Gardiner says Paisley is ducking the question on the real cost of Assembly Questions
Sam Gardiner MLA, the Ulster Unionist Assemblyman for Upper Bann has said he is deeply dissatisfied at First Minister Dr Ian Paisley’s failure to give him an answer on the real cost of Assembly Questions.
“I asked the First Minister how much on average it cost the taxpayer to have both oral and written Assembly Question answered. This involves civil service time and incurs a cost. Instead of giving me an answer Dr Paisley just said that Assembly members had a right to ask questions and sat down.”
“In the Welsh Assembly this information is readily given and publicly available. The figure for the cost limit for answering questions has been aligned with the limit for answering Freedom of Information requests without charge which is currently £600.”
“Back on 19 January 2001, David Trimble the then First Minister had no difficulty in answering this exact same query. He said that an exercise has recently been conducted on the cost of answering a written Assembly question. The average cost of providing a written answer is £91.44. He added that a similar exercise was underway in relation to oral Assembly questions. A figure for the average cost was then expected to be available in March 2001. He also said that this exercise to determine the cost of answering Assembly questions would be repeated at five-yearly intervals.”
“Clearly, if that exercise has been carried out, the information should have been readily available to Dr Paisley. Instead of promising to find out, all he could do was tell me that members had a right to ask questions. That is not the answer to the question I asked.”
“I am asking this question for a very good reason. I am concerned that a lot of what is going on in the Assembly is point scoring. Some members are asking questions to get information they could readily obtain from other public sources. They are doing this so they can claim to the public that they are asking large numbers of questions.
“What they are not telling the public is that they could, with a little bit of digging, find that information out from other publicly available sources rather than wasting taxpayer’s money just asking questions so they can notch up a high number of questions.”
“Asking questions churned out by party central offices like spaghetti and talking endlessly in endless debates on private members motions that are going nowhere are the way the DUP and their partners in Sinn Fein are operating this Assembly. I maintain that they are wasting public money and not getting on with the business of government.”
“Some indication of the costs I am talking about is given by two examples from Westminster. On 10 January 2000 Adam Ingram the Northern Ireland Office Minister, told the House that the total cost of answering 153 parliamentary questions on policing matters questions was £52,020. On 22 April 2004 Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw told the House that one Member had tabled 450 questions on badgers and bovine tuberculosis at a cost of £60,750. In 2004 it was estimated that the average cost of answering a Parliamentary Question was £135.”
“Questions are an important democratic weapon for the Assembly member but used in this way, they are a cynical manipulation of the public and show a callous indifference to the interests of the taxpayer.”