22/03/2012 Hearts and Minds

Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up this week - the good, the

bad and the ugly - the Finance Minister gives us his thoughts on

how Northern Ireland emerges from the Budget. And, as the UUP

prepares to elect a new leader, we ask John McCallister what makes him

so special. Not a disaster certainly, but not a triumph either.

After yesterday's Budget, our politicians have been lambasting

the Chancellor over fuel duty, public pay differentials and the

granny tax, but are they doing all they can to improve the economy?

After all, devolution is supposed to be about local decision taking

for the benefit of local people. In a moment I'll be talking to the

Finance Minister Sammy Wilson, but first, Julia Paul. Can I help you

at all? Well, yes, I was wondering how much this was. What are you

doing? Don't touch the things. This is a local shop for local people.

There's nothing for you here. this is hour local shop. People

here at the sharp end of the decisions made by central

Government and it's no joke. Wasn't devolution supposed to help with

that? Well, with so much bad economic news around, many people

are looking to their local politicians to try and help the

idea of devolution was that if local politicians took decisions

locally about the way money was spent, ideally those decisions

should be better informed. But realistically speaking, with a

worldwide recession, and no tax- raising powers at Stormont, is

there actually very much the Northern Ireland Assembly can do?

think there are many things they could do and they need to be much

more imaginative. We have our own expenditure and we can decide how

to spend certain monies and that's not covered by the same constraints

as money coming from the Treasury. At the moment we have a glorified

County Council. It barely ledge slates. It can't take any dramatic

decisions on welfare or taxation. This week, all eyes have been on

the Chancellor. The Budget has had mixed reviews here. An extra three

pence on fuel and 37 pence on a packet of cigarettes haven't gone

down well. The limited reductions in corporation tax have been

welcomed by the business community. We approached three commentators,

all with experience of number crunching around social policy, to

ask them is there more the assembly could be doing? At the Law Centre

in Northern Ireland in Belfast, director Des is delivering a

training course. This centre works to advance social welfare rights,

which means staff see the people at the sharp end of cuts. We know it

will take longer for Northern Ireland to come out of the

recession than the rest of the UK. That means in terms of our

unemployment rates, not just in terms of the official statistics,

but also those people who are looking for work, not included in

the statistics, we are pretty much at the top of the league table and

it will take us longer to get out. The assembly needs to recognise the

extent of the cuts and manage those, using money they do have access to,

for Les. I would say let's have a social protection fund operating

alongside a social investment fund and recognise that both social

security and the economy are two key pillars about how we deal with

the future of people here. That would be my first ask, if you like.

I think secondly, we need to look at how we ensure that jobs are

created are sustained. I think thirdly, Sammy Wilson and others

need to go out to bat for Northern Ireland and say that some of the

things done in Britain don't actually work in Northern Ireland.

At Queen's University versity the green shoots of spring are evident.

But a leading academic says for many people here life is not

improving. We need to think about how we can create a much fairer

society in Northern Ireland. If you look at the last executive then we

saw resources being redistributed from the less well off to the

better off. There were a number of different policies. For example,

prescription charges. The abolition of those was a clear redistribution,

because the bottom 10% spent five pence a week and the top 10% spend

over 50 pence, so by abolishing charges that's redistributed from

the poor to the better off. professor here has advised OMFDMM

on social policy and he says the executive needs to think about

water charges. We have to take the purchase of water and funding of

water out from the overall budget, which means there is less money to

spend on schools and hospitals. That's a considerable sum. We are

paying Northern Ireland Water somewhere around �260 million a

year for the provision of water. There are other costs involved with

that. We are paying far too much for water as a society. It's high

time the politicians looked very seriously at that. Commentator

Newton has finished writing his weekly column. He agrees the

assembly is constrained by Westminster rules. But he's

challenging the executive to do something about those. There are a

surprising number of technical rules, restricting Stormont to save

money and switching it from investment to spending and there

are restrictions on the welfare bunget for example, but the rules

are open for negotiation. Peter Robinson was offered a deal by

Gordon Brown four years ago, to reform all the rules in a deal over

corporation tax so Stormont could have saved money and invested and

saved and carried money over year to year. He says the Scottish

Parliament has managed to change the rules, so why can't we?

