Ms Anna Mercer:

I will briefly say that what we need to do, rather than always trying to criticise or catch politicians out, is to try to help them. What we need to do is to create a situation whereby we are not trying to get one over on the DUP or one over on Sinn Féin or any of that sort of thing. We are trying to make the institutions work and no politician should be afraid of that. The status quodoes not suit anyone at present. I do not know whether anyone will be terribly concerned about keeping things as they are, because everyone has their issue with it. There is an opportunity, in that Brexit, Covid-19 and the climate at present in terms of the need to build back better means we may be at a point in the road at which it would be appropriate to have a wider public conversation and, critically, to take it outside Stormont. I know it is hard. We need to get Stormont's buy-in to take it outside of Stormont but if you look at the text in the New Decade, New Approach, NDNA, and the tone, it is all about public engagement. It is all about accountability. It is really making people do what they say they will do and holding them to account.

The other thing is in terms of switching the focus from everything is about the constitution. People are rightly entitled to hold their beliefs, whether they are nationalist, unionist or they do not care. We are not taking away from that. I am harping on about well-being but going back to changing the focus of why decisions and policy are made is really important. When that outcomes-based approach came out in 2016, there was so much excitement. We had Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster standing side by side, really excited about this concept. Wider civic society was really excited about it as well and there was an opportunity there for us to be, not quite world leaders, but up in the top five of being able to deliver on this.

With regard to creating a bit of ambition about what we can do within the current state we live, we need to somehow take the heat off the constitution. The provision is there within the Northern Ireland Act for a border poll. That is there and that is not going anywhere but we need to be a bit more at ease with ourselves in terms of what we can achieve when we are living in this moment, because we are missing the opportunity to deliver better outcomes for people by always transferring the focus to whether you want live in a united Ireland or in the UK. We need to look at other ways of having that conversation, reframing the debate and changing the focus.