16
Examination of witnesses
Celine McStravick and Ian Jeffers.
Q25 The Chair: Good morning, and welcome to this public meeting of the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee. We are today holding the third evidence session of our inquiry on strengthening Northern Ireland’s voice in the context of the Windsor Framework. We are joined today by two Northern Ireland civil society representatives. Celine McStravick is the chief executive of the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action. Ian Jeffers is the chief executive of Co-operation Ireland. You are both extremely welcome to the committee. We have been looking forward to hearing your evidence. We would be grateful if when you first speak you would introduce yourselves briefly. I remind everyone that today’s meeting is being broadcast. A verbatim transcript will be taken for subsequent publication, and it will be sent to you as witnesses to check for accuracy. I refer at this stage to the list of members’ interests as published on the committee’s website.
We start with a question from me in two parts. First, what impact has Brexit and the Windsor Framework had on the community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland? As a result, how have Brexit and the Windsor Framework impacted on communities on the ground in Northern Ireland? I suppose the sub-question to that second one is: do communities really know anything or anything much about the Windsor Framework in Northern Ireland?
Celine McStravick: Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much for the invitation to come to today’s session. I am delighted to be here. By way of introduction, I am chief executive of NICVA, and we are the umbrella organisation representing the views of the community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. We have over 1,500 members. In Northern Ireland, the community and voluntary sector has about 53,000 employees, over 7,000 organisations and over 200,000 volunteers. We underpin economic and social development throughout the region.
On your question, Chair, about the impact of Brexit and the Windsor Framework, because of course both are very connected, our sector has had a really difficult time over the past few years, with lots of change. Brexit meant we lost the European funding element. We were told and promised that it would be replaced by the UK shared prosperity fund. Of course, that fell short, and we often lament the missing £20 million-odd that should have come to our sector. We have been experiencing the cost of living crisis, which has been difficult, and, of course, we have had a pandemic. In the past few years, we had no Northern Ireland Executive. They returned last February. All of that has led to a huge atmosphere of uncertainty and unsustainability in our sector. In terms of the Windsor Framework, we held a meeting recently with our members to give specific information.
I think it would be useful to have some concrete examples of the difference Brexit and the Windsor Framework have made to the sector as a whole. I will start with one example regarding the difference in application of gift aid as a result of Brexit. The Chancellor’s Spring Budget in March 2023 removed charitable tax reliefs for charities that operated with their headquarters outside Northern Ireland in an EU state. For charities working in Northern Ireland, that could have a significant difference, because many charities might have a headquarters in Dublin but operate to the benefit of people in Northern Ireland. Now, those charities can no longer benefit from gift aid from the UK taxpayer even though they are benefiting UK residents in Northern Ireland. One charity told us that that has made an effective loss this year of £120,000 income, which, as you can imagine, is critical to the running of the charity. The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland has written to HMRC seeking clarification on this, and HMRC is insisting that organisations now need to dual register in the UK and outside the UK. I see how that would be helpful to HMRC, but you can understand from a charity’s perspective that it just adds further burdens to have a separate governance procedure for working in Northern Ireland. That is one such example.
Two other examples are about organisations working UK-wide and how the Windsor Framework has created a very complex paperwork system for the charities to try to navigate and, I stress, with no additional income or investment in the charitable sector to help them navigate this hugely complex area. One example is Homeless Connect. It runs the FareShare programme, which is about distributing food to those most in need. Its head office is based in mainland UK, and a lot of that food would come from mainland food distributors coming into Northern Ireland. They have told us that this has created huge challenges and really complex fighting against the framework with no resources whatsoever to understand how to navigate it, and, ultimately, it impacts directly on communities in Northern Ireland that require emergency food provision.
Another example is the RNIB, which operates across the UK, where it talks about how the changing regulatory requirements impact on the wide range of products and services that it can seemingly no longer sell on in Northern Ireland. I use the word “seemingly”, because, again, it finds it really difficult to understand the new legislative framework; it is trying to source pro bono legal support to help it. This is at a time when charities need more support. They do not need more paperwork and more process to navigate through. Those are three examples of how Brexit has affected us—less income but more paperwork.
The Chair: Can I ask you to urge particularly the Northern Ireland-based food charity to respond to our call for evidence setting out the problems that it has had? That would be really useful. It is great to hear these examples from you, but it would be really useful to hear some granular material from it about the problems that it has had.
