Maginnis slams RPA ‘travesty’ during Lords Debate
Ulster Unionist Peer Lord Maginnis of Drumglass has told the Upper House that the government’s Order implementing the seven council plan is a “travesty” which is clearly “designed to bully the majority of citizens” in Northern Ireland.
In a hard-hitting speech during Wednesday’s debate, Lord Maginnis said: “My Lords, this Order is a travesty… It is time the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland stopped to listen. It is time he stopped digging up the cricket pitch on which the game of peace and democracy is to be played out.
“The 7-councils structure being proposed will give militant Sinn Fein absolute control over a greater geographical half of Northern Ireland. It will inevitably create a Balkan-type structure that will be untenable for Unionists.”
“The uncertainty and inevitable resentment that Government is about to unleash fills me with dread for the future,” he warned.
Lord Maginnis said that RPA changes would create “organisational and communication chaos”, and he hit out at the fundamental lack of democratic accountability in the process – saying Peter Hain would never accept local government for Wales on the basis of “tenuous support from only one minority party”.
He added: “I honestly regret having to evaluate this Order in Council as [it is] a deliberately perverse and bad piece of legislation designed to meet only the sectarian demands of the most intransient elements of Sinn Fein and unable to be justified, on any reasonable grounds.”
Lord Maginnis said that Ulster Unionists wanted “significant change”, and would have preferred 15 councils.
“But I think we really ought to wonder why the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Alliance Party oppose a 7-council arrangement?” he said.
“Is it not relevant that the Northern Ireland Local Government Authority (NILGA), representing all political parties, opposed 7 councils. And is (SOLACE), the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives not, currently, working in partnership and agreeably with NILGA on the basis of its position.
“The Government has no real clothes on this issue and is operating against the expressed wishes of all these bodies and a clear majority of the Members of the NI Assembly.”