Colum Eastwood says those who threatened Jeffrey Donaldson are ‘not fit to lace his boots’
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00:00 I am a proud Unionist. I am proud to be part of this United Kingdom. I am proud
00:06 to have served my country in this Parliament for almost 27 years. I'm proud
00:13 of the service that I've given, unlike some others, to my country when I put on
00:17 the uniform of the Ulster Defence Regiment to protect everyone in the
00:22 community from terrorism and violence. And yet today, because of the stirring up
00:28 that is going on, I was threatened. Threatened. By those who never put on a
00:37 uniform. By those who haven't served our country. And when I checked out, one of
00:44 the people who threatened me, on the register, didn't vote at the last
00:49 election. Can't even come out to vote for our future in the Union, never mind do
00:57 anything about it. And yet they're threatening people like me, who's working
01:01 day and night to try and find solutions and to move Northern Ireland forward on
01:05 a basis that the vast majority of people can't support.
01:10 Can I begin by saying the Right Honourable Member for Lagan Valley and I haven't agreed on very much recently.
01:17 In fact, it kind of drives me crazy. And we don't agree on much of what we've
01:23 debated today over the past couple of years. But I do strongly believe that he
01:29 comes at this from a position of strong belief. He comes at it in an attempt to
01:35 represent his constituents. He comes at it from a good place. It's a different
01:40 place than me. And we want to end up in a different place. And maybe I would argue
01:45 he's helping us along in that regard. But I do say this very clearly. Those people
01:52 who have threatened him today couldn't lace his boots. And every single
01:58 Democrat in this House or elsewhere should stand in
02:03 solidarity with any of us who are being attacked like that. I think we are in a
02:09 more hopeful place than we have been today. I was expecting last week to come
02:14 and have to debate a much wider piece of legislation that would have seen us
02:20 going in a different direction. If this today symbolizes that we're getting
02:27 closer at least to a resolution, then I think we have to welcome it. And we have
02:32 to give it space. There is nobody more frustrated than me at the slowness of
02:39 this process. There is nobody, I think, who has expressed frustration more than me
02:44 about how we've got into this situation. Of course it's nearly two years now
02:48 since we've had a government in Northern Ireland. Just before that we had COVID,
02:52 which is a very strange time. And before that we had three and a half years after
02:55 Sinn Féin brought the government down of having no government. People in Northern
03:00 Ireland now feel like the default setting is to have no government. That
03:05 just isn't good enough. And any of us in this place who really believes in
03:10 devolution, who really put their shoulder to the wheel around this peace process,
03:14 need to ensure that we can very soon have democratically elected politicians
03:20 in Northern Ireland dealing with these issues. Because I do find it frankly
03:25 embarrassing at the state of our health service. I was reading some figures the
03:29 other day about dementia diagnoses. Some people in the western
03:37 part of Northern Ireland are waiting almost six years to get diagnosed with
03:42 dementia. In what modern democracy should that be seen as acceptable? I mean we are
03:48 very lucky that people aren't on the streets in uproar at those kind of
03:54 figures. The public sector is being tied together by a string. Our health service
04:02 is at the point, if not beyond the point, of collapse. And it isn't the fault of
04:07 those people who've been asked to go into the tough places, do the tough
04:12 work for very little pay. And we had an amendment to this bill and we
04:17 understand the bill is very narrow in scope today, calling on the Secretary of
04:21 State to pay those workers. There were 175,000 people in the cold and the snow on
04:27 picket lanes last week across Northern Ireland. Now I think people will know my
04:32 preference is that the DUP go back into government as soon as possible, that we
04:36 have democratically elected people making those decisions and we get that
04:39 money into people's pockets. But I am absolutely furious that those ordinary
04:44 workers have been used as a political pawn because of our political failure. It
04:49 is absolutely unacceptable. Those people need their pay raised today. They're the
04:55 people holding this thing together. They're the people who we've asked to go
04:59 and do the tough things for very little reward. There is no excuse anymore for
05:04 that money not getting paid. And if there's a technical reason for it, I'll
05:07 come back tomorrow and we can debate a budget bill if the Secretary of State
05:10 wants about getting money into those people's pockets. There is no technical
05:14 reason as to why those people cannot get paid. We have talked about solutions. We've
05:22 got lots of solutions and I noticed that the Member for North Down talks
05:27 about reform. We're up for that conversation about reform. In fact we had
05:29 an amendment today that would have got I think the Assembly back up and running
05:33 again if we used a different mechanism for electing the Speaker as at least a
05:39 first point. We also understand that we have to get a proper reformed
05:44 institutions at Stormont. But my strong view is the best way to have that
05:49 conversation is whilst we have a government and an executive in Stormont.
05:54 Because I do fear that we would end up in a five-year negotiation about what
05:58 reform would look like and all the while we still wouldn't have
06:02 a government in Stormont, locally elected people dealing with
06:06 the people's concerns. Some of us in this chamber have been through many long
06:11 negotiations and know you can go into a negotiation wanting to fix one little
06:14 thing. Five years later you haven't fixed that thing and you've done three or four
06:19 different things that nobody asked for in the first place. So I think we need to
06:21 be cautious about that. We need to be committed to reform. But the first thing
06:25 that has to happen is the people who were elected to represent people in
06:29 Northern Ireland, the First Minister who was elected to be the First Minister,
06:32 they should be in place. They should be allowed to do the job that they're
06:36 elected to do and then we can have a proper discussion about how we reform
06:40 our institutions. Because a blind man on a galloping horse could tell you we have
06:44 to reform those institutions because frankly they're not working. And I would
06:48 make one plea today to all other political parties and I'll make the
06:53 commitment myself that the next time if we do get Stormont back up and running,
06:57 the next time that a particular political party has a major disagreement,
07:01 can we have a discussion about that and can we all commit not to pulling the
07:06 institutions down. The edifice of government should not be the first thing
07:10 that goes when we have a difficult decision to make and I think that would
07:14 take us a long way. Look I'm glad that we've come to this point. I think
07:19 it tells us something about the direction of travel. I think the history
07:24 of our place should remind us all that at some point we always have to
07:30 take on our own dissidents whether they're within our own party and our own
07:34 community, on social media or wherever they reside. But they need to be taken on
07:39 because the broad swathe of opinion whether they're nationalist or unionist
07:43 or not interested, want ordinary people to be looked after. They want their
07:48 health service properly resourced. They want their schools properly functioning.
07:53 They want their public sector workers paid properly.