Celine McStravick: Yes, absolutely. No problem, Chair. In our session with members, we highlighted this call for evidence, and we will do that again.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Ian Jeffers: I am chief executive of Co-operation Ireland. Thank you very much for this opportunity. For the record, Baroness Ritchie and Baroness Foster are both board members of Co-operation Ireland, as is Paul Murphy, Lord Murphy.
Broadening the question, you ask whether communities know about the Windsor Framework. The simple answer is no. What they know is interpreted through the lens of their community. That is important for us to understand. We have seen from Brexit and then the framework and the protocol the challenges that the sector has faced, which Celine outlined very well. That change of funding platform altogether away from ESF, the European Social Fund, and lots of funding streams disappearing has put a strain on the community and voluntary sector. It has then had to seek new funding or engage with new organisations such as SEUPB, the Special EU Programmes Body, and that only works for charities that are robust enough to actually seek that sort of funding.
Focusing specifically on communities, one of the big challenges that we must address is the whole social cohesion side of things. It is to some extent opening up old wounds, or reminding us of some of the things from the past. Prior to Brexit, a border referendum or a border poll was something that we would potentially have not considered in our lifetime, or was 25 to 50 years off. In Northern Ireland we could be British, we could be Irish, we could be Northern Irish or we could be “none of the above”, and then we come to the point where we are today. We are in some ways isolating, as a result of the framework and Brexit, the largely Protestant, unionist, loyalist community. The feedback that I am getting from community groups that we work with in the PUL, the Protestant, unionist, loyal community, is a feeling of loss and that we are being pushed into a corner.
Co-operation Ireland’s role is peace and reconciliation. We do not have a view on the island of Ireland. We want to live on the landmass as a collective in peace together, but what we are doing is encouraging people to take sides again. There is a real misunderstanding; it is interpreted in very black and white ways in some ways that there is now an Irish Sea border. We have seen that in our communities. We have seen posters saying “No sea border here” or that a particular community or village says “No to the Irish Sea border”, and that is effectively stirring up tribal conflict that we have to address ourselves to. That is the biggest concern. We have all the practicalities of Brexit and the Windsor Framework and the perception that “I can’t get X, Y or Z foodstuffs in that particular shop that I used to before”, but we are at a very granular level in communities where it is about my position, our position and our community’s position within the union. As some have said to me, particularly from the Protestant, unionist, loyalist community, this is just the stepping-stone to an all-Ireland environment.
The Chair: That leads nicely into a question that Baroness Ritchie wants to ask.
Q26 Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: Thank you, Lord Chair. First, I declare my interest as a member of the board of Co-operation Ireland. In my former role as Minister for Social Development in the Northern Ireland Executive, I worked directly with NICVA and your predecessor, Mr McAleavey, in terms of the community and voluntary sector, for which I had ministerial responsibility.
It leads in very well, Lord Chair, because Ian—both of you are very welcome—referred to the Special EU Programmes Body, from which Co-operation Ireland received programme funds and dispersed those. Can you assess for us the extent to which the voices of the people of Northern Ireland, the people of Northern Ireland’s civil society and the voluntary sector organisations are currently being heard in the context of the Windsor Framework, Celine?
Celine McStravick: It is an interesting question, and Ian, colleagues and I have talked about this. The voices are not being heard at all.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: How should they be heard?
Celine McStravick: I suppose the struggle is that the Windsor Framework has been developed largely as a legislative answer to the problem that we are facing, which is Brexit. Often, those voices are not about the day-to-day life of people; they are about businesses and they are about transport and logistics. There is definitely a gap in terms of hearing those voices. As Ian rightly said, when there is a gap, people fill that gap with their own version of what they believe. We need a much more concerted effort and a focus on hearing those voices. Anything that has happened to date in even NICVA’s involvement in working with Queen’s University and working with the EU-UK specialised committee has very much been in terms of using NICVA’s limited resources, what we can do, how we can stretch ourselves and our policy knowledge, but there has been no significant investment or any programme to hear those voices in a systematic way. How we do that needs some investment in time and a real commitment to it rather than just words.
The Chair: Mr Jeffers, I want to ask a question arising from Lady Ritchie’s question. It sounds to me as though this is an issue of accessibility. People simply do not understand how they can make contact with what they see as the Windsor Framework as a sort of blob in order that something can be done. Is that too cynical a view?
