“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal..”
If anyone was thinking that the weekend would see a calming of the fractious Executive they can think again. The Northern Ireland Finance minister, the DUP’s Peter Robinson, has added to the comments made on Thursday by the Deputy First Minister, SF’s Martin McGuinness, and accused the Social Development minister, the SDLP’s Margaret Ritchie, of lying about passing on the legal advice. As with the earlier comments, close attention may be required to the detail of what is being said. Adds More of that advice here.From the Irish Times report
Mr Robinson deepened divisions today accusing Ms Ritchie of having lied about passing him the legal advice she obtained prior to making her decision to cut funding.
He quoted Ms Ritchie of stating on BBC TV: “I am very clear that I agreed and the Executive agreed on Monday night of last week that I was to obtain legal advice and share it with the First and Deputy First Minister and also the Finance Minister.
“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal, I supplied it to those three individuals.”
But firing his fresh broadside, Mr Robinson said: “This is a lie. Firstly no legal advice was handed over to be me before it was announced on Monday that the DSD minister was making statement to the Assembly. I first heard she was making a statement through the press.”
He said that on hearing she was making a statement he sent her a letter asking for the legal advice she had undertaken to supply, and claimed “some” pieces of the advice was passed to his office.
Mr Robinson said the dates on the documentation showed Ms Ritchie had been holding some of the advice for a week without passing it on.
I’d suggest that the “some of the advice” being referred to would be the internal advice… which would make the following line pivotal to the accusation.
“As soon as I was in receipt of that legal advice, both external and internal, I supplied it to those three individuals.” [added emphasis]
Also worth noting is the BBC report’s final line on those contested minutes
This, [Mr Robinson] says, is regardless of last week’s controversy over the minutes of an executive meeting on the matter.
Pete,
Then surely that would mean she made the announcement she was making a statement before she had all the legal advice? She made a decision before the advice was in? Or as Robbo says she didn’t hand anything over until he went asking for it?
Transparency is the absent thing.
Is the fact that Margaret Ritchie was out of the country (in Brussels, I think) for a significant part of the time in question of any relevance in this?
Bit hard to pass something on if you’re not there!
On a separate point, is Prime Minister Robbo losing the run of himself? He has dug himself into a deep hole with the public, would he not be wiser stopping digging and starting to mend fences?
People have little grasp and/or interest in what they see as technicalities. All they recognise is that the DUP and SF are clubbing together and using any means they can to stop a minister from witholding government money from the UDA. It isn’t playing well. I have not met a single unionist in the last few days who isn’t raging at this, and especially angry at PM Robbo.
I need hardly add that the same thing applies to every nationalist and republican I have spoken to
I find the whole thing so riling that I actually am trying to grasp the technicalities of this, Penguin. And I have a technical question.
On Tuesday, in his quote-unquote point of order, Robinson said this in his first, immediate response to Ritchie’s statement:
“Mr P Robinson: I am on a point of order.
The announcement she has made is contrary to a process set out by the Executive, and the decision is not consistent with the advice offered by the Departmental Solicitor’s Office and senior Crown counsel. I believe her decision is also a breach of the ministerial code and the Pledge of Office. In such circumstances, I wonder whether it is sensible for Members to ask questions based on such a statement.”
My question is, how would Robinson know Ritchie’s decision was “not consistent” with the advice of McCloskey unless Ritchie had already shared that advice with Robinson? Robinson doesn’t seem to be saying Lockhart’s advice wasn’t handed over, he’s claiming “no legal advice was handed over,” and I don’t understand the claim.
Frank
Robinson’s complaint appears to be centred on the date on the, presumably internal, advice.
Having sought external legal opinion I wouldn’t have thought an announcement of a statement would be made before that external advice was supplied.
If Robinson believed he was due to be consulted before that decision was made then I could see why he wouldn’t wait for the advice to be passed on, but would instead chase it up as soon as he heard about the statement.
But that brings us back to the contested minutes..
With the additional accusation that an Executive Minister has lied.
