Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 27th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I wish to speak primarily on the budget Bill and the regional rates and energy Bill. The third Bill on Assembly Members’ pay requires little debate and its provisions are inevitable in the current circumstances. The sad thing is that we are, as usual, punishing the innocent along with the guilty, but the Bill will pass.

Dealing with the budget Bill first, apart from the totally avoidable circumstances which have brought us to the present impasse, I want to focus on one issue which is causing many people in Northern Ireland great concern and anxiety. It has already been touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie.

In January 2017, Sir Anthony Hart submitted his report on his findings following the historical institutional abuse inquiry over which he presided. Among his recommendations was that compensation should be paid to survivors of abuse, including in homes and institutions not covered by his inquiry, and that relatives of the deceased should also be taken into account. In the Bill, for both 2017-18 and 2018-19 under the allocations for the Executive Office, provision is made for,

“actions associated with the preparation and implementation of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry Report and Findings”.

This gives the Executive Office authority to make expenditure to implement the findings of the HIA inquiry.

To put this in context for your Lordships, the inquiry covered the period beginning in 1922, and I think it went up to 1996. Some of the evidence of the abuse was shocking. It ranged from vulnerable children being scrubbed with Jeyes Fluid by nuns to the notorious sexual abuse committed in the Kincora Boys’ Home: years and years of all sorts of physical, psychological and sexual abuse conducted by those who were supposed to help children and vulnerable young people at difficult times in their lives.

In excess of 500 people came forward to Sir Anthony’s inquiry—and more have since indicated that they wish they had. However, as the noble Baroness rightly said, many have also died during the period and more continue to do so. Having fought for years to get this inquiry, the victims are now being subjected to a second—if different—form of abuse. As my party colleague at Stormont Mike Nesbitt MLA said:

“They have no Executive in place in Belfast to ratify the inquiry report and nobody is planning to implement its findings. This is totally unacceptable”.


Does the Minister agree with me that the Bill gives the Executive Office power to spend money to implement the findings of the report? Secondly, do he or his ministerial colleagues have any plans to persuade the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to get on and implement the findings of Sir Anthony Hart’s report? Thirdly, does he believe that this matter should be above politics and other political and constitutional concerns and be treated as a humanitarian measure which has unanimous political support in Belfast?

I turn now to the regional rates and energy Bill. The proposal for rates, as it affects ordinary householders, imposes a 4.5% increase on ratepayers, well above inflation. For the benefit of your Lordships, I say that local government finance in Northern Ireland is vastly different from that in Great Britain. A domestic householder still pays rates levied on capital values. Part of the rates is levied by local councils— approximately half—and the balance by Stormont. All major services are delivered by central government—that includes social services, welfare, housing, roads and education. No local council in Northern Ireland has delivered such a high increase this year, confining their increases to from nil to just over 3%. While councillors have tried to ease the burden on people, central government has not. This is another example of Stormont letting people down.

However, the main item in this Bill that I want to address is the RHI scandal that has left a trail of destruction in its wake. We know that the inquiry into the RHI is ongoing with Judge Patrick Coghlin presiding. The Bill proposes to continue the tariff regime that was introduced last year by the Assembly as its dying gasp, in an attempt to staunch the flow of money out of the system due to a botched scheme. The Assembly decided to impose a cap for one year, and this expires on 1 April next, unless it is renewed.

Members need to know, however, that this was a blunt and badly prepared instrument. That it was time limited for a scheme that will be ongoing for years illustrates the fact that the intervening period was to be used to consult stakeholders and reflect on the best way ahead. This has not happened. No business case was presented to the Assembly to justify the new tariffs, and the relevant Assembly committee twice refused to endorse the new cap, due to lack of information. The Minister, Mr Hamilton, confirmed to the Assembly on 23 January 2017:

“I have not yet received approval for the business case that underpins the regulations before us, and that is deeply troubling”.


The former First Minister who introduced the scheme described it as a “debacle”, and so it has proved to be.

Some Members will have received heartfelt emails from a range of participants in the scheme. These are people who, quite legitimately, took up the offer to convert from fossil fuels to renewable fuel, as the scheme intended. But they have been betrayed. I wish to quote from a letter to the banks in Northern Ireland from the then Minister, Arlene Foster. On 7 January 2013, Mrs Foster wrote:

“The tariffs have been calculated to cover the cost difference between traditional fossil fuel heating systems and a renewable heat alternative. The tariffs account for the variances in both capital and operating costs, as well as seeking to address non-financial ‘hassle’ costs. In addition, a rate of return is also included on the net capital expenditure to ensure the renewable energy technology is attractive to investors. The rate of return has been set at 12% for all technologies incentivised under the NI RHI”.