Ian Jeffers: No, it is spot-on. To refer to it as a blob really illustrates the point. People at community level are concerned about what it is, but they are not quite sure what it is. We have not done enough to explain what the framework is, how it impacts and how it is trying to drive things forward. We do not have enough talk about what could be a positive benefit from Northern Ireland having, effectively, access to two markets—in the UK and in the EU. We do not have the positives; we look at the negatives. When I have spoken to community groups, they have largely taken tribal lines, for want of a better phrase, because that is a position of comfort, and not based necessarily on the full understanding of things. There is a huge body of work for us to do—by us, I mean everybody—to help understand what the framework is, how it is implemented and how we could better support communities to engage.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: Do you see a role for NICVA and Co-operation Ireland working with the Northern Ireland Executive and others to try to communicate that with all the community infrastructure in Northern Ireland?
Celine McStravick: That would have been a very positive move, but, again, I do not think it can be done with existing resources, and I hate to remind people of that. There is definitely something about the voluntary and community sector just being expected to do more with the same. We have come to the end with the pressure in our sector. We are completely overstretched. As an organisation, NICVA’s aspiration would be to support the sector as much as possible. We are as involved as we can be in discussions like this, but when you couple that with other issues such as poverty, economic inactivity, transport issues, and health and social care in Northern Ireland, it is very difficult when everything is so overstretched. Yes, a clear and obvious way to do it would be to use NICVA and other organisations like Co-operation Ireland as a way into the sector.
Q27 Lord Willis of Knaresborough: I am quite a novice on this committee with all these experienced colleagues. What I cannot understand from all the sessions we have had so far—yours has been the most about people—is what, if any, advantage either of you has seen because of the passing of the Windsor Framework.
Celine McStravick: I will answer that very quickly. It reminds me a bit of when we turned into 2000 and we all expected our computers to turn off because we did not know what we do not know. We do not know what it would have been like without the Windsor Framework, so it is very difficult to say what difference it has made. We know that the ambition was to make life in Northern Ireland as easy as possible given the difficult jurisdiction issues close to a border with a member state. That is a difficult question. When we talk to community organisations, our members, they tell us the problems that they face now as a result of Brexit. They cannot tell us how those problems are being solved by the Windsor Framework because they still have the problems. The problems are still there. In addition to what I have mentioned, we have problems with organisations talking about staff who need to come in and work in Northern Ireland but now no longer can. We do not know whether without the Windsor Framework those problems would have been even worse, so it is a difficult one.
Q28 Lord Hain: It is good to see you. My apologies to you both for not being present physically. I am interested in the extent to which civil society stakeholders can engage with the structures that govern the Windsor Framework. Could these structures be opened up to be more accessible to your stakeholders? For example, there are thematic sub-groups in the whole joint committee structure on such matters as agri-food, SPS and subsidy control in the single electricity market, all of which affect people in their daily lives. Do people really know about these structures? If they do, or even if they do not, how might they engage? Are they consulted early enough when new proposals are in draft stage, or is it seen as a fait accompli?
Ian Jeffers: Thanks for that question. Do people know? Again, the answer is no, they do not unless they are inside the circle. We are fortunate in some respects thanks to Katy Hayward at Queen’s University, who has done a fantastic job at corralling particularly the community and voluntary sector as well as some in the business sector to feed into those groups, but it feels like a club that you are invited into. That is not a criticism in any way of the voluntary role that Katy Hayward plays there. It is finding people in the sector who are interested, who understand the importance of it and who have the time and the resources to engage with it. To Celine’s point, we are asking busy people to do more with no additional resources therefor. We can do more to open the already existing mechanisms. We have proven that they can work. The civic working group meets on a regular basis. We have that access and so forth, but it does—
Lord Hain: Do you feel you are being listened to, Ian?
Ian Jeffers: My honest reflection on that is that it is still early. About a year ago, we had the good fortune to go out to Brussels and had an intense couple of days of meeting all the various people. We had an online meeting last month where we got the work plan, but it felt like being talked to and not with. It is early days. As with any relationship, it is up to us to build it. Building relationships needs resource, time and effort. It feels a little bit like marriage counselling in some ways; we have left the EU but we still want to be friends, and that needs time and investment. We are struggling to do the day job over here. The same applies whether in the community and voluntary sector or in the business sector, to be truthful. It is all collective. How does that transition to a small community group that may have 20 volunteers and one full-time member of staff? They do not have a chance, really.
The Chair: In his evidence to this committee’s predecessor sub-committee, Professor Usherwood said: “The flipside of the complexity is that, as long as we are providing many opportunities for everyone to talk to as many different people as possible, although it will be messy, it reduces the risks of an accidental issue floating up”. Do you subscribe to that view that complexity is an opportunity?