Pete,
An allegation of a breech of the Ministerial Code. Quite an easy one to confirm.
Is their a sanction for breaking it or is it an aspirational document?
IMC for Ritchie?
Susan, you need to read the whole text to see when Robinson supposedly got part or all of the legal advice from Ritchie.
Pete Gregory Campbell made some mention of him and David Hilditch only getting a partial report of the advice in the Assembly session last week.
Worth a back check:
http://tinyurl.com/227yjz
The technicalities are important.
susan
The point of order came when the statement was actually made. Presumably, by that time, the advice, both internal and external, had been circulated to those concerned.
Frank
Just to add. And Margaret Ritchie appears to believe that she wasn’t required to share the legal advice until she had all the advice available and, possibly, also had made a decision.
Back to those contested minutes again..
Additionally only getting legal advice on a statement made with a 60 day deadline after the deadline expired seems a tad incompetent.
I’d suggest she should have taken legal advice before making the initial statement on how the money was danegeld.
Mick
“The technicalities are important”
Indeed. But that would be a different technicality from the one raised by Robinson – Campbell and Hilditch aren’t in the Executive.
Pete, here’s Robbo’s statement.
Other than the fact that she seems to have promised to do so, why did Margaret Ritchie have to share the legal advice with Oberstrumfuhrer Robbo as well as the Chuckle Bros?
Does the finance portfolio give automatic superiority over other ministers to the holder? Or was the DUP not too confident that Big Daddy Chuckle would fully understand the legal complexities and possible political ramifications of the lawyerly advice?
Thank you for clarifying that, Pete, I was getting lost. Is there also an agreed timeline of the dates when Ritchie first sought the external and internal advice, and when she received it?
I suppose I should just scroll down to that Tele piece with excerpts from the advice from McCloskey and Lockhart and see if I can answer my own question.
Nevin
That’s an earlier statement.
susan
I’ve not seen a time-line yet.
Peter Robinson is making a very serious and derogatory attack on another person’s integrity which he has failed to support with the evidence. Lying implies intent to deceive; and Robinson only has a basis to claim that the minister did not do as he understood she gave a commitment to do, not a basis to claim that there was deliberate deception in the alleged failure. Indeed, it’s doubtful that Robinson even has a solid basis to claim breach of promise based on the wording of the minister’s actual promise as cited by Robinson and whether or not she fulfilled it. If there is to be a court action, it may well be that it is a defamation of character action brought by Margaret Ritchie against Peter “The Punt” Robinson.
Penguin,
Ministers seem to have a responsibility to inform Robbo of anything with budgetary implications.
Dubliner,
Ritchie made equally serious allegations without presenting evidence – altering minutes.
Until we get transparency it’s just the word of eight against three in one case and the word of one against other in the next.
You can’t call the honesty yet in either case, well you can if you approach the issue with bias.
Frank, did Ms Ritchie call any named individual a liar? I don’t recall her doing that. If she didn’t, then there is no direct comparsion to a very direct attack on the integrity of a named individual sans any evidence to support the claim.
Peter Robinson is highly vulnerable to court action here.
Dubliner,
Groups, including the DUP, SF and civil servants, have protection exactly the same as individuals from libel/slander. So the comparison is valid.
what robbo’s done is to draw the whole debacle into a series of technicalities and time-lines.
In chess terms it’s called “creating complications”
this is what you do when you’re in a losing position. Its a well known method!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Imitates-Chess-Garry-Kasparov/dp/0434014109
This is the 2nd time Robbo has accused other members of the Executive of breaking the ministerial code, the previous time was over the free care for the elderly vote. It ended up being a fuss without outcome that time.
Is the Ministerial code a toothless document?
Frank
Surely if it is only to do with budgetary considerations, Margaret Ritchie would only be bound to advise Oberstrumfuhrer Robbo if or when she had made a decision, not explain how and why she had reached that decision and ask permission.
“Groups, including the DUP, SF and civil servants, have protection exactly the same as individuals from libel/slander.”