Sammy Wilson and Martin McGuinness were to go to London and say, "We

can help you deliver your policies if you help us to mitigate their

effects." Windows of opportunity have been opened in the past.

They'll open again on welfare reform, on corporation tax and so

on. They need to seize them, but the question is - are we prepared

to switch our politics from the bun fight it's been in the past to a

very dry, sort of procedural politics, negotiating the

technicalities of accounting rules? For those caught in the poverty

trap help can't come soon enough. The finance minister is with me now.

The Secretary of State says this is a tremendous Budget for Northern

Ireland and told the politicians to stop going on about it. Do you see

the point? I don't think he can describe anything that has been

said as whinging, but what we have done is try to make an honest

decision. That was my word. He says the responses have been pathetic.

We have tried to make an honest assessment. Yesterday I accepted in

the House that the Finance Bill, including the devolution of air

passenger duty and the help for the film industry and Belfast being

recorded as one of the broadband cities are all very welcome

interventions and will help to improve the economy here. However,

I believe that the Chancellor made a number of wrong choices yesterday.

Why he needs to give a tax break of 3,000 million to the top two% of

people. -- 2% of people. It doesn't affect many people here? No, but he

could have used the resource more effectively. Including bringing the

low-income people out of tax all together. He could have raised it

to �10,000. That is not a huge amount of money. It will get there

eventually, because that is the Liberal Democrats' desire. Yes, but

at a time when that end of the income spectrum is really being

squeezed that would be a much better way, to me, of spending

3,000 million. 600,000 people in Northern Ireland will Ben in the

from that? I'm not saying that that's not bad, all I'm saying is

that given the choices that the Chancellor had to make, I think

it's a very bizarre choice for him to say that for people who are

earning over �150,000, 2% of the population, they should get a tax

break of 3,000 million. He says he will claim it back in other ways.

He hopes he will. He hopes for example that tax exiles will come

from all around the world and flood the shores of Britain and beat down

the doors of the HMRC and say, "Please take our tax off us." If he

has that wrong it's very costly. I'm keen to limit the discussion to

how it affects Northern Ireland. think in some ways it affects

Northern Ireland in a positive way. There are things which I believe if

he's going to give money and to relax some spending, then I would

have rather seen he was directing that towards fuel duty. That he

wouldn't have intervened in the way he has with pensions, that he would

have looked at how he could have spent some more money on

infrastructure and capital investment, which of course would

have given us the potential for longer-term growth and enabled us

to attract further investment into Northern Ireland. Those are the

kinds of things which I this I would have perhaps contribute today

economic growth, rather than giving a huge amount of money to people

who by and large will probably save it, because they are already well

off. You have talked about the pernicious attempt to introduce a

public pay differential. Suerl it will happen. -- surely it will

happen? I've heard the Secretary of State yesterday saying that if we

had lower public sector pay here we could attract jobs from London. We

already have a differential between London and the public sector in

Northern Ireland of 22%. There's already a difference there. That's

because there is a London weighting. I have intervened as the finance

minister, because we have stopped bonuses which are non-contractual

to public sector employees, because that's one of the ways we could

free up money. There is the difference between the private and

public in Northern Irelandment -- Northern Ireland. 24% to 27%

between the two? That's right, Noel, had I been sitting here four years

ago I would have been telling a different story, because at that

stage the difference between the private sector and the public

sector in the middle of the boom was that the public sector found it

very difficult to recruit some people. When I was Environment

Minister we were losing planning officers hand over fist to the

private sector. At that stage the Health Service were having to pay a

premium to people who worked in technical grades. Now is now. Now,

- All I'm saying, this is swings and round abouts and to say that's

-- there is a problem, there is not a prerm nant problem. If you want

to stim -- permanent problem. If you want to stimulate jobs then -

You are making the assumption that the private sector is finding it

impossible to recruit, but it's not true. In fact, the public sector

isn't even competing with the private sector, because we are not

recruiting anyone. The private sector is not saying that it cannot

get work. There are 67,000 people unemployed in Northern Ireland at

present. The public sector is not recruiting, so how anyone could say

that the difference that there is in wages at the moment is impinging

upon the ability of the private sector to grow. If logic that's the

way it works. That might be the case. In practice it's not the case.

