Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 5th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House amendments as at Tuesday 5 March 2019 (PDF) - (5 Mar 2019)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Karen Bradley)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As I have stated to the House on a number of occasions over the 14 months that I have been in this role, and as my predecessors did previously, the UK Government have a responsibility, in the absence of a functioning devolved Government in Northern Ireland, to ensure good governance and to protect the interests of all parts of the community. We have a duty to safeguard public services and public finances. The Bill before the House today upholds that duty by giving certainty to Northern Ireland finances for the 2018-19 financial year and by enabling Northern Ireland Departments to continue to deliver public services into the first half of 2019-20.
Last year, the UK Government had to step in and ask Parliament to legislate for the 2018-19 budget for Northern Ireland. This was not a step that we wanted to take, but it was a necessary step to give a clear, legal basis to Northern Ireland Departments to enable them to manage resources and perform the important work that they continue to do in the absence of an Executive. I want to put on record once again my admiration for the work that the civil servants in the Northern Ireland civil service do in the absence of political leadership. The legislation that we passed, the Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018, did not set out any direction for how spending decisions should be made. Instead, it set out in law departmental spending allocations within which permanent secretaries could deliver on their respective responsibilities. That Act was passed in July. Since then, the Northern Ireland civil service has continued to assess where pressures lie across the system, and it has reallocated resources as required. As we approach the end of the financial year, those changes need to be put on to a legal footing, as is a standard part of any annual budgetary process, and that is what this Bill does.
In addition, the Bill will provide for a vote on account for the first half of next year, to give legal authority for managing day-to-day spending in the run-up to the usual main estimates process. This is a normal part of the estimates process. This year, however, following discussions with the Northern Ireland civil service on the pressures it faces in the year ahead, I am proposing in this Bill to provide a higher than normal level of vote on account of 70%.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
The Secretary of State will be well aware that, in evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, a considerable amount of criticism has been expressed of the budget allocation to the Education Department. In particular, we have heard evidence that primary schools have had to ask for donations of toilet roll, in addition to pencils and the other things that one would usually expect. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that, following the increase in the budget to the Department of Education—many other Departments are in the same situation—we will not see a repetition of primary schools in Northern Ireland asking for donations of toilet roll?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady makes a number of important points, the first being that we have rightly increased spending for the Department of Education. This is an area in which there is a clear need for increased spending, and the permanent secretary at the Department was keen to ensure that the Government were aware of that. That is why, in the allocations for 2019-20 that were set out in the written statement last week, there is an increase in spending power for the Department of Education. The hon. Lady also makes a point about how that spending happens. The difficulty in the absence of Ministers in Stormont is that spending cannot be directed from this House. She also refers to issues within education in Northern Ireland. There is an undoubted need for reform of the system to ensure that money is spent appropriately and gets to the frontline and to the children and students who need it most, but we need Ministers to do that, which is why Stormont must be restored as soon as possible.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
I am interested in what the Secretary of State said in response to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). I am looking at the Secretary of State’s written statement and the announcement of an extra £140 million for education, health and, as it happens, justice, but she says that it was provided
“in recognition of the lack of opportunity for more fundamental service reconfiguration over the last 12 months”.—[Official Report, 28 February 2019; Vol. 655, c. 23WS.]
This may be new money, but it will provide no new services and it comes as a result of a failure of the political process in Northern Ireland to reconfigure those services.
Karen Bradley
The additional funding for health and education is partly down to the new money that the Treasury has found—the £140 million—but it is also down to Barnett consequentials and other reasons. We have worked to ensure that the money that is needed by Departments, as requested by the permanent secretaries, is given to them, but the shadow Secretary of State is right that it is for business as usual activities. Major policy decisions cannot be taken at this stage because that needs political leadership.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is right to say that this is not simply a matter of uplifting the amount of funding to education or healthcare; this is also about trying to work out how best to spend that money. Will any of the £4 million in transformation funding that she identified last month be used to try to work out how the footprint of the education and healthcare estate might be better utilised?
Karen Bradley
We are keen that the Northern Ireland civil service does the necessary work to prepare for the transformation of health and education and for the urgently needed reforms but, to be clear, the actual reforms can only be made once Ministers are in place in Stormont to make the decisions and give political direction.
Returning to the vote on account, the reason why it is 70% in this Bill, rather than the normal 45%, is that that recognises the increased spending pressures facing public services and the lack of Ministers in place to take reactive and decisive steps to respond to emerging or escalating pressures. It also recognises the uncertainty of the political situation in Northern Ireland in the months ahead. In the light of that context, such a level of vote on account is reasonable and provides the practical and legal certainties to protect public services in any circumstance and up until the point that Northern Ireland budget legislation for 2019-20 is taken through to secure funding for the full year. It goes without saying that I genuinely hope that a new Executive will be in place to take their own budget legislation forward for 2019-20, but this Government stand ready to take it through if needed.
To be clear, this Bill does not represent a budget for the year ahead. It does not seek to set out in legislation the departmental allocations that I outlined in my written statement on 28 February, because the headline allocations will require legislation later in the year. However, until that point, the vote on account in this Bill and the draft Northern Ireland budgetary position for 2019-20, as set out in my written statement last week, give the necessary clarity and certainty to Northern Ireland Departments to enable them to take decisions and plan and prepare for the year ahead.
Lady Hermon
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing me to intervene for a second time. She has said twice in quick succession that the Bill is to allow a budget that takes into account any circumstances in Northern Ireland—that allows Departments to plan ahead. May I just mention Brexit to her? Can she actually tell us how much has been allocated in the Bill towards Brexit preparations and does that allocation take into account—heaven forbid—the possibility of a no-deal Brexit?
Karen Bradley
I repeat: the Bill is about putting on a statutory footing the spending that has already taken place. I will be happy to furnish the hon. Lady with information about money that Departments in Northern Ireland have spent on planning for Brexit, which covers all Brexit planning. The allocations in the written ministerial statement do include moneys that have been allocated from the Treasury for planning for Brexit, so that is in the written ministerial statement, but the budget today is about the money that has already been spent. I will be happy to give the hon. Lady full information about money that has been spent to date and up till the end of the month. We are putting that on a statutory footing today. The hon. Lady looks as if she is itching to intervene again.
Lady Hermon
I am extremely grateful; it really is very generous of the Secretary of State to give way again. I am reading the legislation before us, which we are asked to give our consent to. Under the allocation for the Department of Justice, it says in black and white —I have not invented this—
“expenditure on activities that are required as a result of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union”.
As that appears to be expenditure on activities that are required as a result of Brexit, I have asked the Secretary of State how much has been spent. That is a clear question; I just want a clear answer.
Karen Bradley
There may be information on certain departmental spending, but, on the total, this is a number that is owned by NICS, not by the Northern Ireland Office, and I would not want to give the hon. Lady just one bit of the jigsaw. I would like to give her the full picture, including all the money that has been spent on preparations this year. On the allocations for the future, this is to enable the vote on account to happen, but actually the departmental allocations will be properly done, through a budget next year. In the same way as we had a budget Bill last July, which put the 2018-19 spending on a statutory footing, this is the completion of that process for 2018-19. Another Bill will do that for 2019-20. However, I will of course write to the hon. Lady and ensure that she has full information about all the spending across all Departments, because as I say, that information is held by the NICS; it is not owned by the Northern Ireland Office and I want to get it absolutely correct for her.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I think it would be very useful for the House to have the information that the Secretary of State just mentioned. Given that, regrettably, we do not have a functioning Executive and Parliament in Northern Ireland, it would be useful for the House to have the information that the civil servants have given her on why there should be a budgetary increase in individual Departments—such as Justice, Education or Health—so that we have some way of understanding in this House what the budgetary pressures are and what influences are leading to the decisions that the Secretary of State is making. I think that would be very helpful to us all.
Karen Bradley
The written ministerial statement sets out the departmental allocations. Those are the moneys that the permanent secretaries have asked me to deliver to them. I cannot direct the spending within those Departments. I also cannot ask them exactly which work streams or programmes they will spend the money on, because in this House we do not have the Executive power to do that. However, I am making it possible for the spending that has already happened to have the statutory footing that it needs, and I am making possible the vote on account for next year, as agreed with the permanent secretaries of each Department.
It is not a satisfactory process. I do not deny that this is not the ideal way to do it. The ideal way to do this would be to have Ministers in Stormont who are able to direct departmental spending and to have a budget process that is done in the same way as the overall budget is done for the United Kingdom in the Treasury; but we are not in a situation where that can happen, so unfortunately, this is where we are.
Karen Bradley
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman again, and then I will make progress.
Vernon Coaker
I am not trying to criticise. I am not complaining or saying that the Secretary of State is wrong. All I am saying is that, for example, her statement states that £16.5 million goes to the police for EU exit preparations. So, somewhere along the line, the police have decided that they would like those additional moneys to help. All I am saying, as somebody who takes a keen interest in Northern Ireland, is that with that, or with the schools, or with health, it would be helpful, as far as possible, to have some idea about the reasons that that money has been requested—not to criticise it, but just to understand it better.
Karen Bradley
I understand the point the hon. Gentleman makes. He has significant experience in Northern Ireland and will know a great deal about it. The police put in a specific bid for additional resources for Brexit preparations. It went through the proper processes in the Treasury and this has been paid. I recognise his frustration about wanting more information here for parliamentarians, and I have supplied the information I am able to supply in my capacity as Secretary of State. Clearly, we are not looking at the future spending and, when we do the budget for 2019-20—I hope we will not have to, as I hope it will be done by Ministers in Stormont—I will bear in mind the points he has raised.
Emma Little Pengelly
At which point will the Secretary of State accept that this is an entirely unsustainable position? As has been outlined, there is no scrutiny in this process. I do not believe that such a process would take place anywhere in a democracy in the western world. This process is taking place completely behind closed doors in terms of what bids are being put forward and what bids are being accepted. The people of Northern Ireland are in a difficult position; they are between two positions. The first is that Sinn Féin is boycotting the Northern Ireland Assembly, so we do not have the right mechanisms in place to scrutinise and make decisions. The second is that the Secretary of State and this Government are refusing to put in place direct rule, which, although not desirable, is necessary. We have now had several years of this type of process where there is no scrutiny and no democratic accountability. When is that going to change?
Karen Bradley
Of course, there is full scrutiny of the Northern Ireland block grant—that is the estimates process that we went through last week in this House; this House is able to scrutinise the block grant. I well accept the point the hon. Lady makes about the undesirable level of scrutiny and about how the allocations are made between Departments. I do not disagree with her on that. It would be much better to have the full scrutiny process that a devolved Executive would be able to deliver. We are in a very unsatisfactory position. I would rather we were not doing this in this way, but to ensure that public services continue to be delivered and that public servants—the civil servants in Northern Ireland—have the statutory underpinning they need for the spending, we are taking forward this budget Bill. I would really rather we were not.
Karen Bradley
I will take one final intervention and then I will make some progress.
Gavin Robinson
The Secretary of State is right about the difficulty we are in because Stormont is not sitting, but that does not obviate the need for the process that this House should be engaged in. There is no need for this Bill be done through emergency procedures—there is no need for it to be fast-tracked. The explanatory memorandum says that the Bill is being fast-tracked because there was a hope that the Executive would have been restored to make the provisions. When in the past two months was there any genuine prospect of the Assembly being restored to go through this process? Our Committee stage is to be constrained this afternoon—we might get an hour or we might get 45 minutes on the Floor of this House. That is not satisfactory; we have the tools and the mechanisms in Parliament for full Bill Committee consideration of the estimates and future allocations. There was also the opportunity for the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs to get into these discussions. The Departments are very good at appearing before the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). We should have used those processes, rather than this constrained, fast-track process today.
Karen Bradley
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, but we have to be aware of the constitutional precedents that are set by changing the way we scrutinise these Bills. The way this Bill should be taken through is not as primary legislation; it should be an estimates process done in Stormont, in the same way as we vote on our Budget in this House. We do not have scrutiny of the Budget resolutions upstairs; we have a Finance Bill that puts them into legislation, but we vote on Ways and Means resolutions on the Floor of the House. Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to do that in Stormont, for well documented reasons. What I want is to see those politicians in Northern Ireland doing the right thing, coming back to Stormont and forming the Executive, so that all those proper processes can be applied. We should not kid ourselves that some substitute arrangement will offer a different approach; we have to see devolved government restored in Stormont.
Karen Bradley
I know the right hon. Gentleman wants to come in, but I want to make some progress, because I am conscious that others want to speak and we want to make sure everyone has a chance to be heard.
Let me go back to the work we are doing today. Like last year, the draft budget sets headline allocations only. It will remain for Northern Ireland permanent secretaries to use the powers of this budget legislation and the draft budget position to take decisions to maintain public services and live within their means. Also like last year, the Bill does not propose any new moneys to be voted on for Northern Ireland. The totals to which it relates are either raised locally or have been subject to previous votes in Parliament, most recently in respect of the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill, which has passed through this House and is now in the other House. Instead, the Bill looks back to confirm spending totals for 2018-19, to ensure that the Northern Ireland civil service has a secure legal basis for its spending in the past year. Taken as a whole, it represents the minimum necessary intervention to secure public finances at this juncture.