This is an interesting bit. She continues:

“Tariffs are ‘grandfathered’ providing certainty for investors by setting a guaranteed support level for projects for their lifetime in a scheme, regardless of future reviews”.


It goes on:

“I am therefore writing to encourage you”—


the banks—

“to look favourably on approaches from businesses that are seeking finance to install renewable technologies. The government support, on offer through the incentive schemes, is reliable, long term and offers a good return on investment”.

It goes on to offer the opportunity for officials to arrange seminars to promote the scheme to the banks’ customers.

The language and undertakings in that letter could not be clearer. People have been badly let down, and many are facing financial ruin. They have been conned. Be under no doubt about the consequences of the measures in this Bill. They will confine some businesses to ruin and their owners to a further year of worry and torment. While a focus has naturally been on the potential for some people to profit from RHI by abusing it, and it is right that such cases are investigated, we must remember that the vast majority of applicants are bona fide businesspeople who responded to a government initiative that has left them in financial peril.

I hope that the RHI inquiry looks into the suspicious cases. I suggest it looks at those who subsequently made alterations to what legitimate installers did. In the few cases that look questionable, were workmen asked to run pipes from commercial buildings containing these boilers to other private property? Does that appear on invoices or have workmen perhaps been asked to modify invoices to conceal such actions? I suspect at the end of the day such cases will be few and far between.

I propose that the Minister asks the NI Civil Service to begin work on a strategy for alleviating the hardship being suffered by many, as was the original intention. Such a hardship scheme was suggested by an academic last year in a submission to MLAs. I urge the Government to respond positively to this request.

The real problem with the RHI scheme was that the former Executive set a target to achieve electricity generation from renewables but no adequate budget was provided. Today, legitimate businesses are paying the price for that blunder and it is unfair and unjust. I hope the Government have considered the implications of introducing retrospective tariffs for other schemes in the UK’s energy generation market. This is dangerous territory.

To those who seek a return to direct rule in Northern Ireland, I point out that we are being asked to pass all stages of three Bills in one afternoon, with no ability to delve into the detail. I ask those people: is this the way ahead? I think not.

Will the Minister, together with his NIO colleagues in the other place, also investigate with urgency the statement from the head of the Civil Service on 14 March 2018 to the effect that minutes of meetings in Stormont departments were not taken, to frustrate freedom of information requests? Mr Sterling said:

“Ministers liked to have a safe space where they could think the unthinkable and not necessarily have it all recorded”.


He went on to say that the DUP and Sinn Fein were sensitive to criticism and, in that context, senior civil servants had “got into the habit” of not recording all meetings. He said this was done on the basis that it was sometimes “safer” not to have a record which might be released under FOI.

Does the Minister agree that Mr Sterling’s comments must leave the former Administration at Stormont teetering on the brink of illegality? Was he admitting to a conspiracy to thwart the law? These are serious matters and I look forward to the Government’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, who makes his point clear, as always. I understand exactly what he is saying.

On that basis, I hope your Lordships will accept that this is not what we want to do, it is not how we want to do it and it is not when we want to do it, but it is what we must do.

[Lord Empey]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I ask him to reflect on the Judge Hart inquiry. If I picked up him correctly, he indicated that this would await the return of an Executive. I point out to him that every solitary MLA I am aware of supports the implementation of that inquiry. Other parties represented here can say no if they disagree. Every party supports it. Some of the material in the report is very harrowing. One lady started off in the system at four years old. She is now 87. How much more do we have to put these people through? I therefore ask the Minister to discuss with his colleagues and reflect on that.

Secondly, on the RHI scheme, although I appreciate that this is a renewal, it was originally based on no substantive information. I suggest that the Minister again consult his colleagues and ensure that a proper working party is established to alleviate this, because people are losing their livelihoods as a result of this botched scheme.

[Lord Hay of Ballyore]

Just before the Minister gets to his feet, I should like to say that I broadly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said. There is no doubt that all the political parties in Northern Ireland want this issue resolved. The issue I raised earlier was that the institutions that carried out the abuse should be made to pay for some of that abuse and repent for all of it. I do not think there is an issue in resolving this, but it would be totally wrong if only taxpayers’ money was used to resolve it.