I suspect that this policy, which the Government at Westminster is

driving, is more about how do they cut public sector spending and how

and this is the important thing, how do they take money from regions

and it's not just Northern Ireland, this includes most of England as

well, outside London and the south- east of England, how do they take

money from areas who are already struggling to keep up with the

average UK growth and if they take that money out, then they'll

deflate the places like Northern Ireland even further, causing more

unemployment and making it difficult for the private sector to

grow? Perhaps Tom Elliott really was an inspirational UUP leader and

not the grey man he was painted in That is not true. The Executive

were offered a poisoned chalice. You can be sure that once the wages

had been negotiated downwards, the Treasury would have said... And it

is all about negotiation though. We already know the direction the

Treasury will go. When you want to add your own level of corporation

tax, you will pay for it. We were quite right in turning the offer

down at that stage. But what I have said, if we had the ability to do

things like that, or we would have made differences. We have already

made differences in public sector pay in Northern Ireland. Big

bonuses have been stopped so that the money can be diverted into

other public services. When are you find the going to say it, or we are

going to have to do this? attitude all along has been that in

the middle of a recession when people are struggling to pay their

bills, I will not dip further into their pockets if I believe there

are ways in which money can be saved. We could have put up water

charges in the Budget... Up and may be served -- and may be saved 500

nursing jobs. We did say we wanted government departments to make

savings. Administrative costs in Northern Ireland in the past year

have fallen by 3.8 %. That is more than any other part of the United

Kingdom, as far as I am aware. We have bought our consultancy build

dams. That is the first priority of a finance minister. Make the best

use of the money you have at the moment. When you have made the best

use and achieve some efficiencies, if hard decisions need to be made

over extra revenue, only then can you have justification to go to

people and say you will have to pay more for your services. Minister,

Thank you. Perhaps Tom Elliott really was an

inspirational UUP leader and not the grey man he was painted in the

media. That is the impression given by John McCallister and Mike

Nesbitt, who are contending to replace him. Both cling to his

memory like a lucky rabbit's foot as they go into battle promising

change. Mike Nesbitt has been canvassing heavily in Tom Elliott's

Fermanagh stomping ground and is pictured in the Impartial Reporter

having his papers signed by Sam Foster, a veteran Elliotista.