I don’t think you can be held to have libelled or slandered individuals that form a group if the the said group consists of more than a certain number of people (6 I think).
With that number and above, the liable or slander is adjudged to be spread so thin as to be meaningless in terms of having liabled or slandered individual people. Hence, for example, if you were to say the DUP and Sinn Fein are no better than Nazis then each member of those two parties could not launch proceedings against you.
Just as a historical footnote, in Purdy’s ‘Room 21′ she refers to previous problems in the first Executive regarding minutes. Both McGimpsy and Empey were quoted as having problems with de Brún demanding accurate minutes. Other quotes from insiders described it as ‘pedantic’, ‘wringing little issues to death over wording’.
Pity they didn’t learn the lesson then and go for a stenographer or audio records.
Penguin,
How many of them sit on the Executive or take minutes there?
Though, think ‘McLibel’ and you’ll have an easy demonstration of how your understanding isn’t true.
Frank
I’m not trying to score cheap points, just recounting what I understand the position to be.
If you accuse a group of something that, if it were a single individual, would ordinarily leave you open to legal proceedings, there has to be a limitation on how many people can reasonably claim to have been personally liabled/slandered. As far as I am aware that number is 6.
How did the ‘McLibel’ case work then? There are slightly more working for McDonalds than either the DUP, SF or the civil service.
And those with a say on the meetings who she named in groups:
DUP = 5
SF = 4
Civil Service = ?
Less than six in ever organisation she accused of malpractice.
Though I’m pretty sure the only one facing the courts over this will be Ritchie and then it’ll all come out.
There is a difference between the two situations, Frank.
In the case of the contested minutes, we have the officially adopted version – as supported by the DUP and SF ministers against the UUP and SDLP ministers.
While in this more recent case, the Finance Minister has provided his evidence – the quotes noted above. Which, I’d suggest, are not as conclusive as he may believe.
There’s no doubt that the facts of this case have probably washed over the heads of the general public (at least at present) and that’s why to date Margaret Ritchie has received a fairly favourable press.
However, the details here are vital and as the days pass her problems seem to increase. Whether she was in or out of the country is irrelevant – she has hoards of Civil Servants who could have passed on the advice to Robinson had she wanted it done.
However, it becomes increasingly clear that she wanted to grab a few (positive) headlines and let that cloud her judgement.
Its probably inevitable that this will end up in the courts at some point. The only possible question is over who takes the case – will it be Robinson or Farset?
Should Ritchie become unstuck, either inside or outside the Courts then it will also pose some problems for those who were so quick to rush in and back her up (take note Reg) simply in an attempt to get one over on the DUP and attempt to take their share of the (currently) favourable headlines.
Pete,
Just to be pedantic, we don’t have an ‘officially adopted version’, we have official minutes and one person in conflict with them. Rules is rules, there are no versions, no qualification, just official minutes and those that don’t accept them or have a slightly different recollection.
Not to be overly pedantic, Frank, but yes we do have an officially adopted version.
And more than one person dissents from that officially adopted version. As you well know.
Pete,
There aren’t versions. The vote was taken. The minutes adopted are official and the only ones. It would take a JR to challenge them.
Until Ritchie does that there are official minutes and those that don’t accept them and/or didn’t complied with them.
No versions involved. Just minutes and dissenters. If anyone wants to change that fact they’ll have to go to court. Recollections or media complaints don’t hold any weight in a bureaucracy, no matter how much some people may think their opinion is worth more weight than the accepted and procedural correct reality. The minutes say Ritchie is wrong, there are no versions involved.
more smokescreens to hide the real point- ritchie made a good and highly popular decision.let us not miss that point,the rest is an attempt by the dup/sf to attempt to justify their spinelessness to the public.
God preserve us from people that think not using a capital letter or a space after a fullstop hides the fact they are using multiple names. Oldest trick in the book.
Interesting, Frank, that you’re arguing that the officially recognised version of events is now “official” – to be regarded as “fact”.
And just because the SF and DUP ministers out-voted the others.
