Ulster Unionist Party conference:THE STORMONT Executive must be reformed to enable it to act as a fully functioning four-party coalition, Sir Reg Empey told his party's annual conference at the weekend.
The Ulster Unionist leader warned First Minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson he would not back any plan to transfer politically sensitive policing and justice powers unless the situation was addressed.
In a key section of his leader’s address to the UUP conference in Belfast, Mr Empey said: “Peter Robinson said this week that he will not do this policing deal without this party, I must tell him that there will be no support from us for any backroom deal.” He said there must be “an open and transparent process to reconstruct the Executive and make it work as a proper, full four-party coalition”.
Sir Reg singled out the conduct of Executive business by the DUP and Sinn Féin and warned: “No more dysfunctional meetings; and we must resolve the policy stalemates that are still there. We simply won’t allow things to continue as they are.”
He said he wanted to “expose the lie at the heart of the Executive – the belief that the DUP and Sinn Féin can go it alone and hope to build confidence . . . They can’t and they won’t.”
The Executive must sit down to discuss what it would do with policing and justice powers to meet the inevitable challenge that will be faced if there is no agreed vision in place beforehand, he said. “I have told the Prime Minister this as clearly as I can,” he added.
“I believe that the transfer of these powers is much too important to get wrong,” he said, but promised that in the weeks ahead, the Ulster Unionist Party “will not be found wanting on this issue”.
Without directly linking to two issues, Sir Reg referred in detail to the Eames-Bradley report on proposals for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles.
“We will also have to address how we treat the past – we have seen the pain caused by the Eames-Bradley report,” he said, referring to the significant unionist objection to its key proposals.
“The day the report was released brought back to the people all the hurt of the past,” he said. Ulster Unionists “must talk about these things,” he said, adding “there is no single action we can take to isolate it”.
The party opposes the proposed “recognition payment” to bereaved families and the equal treatment of all victims, including those with paramilitary connections.
But he vowed steadfast opposition to what he called “republican demands for a one-sided inquisition into state forces”.
Sir Reg highlighted the success of the party’s MEP Jim Nicholson in retaining his seat at last June’s election, contrasting it with the reversal suffered by the DUP.
He said the result “brought to an abrupt end Peter Robinson’s assertion that the ‘DUP is the voice of unionism’.”
The DUP “have paid the electoral price for promising one thing and then doing the complete opposite,” he claimed.
“The blunt reality for the DUP is that barely two and a half years after their self-serving ‘Themselves Alone’ deal with Sinn Féin, they have ceased to be the voice of unionism.”
The success underscored the value of the deal with the Conservatives “who did so much work to ensure Jim’s re-election”.
“This was an important election for us and for our relationship with the Conservative Party,” he said.
“But the fact remains that at the first test of the Ulster Unionist-Conservative Party electoral alliance Jim Nicholson was the first unionist to be elected. In my book that’s a good result.”
In a lengthy section of his address, Sir Reg emphasised the link with the Tory party.
“We are doing this to strengthen the union and to provide a policy agenda and a policy commitment that no other party in Northern Ireland can provide,” he told the conference.
Tory link-up gives UUP new allure for middle unionism: page 12