Hain gives PUP deadline to justify cash allowances
The Progressive Unionist Party, linked to the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commandos, has been given a week today to make a case to the British government on why they should be given their Northern Ireland Assembly allowances.
In a written statement to MPs, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said he was considering removing the party’s entitlement to the allowances for another year.
The Progressive Unionist Party, whose leader David Ervine is its sole Assembly member, and Sinn Féin, both had their financial allowances withdrawn last year.
This followed a report by the four-member Independent Monitoring Commission which highlighted paramilitary and criminal activity by the UVF, Red Hand Commando and the Provisional IRA.
In May, another report submitted to the British and Irish governments by the Commission, which assesses republican and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires, said the UVF and Red Hand Commando remained active and violent and was involved in organised crime.
Mr Hain said the report had concluded that the PUP had not done as much as it should to exert influence on the groups to end such activities.
“The Commission recommended that I should continue the financial measures against the Progressive Unionist Party,” he said.
“I have considered carefully the IMC’s report and I have today written to the Progressive Unionist Party to advise them that I am minded to remove for a period of 12 months the party’s entitlement to financial assistance payable to political parties in Northern Ireland.
“I have provided the PUP with seven days from today to make representations to me. At the end of that period I will take into account any such representations made to me and will reach a final decision.”
The PUP was yesterday urged by nationalist SDLP Assembly member Alban Maginness to sever its ties with the UVF following the group’s bitter feud with the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force.
The feud claimed the life of 20-year-old Craig McCausland in north Belfast last week, whose family has denied he had any link to the LVF or any other terror group, and whose mother, Lorraine, was believed to have been murdered by loyalists in 1987 in a vicious beating near a drinking club.
Earlier this month, 25-year-old Jameson Lockhart was also gunned down as he worked on a building site in east Belfast in an attack also blamed on the UVF.
The UVF was also blamed for a gun attack on a house in the east of the city on Monday night.
