Political parties “are habitually abusing” a mechanism called a ‘petition of concern’, which triggers a cross-community vote at Stormont, according to NI Conservatives’ Euro candidate, Mark Brotherston. He made his comments as the DUP tabled a petition of concern for a debate on same-sex marriage, which takes place today.
“The abuse of this mechanism, particularly by the DUP and Sinn Féin, to simply veto things they don’t like, is deeply worrying for our democratic institutions”, Mark argued. “The petition of concern was intended to guard against sectarianism, not to act as a trump card to render majority opinion meaningless. People have strong opinions around same-sex marriage, but it is certainly not a unionist-nationalist issue and our politicians should be capable of having a thorough debate and voting in the normal way. That’s the very essence of the democratic system.”
“The mechanism has been used recently by nationalists to prevent extending the National Crime Agency, which fights organised crime in the rest of the UK, to Northern Ireland. There were also concerted attempts to subject the bill stopping people with serious convictions from becoming special advisers at Stormont to a petition of concern. In fact, up to last November this blocking tactic had been used more than 60 times, sometimes for common or garden matters like planning law reform. It is simply not right that the petition is being used in this way. Our politicians should be mature enough to debate issues, where there is no obviously community sensitivity, and accept the majority view. Otherwise the law which gives parties this ‘trump card’ needs to be re-examined.”