Let me turn briefly to the Bill’s contents, which largely rehearse what I set out to the House in spring last year when I introduced the Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2018. In short, the Bill authorises Northern Ireland Departments and certain other bodies to incur expenditure and use resources for the financial year ending on 31 March 2019—this month.
Clause 1 authorises the issue of £16.8 billion out of the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland. The allocation levels for each Northern Ireland Department and the other bodies in receipt of the funds are set out in schedule 1, which also states the purposes for which the funds are to be used.
Clause 2 authorises the use of resources amounting to some £20 billion in the year ending 31 March 2019 by the Northern Ireland Departments and other bodies listed in subsection (3).
Clause 3 sets revised limits on the accruing resources, including both operating and non-operating accruing resources in the current financial year. All are largely as they appeared in the Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018. The revised totals for Departments appear in schedules 1 and 2.
Clause 4 sets out the power for the Northern Ireland civil service to issue out of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund some £11.8 billion in cash for the forthcoming financial year. That is the vote-on-account provision that I have already outlined. It is linked to clause 6, which does the same in terms of resources. The value is set at around 70% of the sums available in both regards in the previous financial year. Schedules 3 and 4 operate on the same basis, with each departmental allocation simply set at 70% of the previous year, and clause 5 permits some temporary borrowing powers for cash-management purposes.
As I have already noted, all these sums relate to those that have already been voted for by Parliament, together with revenue generated locally in Northern Ireland. There is no new money in the Bill; there is simply the explicit authority to spend in full the moneys that have already been allocated.
Lady Hermon
May I record my serious disappointment that in the allocations we are going to approve today there appears to be absolutely no money at all set aside for the victims of historical institutional abuse? Will the Secretary of State confirm that the head of the Northern Ireland civil service, David Sterling, indicated that the Government would have a moral obligation, after the consultation on the Hart recommendations had ended, to bring the legislation through this House if the Assembly was not sitting? Will the Secretary of State honour that moral obligation to the victims of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady has raised this issue on several occasions and I know how strongly she feels about it. I have met survivors of historical institutional abuse and what they went through is shocking. As she will know, the consultation the Northern Ireland civil service started is still open. Once that consultation has been completed and the recommendations from it are clear, we will consider them in the normal way. To reassure her, the vote on account that we are talking about is merely on 70% of the previous year’s spending. We are not doing anything in this Bill other than giving the Departments in Northern Ireland the ability to continue to spend money up to the level of 70% of the spending in the previous year. We are not directing them on how they spend that money.
Sammy Wilson
May I take the Secretary of State back to where she started, before she began going through the departmental allocations and the detail of the Bill? The whole point—it has been made time and again by Democratic Unionist party Members—is that there is no scrutiny of how the departmental allocations were reached. She is right that that scrutiny would normally be done through Stormont, but Stormont is not operating. A mechanism is available here, but there seems to be reluctance to use it because of the possible reaction from Sinn Féin. Not only is Sinn Féin stopping scrutiny in Stormont; the fear of how it will react is stopping scrutiny here. When will the Secretary of State realise that Sinn Féin cannot block the scrutiny of how money is spent in Northern Ireland by keeping the doors of Stormont shut and causing fear here about how it may react when we try to do the job in this place?
Karen Bradley
I know how strongly the right hon. Gentleman feels about that point, which he has raised on several occasions. He will know that we consulted on the process with all five main parties in Northern Ireland, with the Opposition and with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to allow some prior scrutiny of the figures. All parties had full sight of the figures that we published in last week’s written ministerial statement. He is absolutely right that normal scrutiny procedures are not in place—they will be in place only with the restoration of devolution—but I caution him against trying to create artificial scrutiny processes that might well set a precedent for the future across all the devolved nations. The right scrutiny processes are available to respect the constitutional arrangements across the whole United Kingdom and all the devolved Administrations.
Civil servants are taking decisions—not major policy decisions, but the decisions that the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 enables them to make and that we want them to be able to make. We have to be very careful about the civil service’s separation and independence from scrutiny by political masters. It is the political decisions that need scrutiny, not the decisions of civil servants. We would like to see Departments given full scrutiny in Stormont, as happens in this House, but we have to be very careful about the constitutional arrangements.
That brings me back to my point that the Bill would ordinarily have been taken through the Assembly. Clause 7 therefore includes a series of adaptations that ensure that, once approved by both Houses in Westminster, the Bill will be treated as though it were an Assembly budget Act. That will enable Northern Ireland public finances to continue to function, notwithstanding the absence of an Executive.
Alongside the Bill, I have laid before the House, as a Command Paper, a set of supplementary estimates for the Departments and bodies covered by the budget Bill. Those estimates, which have been prepared by the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, set out the breakdown of resource allocation in greater detail.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
When I was over in Northern Ireland recently, I realised to my horror that childcare is not widely available there, as it is in GB. People told me that some money had previously been allocated for childcare, but it seems that all the money for education, early years and childcare in the Bill is being allocated towards equal pay claims rather than provision to help women go to work, so this is a cracking day for women in Northern Ireland. To go back to the scrutiny conversation, the details seem to be very cloudy about where the previous money has gone and why there is no childcare in Northern Ireland. Could the Secretary of State answer that point?
Karen Bradley
This is a very technical Bill to put on a statutory footing the moneys that we have already voted through the House or that have been raised locally. The departmental allocations that the hon. Lady questions are in line with the advice that I have received from permanent secretaries about the moneys that they need. How they spend that money is for them to determine, based on previous decisions of the Executive and on the previous draft programme for government. That leads to perverse outcomes: things not being as we would like them to be in Northern Ireland, differences in Northern Ireland and the end of programmes that we might otherwise have wanted to continue. Without a Minister to direct them, those programmes finish. The answer is devolved government in Stormont. That is the way in which there will be proper scrutiny and proper political accountability, and there is no alternative.
Emma Little Pengelly
In Northern Ireland, we have a childcare strategy called Bright Start, and a significant amount of money was allocated to each of its themes and actions. I concur with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) that we do not have the 30 hours’ free childcare; the Department of Education in Northern Ireland was supposed to work on that. This illustrates two issues. First, we do not know what further allocations are being made under the childcare strategy. There has been no information on that thus far, and nor has there been any information about whether those allocations were bid for. Secondly, there cannot be a decision about 30 hours’ free childcare, despite all the work in the Department, because there is no Minister to take that decision. Sinn Féin are boycotting the Northern Ireland Assembly, so we cannot make the decision there. Will the Secretary of State please step up and start making those kinds of decision for Northern Ireland?
Karen Bradley
As I have said, there is no good alternative for the people of Northern Ireland other than the politicians that they have elected making the decisions on their behalf in Northern Ireland, fully scrutinised and fully accountable to the people who elected them. There is no alternative, and that is why we want to see politicians back in Northern Ireland. [Interruption.] I can hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) making noises from a sedentary position.
Karen Bradley
I do not believe that my right hon. Friend is capable of moaning.
Karen Bradley
As hon. right and hon. Members will note, this is a different process from that which we might ordinarily see for estimates at Westminster, whereby the estimates document precedes the formal Budget legislation and is separately approved. That would also be the case at the Assembly. If it is Westminster that is passing the main Northern Ireland budget Bill later in the year, that Bill would contain modifications to the Government Resources and Accounts Act (Northern Ireland) 2001 to reflect the departure from the usual process.
As I hope hon. right and hon. Members will agree, this is very much a technical step that we are taking as we approach the end of the financial year. It provides a secure legal footing for the Northern Ireland civil service and demonstrates that this Government will uphold our responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland.
As I conclude, I will set out once again a point that I have made several times before to this House. The UK Government are steadfastly committed to the Belfast agreement. Legislating on Northern Ireland budgetary matters at Westminster is not a step I want to take; nor is it one I want to take again. I am determined to restore the political institutions set out in the 1998 agreement and its successors at the earliest possible opportunity.
The people of Northern Ireland have now been without a power-sharing devolved Government for over two years. They need their representatives back in Stormont, taking decisions on the issues that matter to them. I know that an agreement to restore the Executive is achievable. I met the party leaders of the five main parties on 15 February at Stormont House, and I spoke to them again last week to discuss a further period of intensive talks to restore the Executive. In those discussions, all parties bar one—which was not able to meet me, rather than anything else—reaffirmed their commitment to a restored Executive and said that they wanted to continue to work towards that aim. I am absolutely determined to bring this about, and that is my focus and priority. I will do everything I can to support parties in coming together to find an agreement that can restore the power-sharing devolved government that is so needed. In its absence, this Bill is a reminder that the UK Government will always uphold their responsibilities for political stability and good governance in Northern Ireland, and I commend it to the House.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
May I begin by offering a small prediction that, sadly, there will be very little coverage of this debate in the Northern Ireland media or beyond? That is a tragedy, especially when I compare it to a debate that might take place in a large local authority—in my city region, for example. There would be massively more local media interest in such a debate for a particular reason: there is engagement with the political process. At the moment, people are becoming disillusioned with the political process in Northern Ireland, and that is beyond a matter of regret; it is a matter of danger for us all, and we should recognise that.
As the Secretary of State said, there has been no functioning Stormont for over two years, as the Stormont Executive and Assembly collapsed on 9 January 2017. The Secretary of State has a unique role, in that at no point other than when the present Lord Murphy introduced a budget to establish the Assembly has a Secretary of State delivered a budget. This Secretary of State has now delivered two.
This is set against a background of a seeming lack of action on re-establishing the Stormont Executive and Assembly. I know that the political parties in Stormont will argue about who is responsible. However, the reality is that during the more than two years that have gone by, the level of activity has been low. The Secretary of State has met the political parties, but not regularly. A little over a year ago, when the Prime Minister went over to be part of this along with the Taoiseach, people thought and hoped, rightly, that there would be a resolution to the situation. The Prime Minister has not been engaged consistently since then. I am bound to compare that with John Major when he was Prime Minister before the Good Friday agreement was signed, with Tony Blair during the years when he was Prime Minister, and with David Cameron when he was Prime Minister. I have to say to the Secretary of State that we must see more concerted action. We have to see some ambition for real change.
I know that this will not please everybody in the Chamber, but let me quote Michelle O’Neill, the leader of Sinn Féin at Stormont, who said, when talking about a serious and meaningful talks process that removes obstacles to proper power sharing and delivers a successful outcome in restoring the Assembly, that
“we have yet to see Karen Bradley prioritise such a process”.
The Secretary of State may be cynical about Michelle O’Neill. I know that other hon. Members in the Chamber certainly will be. However, the same message is coming through to me from all the political parties that this Government have not been properly engaged in re-establishing the Stormont Assembly.
The Secretary of State has said to me:
“This Government will continue to observe all our commitments under the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.”—[Official Report, 13 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 906.]
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman quoted the leader of Sinn Féin’s explanation of situations that had to come about in advance of the talks process. Does he agree that that sounded remarkably like a precondition to talks as well as a precondition to going into Stormont?
Tony Lloyd
When John Major was engaged in the talks process leading up to the Good Friday agreement, and Tony Blair even more intensely so, there were many preconditions on the table—of course there were. That is the nature of a talks process. Anybody who has ever engaged in meaningful negotiations knows that people do not walk in with no agenda, but the talks process has to get them together and iron out the differences. It has, in the end, to say what is held more in common and what is more important.
I will go through some of the things that, in the end, are more important when we look at what is not taking place in Northern Ireland now—some of the things that hon. Members have already raised. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) mentioned the Hart inquiry. The Secretary of State has heard the demands in this Chamber, on a regular basis, that she take action. We have to look at the people across Northern Ireland. The politicians from all sides say that they want to get back to Stormont. Yes, we have to test the competence and the willingness of politicians really to negotiate, but the trade unions, the business community and civil society are also saying, “Let’s get Stormont back working.” That is so important, because without it the decisions are not being made that can make a material difference.
The business community and the trade unions have recently said to me that they cannot get decisions made on infrastructure investment. I know that the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) will agree that the Derry and Strabane city deal is fundamental, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) will talk later about the pressing importance of a decision on the medical school there. Decisions are required on the upgrading of the A5 and the A6 and on higher and further education. This might sound like a trivial issue, but decisions are required on sewers in Belfast. The sewerage system in Belfast requires £800 million. People may wonder why that matters, but from 2021, no new facility will be connectable to that water and sewerage system. We want to see the Belfast city deal bring in new offices, industries and hotels, but that will not be viable if the sewerage system is not capable of taking them on board. That is not a joke; it is very serious.
Gavin Robinson
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. I want to give another example, which is the Belfast power plant. When the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill went through the House, we indicated the need to get planning consent for that, so that it could form part of our capacity auctions and the Utility Regulator could factor it into our future energy requirements. Without it, we will not be able to keep the lights on. Four months on from that Act being passed, we still do not have a decision, and we need decisions where they can be taken.