Ian Jeffers: We must accept that the framework in itself is a very complex agreement that is trying to find a compromise to allow the situation in Northern Ireland to be the best it possibly can. It needs work. It needs us all collectively to acknowledge that this is going to be tough and that as a result of Brexit we are in a different situation that we did not see eight or nine years ago. It is a complex situation. We need to continue to talk about it. There is also an element of communities and a lot of the community groups and voluntary sector groups not having the appetite, the interest or the resources to tackle this. If we look into our local Assembly, Stormont, there is no real clear clarity there. Is it in our control? Is it in their control? Is it something that sits within this House? I have not explained it very well, but it is a complex issue. We need to keep talking, and maybe that is the solution. We need to somehow acknowledge that we are making progress forward with it all.
Lord Hain: Ian, before Celine answers, can I press you on the point about whether you are consulted early enough? If there were to be a new regulation affecting daily life in Northern Ireland, do you think people would know early enough from Brussels what was coming down the road?
The Chair: Celine.
Celine McStravick: Probably not. I echo Ian’s support for the work that Professor Katy Hayward has done at Queen’s University. She has played a pivotal role in getting information out to organisations like us. She is so heavily embedded in the nuts and bolts of the whole system that she can fast-track us, certainly, but if NICVA were to do it alone, it would be absolutely impossible because it would not have the resources to keep on top of it all. Sometimes, the complexity argument is used as an excuse for non-communication, whereas the complexity argument should be the rationale for better communication. We have—
Lord Hain: At Brussels, or by whom?
Celine McStravick: We deal directly with the EU specialised committee that is co-chaired by the EU and the UK. That committee has a pivotal role in making sure that information is shared in a timely but user-friendly way. We do not need weighty tomes to read through. We need the simple user’s guide, and that is where the complexity, as I say, can become an excuse.
The Chair: Lord Hain’s supplementary question leads us neatly to something that Baroness O’Loan wants to raise.
Q29 Baroness O’Loan: Thank you, Lord Chair. You are already talking about the joint co-chairs of the specialised committees and so on. Would you like to comment on the opportunities that are available for civil society and voluntary sector stakeholders to engage jointly with the UK and the EU under the framework, for example with the co-chairs of the specialised committees? I think you have gone some way, but is there anything that you would like to add? How would you assess the effectiveness of this and other relevant structures? Could they be improved? If so, how? That is probably the most important thing.
Ian Jeffers: Certainly, they could be improved, and that may be the ultimate answer. It is very early for those specialist committees and that engagement. It still feels as if they are going through the process of, “We said we’d do it, so we’d better do it, but we’re not quite sure what we are trying to achieve with this”. It feels like being talked to rather than with from that point of view. It touches as well on the comments from Lord Hain on the time aspect: “We must tick that box. We must talk to those individuals at this particular time, so let’s do that. We can do that. We’ve done that and can get on with our job now”. I would encourage us to review that and say, “Is there a better, more transparent way that we could be involved?” We are not engaged sufficiently at the right levels to really influence. It is one thing listening to what is happening, but if you cannot influence, you can debate as to the point of listening to it.
Baroness O’Loan: Does our other witness want to say something on this, because you come from a very different perspective?
Celine McStravick: Yes, a different perspective. The relationship started with very positive motivation. Ian mentioned that we went over to Brussels and we had a very intensive couple of days. We met everyone. The spirit was definitely positive, but when you look at the outworkings, it just becomes another bit of a process—zooming into meetings and asking us what we think and us raising the same things over and over again. Now, we are coming into the storming phase of that development. We have gone beyond the politeness, and now we need to start calling out more accountability and saying, “Actually, we probably need things to move a bit faster in resolving some issues”.
Baroness O’Loan: Is there a feedback mechanism after the meetings at which you make all these observations and offer all these points? Is there anything that comes back to you?
Celine McStravick: Katy Hayward from Queen’s would call us together, and we would give feedback on how it felt and we would choreograph, but as to feedback directly from the committee, the answer to that is probably no.
The Chair: That leads us neatly to Lord Lexden's question, which is about structures.
Q30 Lord Lexden: When the Windsor Framework was announced, the European Commission committed itself to holding workshops and to providing an annual presentation on forthcoming policy initiatives and legislative proposals for Northern Ireland stakeholders, including engagement on the Commission’s work programme. Have these European Commission initiatives involved civil society stakeholders and, if so, how effective have the results been?