That’s a commendably democratic approach.. but one that is likely to be abandoned as rapidly as it has been adopted.
Pete,
They all agreed to the rules. They all took their positions. They vote, the minutes are adopted or rejected.
I’m agin the whole sham. It seems the SDLP and UUP are joining me. If you reject the rules and procedures…
Glad to see the dissident body building up such momentum. If they can’t even agree/accept minutes we have a clear demonstration of their inability to work within their own rules.
The SDLP – exposing Stormont as a farce. Well done them.
I wonder if Margaret Ritchie doesn’t conclude at some imminent point that the sewer of NI politics is best left to the rats? She has tried to do the right thing when all around her were instructing her to do the wrong thing because appeasing terrorists by giving them control of the apparatus of state and mistaking sociopathic criminals for sincere social workers and statesmen is deemed to be the new black – a wonderful model of peace and reconciliation that is to be held up to the outside world as an example of something other than rewarding criminals with power, privilege, accolades, and pensionable jobs. Or have they dropped the “reconciliation†part beyond it being manifest for the cameras only in the grotesque charade of The Chuckle Brothers on the steps of Stormont but not anywhere else in society? Justice was the very first to go as a sop to murder gangs by letting the gang members out of jail, expediently followed by a simple Truth Commission, as the murdered and the maimed must be forgotten in order for The Chuckle Brothers show to be enjoyed by the public without uncomfortable feelings of guilt for voting society-destroyers into the roles of society-builders, stepping over the bodies of the dead to get their snouts into the state’s trough. Now Ms Ritchie uncomfortably reminds the public that it isn’t morally correct to reward criminals, in much the same manner, no doubt but never said, that PSF were rewarded for their crimes. Ms Ritchie decided that not only was it wrong but that it must be stopped, doing so against the cartel of vested interests who wished to continue the New Black of rewarding criminals, ranging from the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs, the British SoS, the US Special Envoy, the NIO, and the DUP and PSF . Ms Ritchie refused to go along with the cosy cartel of the amoral and asserted that she had the authority to act, doing so against the wishes of those who knew that she was only supposed to do as a puppet is supposed to do and not to actually make autonomous decisions. Having done so, she has spilt the cosy cartel and bothered them deeply by introducing a terrible thing called “morality.†The public seem to support her and this has upset the two main parties greatly, for now they are seen as having done nothing to stop the funding and as having no intention of ever doing anything to stop it, since, after all, it is only fair that the UDA pigs get their snouts into the trough, too. Ergo, the inevitable deflections and smear campaign follows. The honourable mass-murderer, Martin McGuinness informs us that Ms Ritchie is mentally unwell and that we must see her bizarrely moral behaviour in that tragic context. The equally honourable Peter Robinson then informs us that Ms Ritchie isn’t moral at all but is, in fact, completely devoid of integrity: a liar who should not be trusted. Yes, yes, that’s the smear campaign on the move and the deflections are transparent (but successful) attempts to divert the public’s attention away from the failure of the DUP and PSF to oppose funding for the UDA and onto irrelevant procedural details. In the end, folks like it in the sewer. They must do because they voted for the rats. Margaret Ritchie should probably resign from the Assembly and from politics and let the lot of them drown in their own rancid piss and shit.
Someone mentioned if there is a recorded/ taped version of the minutes taken and if not why not.
In other committees I have observed the proceedings recorded. I can’t imagine the Assembly executive minutes have not been recorded.
The Dubliner,
Well said that man.
A grubby little Council set up by Westminister while they barely concealed their laughter and contempt runs into the buffers …. shock , horror.
The pompous crap that passes for “commentary and diverse opinion on Northern Ireland ” is so woeful. Truly depressing.
Listen folks … grow up , get a life , see us as we are and as others see us .. and then either drown in shite to laugther or emigrate to somewhere with the grown-ups.
I doubt that the proceedings in the executive are taped-if they were they would be subject to foi requests.they are taped in other committees or in plenary sessions to allow the note takers to listen to them in order to produce verbatim reports which are published ,unlike the executive whose minutes are kept from joe public.non accountable and non attributable-hence the current dispute.
