Mr. Mark Durkan, MP:

I thank Ms Adrienne Reilly for her clarification. In the discussion we heard about some of the political party opposition to this in the North. We need to recognise that a very natural source of opposition in the North is the permanent government. The Civil Service instinct, by and large, is to say that a bill of rights would create an impossible situation, as it would interfere with decisions on the planning and allocation of resources by the Government, and the Government would be second-guessed in every decision it made. That is part of the argument that is made. Those who make that argument have been able to ram it home in the years of certain masters in certain parties, almost to reinforce their own antipathy. There is a certain Civil Service neuralgia around some of this. That scepticism has been there for a long time. We should not kid ourselves that there are only pockets of party political resistance or scepticism about this issue. I say that not to agree with it but to recognise that it is part of the nature of the challenge.

Like Ms Michelle Gildernew, I fully concur with the worthwhile suggestions that are being made to keep the ball rolling and get things moving. My own observations earlier on the charter were not to look to the charter as an alternative to the bill of rights but maybe as a way of trying to achieve a different level of engagement, particularly from Unionist parties, given some of the issues they have raised about matters in this State and so on. We may be able to create a situation in which they can engage with the charter and we can use that to create a different backlight around the debate on the need for a bill of rights.

We need to give people an example of the difference a bill of rights may bring. An emerging issue that will affect people right across the community in Northern Ireland and which will have a particularly sensitive impact on sections of the loyalist community, following the flag protest and arguments, relates to the welfare reform measures that are being passed. The notion of a bedroom tax was suggested in Westminster as a way to deal with issues in London and elsewhere. The justification for such a tax is that if people occupy social housing that is too large for them, the bedroom tax is a way of encouraging them to move to housing that is a better size for them, making the larger house available for others. If we translate such a measure into places like the Fountain Estate in my constituency, we are basically saying to the small loyalist community members there that they should not be living there and should go somewhere else or should pay extra for being there. The bill of rights proposed in the agreement would give people the right to choose where they live. However, if the bedroom tax is implemented, people will be told that if they choose to stay, it will cost them.

We need to think about how the North could have been in a better position to influence legislation going through Westminster, that is now going through the Assembly in a sort of karaoke form. If we did, Northern sensitivities based around rights and particular community sensitivities around those rights might have been front-loaded into that debate a lot earlier. Even if we could not have changed the Westminster Bill fundamentally, there would have been a lot more leeway created for the North, but, unfortunately, the Assembly kind of slept in on that. If there had been a bill of rights and people were alert to the situation earlier, some reaction might have kicked in and we might have a different outcome that would matter to people. This is something that will hurt a lot of families in years to come.