Celine McStravick: It is probably a short answer from me. I am not aware of said EU workshops. They sound like a terrific idea and I would be very supportive, but I am not aware of them.
Ian Jeffers: Their work plan has been shared, but I think our shared definition of a workshop has not happened, certainly.
The Chair: Dr de Mars, who gave evidence previously to our predecessor committee, uttered the words, “when are these stakeholders giving that information? How are the relevant stakeholders selected? How do they become aware of the need for them to put feedback in?” If she is right, it suggests that the methodology is discussed but not much more. Is that fair or unfair?
Ian Jeffers: I think that is fair. We should acknowledge again that, in some respects, this is also about resource because, in our case, we are reliant on the efforts of someone like Katy Hayward at Queen’s, because she believes that it is the right thing to do, and corralling us to then engage with it. If we are really serious in this, we need to look at some sort of formal, co-ordinated civil society platform that we resource to do that and not leave it as almost a voluntary effort.
The Chair: What you are really saying is that if you are going to be corralled into a room to give feedback, you want to know at the end of the corralling that somebody is going to be fed it. Is that a fair summary?
Ian Jeffers: Yes.
The Chair: And you say it is not happening.
Q31 Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: I declare my interest as a board member of Co-operation Ireland. Thank you both very much for your evidence thus far. It has been very interesting. You have both mentioned and acknowledged the role that Katy Hayward has played, and I think it is important that you do that, but I am struck by the fact that we are relying on one person to corral the whole of the voluntary and civil sector in Northern Ireland. But to hear what they are saying, that is where it stops and, to pick up on Baroness O’Loan’s point, the feedback is not then taken to the European Commission.
Lord Lexden asked you a question about the Windsor Framework structures and stakeholder engagement. You have already mentioned the Commission's work programme and how you had a meeting where it communicated to you its work plan. We have been told by other witnesses that you were told not to share the details of that work plan, which I think we were astounded by. How are you supposed to provide feedback from your member organisations—in your case, Celine—if you are not allowed to share the information? To us it seems really bizarre. Is that the case and is that what you were told?
Ian Jeffers: Yes, it was the case and we all were. There are Chatham House rules and then there was just “Don't share anything”, so it was quite clear from that. Again, it may be an element of the storming and norming process. We are just finding our way on it all, but it points towards the need to have an improved structure in there.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: I have been making the point that it is dressed up as engagement, but you are actually just there present and being told. It is not actually engagement, from my perspective.
Celine McStravick: There is opportunity for us to raise issues, and we do raise them. Some of our other civil society partners around the table raise issues about Article 2 on immigration and all sorts. The challenge is the pace of change as a result of raising those issues, so there is bit of it being all transmit and nothing happening as a result. In reference to not being able to share things, there was definitely a perspective when we went to Brussels, in the early kind of engagement around the Windsor Framework, that it was a very delicate political situation. They were trying to manage the communications around it. I would argue that we have come out of that and we now need to get on with it and be much more robust. As we mentioned before, leaving that kind of gap in communications just means that people fill the gap. What we need are very significant resources that we can share with the sector, and what is, and is not, in the Windsor Framework.
The Chair: If you are sharing it in the sector and providing your stakeholders’ views, do you not want to go back and repeat the views you have heard from other people, so that there can be some progress made in the way in which stakeholders do broadly similar kinds of work? Is that not sort of stating the obvious?
Celine McStravick: Yes, I think it is and it is only recently, probably in the past three to six months, that the structures have even settled and NICVA has understood where we fit within all those boxes and arrows; you can imagine the number of PowerPoint slides to describe the complexity of all these systems. Now NICVA can say, “Okay, we have a place on a certain group”. The job has to be for us to say, “How we do make sure that we make the most of that?” I hate to say it, but I come back to resources. We are just being expected to do it within a set quota.
Baroness O’Loan: Following up what you just said about finding out where you fit, you said that you think you have found that out and have prepared slides. Is it possible for you to share those with the committee? We have seen structural slides with the different bodies on them but your relationship to them, with all your representative function, would be rather interesting.
Celine McStravick: I have no problem sharing those at all.
Baroness O’Loan: Thank you.
The Chair: Lord Empey has a question that he wishes to ask, which immediately follows on what has been said.