Tony Lloyd
The hon. Gentleman is right. Electricity is fundamental to our way of life. It is not a bolt-on extra, and it is not just a question of keeping the lights on; it is a question of keeping hospitals working and the world of work functioning. That is fundamental.
I want to touch on one area of progress. I am delighted to see that £55 million has been put into the budget for the legacy coronial process, which is a really important step forward. That is a decision by the Department of Justice, within the framework of this budget. However, there will be a consequence of that coronial process. If it is successful, which we all hope it will be, it will put pressure on the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the police ombudsman and the Public Prosecution Service. Those bodies will all need a resource base that allows them to complete the work of the coronial process. Otherwise, we will be giving an illusion to the families of victims of crime.
In that context, I also want to mention pensions for the victims of violence. There are issues to be resolved, but nobody in the Chamber would disagree that those pensions are necessary. All these things are urgent, because we have an ageing population, whether it is Hart victims or victims of the violence during the troubles. They will die without resolution of these issues unless action is taken.
I am bound to compare this issue to what we will discuss tomorrow, which is the contentious issue of tariffs under the renewable heat incentive. That is urgent, and the Government are acting—even though it is outwith the norms of Government power, according to the Secretary of State’s definition—because it is about money. The issues relating to the Hart victims and victims of terrorism are human issues, and they are just as urgent. If we can act on one such issue, we should think seriously about acting on others.
Sir Mike Penning
I have listened carefully to what the shadow Secretary of State has said, and he has made some very reasonable points. I would like to ask him two questions. First, it seems that there is little movement, and we can blame a lot of different people, but at the end of the day it takes two to tango and Sinn Féin needs to come forward and be part of the process. If there is no movement, does he think that direct rule is the answer, two years on? Secondly, he talked about victims. Has he forgotten the victims who were our soldiers, our people and our policemen on the streets of Northern Ireland, who are now being dragged before the courts? Does he not think that they need a mention?
Tony Lloyd
On the first question, it is very reasonable to ask what happens next. We simply cannot allow this vacuum to continue—decisions are not being made. I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that, from my perspective at the moment, I still think we have to say that the hope is for a restoration of the Stormont structures, because if we give up on that, we are giving up on at least the principle of what the Good Friday agreement delivered.
Democracy matters. The right hon. Gentleman would not accept the situation—I say this to him seriously—if I said that we were going to abrogate his local council’s need to function. This is not about getting two to tango, but probably about getting at least five parties in Stormont to tango, plus the Government here in London and, actually, the Government in Dublin. We have to see a much more concerted effort to get people around the table to try to break the logjam. If we start raising the spectre of direct rule at this point, we are saying that we are giving up on power sharing.
Sir Mike Penning
I do not quite understand the point the shadow Secretary of State is making. If a council is failing to deliver the services we would expect from it, the Government step in and deliver them, as we have seen in Northamptonshire. We have a situation in the Province where there is no governance. We cannot question what civil servants are doing, quite rightly, because they are civil servants. However, they are running the show, which is not a democracy. I ask again: if not today or next week, when, for Labour, does direct rule come in?
Tony Lloyd
I simply repeat to the right hon. Gentleman that I do not want to see direct rule—I genuinely do not—and there are massive issues with it. Some of my hon. Friends served as Ministers during the period of direct rule, and it is a very difficult and undesirable thing. I will say this, and it may give him a small hint: the Labour Government did bring in direct rule, so none of us can say that it will never happen. We are not there yet, but we are in a position where we have to see greater activity from the Secretary of State and—yes, of course—from the leaders of the political parties. I will return to that theme in a little while, because I want to make another point in that context, but I am definitely not giving up yet on Stormont being brought back into operation.
The right hon. Gentleman also asked me a totally separate question. By the way, let me make it clear to him that there were soldiers who were victims themselves, members of the then Royal Ulster Constabulary were victims. Many of them take the view that the justice process has to continue because they want justice or, very often, the families of soldiers and serving police officers want to know what happened to their loved ones. I think that is still a legitimate case to make, and it is one I will continue to make. We will no doubt debate this on other occasions.
Dr Murrison
As always, I am following all the hon. Gentleman has to say with a great deal of interest. He has mentioned victims, and he is right to do so. Will he say whether he would include within his definition of a victim those who are victims by virtue of actions by their own hand?
Tony Lloyd
I am afraid—to give the hon. Gentleman the answer he does not want to hear—that, yes, I think so. We have to cut through this very difficult situation, and we cannot delay payments to victims. It is controversial, and I am very well aware of that, but if we are going to delay payments to victims across the piece to get the perfect, then we may be waiting forever, and that would be at the expense of the ageing population of people who are now dependent on seeing some real progress.
Dr Murrison
I do appreciate that this is a sensitive point. In saying that, however, does the hon. Gentleman accept that he is condoning criminality, because that is what compensating criminals would be? It is an extraordinary thing—indeed, I would say, an unprecedented thing in this country—that the state should seek to compensate those who damage themselves by their own hand while engaged in terroristic activities.
Tony Lloyd
I do understand the difficulties. Let me simply say that this is probably not the right time to pursue this debate, although I am more than content that we ought to pursue it, because bringing to a conclusion the question of victims’ payments is clearly right and just, and it is important that it is done in this era, not simply deferred forever. However, it is probably not for today. I hope I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question as directly as I could—I think it was a clear answer —and we will continue the conversation.
Sir Mike Penning
It is clear that the hon. Gentleman does not want to talk about this issue, but it is vital, when we are talking about money that will go to schemes to develop the whole argument about victims, that we address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). We have plenty of time to do it now. How can it be right that someone who has attempted to kill a civilian, a member of the police force or soldiers on active duty gets compensation from the victims fund? I used to administer the victims fund when I was at the Ministry of Justice, and it is not perfect, but, for sure, one thing that I would not allow was that.
Tony Lloyd
It is rather interesting that the right hon. Gentleman says that I do not want to discuss the issue. I did. I answered the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) very directly. I do not know what the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) wants me to say beyond what I have said. If he wants to check the record, he should please do so. I am happy to continue the debate. If any Member wants to apply for an Adjournment debate, I will certainly turn up. They can ask the Secretary of State the same difficult question. It is a difficult question, but what we cannot do is freeze the process for victims, who, as I and the right hon. Gentleman agree, are absolutely worthy of compensation. We have to get on with it; that is the issue today. We need progress on all these issues, the difficult ones as well, then let us debate the finer points.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
There needs to be a comprehensive settlement, but are we not coming up against the same problem that was discussed earlier? The question of transparency in the Bill and the limits that the Secretary of State sets for disclosure of all items confine us equally when we talk about any one element of the Bill. We need to look at it globally—at all of it. We need some way to get through the lack of transparency to find out where the expenditure is going, how it is being asked for, and what is being sought.
Tony Lloyd
My hon. Friend makes a similar point about the lack of transparency to that which has already been made by a number of Members, including the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). They are right to make that point.
Any local authority would have a far more dignified debate than the one we are having today about the length of time involved and the capacity to scrutinise. The Secretary of State says that we would create a new precedent were we to change these things, but we are in very different circumstances because we do not have direct rule and we do not have a functioning Stormont structure. We are already in unprecedented terrain, and we have to find ways to make sure that transparency and scrutiny are done far better.
There are specific questions I want to come on to, but it is probably worth making the point that a lot of people in Northern Ireland are already concerned about the lack of engagement with the budgetary process. I know that they are not represented in this House, but I want to quote the Ulster Unionist party’s finance spokesman, Steve Aiken, who said:
“It’s a disgrace…that the NIO handled the engagement on next year’s budget so appallingly. The Secretary of State said in her budget statement that she has discussed the budget situation with the political parties—she has not. Tokenistic efforts do not constitute actual engagement.
Over the last ten days there have been three NIO budget meetings. The first ended in farce as the political parties were asked to consider options without being told what those options were, the second ended with only minimal information provided, and the third—just two hours before her statement was published—lasted minutes with again only bare information provided.”
That is not good enough to reassure the wider public or even people in this House that the process is transparent and accountable or has any processes for scrutiny. They simply are not there.
I have some specific questions and I hope that the Minister of State will pick up on them in his response. The Secretary of State said that this was retrospective, and of course not all of it is, because it sets out the budgetary headings for the coming year. It is important to recognise that. There is a real question. If Stormont were to begin to operate again at the beginning of April, would this budgetary process be transferable and amendable by an elected Stormont? Would it be able to change the budgetary headings?
Karen Bradley
That is absolutely the case. The shadow Secretary of State is absolutely right. The Bill puts on a statutory footing the spending that has already happened and that which will happen in the next three weeks up to the end of March. It also allows for a vote on account of 70% of the previous financial year’s spending in the following year’s spending, but nothing about this budget puts on a statutory footing any of the departmental allocations as set out in the written statement. That has to be done in a separate piece of legislation, which we hope will be done at Stormont. It could be amended and changed at Stormont, as seen fit by Ministers in Stormont.
Tony Lloyd
I very much welcome that reassurance. Will the Secretary of State also consider this point? The frame of reference in previous budgets is that 45% of the spend has been moved forward. That would take us up to September, roughly. This year, unusually, the Secretary of State has put in 70% of next year’s spend. That speaks to the point raised by the hon. Member for Belfast East, who made the legitimate point that there is no emergency. The original ambition was to put this through using emergency powers, but there is no emergency whatsoever. This could have been done at any other time, whether in March, April or May—well, the retrospective part cannot, but the part for next year could be.
Karen Bradley
It is probably helpful if I clarify that point. We have to put on a statutory footing, by the end of March, the spending for the financial year 2018-19—the year we are in. That is what we are doing. The vote on account of 70%, rather than the 45% we did last year, is because of the recognition of the pressures on the Departments in Northern Ireland as a result of having no Ministers, and because we have additional moneys coming through. If an infrastructure decision is taken, money will need to be spent. What I did not want to do was constrain Departments to be legally able to have only up to 45% of the previous year’s spending. The 70% reflects the fact that, because there are no Ministers and because of the unique circumstances in Northern Ireland the fact that there may well be decisions on infrastructure and on other issues that may require accelerated spending in a Department, I wanted to provide flexibility so we do not have to come back sooner and bring forward the legislation required to put that on a statutory footing for the next year. We will of course have to do that at some point; what we hope is that it will actually be done in Stormont.
Tony Lloyd
I think the Secretary of State is confirming that this is not an emergency and that the procedures to allow everything to be forced through so quickly are not absolutely necessary. The different parts of the Bill—the retrospective definition of what was legal spend and the anticipatory spend for next year—could have been separated. The second most certainly could have been done more slowly. There could have been capacity for much greater and lengthier scrutiny of those processes. That is important. The suspicion about the 70% is that it anticipates that there will not be an Executive or an Assembly back in operation. It allows the situation to ride over and ride over. The concern is that there is no ambition to see the restoration of Stormont.
Karen Bradley
I am sorry to intervene on the hon. Gentleman again—he is being very generous with his time—but I just want to be absolutely clear on the record: this has nothing to do with a timetable around the restoration of devolution. It is recognising that last year we were under pressure to introduce, before the summer recess, the Northern Ireland Budget Bill for 2018-19. We did that in July—I think in the last week of July—to put it on a statutory footing, because there was a risk that if we had not done so, some Departments would have run out of the ability to spend money over the summer recess. There would have been no legal basis for spending on schools, hospitals and so on. The reason for the 70% is that, in the absence of Ministers and with additional spending pressures on Departments, I do not want us to be in a position where we are urgently having to take that legislation through here again. I would much rather we gave civil servants the comfort they need. I accept that it is unusual, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is nothing to do with the timetable around devolution.
Tony Lloyd
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that assurance.
On a different issue, the Secretary of State’s colleague, the Communities Secretary, made it clear that the stronger towns initiative would extend to Northern Ireland, and hon. Members from across the Chamber will welcome that. However, given that it is a UK Government initiative, it is not clear how the decision-making capacity will be implemented. It is important that people can make decisions. It would be farcical if money were gifted to Northern Ireland—I do not know whether it would be Barnettised—but were not spendable because nobody can made a decision. [Interruption.] I am glad to see that the Secretary of State is considering that proposition.
Some have claimed that the £140 million is new funding that has resulted from the political pressure that Northern Ireland parties have put on central Government, but it is important that I repeat what the Secretary of State has already confirmed. Although it is new funding, and is welcome for that reason, it is actually a result of the lack of opportunity for more fundamental service reconfiguration, as she said. In other words, it is money for failure. The problem with that—the House must look at this very closely—is that my constituents, the Secretary of State’s constituents and the constituents of all Northern Ireland Members are paying for it. That is unacceptable. It is a tariff resulting from the failure of the political process. Once again, we come back to the recognition that, because there is no Stormont Assembly, we are all paying the cost in worse services, financially, and in the erosion of democratic values.
