Local Government (Disqualification) Bill: Final Stage

Part of Private Members’ Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 7:30 pm on 9 March 2011.

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Photo of Alastair Ross Alastair Ross DUP 7:30, 9 March 2011

I was just putting the issue of dual mandates into context, and I will go on to discuss the issue of dual mandates between local government and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The fact remains that many Democratic Unionist MLAs have already stood down from local councils, and a number of others have indicated that they will not be standing for local government next time around. Again, we did not need legislation to do that. That was done on a voluntary basis, and a total of 25 dual mandates have been ended by this party.

Other myths have been brought up over the past year as the Bill has come to the House, in numerous guises. One of the first myths was that the Bill will bring more young people and women into the Chamber, but I do not accept that. I would like the Chamber to be representative of society, and having more young people and more women in the Chamber would be a good thing, as it would make it more representative of society. However, to suggest that ending dual mandates will achieve that is misleading. The whole selection process for candidates will remain the same. The electorate will also remain the same, and they will still have the choice to pick who they want to serve their local communities. Therefore, that is an argument that I have no sympathy with. There is no evidence that it would be the case.

The second myth that has been put forward about the issue is that the public are very angry about the issue of dual mandates and want them to be ended immediately. There are a number of things that could be said about that. First, fewer than 15 members of the public took the time to respond to the public consultation that the sponsor of the Bill did. If the issue was as big as the sponsor of the Bill has said, I would have expected many more members of the public to voice their concerns or opinions on it, but they did not do so. In addition, the evidence points to the fact that the electorate have not been put off from voting for Members who hold other mandates. If it was such a huge issue among the public, they would not vote for a candidate who either held another office or said openly that they wanted to stand for two offices. That is also worth bearing in mind.

There was also a media campaign about the dual mandate issue. More recently, the ‘Belfast Telegraph’ ran a campaign to keep Sammy Wilson in the Assembly because we need him as Finance Minister and do not want him to end his dual mandate, because we also need him to have a voice in the House of Commons. Therefore, even the media has changed its tune on the issue, and that same media expressed concerns about many senior Members leaving the House as it could potentially leave a gap. Therefore, the public and media perception of things has changed dramatically.

I listened to the comments that were made by the Chairperson of the Committee for the Environment. He has left the Chamber at the moment, but he talked about not being able to be in two places at one time, and about how councillors wanted to be in their local councils giving their views and casting their votes on issues for their local communities. My colleague Ian McCrea talked about his own voting record at local council level, and it is worth putting on record the fact that the voting records of Members of this party who serve both on local councils and in the Assembly or elsewhere are favourable when compared to anybody else. Indeed, we have one of the best voting records of any of the parties. The greatest irony of all is that the sponsor of the Bill has one of the worst voting records in the House, and she does not hold another mandate. I think that that highlights the fact that the sponsor of the Bill —