Nesbitt even received a discreet endorsement from Mr Elliott,

tweeted via the Impartial's redoubtable Rodney Edwards. In the

other corner John McCallister shot from the hip for Mr Elliott. If

elected, he promised to expel David McNarry from the UUP for dissing

Tom on radio. Never mind that the leader has no power to expel

members. He had nailed his colours to the mast and been noticed. John

McCallister even invoked Mr Elliott's name to prove that

McNarry's plans for pacts with the DUP would be doomed. Pacts didn't

work in Fermanagh. Tom Elliott gave me the figures, he argued. With all

this praise it is a wonder that nobody has asked Tom Elliott to

stay on. It seems a case of, "We really hate to lose you, but we

think you have to go." Or could it be more about Fermanagh than Tom

Elliott? It is a very efficient area of organisation with an

estimated 600 party members. That dwarfs the 17 other constituency

associations - they have an average of 70 each. Tom Elliott stood

taller against Basil McCrea atop that huge mound of Fermanagh votes

last time around. No wonder John and Mike want to climb on board. So

far Mike Nesbitt is the favourite and is undoubtedly more polished,

but McCallister has managed to set the agenda. He pledged to take the

party into opposition - something he can actually deliver. Nesbitt

responded by proposing a referendum on the issue. This kite was

promptly shot down by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness,

round one to John McCallister. So how will it play in Fermanagh? It

could give lessons to other areas in how to organise. Will Mike

Nesbitt seem too slick? Or is John McCallister too rash? Over a

century ago Randolph Churchill said the Orange card was the best one to

play. Now for the first time, none of the UUP leadership contenders

are Orangemen. Instead two east of the Bann candidates hope to play

the Fermanagh card. But will Fermanagh turn out for either

candidate? Or will apathy rule? Each will be hoping, like Churchill

with his Orange card, that their pitch turns out to be "the ace of

John MacCallister is with me now. The first question is why? Why

would anyone want to lead a party that appears to be in terminal

decline? Do not be so negative. But party has had a few difficulties,

but it is a clear choice to make for the party and where I would

like to see the party go is obviously forming an opposition for

the good of the party and Northern Ireland. I want to see are setting

a distinct agenda and rebuild our connection with voters. Why is

going into opposition go for the party? Your phrase and questioned

and question -- and question is key. We have to move away from the

cistern that guarantees everyone has a seat in the government at

some point. That might be good for the Assembly, but how is it good

for the Ulster Unionists? It gives us a chance to break away from

Executive policies, some of which we don't believe in and we are not

supportive of. We are tied in BO because there is a member on the

Executive. Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson may have voted. It

gives you a chance to rebrand and make things more distinct. But you

will be keeping your committee chairs and vice chairs? Of course.

Say you are still part of it? is an Executive branch of

government and the other is legislative. We would keep hour

committee plays. That is what passes for a position at the moment.

I am sake let us build on that and use their structures much better.

We need to set a distinct agenda. We need to scrutinise and provide

people with an alternative at the next election. We do not have that.

You as a voter few hours of this programme have no way of changing

the government. -- view as a voter and viewers of this programme.

it be the final step into the dark for the UUP? A lot of commentators

think so. Opposition is not going to be easy. MLAs will have to work

very hard and we need to look at our policies. We need to move to

normalise things. Do you have enough people of Canada to act as a

shadow ministers? -- enough people of Canada. We have enough people. I

used saying we don't? People like Daniel Kennedy had seen things from

both sides. There is plenty of talent. Across the board we do have

people. So would you give Mike Nesbitt a job, even though you have

called him policy light and inexperience? What I want with Mike

Nesbitt, and I think he can make a difference, is he is into the

education staff and he needs to develop that. He does have an

expertise in education. He has a large job of work to do. So are you

saying people should vote for you to create an opposition? Yes. We

want to go into opposition and make a distinct difference. Tom Elliott

spoke about a wit and branch re organisation of the party. -- 8

read and branch reorganisation of the party. We have to get to a

point to deliver a strategy that will get us back into office in a

proper way. Do you think there will is there. Take the election next

weekend. There are 700 electors from Fermanagh which is almost half

the people who will elect you. What kind of a party is that? It is one-

member, one-vote. Her Democratic Party. Fermanagh are exceptionally

good at getting members. We want to do that every where. If we could

get 700 members in every constituency, we will be doing well.

But point is, can you raise that amount of interest. When we put our

mind to opposition and the talent we have in the Assembly, we can

make a real difference at normalising politics in Northern

Ireland. Do you agree that the organisation of the party is one of

its problems? You have spoken about a lack of clarity and strategy. Is

it not the fact that the party are made up of groups who consider

themselves to be independent? Is that not a problem? You cannot form

a coherent central strategy. What we have to do is get back central

message and that is what I will bring to the role of leadership. We

need a core central message as to what we are standing for. We need

to reconnect with the voters and develop strategies that are fit for

the 21st century. We need to get people out voting who have left us.

What is the big policy difference between you and the DUP? There are

a range of policy differences. When I took about normalising politics,

the DUP had no interest in that. There are still stuck between Sinn

Fein and themselves. Which everyone votes for time after time.

reason they are voting for them is because we have not been in

opposition to provide that credible alternative. There is no choice.

You need a credible alternative. Some of the policy differences

between ourselves and the DUP, we have made it clear that health

spending is insufficient and we have a crisis now in our health

service. Well we get the extra money? One simple place you could

get 80 million over the next four years is from the Social Investment

Fund. It is sitting there and we have not spent any money. What

about David McNarry? You has said he would get rid of him. Is that a

diplomatic way to start? The party wants to see leadership. As party

leader, I will suspend him immediately if elected. I do not

want his experience because it has been negative. I went even refer to

the disciplinary committee. The Commons that he has made a good.

But when that be a divisive step? - but when that be a divisive step?

The more he talks, the more he goes to the media, the easier it makes

my job of getting rid of him. Where did you get your licence?

There was good news and bad news this week. A work top golfers's tax