We do not intend to divide the House on budgetary items. It would not be appropriate do so because they give permission to spend or are the legal ratification of spending processes. However, this shakes us all to say that there must now be real effort put in to restoring Stormont. I have never doubted the Secretary of State’s sincerity in wanting to see Stormont restored, but I doubt the Government’s capacity. That is the real issue that divides us. I repeat what I have said previously: if the Prime Minister is so preoccupied with Brexit that she has no time to look at devolution to Northern Ireland, that is a fundamental political mistake that we will rue in time to come. We need ambition. Those talks must take place, and the Government in Dublin must be involved.
Some time ago, when I arranged the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference with the Secretary of State, she said:
“I remind him that that body has met twice in the past 12 months.” —[Official Report, 13 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 906.]
That is true, and those occasions were the first in 145 months. That is not acceptable.
Karen Bradley
It is worth putting on the record the fact that the last time the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference had met was in 2007. Clearly, although the institutions were running and Stormont was fully running with full power sharing, the appropriate east-west conversations could happen through other bodies. It is clear that that has happened, but it is a consequence of Stormont’s not operating and there needing to be a forum for east-west communication.
Tony Lloyd
As the Secretary of State knows, I have asked for the BIIGC to be convened regularly. Back in the day, it sometimes met three or four times a year, particularly in the days of direct rule, when there was an ambition to get us back to a functioning Stormont. I have asked her in the past when it will meet again. Those meetings need to be timetabled and put on a regular basis so that we know it will meet and continue to be an active partner with the British Government in achieving the ambition of a restored Stormont.
I am aware that I have spoken for some time—I have given way a lot—and although we have the time, as the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead reminded me, it is probably time I devoted it to other people.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s hard work over the past several months in trying to resolve the impasse at Stormont. She has worked tirelessly. If I may be ever so slightly critical of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), I think he is being a little harsh—uncharacteristically —about the efforts of the Government to restart this process and about the Prime Minister’s efforts. I do not particularly appreciate shuttle diplomacy of the sort we have seen in the past—there are other more effective ways of achieving the same end—but he has to accept the extraordinary difficulty that currently pertains in Northern Ireland and the intransigence of some of the actors therein.
Like the Secretary of State, I hope that we restore the Executive in the near future—more in hope than expectation—and I understand why she is behaving as she is in trying to keep the ship on an even keel while trying not to interfere in matters that are properly devolved. It is a dilemma she faces on a daily basis. She well knows that the longer this goes on, the more the people of Northern Ireland suffer and the more their lived experience deteriorates. In that context, I congratulate once again the Northern Ireland civil service and David Sterling. It is important to do that. This is unprecedented, and Northern Ireland should be very proud of its civil service. I also thank and commend the work of the Northern Ireland Office under the strong leadership of Sir Jonathan Stephens. It is often forgotten in this mix, but it has done an excellent job in trying to keep things going.
Clearly, I welcome the Bill, which is largely of a technical nature, but I share the concerns expressed about scrutiny. I am not entirely clear that this measure should be dealt with as an urgent matter, as referred to in paragraph 27 of the guidance notes. It could have been far more elective than that. Scrutiny is important. I accept that the Secretary of State is avoiding at all costs making decisions on important matters relating to Northern Ireland that are properly devolved, but this place has to assume some responsibility for scrutiny of these important matters, and I am not sure we are doing justice to that process.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend says the Bill is of a technical nature, and I agree in some respects, but ultimately it authorises the spending of billions of pounds in Northern Ireland. Can it really be called merely technical when it is so substantive in nature? On scrutiny, despite all the money going to Northern Ireland, there has been very little progress in getting it directed in a way that meets the needs of people in Northern Ireland since the priorities were first set. If we are to be in this situation again in 12 months, we will need to reflect on how we can do this better.
Dr Murrison
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We are in uncharted waters. It is difficult to hold to account Ministers who are not making decisions. It is not clear where accountability lies in this process. I hesitate to say we are making it up as we go along—clearly that would be unfair—but it is difficult to know precisely whom to hold to account, which is the job of this place.
Of course we have organisations such as the Northern Ireland Audit Office, which does its best to ensure that public funds are being disbursed in a reasonable manner, and there are other mechanisms for Members to attempt to shed light on the position and hold the Executive to account. Ultimately that process may end up in the courts through judicial review, but the Secretary of State is very keen for that not to happen, hence the guidance that she issued recently. However, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) that the whole thing is unsatisfactory. I suspect that if the Secretary of State were answering his point, she would say that the solution is very straightforward, and it is the restoration of the Executive.
I must say that I worry about the state of Northern Ireland and where it is going, given the lack of Ministers. The public are often rather cynical about us politicians, but I think this process has shown that Ministers have utility in improving people’s lives. David Sterling himself has referred to “slow decay and stagnation” in Northern Ireland. Those are strong words, and I take them very seriously: I think he is absolutely right. Very few of us who have anything to do with Northern Ireland will not be impressed by the sense there that people are being let down by their political class, and that is an indictment of us all. I will not pin the blame on any one party or set of politicians, but it is incumbent on us all to ensure that proper governance is restored to Northern Ireland at the earliest available opportunity.
I accept the arguments for the uplift in the vote on account for the financial year 2019-20, because that strikes me as a pragmatic way ahead, but it is quite unusual. Of course I accept everything that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has to say—she is a person of great honour and integrity—but, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire pointed out, surely the job of this place is ultimately to scrutinise, and this 70% uplift is somewhat unusual. I therefore particularly regret the lack of opportunity that we are having—and, if I may say so, my Select Committee is having—to delve into why the uplift is needed. It may be expedient, but expediency is not necessarily sufficient.
I also accept that the Bill does not imply any particular decisions, political or otherwise, except, of course the so-called flagship projects to which the Secretary of State referred in her written ministerial statement on 28 February, which include the A6, the York street interchange and the mother and children’s hospital. Those projects are unobjectionable and I believe that everyone in Northern Ireland wants to see them, so I think that the Secretary of State is on very safe ground. Nevertheless, they are big infrastructure projects, which, in the normal course of things, would be subject to intense scrutiny one way or the other. That scrutiny clearly cannot come from Stormont, as Stormont is not working, but it falls to someone, and it really falls to us, because we are the default position. I am not clear in my mind that those big projects, and the planned expenditure on them, are being given the scrutiny that they deserve.
At the risk of being accused of being a pedant, I should like the Minister, when he sums up the debate, to clarify what the £4 million allocated to transformation is being spent on. I alluded to that earlier in a brief intervention. “Transformation” is very politically loaded, because it implies that something is being transformed into something else. It is important to know what is in the minds of those who are doing the transforming. I know that £4 million is not a great deal of money, but it would be useful to know what it is being spent on, because it implies a particular direction in terms of the outcomes that are being sought. I understand from what has been said previously that it is intended to make public services more sustainable. “Sustainable” is one of those words that sound innocuous, but it does imply change, and when change impacts on public services, it becomes politically contentious and, again, politically loaded. We therefore need to be told in a reasonable amount of detail how that relatively small sum is being disbursed.
I welcome the real-terms increase for health and education. My Select Committee has taken the view that it should get involved in both those areas. They are both areas that in the normal way of things we would be firmly told to set aside since they are devolved matters, but nobody else is looking at these particularly important areas of public policy at the moment and we have taken that as licence to exert some level of scrutiny. It has been very clear to us that not only is transformation needed in both areas, but that we need to look at making root-and-branch changes particularly in relation to footprint, to ensure that public money is spent properly and outcomes are improved.
In healthcare in particular, outcomes in Northern Ireland are really not good at all. The people of Northern Ireland deserve much better. We have heard in our Committee about issues to do with education, and I think we will be drawn to conclude that the footprint is part of the problem. All these things in all our constituencies up and down the country would ordinarily be matters of acute political interest in which politicians would be heavily involved, and there would be public meetings and all manner of things. The hon. Member for Rochdale who speaks for the Opposition was absolutely right to draw that comparison in his opening remarks, because were this to happen in my constituency I know I would be attending public meetings and doing all sorts of things that simply do not happen in Northern Ireland because of the absence of normal politics there at the moment. What is important however is that, wherever we can, we make sure we have some level of scrutiny, and that is why in its small way my Select Committee has taken upon itself investigations into health and education, and will be reporting very shortly.
I wonder whether the Secretary of State, or the Minister who replies, can update the House on what the £130 million transferred from capital for the next financial year to deal with public service resource pressures is being spent on. It has been referred to already and is a substantial sum of money. We really do need some level of granularity to ensure that money is best spent on areas where it will have the biggest impact. It is of concern, obviously, when money is transferred from capital to revenue, because it implies that there will be a backlog in due course of capital spend not being done at the moment that will have to be made good in the fullness of time.
Will the Minister say why the Executive Office vote is being uplifted by 4.4%? On the face of it that seems remarkable, and, knowing how eager the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is to scrutinise these areas, she might have it in mind to press Ministers further on this when she speaks. It is remarkable that when we do not have an Executive in place, the Executive Office should be having an uplift of 4.4%. I would have thought the reverse would be the case.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most heartbreaking pressures brought to the attention of his Committee is that of special educational needs children in the education sector, and that some of the money he has identified would be far better allocated to addressing that particular and acute need that affects everyone on these Benches, and indeed those who do not even come to this House?
Dr Murrison
Yes, I very much do, and if the hon. Gentleman wants to attend my Adjournment debate tomorrow on the subject of special educational needs in Wiltshire, perhaps he will find some commonality between his situation and my own as a constituency MP. [Interruption.] I am looking forward to the contribution of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon); I would be very disappointed if he did not contribute to my debate. He will be very welcome, while of course trying to remain in order since I suspect his knowledge of special educational needs in Wiltshire is somewhat limited—not that that will necessarily stop him.
May I press Ministers on how confidence and supply money is being spent? Of course spending in general in Northern Ireland uses guidance set by the collapsed Executive. That is perfectly right and proper, and to use that trajectory to guide spending is perfectly legitimate, but that justification obviously falls away in relation to confidence and supply money; the guidebook is not there, which makes it of particular interest.
For example, under the non-ring-fenced resource departmental expenditure limit—RDEL—£100 million is being allowed for health transformation. Health transformation is surely needed, but it is politically sensitive. We in this place really do deserve to know how that money is being spent, but we are none the wiser. Under CDEL—the capital departmental expenditure limit—there is £200 million for infrastructure. Again, that is highly politically sensitive stuff, and almost certainly involves projects that will be warmly welcomed by the people of Northern Ireland, but our job is scrutiny, and one way or the other, scrutiny must be done. I fear that it is not being done at the moment.
We are sort of being asked to sign this off, although the Secretary of State is saying that she has no input into decision making within this process. Nevertheless, the mere fact that we have a Bill before us today means that we have to accept some level of responsibility. I am left with a sinking feeling that I do not have the information necessary to do this confidently, yet it needs to be done, because the consequences of not doing it would be immense. This is putting right hon. and hon. Members in something of an invidious position, because we do not have the level of detail or granularity that we deserve. Paragraph 27 of the guidance notes claims that the Bill needs to be implemented “urgently”. I think it probably does, and I sincerely hope that it is passed this evening, but this really should not happen at the expense of scrutiny.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
For another year, I rise with a degree of reluctance as we agree a budget that should be debated about 300 miles from here. I am sure that hon. Members across the House will agree that this situation is deeply regrettable. Devolution should be cherished, and its success is vital to the growth and prosperity of Northern Ireland. I believe unequivocally that this budget should not be voted on by politicians in this place representing constituencies in Scotland, Wales and England. Also, as others have said, this emergency legislation process affords ineffective scrutiny. I once again urge the Government to redouble their efforts to begin talks in earnest as soon as possible, so that they can be the effective arbiter required to bring an end to this impasse. If they cannot do that, they should bring in someone who can.
The collapse of the Executive and the subsequent failure to deal with the situation have placed huge, unsustainable stress on the civil service in Northern Ireland. I join the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) in praising the Northern Irish civil service for all the work it has done in these tough times without an Executive. In our opinion, direct rule can never be countenanced, but as the shambolic Brexit process is now a central reason for the ongoing crisis, the UK Government have a responsibility to ensure that talks progress swiftly.
Amid ongoing austerity, the absence of decision making is straining Northern Irish public services. Decisions are urgently required to provide direction and funding to vital services. The current conditions are placing particular pressures on health and education, which are the most important services that a Government can deliver. It is for this reason that I want to make it clear that I do not begrudge the additional money that is going to be made available for public services in Northern Ireland—far from it. We have been calling for additional public spending from Westminster for years. However, it must be said that, under our agreed devolved settlement in this precious Union of equals, both Scotland and Wales should also receive additional funding. Successive UK Governments have inflicted brutal austerity measures on Scotland and Wales, as well as on Northern Ireland. That extra funding could be a small step towards repairing this recklessly inflicted damage. Indeed, if the Barnett formula were applied as it should be, Scotland would receive an extra £400 million for its budget.
Last year, the economy of Northern Ireland did not keep pace with the rest of the UK and it lagged far behind that of the Republic of Ireland, which was growing around four times faster. That just shows what a small independent country in the EU is capable of.