Q32 Lord Empey: It is lovely to see you both here. To some extent, we are beginning to get answers as we progress, but when you are designing questions, you cannot anticipate exactly the answers you will get to some of the earlier ones. Specifically, do the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive Office provide sufficient support to civil society and voluntary sector stakeholders to enable them to engage with EU stakeholders effectively? What could be done to promote further engagement? You have partly answered that, but, Ian, will you kick off?
Ian Jeffers: I am starting to sound like a broken record to some extent, because if we did not have someone like Katy Hayward continually pressuring us—not pressuring, but encouraging us—to engage, we would not get it from anywhere else. It would not be coming from the executive office or the NIO, or whatever, so that has to be acknowledged. We have the executive office in Brussels and Aodhán Connolly, the leader of it, has tried his best. But again—we seem to be repeating ourselves—it is probably down to resources. It is a very small office trying to do that, so where do you put your efforts? It seems that if we are to tackle this, we have to take it seriously and look at how we put in resources to do it. I do not see the resources at the minute; certainly, I am not being contacted by anybody, whether that is in UKG, NIO or TEO, to get engaged in it.
Celine McStravick: It is interesting to look at what happens in, for example, the private sector. The private sector lobby around the Windsor Framework, and particular private sector representative groups in Northern Ireland, seem to have been able to use their own membership fees and income to provide a policy perspective and become experts in this area, which is needed for their members. On the other side, in our sector, there has been no additional investment to do that. It is expected for us to be able to find the resources in an already stretched area.
Lord Empey: I will stop you on that point. The question was about the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive providing sufficient support to civil society and the voluntary sector. Do you get any support?
Celine McStravick: Not that I am aware of.
Lord Empey: Ian, is that the same for you? One of our former witnesses talked about horizon scanning. How is your horizon scanning going, apart from what you get from Katy? Are you saying that she does your horizon scanning?
Celine McStravick: NICVA will call group meetings of our own members and ask them about the Windsor Framework. We do that within our own resources but there has been no approach—
Lord Empey: Am I right to assume that your answer means that, effectively, since the protocol/Windsor Framework came in, you are not provided with any specific resource to address the issues that we are talking about?
Celine McStravick: You are very correct.
The Chair: Can I quote to you what was said on what Lord Empey was just referring to? A witness, Anton Spisak, said that the UK Government have a role to play in horizon scanning, arguing that “a lot of very useful informal work can be done here in London by the UK Government being proactive about the things that they know will be coming down the line and engaging with people in a more systematic way about the impacts of those”. What evidence have you seen of successful horizon scanning as so described?
Ian Jeffers: I have not seen any evidence. I could point towards some work that the Centre for Cross Border Cooperation, which used to be the centre for cross-border studies, has done, but I would not necessarily describe that as horizon scanning, in that it is up to the individual organisations to do that. You are left to your own devices, so taking it from a Co-operation Ireland point of view, if I see things changing in the Republic of Ireland as a result of EU membership, it is up to me to identify it and try to find workarounds to it.
The Chair: Celine, have you been helped by the UK Government horizon scanning as described in that quotation?
Celine McStravick: No, that sounds really interesting and I would love to be involved in it. My first approach would have been you, Lord Chair, coming over to Belfast. That was probably the first direct question to NICVA about the Windsor Framework.
Q33 Baroness Goudie: It is lovely to see you here. Celine, if I may start with you, thank you for the information you told us about earlier about CAF. I will talk to the chairman about that, because it is something that I know quite a lot about in different ways, but not how it affects you. Arising out of that, what opportunities do civil society organisations have to engage with the Northern Ireland Assembly on issues raised in the Windsor Framework?
Celine McStravick: I am aware of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, but that is all. It is a very low level of awareness.
The Chair: Do you know what it does?
Celine McStravick: No, I have no idea what it does. Again, that might be something NICVA has to take responsibility for, but I am certainly not party to any proactive approach to NICVA from that committee or any kind of involvement with it. We run NICVA as an all-party group in Northern Ireland regarding the needs of the voluntary and community sector and we have not had the Windsor Framework or Brexit on our agenda yet.
The Chair: Ian, do you want to add to that?
Ian Jeffers: I have not engaged with that group at all. My engagement at local level would be with individual MLAs—where there is good access when needed—but rarely, if at all, are we discussing the Windsor Framework or its complexities.
Baroness O’Loan: I want to come back on the question of Katy Hayward, because it seems that she is absolutely critical to any understanding that your sectors have about the Windsor Framework and its implications. Katy Hayward is an academic with a very wide range of academic responsibilities, and I am absolutely sure that she is not receiving any funding either—no, I see you shaking your heads. Lord Chair, I think it is important that we record that she is doing that job, presumably without funding.
