Speaking today in the Assembly TUV leader Jim Allister welcomed the result of the Scottish referendum and called for fundamental reform of Stormont:
“I greatly welcome the result in Scotland and, unlike the union-agnostic Mr Ford, I recognise that it was a victory for the union and one that one very much appreciates and supports. It was good to see the canny, wise Scots refuse the invitation to break up the United Kingdom, and I believe that the case of those who sought to break it up may well now wane in consequence.
“The Prime Minister said that, after the referendum, there is a need for constitutional reform. He is probably right, but he would be totally wrong in so far as this House is concerned were he to say that this House, which cannot handle the powers that it has, needs more powers. This House does not need more powers. This House has structures that, in the words of the First Minister, are unfit for purpose, and therefore it is unable to handle even the powers that it has.
“What this House needs is parity of democratic rights with the rest of the United Kingdom. There are components of Scotland and Wales’s settlements that we take for granted. The very right to have an opposition is taken for granted in Edinburgh and Cardiff; indeed, it is taken for granted across the democratic world. Yet here, even that basic democratic right is denied in these institutions. On top of that, the people of Scotland and Wales have the basic democratic right to change their government; to vote a party that they are disillusioned with out of government. Of course, because of the import of an unworkable mandatory coalition, we do not even have that right here. If the Prime Minister is talking about constitutional reform, he should start at the point where one infuses the democratic imperatives into the structures that we have in this House.
“Let me be very clear: the enemies of Stormont are those who refuse to contemplate the democratisation of Stormont. That is who they are.”