I firmly believe that investment in good public services and infrastructure is vital to the success of any economy. There is £140 million of new funding in recognition of the lack of opportunity for more “fundamental service reconfiguration”—a nifty wee phrase with which the Treasury and the Northern Ireland Office are attempting to circumvent the regular budgetary process. We cannot forget that that is in addition to the £333 million of funding that comes from the Government’s confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist party. Some of the money seems to be allocated effectively, with £100 million to support health transformation, £3 million for broadband and £200 million for capital spending on key infrastructure projects. I particularly welcome the £30 million to tackle poor mental health and severe deprivation. However, despite my jealousy at that extra investment, I would never countenance the SNP selling its soul to prop up a Government who do so much harm to our citizens and are hellbent on ripping us out of the EU, for which neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland voted, and the reasons behind the positive spending are more than a little suspect. In fact, many say that the extra funding is just a Brexit bung to buy off the DUP.
The extra revenue allocation falls outside the normal budgetary processes deliberately to ensure that Scotland and Wales are denied their rightful Barnett consequentials. That raises huge questions of the Secretary of State for Scotland, who said unequivocally that he
“was not going to agree to anything that could be construed as back-door funding to Northern Ireland”.
He has been written to this week, but he had not replied by the time that I stood up to speak, so does the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland know when the Secretary of State for Scotland was informed that the additional moneys would not be subject to the Barnett formula? Did he agree to that? Most importantly, did he even argue that Scotland should be entitled to its fair share of budgetary increases? If he did not, he must simply go.
Gavin Robinson
I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to make an elaborate political point, but he is not a churlish individual and will have heard this afternoon that we do not have devolved Ministers who are able to take account of financial pressures and make decisions accordingly. That is the rationale for the additional funds. Scotland is blessed with a functioning Government, and we wish we had one, but he should not try to extrapolate this proposal into some cheap point.
Gavin Newlands
I do not accept that I am making a cheap point, but I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s central point. We would not be strong Members of Parliament for Scotland if we were not here to represent Scottish interests, and the Barnett formula is there for a reason.
The Secretary of State for Scotland should have used his position in Cabinet to stand up for Scotland and protect the Barnett formula, but he did not. If he did, the Scottish budget could have increased by £400 million. Moreover, if he had stood firm regarding the confidence and supply agreement in its entirety, Scotland would have had an extra £3 billion to mitigate this Government’s policies, to prepare for Brexit and to invest in infrastructure, but he either failed or did not bother. He has abdicated his responsibility to Scotland and, despite various promises that he would resign with regard to protecting Scotland interests vis-à-vis Brexit, he has bottled it each and every time.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution. Does he agree that the Secretary of State for Scotland has promised to resign so many times that we have lost count? It is clear that the Secretary of State does not have the ability to have any effect in Cabinet and is becoming the boy who cried wolf.
Gavin Newlands
I could not agree more. The Secretary of State for Scotland’s promises to resign in defence of Scotland have become like white noise, which just highlights how Westminster does not work for Scotland. If the Scottish Secretary is actually arguing for us in Cabinet, he is not being listened to. The alternative is that he is not bothering at all, which is even more troubling. If ever there were proof that the Scottish Secretary is the Tory Cabinet’s voice in Scotland rather than Scotland’s voice in Cabinet, it is now.
The SNP believes that new talks should be established immediately to restore the Executive and the Assembly. However, with the UK Government rather distracted by internal Tory party infighting, I say again that an independent mediator could and should be brought in to speed up progress. It has been over two years since Northern Ireland had a functioning Assembly, which is far too long. The people of Northern Ireland deserve reassurances that they will have a responsive and functional devolved Assembly and Executive as they face Brexit—one of the biggest policy challenges that any of us will ever face. Nothing must be done that would undermine the Good Friday agreement. Therefore this, in my opinion, must be the last budget to be delivered in this manner. A paralysing political vacuum in Northern Ireland must not become the new normal state of affairs.
The UK Government, in this Parliament, to a degree are in chaos, but that absolutely cannot be used as an excuse for the lacklustre attempts since last February to re-establish Northern Ireland’s political institutions. The Government are consumed by their own civil war, but that should not distract from all our duties to steadfastly defend and protect the peace process. The SNP understands that decisions are badly needed to direct and fund public services in Northern Ireland, but the absence of political decision making, amidst ongoing austerity, has placed an intolerable burden on the health and education systems and on the Northern Ireland civil service and the people of Northern Ireland.
The broader instability caused by Brexit is a central reason why it is proving to be so difficult to restore the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. The Executive and Assembly may have collapsed for various reasons, but Brexit and the threat of new borders or regulations have prolonged the dangerous political vacuum. The threat of new borders can, however, be removed. There would be no need for new economic borders in the Irish sea or across the island of Ireland if the whole UK pursues the SNP policy of staying in the European single market and customs union. It is important to remember that Northern Ireland, like Scotland, voted to remain in the EU by 56%.
Since the 2016 referendum, we in the SNP have engaged with businesses and civic leaders across Northern Ireland, all of whom have consistently made the point that the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain, and that their future economic prosperity will be put at risk by Brexit in any form. According to the Government’s own figures, a no-deal Brexit could end up resulting in a 12% GDP decline in the Northern Ireland economy. The UK Government’s analysis states that a no-deal Brexit
“would affect the viability of many businesses across Northern Ireland”,
and would therefore be tantamount to economic vandalism.
We in the SNP want to see Northern Ireland flourish. We want to see political and economic stability, partnered with strong, inclusive economic growth. We want to see that so that our neighbours—only a few miles across the Irish sea—will have effective public services, growing businesses and better livelihoods for their families. A prosperous Northern Ireland is in Scotland’s interests. A prosperous Northern Ireland is in the interests of England, Wales, the Irish Republic and our friends across the European Union.
We in the SNP fully support the Good Friday agreement and the maintenance of an invisible border that people from all over Ireland can freely cross, whether to visit family, to work, to study or to conduct business. Let me be clear: we would never stand in the way of Northern Ireland achieving a special relationship with the European Union, if that was what was required. All that we ask is that correct, and equitable, budget procedures are followed and that any increases in spending across the UK result in the rightful Barnett consequentials for Scotland.
The final point that I want to make about the budget is on the Hart recommendations. I appreciate that those are sensitive topics and have been raised already, and I concede that the Secretary of State’s position has softened somewhat of late, but the Scottish Government have already announced that they are taking action in this area. The Secretary of State and the Minister will be aware of the victims’ group SAVIA—Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse. The group was pleased that the Scottish Government confirmed that they would be making advance payments to elderly and infirm victims and survivors prior to the passing of legislation, and is calling for that model to be adopted for Northern Ireland. So many of those who would have been entitled to compensation are now deceased, and SAVIA believes that the initiative shown by the SNP and the Scottish Government shows that where there is a will, there is a way. The group asks that the Secretary of State follows the leadership, courage and compassion shown by the Scottish Government to make compensation payments to elderly and infirm victims before it is too late.
In conclusion, the Government must give Northern Ireland, and restoring its Assembly, the attention that it requires. Delays in establishing effective talks can no longer be accepted. The institutions of the Good Friday agreement must be championed by all across this House, for the sake of the peace process and for the people of Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland deserve better than this. However, if the Prime Minister’s promises about governing in all our interests are to ring true, she must respect the agreed devolved settlement for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. The people of Scotland and Wales deserve better than this and, believe me, Madam Deputy Speaker: they are watching closely.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I did not expect to be called first, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you have caught me off balance. [Interruption.] I am never lost for words.
I am pleased to be called in this debate and I want to start by thanking the Secretary of State for introducing this essential Bill today. It is important and it is why we are all present. I thank Members for the contributions that have been made up to now. We all know that the Bill contains parliamentary approval for in-year adjustments to Northern Ireland departmental budgets and for certain other bodies to incur expenditure and use resources for the remainder of the financial year ending 31 March 2019. Its importance has been highlighted by everyone who has made a contribution, including in interventions and by Northern Ireland’s representatives in this House. On behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, we are here to make that comment. The Bill further seeks approval for a vote on account of an amount equivalent to 70% of the 2018-19 allocation to allow those Departments and public bodies to continue to deliver public services for part of the 2019-20 financial year. This finance, what it sets out to do and what it does is so important.
We all understand how necessary these steps are to take. We have the information before us and I had a quick look through it earlier. I wonder whether the Minister summing up will be able to indicate what the responsibilities will be in respect of the fisheries enforcement vessel we have in Bangor and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs when we leave the EU on 29 March. On the Monday a week or so ago, I had the opportunity to meet the fisheries officers to discuss that. I said to them that that fisheries enforcement vessel does not seem to do very much. That seems to be the case, from the evidence I have. Will it be more active after 29 March? Will the resources be made available to ensure that it can enforce the fisheries rules that we will have for our seas at that time?
I do not want to be critical about Departments, but sometimes I wonder exactly what happens. I brought the matter of packaging to the attention of Ministers at the Department for Exiting the European Union last week. There is a responsibility here to the agri-food sector, and a number of businesses in my constituency depend on that. The packaging issue has not been addressed. For some reason, DAERA has not responded to the companies in my constituency. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is one of those who contacted me about this. I understand that this is a simple matter of addressing the packaging. DAERA has not done it and has referred the issue to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is like musical chairs; they are pushing it about as much as they can. They must get it done. That is the issue we need to get sorted out for our agri-food sector.
The explanatory notes state:
“This Bill is a minimal step to ensure that public services continue to be provided in Northern Ireland.”
Therein lies the issue I have: the people of Northern Ireland have had the bare minimum for too long. The acceptable level of governance has been emphasised by other Members and we simply are not getting it.
As for 70% of the moneys allocated to Departments being used for projects, I have to say that I have some concerns about delays on some of the things we are all waiting for. I am sure Members will not be surprised if I give them a list of what I am waiting for in my constituency. I could spend half an hour going over all the ones that need to be done, but I will just spend a few minutes highlighting the issues. The first thing we need is the Ballynahinch bypass—we are still waiting on it. All the papers are in order; everything is ready to go; the land has been acquired—but, guess what, the Department just cannot make that decision. Everybody in Ballynahinch wants to see the bypass in place. Even my colleagues and friends do. Why is that? It is because then I will not be bringing this issue up every time we have a parliamentary meeting, but that is by the bye. The point I am trying to make is that everything is in order for it to happen but it is not happening.
Secondly, we have a coastal erosion programme for the Ards peninsula. Again, the deliberations are done and the recommendations have been made. There are 96 coastal erosion locations to be addressed, but we have not got to the place we want to be in addressing that. Again, that highlights how we need to get the moneys through to where they need to be.
The problem with these minimal steps is that they are going to produce a minimal health service and minimal education for our children. The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, referred to its ongoing inquiries on education and health. We will shortly be doing one, which we hope will be less complicated, on the benefits system, which the hon. Member for North Down and I wish to see addressed, too. There are lots of things happening that we need to address.
The DUP has taken action. The fact is that without the supply and confidence agreement, which boosted the budget by some £300 million, and the successful party representation to the Chancellor, which has secured an extra £140 million, Northern Ireland simply could not function. People talk about green cheese in this House all the time. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) sees somebody getting something good and he wants it as well. They are unbelievable, they really are.
We need to take action to tackle the pressures in education and health. The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is trying to address some of the important issues as and when it can and make recommendations, which we hope to see shortly. My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) referred to special needs education. How important that issue is. It comes up in every inquiry, deputation and presentation that we get. I have people in my constituency saying almost every week that we need to address those issues. The highest levels of depression in Northern Ireland are among schoolchildren, some of them under the age of 10. There are levels of depression that we were never aware of before, but we have them in our area and in our constituencies in Northern Ireland. We really need to address those critical issues.
The referrals are also part of the issue. I met the chair of the local primary schools less than a month ago. All those primary schools’ budgets are squeezed. They are really at crisis point, so we have to address the issues. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to the principal of Movilla High School to catch up and find out what is happening there. Movilla High School needs some help. I sit on the board of governors of Glastry College, which needs that new building. These things are coming across throughout the constituency.
The money would not have come without my colleagues having outlined the fact that frontline services are at breaking point. I am thankful for the funding that the DUP has secured, but we must be clear that even with the additional money, frontline services are struggling; A&E services are literally at capacity. We need ministerial intervention, and that is not happening at Stormont, so I ask again for something for which I have advocated consistently: a compulsory return to Stormont with no red lines, or the Secretary of State’s rolling up her sleeves and beginning direct rule procedures.
We have tried to address the issues relating to rare diseases in the Chamber. I am a member of the all-party group, along with other right hon. and hon. Members, and we have tried to address the issues with getting funding through, because rare diseases involve minimal numbers. We need to address those issues. On access to medicines, Orkambi is very important. Those with diseases and problems who need help will understand that access to drugs is important. Diabetes is a growing time bomb in Northern Ireland, among not only children but adults, too. We have the highest levels of diabetes among children in the whole United Kingdom, with Scotland second. We need to address such issues, if we can.
