Ms Anna Mercer:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present at it. My name is Anna Mercer. I am a senior consultant at Stratagem, which is a Belfast-based public affairs agency. Based on a paper which I delivered at the MacGill Summer School in 2019, I hope to provide some practical suggestions that could support our politicians to deliver more effective government through institutional and policy reform. Drawing on the current thinking about the relationship between citizens and the state, alongside the importance of societal, economic and environmental well-being, Northern Ireland has the opportunity to build on both the Good Friday Agreement and the principles and practice of recent innovations such as an outcomes-based programme for Government.

I will look first at an overview of institutional review and reforms. Mark Durkan famously referred to the "ugly scaffolding" of the Good Friday Agreement when describing some of the safeguards installed to protect against abuses, such as community designation, a lack of opposition and the petition of concern. Over the years, we have seen agreements reached, including the St. Andrew's Agreement, Stormont House Agreement and New Decade, New Approach, which have dealt with some of the aspects that have bottle-necked our politics. Each of these has responded to a specific crisis. They have been reactive rather than proactive or strategic. They have been subject to political negotiations and horse-trading. These are not the optimal conditions under which we should be reviewing our institutions. We need to put some oxygen back into this debate, do it away from a crisis, and review the Northern Ireland Act in its entirety to ensure that institutions are fit for purpose in a modern and evolving post-conflict society? One option when doing this would be to mandate an external body such as a citizens' assembly to deliver this, as has been done in the Republic and across the water. There is an opportunity to incorporate this into a commitment within New Decade, New Approach to establish this model of deliberative democracy in Northern Ireland. Other contributors in the committee have looked at this previously.

Moving on to public policy reform, getting a strong framework follows on from the need for a renewed institutional framework. It is critical in setting the tone for good governance. The prominence and dominance of constitutional politics permeate our public policy. The extent of the normalisation of this approach is such that it has become an acceptable and sadly often self-fulfilling characteristic of our policy. We only need to look at our education system for evidence of this. We need to find a vision that all parties can coalesce around which is nothing to do with constitutional preference and which can unify rather than divide. There is an opportunity to make this shift through the welcome development of an outcomes-based programme for Government and the centrality of well-being in this approach. A concept which has promoted by the Carnegie UK Trust for this focus on well-being establishes a more long-term vision that endures beyond electoral cycles, which we need for issues such as climate change, poverty and things which are not just fitted into the electoral cycles, and which is based on a clear, unambiguous ambition to improve the well-being of citizens. Key to making this work is underpinning it with legislation. We have seen the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act and the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales. They have been able to implement this legislation. Legislation was introduced just two weeks ago by Lord Bird, which seeks to introduce this across the UK for reserved matters, but principally for England. All this legislation has had well-being at its heart.

This may also enable a rights-based narrative that is more acceptable for those who are less comfortable with this language. We know that the rights debate, which has been part of the Good Friday Agreement, has become toxic and unpalatable in some political corners. If we reframe the debate and change the language around it while maintaining the integrity and the principles to which we committed, we might be able to inject life into the debate again.

Accompanying the legislation to underpin the programme for Government, there needs to be a duty to co-operate. In the same spirit as my proposal on institutional reform, this goes hand in hand with enshrining well-being in policy. Mr. McCallister talked about collective responsibility. It does not just happen. It is about moving people together and integrating rather than having them separate but equal. A pick-and-mix approach will fail to address the structural requirements that we need to support the policy ambition.

How our politicians interact with the institutions has evolved. An independent, system-wide review is required to consider how the legislation that governs them is fit for purpose and promotes integration and not just equality. We need to move away from the quid pro quoapproach that has characterised our politics and our policy and agree a new platform that can sustain the turbulence of governing and which accommodates but does not prioritise our constitutional positions.