Ulster Unionist Party leader Mike Nesbitt is to focus on mental health and wellbeing issues during a meeting with David Cameron at Downing Street on Monday.
The London talks are being described as historic by the party, as it is the first time in over a decade the British prime minister will meet a UUP leader at the start of a parliamentary mandate.
This comes after Danny Kinahan won the South Antrim Westminster seat from the DUP's William McCrea and Tom Elliott captured the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat from Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew following a unionist electoral pact in the UK constituency. Making a "return to the green benches" is part of the revival Mr Nesbitt says his party is experiencing.
He will be putting mental health and wellbeing at the top of his agenda for Monday’s meeting with Mr Cameron.
Mr Nesbitt said: “I welcome the opportunity for a private conversation with the prime minister, and will use it primarily to continue the conversation we began at Stormont House last December, when I impressed upon David Cameron Northern Ireland’s appalling rates of poor mental health.
“Put simply, the last figures I saw revealed that 12 per cent of people in Great Britain claiming Disability Living Allowance (DLA) do so because of mental health issues, where the corresponding DLA percentage in Northern Ireland is 23 per cent, which is double.
“There is clear causal linkage to the Troubles, which means it is not covered by the Barnett Formula, and is a legacy issue.
“If we can devote hundreds of millions into dealing with the past in terms of case reviews for victims and survivors, there is a compelling case to do something for the tens of thousands of our people who are denied fulfilling, meaningful lives because of poor mental health, measured in trauma, especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alcohol and drug abuse, and attempted and completed suicides.”
Repealing the Human Rights Act is among the controversial ideas the Conservative Party is putting forward following its election success on May 7th. Nesbitt says he is keen to hear the prime minister’s views on human rights and what he says he wants to achieve by introducing a Human Rights Bill to Parliament.
“Our attempts at dealing with the past are dogged by the need to comply with Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights as defined by European case law’” Mr Nesbitt added.
“The issue is not the Article itself, but how it has been interpreted by the European courts. How can you be ‘timely’ in investigating something that happened 20 or 30 years ago? I sense a British Bill on Human Rights could open up possibilities to deal with these difficulties and allow us to press on with the backlog of legacy inquiries, which currently leaves so many families of Troubles victims frustrated.”
The UUP leader will also be asking the Prime Minister if he is considering downgrading Strasbourg rulings from compulsory to advisory and discussing ‘closing the prosperity gap”.
“Put simply, if the people of Great Britain have £1 in their back pockets, our people have only 77 pence.
“We need to start generating serious wealth and the economic levers include Corporation Tax, which is currently on hold because of Sinn Féin’s flip flop on implementing the Stormont House Agreement.”