A long time has passed and Sinn Féin’s intransigence is slowly killing hope and seeing people needlessly die on waiting lists throughout the Province. It is effecting professionals’ mental health as they try to cope in situations that have been described as war-zone situations in A&Es. We need to act on behalf not simply of patients but of the staff who are being asked to do the impossible. Minimal steps are not good enough for the elderly lady lying in a corridor in the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald, and neither are they good enough for the four-year-old about to start her schooling career in a school where the teachers are advised to ask parents—this has been said in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee—for toilet paper and told by unions that they cannot run after-school clubs. Not only the principal of the school that I visited but the chair of the primary schools in my area have told me that if it was not for the parent-teacher association and the moneys that it raises every year, they could not afford to have the classroom assistant teaching in those schools. They could not afford to have the stationery if it was not for the good will of others who are helping out. These are the critical issues.
Of course I welcome the additional money for frontline services—£20 million in 2017-18 and £410 million in 2018-19—but it was a sticking plaster. That plaster has now come off, revealing a wound that needs dedicated, specialised attention but is not getting it. The DUP wants a return to devolution, because we believe that that is the most democratic future for Northern Ireland, but we cannot afford to wait any longer.
I believe it is time to consider a new political process for Northern Ireland with all the parties at Stormont that want a devolved Administration, which Sinn Féin continues to thwart. It is time to consider a different and more direct approval process. If Sinn Féin does not want to participate, or wants to put down red lines to stop the political process, let us move forward with the parties that do wish to participate and form a Government who can look after the affairs of Northern Ireland. I believe that that would be a way forward; it might be different from what we have done in the past, but maybe it is time we did it now. Even if a party does not want to be part of the process, we should move forward, because we need regional government.
I will finish soon—as you will probably be glad to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I do not know why Members are saying that.
Minimal steps are not enough. That is what this debate is about: we are very pleased to have a budget approved, but we are also clear in what we are saying. I ask the Minister of State to take the appropriate steps towards direct rule, not because that is my first option or that of the DUP—we want a regional government in place that is accountable to the people—but because it is our only option to stop the wound seeping before we bleed out.
Please, Minister of State, hear our call. Yes, we need the Bill, but we need more than these minimal steps; we need decisive action. We need to start the process and send a message to Sinn Féin: “If you won’t return to Stormont, fine, but decisions will be made in this place for the education and health of all people in Northern Ireland.” Nevertheless, I welcome the budget, and I welcome where we are today.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
General disappointment has been expressed that, for the third year now, expenditure in Northern Ireland is being approved through this unusual process in the House, with little or no scrutiny or knowledge of how the allocations to Departments have been decided. We do not know what arguments were made for giving 3.8%—or whatever it was—to health and 1.1% to education, while other Departments suffered an overall reduction and others’ budgets were kept static. We have had no opportunity to ask civil servants what cases were made or whether they were valid. As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) pointed out, it is not that there is no mechanism for such scrutiny; it is simply that a choice was made not to use the mechanism that is available through this House.
Of course, this should all have been done at Stormont. During the budget process, its committees ought to have brought civil servants in, asked them what bids were being made and what arguments were being employed, and then made a judgment on the merits of each case. However, we are not in that position—not because parties in Northern Ireland do not want the opportunity of scrutiny at Stormont, but simply because they have been prevented from carrying it out.
Using the terms of the arrangements for setting up a Government in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin has been able to prevent the coalition arrangement that was forced through in the Belfast agreement from being implemented. Because including the two main parties in the Executive is a compulsory imposition rather than a voluntary arrangement, if one of those parties throws a hissy fit and decides that it does not want to be in the Executive, everybody is kept out—not just from the Executive, but from Stormont and from all the roles and responsibilities that they were elected for and would normally be entitled to carry out.
The Secretary of State quite rightly says that this process should be done at Stormont, but she knows that it cannot be done there. Like the shadow Secretary of State, I do not place the blame totally at the door of the Secretary of State. She has to operate within the rules, and the rules state that if one party decides to veto, not a great deal can be done about it. For reasons that I will explain in a moment or two, no powers of persuasion will persuade Sinn Féin to go into Stormont at this particular time; they have made that quite clear. Sinn Féin have thrown up every barrier. Whatever magic wand the Secretary of State might wave, she is not going to persuade them otherwise. However, there is one way in which she could put pressure on them, which is by making it quite clear to them that, through their inaction, the very thing that they do not want to happen—that is, rule by London—will happen, unless they are prepared to accept their responsibilities in Northern Ireland.
We find it difficult to understand why there has not been a willingness to take Sinn Féin on in that way, but I suspect that it is because of the advice given by the Northern Ireland Office, known colloquially among Unionists in Northern Ireland as the nest of vipers. The position of the Northern Ireland Office seems to be, “Don’t annoy Sinn Féin and don’t annoy the Irish Government.” I suspect that a large part of the reason why we have not moved to greater scrutiny and greater decision making by Ministers here is the advice of the Northern Ireland Office: “Don’t rock the boat.” But if we don’t rock the boat, we are going to stay on the path that we are on at present, which does not provide scrutiny of the most important issue for politicians—the expenditure of resources for the benefit of the community.
Not only do we not have scrutiny of the overall budget allocation, we do not even have scrutiny of the efficiency of current spending. Looking through the various headings for expenditure last year, or through the proposed 70% expenditure for next year, we can see many areas where there is great concern about the way in which money is spent. I will pick out just a few. Take, for example, the Department for the Economy. We have been trying to increase connectivity in Northern Ireland, yet despite all the evidence that supporting access to air services to other parts of the world helps economic growth, we have found an unwillingness to spend money in that area. One of the reasons that the Department has given is, “We don’t have any direction from a Minister. It’s not a decision that the civil service can make.” My hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) has lobbied hard on this issue because Belfast international airport is in his constituency and there could be huge opportunities there.
Petroleum licensing is another example. There are huge opportunities in Northern Ireland but we cannot even get consultation on licences that could create hundreds of jobs in mining and oil exploration in rural areas in the west of the Province, where high-paid jobs are hard to come by. Money for broadband has been reprofiled because, despite the fact that £150 million was made available, decisions have not been made about spending that money. Hopefully, with the start of the money that has been allocated this year, we will find that the programme will be accelerated over the next number of years.
We allocate money to Tourism Ireland, and many people query whether that money is used effectively. When people travel into Belfast international airport, what hits them in the face when they come off the plane? An advert to send tourists who arrive at that airport down to Dublin—and our money pays for it. Yet there is no scrutiny of whether that is an effective way of spending public money to promote Northern Ireland.
I could go on with lots of other examples, but that is the kind of vacuum we are left with because of the lack of scrutiny not just of the general allocations of money across Departments but of the specific allocations within Departments.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
As members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, we hear at first hand, nearly every week now, about how the lack of an Assembly and an Executive is affecting ordinary people, whether it is money not being spent on healthcare, schools where parents are having to bring in toilet rolls, or the Police of Service of Northern Ireland not knowing whether it can pay its staff at the end of the month. This is impacting the real lives of real people.
Sammy Wilson
The hon. Lady mentioned education. In the year for which we are now finalising the accounts, additional money was secured for education. That money was meant to go to frontline services in education—that is, the classrooms—but the Department of Education decided to allocate it to finance the education authority, which was running a deficit, and was leaning on schools that were running a deficit in their budgets. That is the kind of thing that would never have been allowed to happen if we had a functioning Assembly and a Minister rather than civil servants making these decisions. It is not just about the total amount of money that is allocated; we also have to be looking at how effectively that money is spent, and we do not have the means for doing that. If it cannot be done in Northern Ireland, then there should a means for doing it here.
The Secretary of State gave an explanation why she had allocated 70% of the expenditure to Departments for next year as opposed to the usual 45%—because there might be heavier expenditure at the beginning of the year than at the end of the year, and she therefore wanted to make sure that Departments did not run out of money. Given that most of the revenue expenditure has to be spread over the year because a lot of it goes on salaries and so on, I do not think that is a credible explanation. I think the Secretary of State knows full well that we will not have an Assembly up and running by June, because she knows what the problem is. She has talked to Sinn Féin and she knows the attitude of Sinn Féin. I suspect that 70% has been allocated so that she has the flexibility maybe even to bring the final budget to this House in September or October rather than be forced to bring it early in June because there is no Assembly up and running.
That brings me to one of the reasons why I believe we are having to do this again this year. Many people have said that it is about Brexit, or the fact that Sinn Féin cannot get agreement with the DUP about certain matters like an Irish language Act. Having said that, I do not know how anyone justifies tens of millions of pounds of expenditure on an Irish language Act at a time when we have the pressure on budgets that we have now. Certainly, it should not be a priority for expenditure or getting Stormont up and running again.
I welcome the additional money. For the information of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), this is not a result of the Barnett formula not being properly applied. The Barnett formula is properly applied. Barnett formula allocations for Scotland and Northern Ireland are based on the expenditure decided for Departments in England. If there is an uplift in areas of spending in those Departments, it also comes to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
This is money over and above the Barnett formula. Scotland has experienced that on occasions, but we did not complain about it. It is wrong to suggest that this is a result of the Barnett formula not being properly applied. Some of the changes to the allocations that we are authorising for 2018-19 are a result of Barnett formula applications during the year, with additional money put into the budget since we discussed it last June having to be spent by Departments.
This is a challenging budget. The real reason why Sinn Féin are not prepared to enter the Assembly is that they do not have the political courage to make the decisions that a budget of this nature would require them to make. There is plenty of evidence for that. First, why did the Assembly collapse? Despite what people say about the renewable heat scheme and everything else, the Assembly would have collapsed anyhow, because the then Finance Minister had not even presented a budget to the Assembly. If it had not been presented to the Assembly, the Government would have collapsed because there would have been no money to spend. Why did he not present a budget two and a half years ago? Because he knew that there were hard decisions to be made, and he was not prepared to make them. His party was not prepared to go through the Lobby to back those decisions because it was looking over its shoulder at People Before Profit, which had taken votes off it in its heartlands in West Belfast and Londonderry.
If that was the problem then, it is still the problem today. Sinn Féin do not want to have to put their hand on the tiller and guide Northern Ireland through the difficulties of budget considerations. Governments here and in Scotland and Wales have to do that, as indeed do Governments in the Irish Republic. Sinn Féin would rather strut around the Irish Republic telling people that if they vote for Sinn Féin, the Government down there will not have to impose austerity measures. Of course, the one way to expose the nonsense of that claim is by Sinn Féin having to make decisions about budgets in Northern Ireland, but they do not want to do that.
That means that we have not been able to look at new areas of expenditure, and that is significant. Members have talked today about new pressures. For example, there is greater pressure on school budgets because of rising populations and a change in the distribution of populations, which sometimes expand and sometimes decline. There are greater pressures on mental health, which my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about. This budget reflects the decisions and priorities of the Executive of more than three years ago. Indeed, if we look at the heads of spending for 2018-19 and 2019-20, we see that it is a cut and paste. There are no new things, because that is not possible.
We pass legislation here to allow top civil servants and permanent secretaries to take decisions that could redirect some spending, but civil servants—wrongly, I think—have refused to use those powers on many occasions. It is frustrating that they have not been prepared to make decisions on even simple things, because they fear that if something goes wrong, they will be called before the Northern Ireland Audit Office or finish up on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph. It is not a great way of doing it, but at least some of these decisions should be made by civil servants.
We have a lack of scrutiny of the overall budget and of the detail of the budget, and we have no mechanism for deciding new priorities, all of which we are going to need in a dynamic economy. That is why this process is so damaging to Northern Ireland. It is damaging politically because it allows people simply to opt out of the political process. They entered that process, stood for election and got elected, but then they do not do their job.
I know there will be debates about how to do this, but I think one of the ways of pushing into doing their job properly those who are holding back our ability to do the job—we are doing it, and doing it very poorly, here today—is to make it quite clear that the stark choice is either to have local rule or to have rule from London. I believe that would be a huge embarrassment to Sinn Féin. It has been able to avoid that embarrassment because the Government here have refused to make such a decision.
We want to see devolution and we want people to be pressurised into going back into Stormont, however difficult that may be. Let me just say to the House that it is difficult. Look at the difficulties the Government have with the disparate views they have on their own Back Benches in this place. It is an indication of the skill that was used by politicians in Northern Ireland that, for many years, we ran a coalition that included people who would very happily sit on the Government Benches as well as people who might be uncomfortable sitting beside the Leader of the Opposition on the Opposition Benches because they are even to the left of him. We ran a coalition on that basis, but it has now collapsed, and following its collapse, this is an inadequate way of doing business for Northern Ireland.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). I am afraid, as far as the Northern Ireland Office is concerned, I will continue on the issue of the lack of transparency and scrutiny. At the nub of this—it is felt across the House and I know it is shared in Northern Ireland—is the fact that these are important matters that need to be dissected and examined, but the level of scrutiny we are able to subject them to will be minimal indeed.