The Chair: I was just thinking that if we were able to raise a glass in this meeting, we would be raising it to Katy Hayward. It is not permissible, unfortunately.
Baroness O’Loan: But I think it is important, for the purposes of our report writing, that we recognise this exceptional contribution and ask why the Government are not making arrangements.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: Is it the case that because Katy Hayward has put herself into that position, of her own volition, because she wants to assist the voluntary sector, the Government are not providing for that role? That is absolutely wrong.
Q34 Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: First, knowing many of the community and voluntary organisations that you have to liaise and work with, right across the community, is it the case that many of them do not see the Windsor Framework impacting on their lives so, as a consequence, it would not be a principal issue? Secondly, would you see a role for NICVA if you were supplied with the resources to so implement and be, shall we say, the organisation that provides that information, as long as you had direct liaison with the EU and the UK Government?
Celine McStravick: I will take the first part of your question. You are absolutely right that community organisations, as I said before, are dealing with issues around poverty, inequalities and education, et cetera, so often they will not even be aware of the Windsor Framework. It would probably be the last thing on their mind. However, the ones that came to us with their issues were clear that when it affects them it makes life incredibly difficult for them, so there are the two extremes. A large majority of our sector would not even be thinking about the Windsor Framework; they are thinking about the people they help day in, day out. They may not even be aware of what Brexit has changed for them, unless it is about CAF, and they are directly responsible for that.
In terms of NICVA’s role, yes, it used to have a strong EU policy team. It used to be well regarded as a one-stop shop for information on what was happening in the EU. Obviously, we do not have that any more and NICVA, as an organisation, would be very keen to be even more supportive to our sector where we can. I think the Windsor Framework will become increasingly, not decreasingly, relevant as it beds in, so even being able to give that source of truth, alongside Katy Hayward, in a broader way—to speak to our members and give the presentations—would definitely be something. When we deal with the members that have contacted us with emails, we have been able to direct and navigate them a bit, but again that is within limited resources.
Lord Empey: I am sorry for coming back to you again. Did I hear you correctly when you said that the Stormont democratic scrutiny committee has not reached out to either of you or consulted you about anything? I assumed that the committee would have a list of people it approached for information, just as we have here. Are you not on it or are you not aware of it?
Ian Jeffers: Not aware of it.
Baroness Goudie: We would have thought that you were the premier organisations for that.
Lord Empey: It is the committee in the Assembly that is charged with looking at potential EU regulations that would apply to Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework, so it is very hard to understand that that committee is not reaching out to you.
Celine McStravick: It may have approached other organisations. I can only speak on behalf of NICVA.
Lord Empey: Yes, but let us be honest: NICVA is an umbrella body. If you are going to connect the community sector in Northern Ireland, you would want to at least talk to NICVA, never mind its members.
The Chair: While we are talking about the Assembly, I want to change gear slightly and move on to a question from Lord Thomas of Gresford, which relates to the Stormont brake.
Q35 Lord Thomas of Gresford: First, I have to share with you my Katy Hayward story. When the previous committee went to Belfast—it was my first time in Northern Ireland—I fell off the plane, tripped over the door and fell flat on my face on the platform, and she said to me that evening, looking at my black eye: “Sure, everybody kisses the ground when they arrive in Northern Ireland”. I had kissed it only too well.
Both of you have said that you are not really aware of the democratic scrutiny committee, which has an important role in considering whether the Stormont brake should be applied for and on applicability motions. Are you aware of that role and what it does? If so, what is the impact and effectiveness, as you see it, of the Stormont brake?
The Chair: Who is going to go first on that easy question?
Ian Jeffers: I would love to take that as a subject matter expert. If anybody asked me to explain applicability motions and the Stormont brake to my father and my mother, I would struggle. If you try to explain it to a member of the public, people are aware of the Stormont brake and the publicity that it gets. I think there is a perception that there is a big handle on the hill in Stormont that our collective MLAs can pull.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: There is a view that it was oversold initially.
Ian Jeffers: The reality, and I refer back to the earlier thoughts, is that we have created a very complex agreement and some of it may not be perfect. We have put in some fail-safes that may or not be the right sort, to give a way for the Assembly to have a veto in some respects. But it then continues to look at it along party lines and we have to continually address that challenge, because it is largely going to divide, again, along those political lines.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: What you are saying is that it is a handle, which you do not understand, and you doubt whether it is going to be pulled because of the various party problems. Of course, there is the overriding role of the Secretary of State to refuse to accept it anyway.
