The Ulster Unionist Party will oppose the Display of Flags and Emblems Bill at Second Stage. While the party is clear that paramilitary flags should be removed from our streets, it does not accept that this Bill offers a workable means of achieving it. Handing the scheme to the Department for Infrastructure would place civil servants at the centre of Northern Ireland's most contested cultural disputes, at the expense of the core services the Department exists to deliver.

Ulster Unionist Infrastructure Spokesperson John Stewart MLA said:

“Paramilitary flags have no legitimate place in our communities. They are not culture and they are not tradition. That problem is real and it needs addressed. But the answer to a bad situation is not a bad law.

“The Department for Infrastructure exists to fix roads, maintain street lighting and run our transport network. This Bill would require its officials to sit in judgement on intimidation, offensiveness, antagonism, cultural identity and territorial demarcation. Those are not infrastructure decisions, and DfI is not equipped to make them.

“This is distraction politics. The problem isn't a flag on a lamppost, it's whether the lamppost works. My constituents are contacting me about potholes, flooded drains and street lights that have been out for months. Not one of them has asked for an official to be taken off that work to assess whether a flag is 'antagonistic'.

“Somebody still has to go out and physically take the flag down. The easiest flags to remove will be the ones in law abiding areas where nobody threatens the contractor. The hardest will be the ones put up by the organisations most capable of intimidation. That would not confront intimidation. It would reward it.

“The Bill asks whether a display demarcates an area as belonging to a particular national or cultural identity. That is the sponsor's own wording, not mine. The party now telling us that symbols mark out territory has been an enthusiastic advocate of dual language street signage. I am not equating the two. My point is that a test which can be argued in opposite directions depending on who is doing the arguing is not a test at all. It is an invitation to litigation.

“Opposing this Bill does not mean defending every display of the national flag. I have little time for the sight of the Union Flag left hanging in tatters from a lamppost, month after month. That is not patriotism. But you fix that with local agreement and community leadership, not a civil servant with a clipboard.”