I want to begin with the political outlook. Unfortunately, we are in the position we face today only because we do not have a devolved Government in Stormont, and we have now been in this limbo for two years and several months. Part of the reason why we continue to be in this limbo is that Sinn Féin, which brought the Stormont institutions down by the resignation of the then Deputy First Minister, has for some considerable time established a series of red lines in relation to going back into government.
However, as indicated by the Opposition spokesperson on Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), Sinn Féin, in the words of its leader, Michelle O’Neill, has now copper-fastened that approach. I have to say that part of the reason why it has copper-fastened that approach is that the lack of decisive action from the Government in this place in confronting its previous intransigence has only emboldened it to be more intransigent.
Not only do those in Sinn Féin say, “Well, we’ve gotten away with two years of saying we’re not going back into government until we have certain unreasonable demands met, and we must have them met, pocketed and banked before we go in”—they have got away with that, and we have simply continued this limbo period—but they have now established yet further red lines in relation to even going in to talk about how we get the Government up and running. I am afraid that a considerable amount of blame can be landed on the desk of the Northern Ireland Office for not confronting the Sinn Féin approach.
We are in a situation that is neither fish nor fowl, with neither direct rule nor local rule, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim put it. Our constituents are talking about education, health and a whole series of local projects that could be delivered and asking what we are doing to try to help deliver them. Our answer is that we can do very little and that we want to get Stormont up and running. I know colleagues of mine met a series of principals in the education sector just a few weeks ago, and the principals were unanimous in their demand that something had to be done to rescue their sector from an impending crisis, as we hear in the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee week after week. Yet my colleagues had to say, “We’re ready to enter Stormont today, tomorrow or next week, but unfortunately others are not.”
We find ourselves in this bind, without either direct rule or devolved government. We are stumbling into a crisis week by week, month by month. Although there are a number of local issues, people are also demanding action on broad, encompassing issues. I know that the Secretary of State made it clear that certain matters of departmental spend were not her prerogative or that of the Minister of State, and I understand that, but nevertheless we are left in a bind with something that cannot deliver and that is inadequate in what it does deliver.
Many parts of Northern Ireland are teetering on the cusp between the crisis that is ahead of us and a remarkable breakthrough. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is not in his place at the moment, talked about his constituency. For the first time in 70 years, the Open golf tournament will return to my constituency and the Royal Portrush golf club. There will be almost 200,000 visitors to that tournament, 30% from outside Northern Ireland and the Republic. A considerable number of that 30% will be high-net- worth individuals.
I have been pressing Invest Northern Ireland to ensure that when those people arrive, we do what we can to maximise any inward investment potential. At this point, I pay tribute to the outgoing chief executive of Invest Northern Ireland, Mr Alastair Hamilton. He has spent 10 years in his role and has performed a manful, dutiful task over and above what would have been expected of someone in his position. So much more could be achieved in the next few months. The Open golf tournament takes place in July, and I would hope that Invest Northern Ireland would be campaigning and pressing inward investment buttons for opportunities that could be opened up as a result of it.
I have referred in this House to the private sector Heathrow logistics hub process, which is taking a further step forward. If it is a successful operation in the part of the United Kingdom that is Northern Ireland, it will deliver thousands of jobs. Here we are on the cusp of a breakthrough, with a combination of things that could deliver. Others have mentioned connectivity, and I think of the potential at all of our airports. Londonderry airport can expand, and we have a public service obligation that could help to deliver additional routes. That can only happen if we have ministerial direction and ministerial cover to ensure that all the possibilities are taken advantage of. We have other rail routes and road routes. All can help to deliver job infrastructure developments, which are there now but cannot be fully developed because of the lack of a devolved Government.
As I said, there are two overarching sectors that pervade the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee week on week—education and health. We hear the messages of complaint. We hear the dire consequences that are ahead of us. I do not want to unduly be a prophet of gloom, but the health sector came through the current winter crises and pressures because of the relatively mild winter. It came through it in a poor state, but not in a crisis. Next winter, however, if emphatic action is not taken either at Stormont or here, I am absolutely certain that we will not come through unscathed in the way that we have in the winter that is hopefully just ending. The overall Bengoa-style review is required to give emphasis and impetus to an overarching exchange and development of our health service to meet the demands of the 21st century. Without taking that into account, we are facing an impending crisis in the health sector.
Every one of us, every week, hears from schools, principals and vice-principals about the escalating catastrophe that is the education sector. That will worsen and deepen in the coming weeks and months unless we have ministerial involvement either in this place or in Stormont. Unfortunately, to date, Sinn Féin’s feet have not been held to the fire. We want to get a devolved Government back up and running. We know and accept that the process for that devolved government is not ideal. It is not our No. 1 priority in terms of what we would like to see, but it is the only show in town, so either we deliver a mechanism through Stormont or moves will have to be made here in the Westminster Parliament. One thing is for sure: we cannot and we must not—the people will not allow us—allow the position that currently pertains to go on for very much longer.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
We have heard a wide range of speeches on the Bill, but they have a similar theme. Before entering this House, I was a manager in the NHS in England. I have been a school governor and a non-executive director. I have served on finance committees, audit committees, and, since joining this place, I have been a member of the Public Accounts Committee. Like many people in this place, I take seriously the issue of spending taxpayers’ money. I believe it warrants scrutiny, analysis, challenge and, critically, accountability. As has been noted in all the speeches we have heard this afternoon, we should not be discussing the Bill, but, as we are, we should be doing it properly, and we cannot.
Paul Masterton
The hon. Lady mentions her role on the Public Accounts Committee. Does she think that, for as long as Stormont continues to not sit, there would be any merit in having the reports of the Northern Ireland Audit Office reviewed by the Public Accounts Committee?
Karin Smyth
I understand that the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland are currently not being scrutinised in the way that we would expect here. If the Public Accounts Committee was to undertake that role, it would be a very serious change to constitutional arrangements. The actuality discussed by the Chair of Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and others is that there needs to be some sort of process. I am not sure whether this is the right process, but I agree that there needs to be some sort of process for the reports already coming out of Northern Ireland that are highlighting some serious problems.
I make no judgment about the work of the Northern Ireland Office, the civil servants in Northern Ireland and the many public servants trying to continue to deliver services, but the lack of scrutiny and analysis of that money, and our incapacity to challenge, means that that huge area of spend, involving UK taxpayers’ money, is receiving less attention than school budgets get when we audit them. We know—this has been reinforced—that there are huge problems under the headings of this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) said, the Opposition want the Department to make progress on the Hart inquiry, victims’ and survivors’ pensions, and the medical school at Ulster University. I recently visited the team behind the project to progress the medical school in Derry/Londonderry. The scale of the work to date, and their ambition for their city and region, is to be commended, and the Secretary of State must find a way to support them. We have the ridiculous situation in which civil servants can support the business case but not agree the funding, because that is beyond their powers and would be considered a reallocation.
Why is a medical school important? The Government are proud of their announcement of new medical schools in England. The areas chosen need those schools because we need the recruits. As the chief executive of Health Education England said when the announcement was made—MPs in those areas know this—
“studies show that doctors tend to stay in the areas where they train so it means more doctors for the region to deliver high-quality care.”
In Northern Ireland, the locum bill is more than £80 million per annum and rising—an increase, according to the Bengoa report, of more than 78% in five years. It is clear that Northern Ireland needs to be training more of its own doctors and other clinical staff. It also needs to pay them properly, but the rates of pay of those staff are falling behind those in the rest of the UK.
Mr Gregory Campbell
I commend the hon. Lady for raising the issue of the medical school. Does she agree that there is an urgent need to develop not only the medical school in Londonderry but the veterinary school in Coleraine for precisely the same reasons, albeit in a different sector?
Karin Smyth
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I have not been able to visit that project, but I would very much like to. I agree that investing, training and keeping people local is an important and valuable symbol.
I recently visited the stunning new Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex, which is part of the Western Health and Social Care Trust. It is doing great work across the area to manage the challenges of rising demand and costs, which all health systems face. Its top issues of concern are the availability of medical staff and the huge amount of money being spent on locums. To ensure cover across Northern Ireland, precious resource is being spread far too thinly. I ask the Minister to tell us whether the Government will direct the Ministry of Justice to support the Lord Chief Justice’s call for funding, and whether he will progress the medical school, which is time-critical.
Some 46% of the Northern Ireland budget is for healthcare, and the history of reports and recommendations is decades-long. Most recently, Professor Bengoa’s report referenced the renowned academic Professor John Appleby, who found that Northern Ireland’s spending is roughly 11.5% higher than in England, but there is roughly an 11.6% higher level of need. The service is broadly funded as well as the rest of the UK, but there are significant disparities. In particular, mental health need is recognised to be about 44% higher than in England, but per capita spending is sometimes 10% to 30% lower. That led to the conclusion that the problem is not the level of funding but how it is being used to deliver services. Today, we are no further forward in addressing that problem. Spending on the acute sector continues to grow. Having a large number of small buildings is expensive and, most importantly, is not fit for the high quality, 21st century care that we should all be expecting across the United Kingdom.
The Bengoa report opens with a quote from the former chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson:
“A proportion of poor quality, unsafe care occurs because local hospital facilities in some parts of Northern Ireland cannot provide the level and standards of care required to meet patients’ needs 24 hours a day”.
What action are the Government taking to address that problem?
The Minister of State and I share a health geography in the south-west. His local hospital is undergoing difficult and controversial changes. He understands the safety issues and the need to make difficult choices about changes to small hospitals and the transformation to different models of care and to greater specialisation at large acute trusts. In his remarks, he needs to reassure people in Northern Ireland, just as we seek to reassure our constituents here in England, about quality of care. He needs to assure us today that the extra money for health is not just covering continuing inefficiencies and deficits, but is doing something to improve services and, above all, that patient safety is paramount.
Previous allocations as part of the confidence and supply money are of course welcomed by people in Northern Ireland, but one-off payments are no way to transform a health system. I recently heard about a preventive cardiology pilot working upstream with GPs. Money for successive years is not known and the trust is expected to continue funding it as part of its mainstream budget. It is not possible to transform healthcare to meet demands in the 21st century on one-off moneys, and it is a very poor use of taxpayers’ money as well as of the staff time spent proposing and developing new bids.
The next greatest area of spending is education, which has dominated today’s debate. As mentioned, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has had an informative session on education spending in the last few weeks, and last week again discussed the much reported recommendations to improve education outcomes in Northern Ireland. Sir Robert Salisbury, who gave evidence last week and reported in 2013, told us six years ago that the system was living beyond its means, and he gave the example of the six post-primary schools in Omagh, which has a similar population to his native Nottinghamshire, which has two.
The Education Authority, which has been referenced this afternoon, has a £90 million deficit largely because of special educational needs spending, which has also been addressed this afternoon. Schools are managing very high levels of mental ill health and, sadly, of suicide and self-harm among children, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted. As I mentioned earlier, the poor funding of mental health services as part of the overall health budget is exacerbating the problem.
There is a large deficit in schools, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) just said, and the budget is an escalating catastrophe. There are also high levels of achievement, as referenced in the Select Committee last week, and what is described as a long tail of underachievement. There are an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 empty desks in Northern Ireland, two teacher training colleges and two separate statutory planning authorities. The Integrated Education Fund, which I have visited recently, has called the system divided and costly.
I hope that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee report will shine more light on education spending, but many of the calls have been for a Bengoa-type review. As noted, however, we already have a Bengoa review of health, and without the political oversight and will, it will not make the change. The end of the Committee’s session finished on a depressing note, as the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People reported that there needed to be an honest conversation about the allocation of funding within the Department of Education but that there was no appetite for that.
We in the Labour party continue to support the need for integrated education as part of the long-term route to reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and I know that the Integrated Education Fund hopes to visit here in the summer to share with Members the work it does and the challenges faced. It would be good to see some of its thoughts put to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in its final report.
Beneath the figures that we are rushing through tonight—without proper process and security—lies the future of Northern Ireland’s children’s hopes, dreams and aspirations and of the people needing treatment and care from the NHS who now find themselves on record length and totally unacceptable waiting lists. We will of course support the budget tonight, so that public services can continue, but the people of Northern Ireland deserve much better than this.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (John Penrose)
Let me pick up from where my opposite number, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), left off and say that I am pleased to hear—from, I think, everyone—that there is limited opposition to the Bill and that Members are willing to support it on a cross-party basis. That is incredibly welcome. This is perhaps an unusual example of cross-party unanimity and consensus; there have been some pretty stroppy debates in the last couple of weeks on a variety of subjects. It is lovely to be here on a day when agreement is breaking out across different parts of the House.
However, I do not want to overstate that degree of cross-party consensus and agreement because what was also widely shared was a sense of frustration. There was frustration at the lack of a Stormont Executive—we heard that from pretty much every speaker this afternoon—and inevitably, because it matches that lack of a Stormont Executive, frustration at the limits of the Bill. As we have heard repeatedly, the Bill is there to keep the wheels turning in Northern Ireland, but not to bring about much-needed reforms, because those reforms require a functioning Stormont Executive. We have also heard repeatedly a litany of things that are either not being done and need to be done, or are not being done as efficiently as they could be, simply because there is not the political air cover in Stormont that would enable much-needed decisions to be made to change what is happening.