All of which begs the question-whatever happened to open government.ps frank i am not duplicate posting i just cant be bothered with caps lock ,typing the words is enough of a challenge for my typing skills
A set of Minutes which have to be steamrollered through, after the event, on a partisan head-count? “Shurely something wrong”, as Bill Deedes would have slurred. I think it was Len Feather, General Secretary of the TUC, who had a line about being ill and receiving a vote of sympathy passed by seven votes to five with eleven abstentions.
We have had three separate issues in play:
the original decision (where the Robinson-led faction are clearly at variance with the overwhelming mass of public opinion, even in conflict with commonsense);
the legal basis on which withdrawal relies (which is in doubt, and would need to go through review to be clarified);
and
the Minutes (which are a distinctly murky area).
We now add a fourth: the accusation of lying (which is precisely to what I drew attention a couple of days ago, in a different thread, and others seems to have caught up with).
It seems that the aim is to obfusticate by adding more and more layers of complication, so that the original issue is buried by persiflage. To whose benefit is that? Which brings one back to the oldest question in the legal textbook: the one about motive — cui bono?
Nor am I wholly convinced that Robinson can claim to have absolute rights to allocate expenditure. On new expenditure commitments, yes, undoubtedly. But on redeploying monies inside a Departmental budget, a “virement”, less so.
Therefore he needs to prove that Ritchie had ratted on a policy commitment, a core element of the programme for government.
I realise I’m addressing some sophisticated observers here, about a complex matter, in a simplistic way. How else can this matters be generally understood?
Dubliner, is there any hope in future of you leaving florid fantasies of “rancid shit and piss” to the love letters of James and Nora Joyce? Plenty of people are able to ponder whether and how Margaret Ritchie might have handled things better without also losing sight of the bigger question of how it is possible the MSD might actually have been required by law to channel £1.2m in public funds to, or at least through, the effing UDA prior to any evidence whatsoever of the UDA decommissioning.
Nor has the general public lost sight of the diversity of the rainbow coalition poised to profit politically or literally had Ritchie been successfully pressured into rubber-stamping the funding.
The real mystery is how long prominent leaders in the two largest parties will lumber along under the illusion that ordinary people will ever be made to care more about the choreography of how Ritchie stalled the funding pending actual UDA decommissioning than they care about the plain and simple fact that she did it. And did it not only without the assistance of either SF or the DUP, but in the face of continuing and possibly (for Ritchie) career-ending resistance from them.
It seems both of the largest political parties had something to gain from Ritchie rubber-stamping the funding. But Ritchie did not, and now leadership of both parties seem cringingly slow to appreciate what they may yet stand to lose for their participation in the whole sorry fiasco.
This issue in itself is relatively trivial – the timimg for the cut off some funding to the UDA – the reason the DUP have made it such an issue is presumably because they have been arguing that the STA agreement is qualitatively different to the GFA in regard to unilateral action by a Minister. Should Ritchie win out on this one this will allow the OO to point out that one of the DUPs STA red lines has been crossed and more importantly let SF/SDLP bypass what the DUP said was in effect a Unionist veto on change.
Must say, I quite like Dubliner’s florid fantasies but everyone to their own taste.
The important thing on here for me is the groundswell right across the board, excepting our rightist friends in the DUP and Sinn Fein naturally enough, solidly behind Ritchie and not falling for the water muddying tactics of Oberstrumfuhrer Robbo.
This is completely in line with the public view.
Malcolm – great post…
“Nor am I wholly convinced that Robinson can claim to have absolute rights to allocate expenditure. On new expenditure commitments, yes, undoubtedly. But on redeploying monies inside a Departmental budget, a “virementâ€, less so.
And perhaps even less so given than this isn’t about spending money, it is either about not spending money, or determining to spend the allocated money on a different vehicle that will impact the deprived areas that CTI was supposed to.
