Allister Highlights South Armagh Fuel Smuggling in Assembly
21 May 2013
Below is the speech delivered by TUV leader Jim Allister during last week's debate on fuel duty:
“There is something inherently disingenuous about a motion that purports to express concern about fuel fraud but then focuses entirely on an issue that will do nothing to address it. As Mr Kennedy rightly pointed out, the issue — the cause and the problem — is not the rate of duty; it is the evasion of duty.
“The crime barons of south Armagh do not stop work in their yards to tune in to the radio when the Chancellor makes a statement about fuel duty in order to hear whether it is going up by 0•5p or down by 0•5p. They are not flabbergasted — or is it "Slab-ergasted" — when it falls by 2p. It is really neither here nor there to them because their business is the evasion of duty. The motion utterly fails to address that because it takes us into the realms of the criminality of these operators. That is where the proponents of the motion do not want to go. They demonstrated that most cogently and indisputably in the House just a few weeks ago. Sadly, when they set about systematically blocking the effective operation of the National Crime Agency here, they were joined in that demonstration by the SDLP.
“The result of that is that now in Northern Ireland, where we have this problem, the assets of the crime barons who live off this illegality are safe because the mechanisms of asset recovery have been stopped in their tracks. Who did that? It was those in the House who today pretend that they have some concern about fuel crime. Someone who stops the National Crime Agency doing its job in order to root out fuel crime and all other crimes has no interest in stopping fuel crime. That is the reality of this situation.
“This motion is but window dressing from those who were active in doing that very thing. For good measure, of course, it takes us into the fantasy politics of Sinn Féin of an all-Ireland taxation system. Even though fuel duty is a non-transferred, excepted matter, Sinn Féin, somehow or other, thinks and believes that it should not only be a transferred matter but an all-Ireland transferred and designated matter. Such are the fantasy politics that Sinn Féin pursues.
“The real test for those who want to address fuel crime is to empower the agencies that can do so. Unless and until that is done, there is no sincerity. Unless and until that is done, there will be no relief for my constituents in the haulage industry who try to live by the law. They compete on impossible terms with those who are in flagrant breach of the law and who are now more confident than ever that they will succeed in defying the law because there is no longer any prospect, through the National Crime Agency or anyone else, that they will be called to account.
“The scandal whereby not a single person is imprisoned for this high-level offending will only get worse if now not even a single asset will be able to be recovered.”
