The Ulster Unionist Party played an integral role in bringing lasting peace to Northern Ireland. However, while the Belfast Agreement brought us peace and created our current political institutions, it served largely to regulate our differences.

Today we have more peace lines than in 1998, more people live in segregated communities and there is growing violence among dissident republicans.

This is in spite of the fact that we have a stringent and enforced equality regime in Northern Ireland and that more people than ever want a genuinely shared future.

It is this reality which makes the DUP and Sinn Fein's Cohesion, Sharing and Integration Programme such a disappointment.

The underlying premise of CSI is the promotion of a 'separate but equal' society where, in the future, our relationships will be regulated by a legalistic approach to rights and equality. This approach ignores the need for good relations and for positive interaction between people from different communities.

Indeed, the production of such a document suggests that the DUP is accepting of Sinn Fein's narrow conception of equality. In short, it typifies the carve-up at the heart of the Executive.

Contrary to the view of the strategy that 'good relations cannot be delivered without the co-delivery of equality and vice versa', it seems to me that we already have stringent equality legislation, but not active good relations.

The Ulster Unionist Party believes in a modern, tolerant and pluralist Northern Ireland. We believe that relationships should be built on respect and understanding of differences, which leads to trust and ultimately to working together towards common goals.

This can only be achieved by a strategy that places community interaction on the same footing as equality law. The main goal of CSI must be to promote a sense of the common good that can be achieved through cohesion, sharing and integration and to build a framework for delivery on improving community relations.

I am committed to this goal and will be seeking to work with the SDLP, and any other political party, towards its achievement.

There is also the danger that, if the DUP and Sinn Fein push through the current document, the Community Relations Council (CRC) will be abolished. Sinn Fein is completely opposed to its retention, illustrating its negative approach to community relations.

The Ulster Unionist Party recognises that, whatever its flaws, the CRC has provided an independent voice on an issue that politicians are often not best-placed to address. Northern Ireland needs an independent voice on good relations and we will fight for its retention.

Peter Robinson has recently made headlines with his comments about segregated education. However, headlines do not effect change - instead his approach through CSI promotes a 'separate but equal' mentality and delivers no practical measures with regards to education. It effectively pushes most of the difficult issues into the long grass.

Politicians must drive forward, rather than stand in the way of, change. We must be confident enough in our values and beliefs to attract voters in a developing Northern Ireland.

The Ulster Unionist Party has always been a party of vision - but as we now set our sights on a genuinely shared future, it is clear that the current proposals for CSI are wholly inadequate.

The Northern Ireland of the future - the country we bequeath to our children - must be able to offer more than managed segregation.