows the Northern Ireland Office is prepared to humiliate the DUP and is happy for this to be obvious.
NIO minister Steve Baker left little doubt about that last week when he tweeted congratulations to BBC journalist Mark Curruthers for grilling DUP former first minister Paul Givan over the Stormont boycott. The gloves are off for the coming protocol deal, expected as soon as next week.
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The postponement of an assembly election until next January, announced by Mr Heaton-Harris last week, is a strong indication of how the government sees a deal playing out.
The DUP may be too cornered and divided to support any deal but time has been created for it to sullenly accept one, perhaps slink back into Stormont on any pretext events provide, and wait for its supporters to get used to it.
Such a lengthy postponement is effectively indefinite. Having torn up the New Decade, New Approach requirement for elections three months after a collapse, it is increasingly unclear why there must be a poll any sooner than the end of the current mandate in 2027.
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Although the other four main parties backed the assembly recall, the illusion of a united front against the DUP was shattered by speaker nominations.
The UUP nominated former leader Mike Nesbitt, who received no votes from the SDLP; the SDLP nominated former deputy speaker Patsy McGlone, who received no votes from the UUP. At least both parties abstained from voting against each other, but they could have done so much better.
In 2011, Sinn Féin and the DUP invented the legally meaningless title of ‘principal deputy speaker’, enabling them to stitch up the speaker’s office up between them, backing each other’s nominees as they take turns.
It is lamentable that the UUP and SDLP could not even manage a symbolic show of similar cooperation, knowing their nominees would be blocked by the DUP regardless.
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Stormont’s Department for the Economy is insisting it paid out only £4.4 million in Covid small business grants to 435 potentially ineligible applicants.
Although that is a lot of money, it is less than 2 per cent of the £247 million paid out to 24,700 applicants overall. The Department for Business in Britain has reported its equivalent error rate as 8 per cent. After RHI, it seems remarkable that Stormont would copy a Whitehall scheme and make only a quarter of Whitehall’s mistakes.
The Department for the Economy has actually reduced its reported error rate since initial media inquires in 2021, when it said it had paid out £4.7 million to 563 potentially ineligible applicants.
Investigating error and only finding fewer errors also seems remarkable.
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Applicants for GP and nursing jobs in Northern Ireland are complaining about onerous bureaucracy to have overseas experience and qualifications recognised. Simplification has not occurred despite the desperate need for more staff.
The usual haplessness at the Department of Health is mostly to blame but there is a deeper problem: medicine can be a closed shop, with protectionist instincts more akin to a medieval trade guild that a modern public service.
Northern Ireland is particularly vulnerable to this as a small, largely self-contained system. Everyone has been to the same medical school, trained in the same handful of hospitals and generally climbed up the same little ladder. They may not even realise the extent to which the ladder gets pulled up behind them.
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Friends of the Earth has been granted permission for a judicial review against Stormont’s Department for Infrastructure over diesel emissions tests.
In 2018, BBC Spotlight discovered the Driver and Vehicle Agency does not perform the tests – legally required since 2006 – because they would require expensive ventilation improvements to MoT centres. Instead, the agency and the department have been quietly waving vehicles through with a ‘visual inspection’.
A judicial review might be considered the least this deserves, given the link between diesel pollution and death. Stormont departments are subject to the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter Act. It is surprising this approach has never been explored against the Department for Infrastructure in particular.
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Controversy over vehicle emissions is suddenly dominating UK news and politics, with the Tories seizing on traffic restrictions as a culture-war issue.
The question seems obscure outside London, as it relates almost entirely to Labour mayor Sadiq Khan extending a low emission zone from the inner to the outer boroughs. But it is all very revealing about the political balance of the UK.
The population of London’s outer boroughs, roughly from zone 3 to the M25, is 5.5 million, the same as Scotland.
Adding the commuter belt beyond the M25, while still not counting the inner boroughs, brings the directly affected population to 11 million, more than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined.