In terms of cui bono? Here is a starter –
Robinson and DUP leadership spring to mind – if he has effective control the assembly, given the Doc’s aging rapidly – he becomes the authority figure as Ian jr, and the right wing stalls.
He is trying to stop the Alexander Haig factor -
(when Reagan was shot) – by controlling everything. It also explains his increasing desperation on this issue. It would be ironic if
trying to control SDLP/UUP was his mistake.
He has shot himself on the foot on this issue, and reloading with abandon…
I think you will find that that was Vic Feather,Malcolm, unless of course it was Len Murray.
Apologies for the pedantry. Mick thinks I should get out more, at least out of London, but then the request that I get outa London, and pronto, is one to which I am inured.
I believe this should go to court. Elements of the Civil Service have been ‘too minded’ to bullying by British Ministers in the past. They appear to be doing the same now. This is a coalition government 50% of it disagrees with an Executive minute. This minute stands inaccurate especially given it allegedly instructs a Minister to act in a certain way. DSO is supposed to offer independent and priviliged advice to a Minister. Why did they receive a copied memo of the Head of the Civil Service containing references to what Ritchie had supposedly agreed when the HoC knew that she contested their accuracy? From what I have heard on the grapevine Ritchie fulfilled her pledge by giving the three parties her legal advice (both sets)within a hour or less of getting it herself. She only had to convince herself of what she was doing not the other three. The orginal CTI programme was apparently forced through by Ministerial Directive -which is the gobbly gook speech of the Civil Service and DSo which means that they were advised it was vulnerable to challenge by nationalist groups ( and subsequently it was) but the Minister went ahead anyhow. Did anyone in the Civil Service try to nobble the Minister of day.
Dubliner,
there is something deeply hypocritical about your outburst above, because your moniker is a reminder of the state, presumably from which you hail, which put the early edition of Sinn Fein into power at the state’s inception in 1922. The moral silarities between the early and later editions of the same party – is a reality that many Unionist would happily acknowledge. This is also an opinion shared by those ‘folks in the sewer’, as you have chosen to refer to them, as they have voted SF ( later edition ) into power.
As the civil war in the South illustrated just because you set up a government does not mean that violence will not break out again and the cautious post conflict treatment of the UDA is a reflection of that.
I know it’s not particularly heavy, but is there any chance we can keep a mind on the detail here rather than head off on a tangent?
The Executive agreed, without any division, at its meeting last week [Oct 8?] how a decision on this matter should be taken. It was agreed that certain actions were required before she would even decide the matter, never mind make an announcement on it. The DSD Minister did not act in accordance with the Executive’s decision. She rushed to make her statement without keeping the conditions set out by the Executive.
Before she made her statement the Minister was warned by Officials she would be breaching the Ministerial Code but chose to dismiss the advice.
Under the new Ministerial Code every Minister is bound by Executive decisions and must act in accordance with those decisions. The Ministerial Code has statutory authority. The DSD Minister has therefore breached the Ministerial Code.
The Minister was asked to take legal advice from the recognised official source – the Departmental Solicitor’s Office (she did not have such legal advice prior to the Executive meeting in spite of the advanced stage of the process).
The Minister claims her decision has been underpinned and supported by both the Departmental Solicitor’s Office legal opinion and that of “independent†legal advice she also received. One is entitled to wonder why the Minister would have sought a second opinion if the Official legal advice was supporting her position. … Robinson statement – link above
There’s no mention why the Executive had remained silent since she issued her ultimatum in mid-August. Were the ‘key’ players out of the country, on holiday? They could have spoken out on October 8 or at an earlier meeting of the Executive.
Has Ritchie’s apparent ‘enthusiasm’ to curb the release of this money anything to do with SF’s support for the likes of the Finaghy Crossroads Group – and the possible leaching of SDLP votes in South Belfast?
As I noted in an earlier thread it might be useful to look at this row in the context of the Conflict Transformation project for Belfast, in which the DSD is one of nine partners. If the focus is too narrow then we might miss the reality of the larger picture.