Department accused of ‘farcical’ handling of proposed Assembly consent vote

A Stormont department has been accused of “farcical” handling of a process to secure Assembly approval for a Westminster Bill after it emerged it is now too late for MLAs to have a meaningful vote on the law change.

Some members of the Assembly’s Finance committee expressed incredulity after Department of Finance officials told them a proposed Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) vote in the chamber would come too late for it to have any consequence.

Members heard that by the time MLAs debated whether to consent to the devolved aspects of the Data (Use and Access) Bill becoming law in Northern Ireland, the legislation would already have passed its passage through Westminster and may even have secured Royal assent and already be law.

SDLP committee chair Matthew O’Toole branded the situation a “fiasco” as he noted that the Scottish parliament had voted on the Bill last November and the Welsh Assembly had considered it in January.

The Bill seeks to modernise laws around the sharing of data. A Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) applies to the provisions of the Bill that relate to areas that cover devolved issues.

“We need to understand exactly what went wrong in this specific process, because this is a totally shambolic situation for a committee to be faced with,” Mr O’Toole said.

“And I would just make the general point that it discredits us as an Assembly whenever we don’t take our job of scrutiny seriously, and whenever departments – either by omission or commission – act like this place is a weird little toy town parliament that doesn’t really do scrutiny, and scrutiny doesn’t really matter, and sure we’ll just go in and debate wee pointless motions in the Assembly chamber, and we’re not really the legislators.

“Unfortunately we reinforce that a lot and I think this fiasco will probably underline that.”

He added: “I’m slightly speechless to be honest at the idea that we are allegedly going to debate this LCM, but we can’t really say what the purpose of it will be, or what happens if it passes or fails.”

Alliance MLA Eoin Tennyson also voiced concerns.

“I think it’s difficult to be constructive because we’re in a situation now where there will be statutory provision made which affects Northern Ireland, which the Northern Ireland Assembly has had absolutely no oversight, scrutiny or input into and I don’t think that is an acceptable position for this committee or for the Assembly to be placed in,” he said.

DUP MLA Paul Frew asked why the department had “missed its slot” to progress the LCM.

“It is quite farcical that we’re going to go through a process, a legislative process on an LCM, which isn’t going to go anywhere,” he said.

Paul Duffy from the department apologised to committee members.

He said the delay could be part explained by the need to seek clarity on the Bill’s implications for the post-Brexit Windsor Framework in Northern Ireland and to assess the views offered on the proposed legislation by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

But he acknowledged the situation was “not satisfactory”.

“I absolutely accept that the handling of this has not been as we intended at the outset,” he said.

“And, at this stage, I can just apologise to the committee for the lack of opportunity to consider – even though the items within the bill are fairly minor, those devolved areas – the committee hasn’t been given sufficient time to consider those.”

Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey, whose party colleague John O’Dowd is Finance minister, said the timing “isn’t perfect”.

However, she said the minister and department may have had concerns about the Bill.

“I’m assuming that some of the concerns that maybe the minister would have had are the same concerns that we would have, maybe around the article two of the Windsor Framework, and also the human rights concerns as well,” she said.

UUP MLA Steve Aiken said the departmental permanent secretary Neil Gibson needed to come before the committee to explain the situation. He questioned why “mid-level officials” had been sent into the “firing line” to inform the committee of the situation.

“I think I would quite like the Permanent Secretary to come and explain to us what happened,” he said.

Mr O’Toole agreed that Mr Gibson should face committee questions on the matter.