Ian Jeffers: That is the key thing. The brake can be pulled; we get that, but it then goes to the Secretary of State, who can decide “No, it's not relevant in this case”.
The Chair: Sometimes, the mechanisms that Lord Thomas has been speaking of are designed to solve political problems rather than to provide practical constructs for organisations such as yours. Is the view widely held in the voluntary sector that the Stormont brake is really for the politicians to deal with the difficult situations that are sometimes peculiar to their activities?
Celine McStravick: Yes, that is fair comment. I suppose that the fear and risk around the Stormont brake is that the communications regarding it come from our press, and often the press will try to find division rather than any kind of collaboration. When you are working with the Northern Ireland Executive, there is a mandatory coalition. Our sector is clear that it is better for Northern Ireland to have the Northern Ireland Executive sitting, so there is a bit of, “Can we leave well alone? Please don't agitate and have more division”. When the Stormont brake was discussed recently, it just led to more division on the ground with people going, “Are you for or against it?”, without really understanding what the conversation was about. It was not about the actual piece of legislation but about the mechanism; it was about power and control. I would argue that our sector probably feels that the risk is longer-term, so let us not use the Stormont brake as another vehicle for disruption.
Ian Jeffers: If I could build on that a little, and this touches on the previous question as well about communities engaging with it, there is a nervousness around even talking about the protocol or the brake. Doing that could indicate that you are from one particular community or another—so your view would be definitely that way and someone else’s would definitely be another way. We have to try to work out how we get round that side of things. People do not necessarily want to engage about the protocol because it might show that they are siding with one particular community and approach or another, so that nervousness underpins all of that side of things. It goes to the wider point: we want the Assembly to be successful and stable. We want it doing “boring politics” and getting on with the job, so we do not want anything to rock the boat too much. That creates a massive issue for us, because it is then reported as if the Stormont brake is something along tribal lines. It looks like that, which it is not, but that is how it is reported.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: You see a danger of tribalism, whereas the purpose of the brake was to give a check on European legislation being passed. It was nothing to do with being tribal.
Ian Jeffers: It comes back nearly to the first point: the need to educate and inform people about what the framework is, why it is there and how it can be used for the advantage of people in Northern Ireland.
The Chair: So that everybody can get their questions in, can I move to Lord McInnes, please?
Q36 Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: Clearly, as well as our, hopefully, helpful recommendations to you from this inquiry, at the same time Lord Murphy of Torfaen has been asked by the Secretary of State to carry out an independent review into the framework and we are more than half way through that. First, have you had a chance, or been asked, to engage with that review? Secondly, what kind of outcomes would you like to come from that review? I think you have already explained a lot of them to us, but if there were any simple things you would like to come from it, what would they be?
Ian Jeffers: I have spoken directly to Lord Murphy. I have engaged and I know that a series of events is planned for later in May, particularly around the community and voluntary sector. I believe that Lord Murphy will be in Belfast and around Northern Ireland with direct engagement. It is another useful mechanism, I hope, to drive improvement; that is the key thing. If we take one thing from today, it is that we are reliant on one or two individuals to give us a lot of information, support and guidance. If we could solidify that, resource it and recognise it, that would be the best recommendation that could come out.
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning: Would it be fair to say that properly resourced channels for engagement on an official level would be the best thing there could be?
Ian Jeffers: Yes, some sort of co-ordinated civil society platform for EU engagement, but it has to be recognised or there is no point. Part of the challenge is that you can have a group of well-minded volunteers coming together but they have to be recognised, whether that is by the UKG or the EU. It will take a joint effort by saying, “We will resource this”, rather than just paying lip service and ticking some boxes.
The Chair: A final question from Lord Empey.
Q37 Lord Empey: Quickly, out of left field, has anybody approached you to ask if there will or should be an EU office in Northern Ireland?
Celine McStravick: No, I am not aware of that question.
The Chair: Thank you both for being very refreshing witnesses. You have been extremely frank and I have enjoyed every minute of the evidence you have given, so thank you very much for coming. I remind you that you will receive a verbatim transcript, and please do not be coy about correcting it. Once again, I give great thanks to you both for giving evidence and we raise a glass to Katy Hayward, were we allowed to do so.
Celine McStravick: Thank you.
Ian Jeffers: Thank you.
The Chair: The public element of this meeting is concluded and therefore the broadcast will now cease.