I echo many Members—including the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison)—in saying that that is no criticism of the civil servants in either the Northern Ireland civil service or the Northern Ireland Office. They are honour bound to make decisions based on the last set of policy decisions available to them, some of which are two or three years old. They must try to draw a line between those policy decisions and remain true to them.
Vernon Coaker
May I repeat what I said earlier? I agree with what the Minister is saying and this is not meant to be critical. I accept that, given the lack of a devolved Administration in Northern Ireland, we cannot scrutinise the decisions of civil servants. May I, however, ask the Minister to reflect again on the fact that changes are being made in this budget on the basis of the advice of civil servants? While we may not want to scrutinise or criticise those decisions, no information is available to the House about why the changes should be made. Will he take on board what the Secretary of State has said and look again at what information is provided to the House so that we can base our decisions on more information than we have now?
John Penrose
I do take that on board, especially because I think that the hon. Gentleman was one of the last Ministers who had to deal with the issue of direct rule.
John Penrose
So I am giving the hon. Gentleman responsibilities that he never had to bear. Let me also mention to him that a Command Paper is currently available in the Library which gives a very detailed breakdown—it is well over an inch thick—of the way in which money has been spent in Northern Ireland during the financial year that is about to end. There is a huge amount of detail, but it is backward-looking. While it is helpful and, I am sure, welcome to all Members to ensure some degree of accountability, I think that all of us, including the Secretary of State, have agreed that we all hanker after a better process than this, but also that the fundamental and central problem is the lack of a functioning Executive in Stormont.
I was delighted to hear the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), clearly say that he did not think direct rule is justified at this stage. He is also right to say that, because of that and because of the shortcomings we have all been enunciating, there is a tariff for political failure at Stormont: I think that that was the phrase he used. The Chairman of the Committee quoted a reference to the “slow decay and stagnation” that is happening in Northern Ireland politics as a result, but rightly levelled the balance a little by referring to the restoration talks efforts made by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, and—again, rightly—was positive and full in his praise of both the Northern Ireland civil service and the NIO, and their unstinting efforts to do a professional job in an extremely difficult and increasingly challenging political environment.
Sir Mike Penning
Can I, in all fairness, challenge the Minister on the way he congratulated the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) in relation to direct rule? If direct rule is not the answer today, when will it be and, if it is not the answer soon, why?
John Penrose
A number of Members have said today that they would regard it as a last resort. I agree because we have to be incredibly careful about what we wish for here. We have to be extremely cautious about the notion of starting to take the drug of direct rule because it very swiftly leads to a very difficult and very precarious political position. I say to my right hon. Friend that there is a process laid out in primary legislation passed by this House—the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018—that says we have, first, five months and then, potentially renewable, a further five months in which to find a consensus and get an Executive re-established at Stormont. At that point, to answer his point about “If not now, when?” there are statutory obligations on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that will require decisions to be made at those various different waypoints, but it is extremely dangerous and extremely difficult for us all to prejudge, or indeed to wish that those talks, stuttering though they are, but attempted though they definitely are, should not be given enough time to come to a sensible conclusion. I think everybody has been clear that that is what we want them to do; we want them to be successful if they possibly can be.
The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), was of the same mind. He spoke about a paralysing political stalemate in Stormont that must not become the new normal, and I agree.
Lady Hermon
I am sure I am not the only one who blinked and drew breath when I heard the Minister use the words “the drug of direct rule.” Perhaps I misheard him, but I will give him the opportunity to pick a more appropriate noun to describe direct rule.
John Penrose
It was certainly not my intention to cause the hon. Lady to draw breath. The point I was trying to make is that direct rule is potentially extremely dangerous and can lead to a very difficult political situation if we are not all collectively very careful. It is not a step to be taken lightly, simply or frivolously at all.
Tony Lloyd
In agreeing with the Minister, it is probably worth pointing out that the last period of direct rule lasted five years. This was the total antithesis of the ambitions of the devolved Administration.
John Penrose
I strongly agree and I think there has been pretty much unanimous agreement across the House during this debate about that point.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Essentially, what the House understood by the Minister’s first remark and his reformulation is that short-term temptations can lead to situations that are adverse and undesirable.
John Penrose
Indeed.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) had a long list of local projects that are not happening and that he thinks could and should happen were there to be proper government led in Stormont, and so did the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson); he had a list of all sorts of missed opportunities—everything from mining to tourism was mentioned. Both of them had some interesting suggestions, which I will take away rather than react to now, about how we might perhaps exert more pressure through potentially changing rules in Stormont. I will treat them with the care with which they were offered, I am sure.
The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) was passionate in saying that Northern Ireland is on the cusp of a breakthrough—the economic performance and indeed the social cohesion in Northern Ireland are out-of-sight better than 10 or 20 years ago—but that it is being frustrated and that further progress could be made, but we are caught. I think he said that the governance of Northern Ireland is neither fish nor fowl—it is neither London nor local—and should this be solved, that would make a huge difference.
My opposite number, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), spent some time talking about important issues to do with public services—health transformation budgets, for example—and how that money could be used to make some of the changes, because they were already agreed in policy before the Stormont Executive changed. But she was also right to point out, as others have done, that the amount of transformation that can be done is limited by the political constraints that everybody here has been describing.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
On the issue of health transformation, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health has made it clear that £100 million went into health transformation funding last year and another £100 million will go in this year as a direct result of confidence and supply money. He has welcomed this greatly, because it gives us an opportunity to roll out multidisciplinary teams and other things that can actually save money. These are not insignificant amounts of money. They are substantial amounts that are going to transform the health service as a result of the confidence and supply deal.
John Penrose
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There is a significant transformation going on, and a significant amount of funds is going in to let that transformation happen, but it is also true to say that more transformation would be possible if there were political leadership as well. The civil service is limited not so much by the money at the moment; it is about the ability to take fresh policy decisions that would allow further progress to be made. That is the frustration under which we are all labouring during this Second Reading debate. On that basis, I plan to let us move on to consider the remaining stages of the Bill. I am delighted that there is cross-party consensus that it should proceed.
Karin Smyth
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. In my remarks, I specifically asked, given the progress that the Government made on the Lord Chief Justice’s proposals, whether the Minister would give us an answer on progress towards having a medical school as part of Ulster University. The project is not only time critical but critical to the future provision of training places for doctors, particularly, in Northern Ireland, which would help to reduce the locum bill. We would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.
John Penrose
I shall respond swiftly, as I do not want to hold up the rest of the process. The hon. Lady is right to say that she asked that specific question. Let me make two comments in response. First, the judicial changes are not a Westminster Government decision. They are taken, rightly, by independent judiciary in Northern Ireland. Secondly, her question on the medical school needs to be addressed as part of the city deal discussions that are currently getting under way, and I would be happy to discuss that with local people and, if necessary, with her as well. With that, I propose to do something unusual for a politician: stop talking and sit down.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Committee of the whole House (Order, this day).
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 5th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House amendments as at Tuesday 5 March 2019 (PDF) - (5 Mar 2019)
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I must inform the Committee that the Chairman of Ways and Means has selected amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). He has not selected the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), and he has not selected amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. It will, however, be in order on this occasion to refer to the subject matter of new clause 1 and amendment 1, which have not been selected.
Clause 1
Issue of sum out of the Consolidated Fund for the year ending 31 March 2019 and appropriation of that sum
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The First Deputy Chairman
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clauses 2 to 9 stand part.
Amendment 2, in schedule 2, page 13, line 7, after ‘offences’ insert—
‘except where such future prosecutions involve alleged offences under sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861’.
Schedules 1 to 4 be schedules to the Bill.
Karen Bradley
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship in this Committee, Dame Eleanor. As these matters were debated at length on Second Reading, I do not propose to detain the Committee any further.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to speak to amendment 2, which I tabled with my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), for St Helens North (Conor McGinn), for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) and for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield). We recognise that this legislation has been brought to the House at short notice, but we want to put the Secretary of State on notice that the concerns raised in the amendments will endure in every piece of legislation until the issues are resolved, because they speak to one of the first concerns that any Member of Parliament should have: the human rights of the people whom we represent. Amendment 2 seeks to recognise that this Government cannot pick and choose their responsibilities. On the one hand, they take full responsibility for expenditure in Northern Ireland but, on the other hand, they ignore human rights abuses and the suffering that they are causing to UK citizens.
The Bill authorises departmental expenditure to allow the continued delivery of public services in Northern Ireland in the absence of an Executive and the consequent inability of the Northern Ireland Assembly to pass legislation to provide the same rules. That Assembly has not sat for over two years, which is why this House passed emergency legislation last November. Section 4 of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 makes it clear that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is responsible for the guidelines relating to human rights in Northern Ireland. However, amendment 2 relates to the fact that she has failed to take any meaningful action to uphold that obligation and, indeed, has sought to deny it.
In a written ministerial statement on 30 January 2019, the Secretary of State said that
“the current absence of devolved Government in Northern Ireland should not dislodge the principle that it is for the devolved Administration to both legislate on, and ensure compliance with, human rights obligations in relation to such devolved matters.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2019; Vol. 653, c. 40WS.]
However, article 27 of the Vienna convention states:
“A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.”
In layman’s terms, that simply means that we cannot ignore our human rights responsibilities to the people of Northern Ireland and use devolution as a cover for doing so.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
We have heard from across the House today that a unified approach is the proper answer in Northern Ireland, but that cannot be achieved at this stage. However, when we asked for transparency around finance, we were unable to get it. With human rights, that obligation rests on each of us as an individual, and particularly on the Secretary of State, and it is not restricted by borders. It is a responsibility wherever we see a human rights abuse.
Stella Creasy
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who is a co-sponsor of amendment 2. That speaks to a concern that is shared by many, which is the picking and choosing for political expediency of what human rights means and what action the Government will take. However, we are not the only people to have identified that. Amendment 2 relates to the prosecution of people under sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and other august bodies have recognised the problems created by the Government’s approach to human rights.
On 23 February 2018, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women carried out an inquiry into abortion law in Northern Ireland under article 8 of the optional protocol to the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, to which the UK acceded in 2004—just as we are a party to the Vienna convention. The report stated that the
“delegation of government powers did not ‘negate the direct responsibility of the State party’s national or federal Government to fulfil its obligations to all women within its jurisdiction’. Thus, the United Kingdom cannot invoke its internal arrangements (the Belfast Agreement) to justify its failure to revise the laws of Northern Ireland that violate the Convention.”
The laws that violate that convention were written in this place, because the 1861 Act was written by the United Kingdom. It was written here, but it still has effect in Northern Ireland. It is the reason why, to this day, a woman who is raped in Northern Ireland and seeks a termination as a result would face a longer prison sentence than her attacker. That is the human rights abuse that we are talking about today, violated in this country and the responsibility of this Parliament.
Amendment 1 was not selected, but Madam Deputy Speaker said that it was in order to speak to it. We are concerned, not just about abortion and human rights abuses, but about human rights across the piece and the importance of equality to our values and to our country. Amendment 1 spoke to the same situation that arises as a result of our failure to give equal marriage to the people of Northern Ireland—a failure to treat people who are married as married under the law, not as civil partners but fully married, as anyone else would be. I am not married myself; I am sure that after today I might even get the odd proposal. [Interruption.] Well, a girl can live in hope. However, the proposal that I would really like to see the Secretary of State picking up on is represented in articles 8, 9, 12 and 14 of the European convention on human rights. Even the former Minister has noted that the prohibition on marriage in Northern Ireland is “simply not justifiable”. Just as with those laws on abortion, it is this Parliament legislating today that is perpetuating the prohibition on same-sex marriage for couples in Northern Ireland, even when those who are lawfully married in England and Wales visit or reside in Northern Ireland.
Martin Whitfield
Is not the real test of a politician their conduct—not when something is easy to do, but when it is hard? This may be a hard decision, but it is the honourable, right and historically correct decision to make.
Stella Creasy
Yet again I find myself in complete agreement with my hon. Friend, because that Vienna convention must mean something. The fact that we have signed those treaties gives rights to all our citizens—not rights to some of them when we need to do a deal with some other citizens to stay in power, but rights that should transcend party politics, rights that should mean something, rights that we should all be proud to uphold. Because we do not do so, our fellow UK citizens in Northern Ireland are treated as second-class citizens. Women are not allowed to access basic rights of control over their own bodies, and people are not allowed to love who they love and see that celebrated without fear or favour and equally.
It is because the Secretary of State has done nothing about those issues, and tries to deny her fundamental responsibility for upholding those rights on behalf of all UK citizens, especially in Northern Ireland, that we are in this position today, and that is where amendment 2 has come from. It is about the mess that has been created—about the fact that UK taxpayers’ money is being used to perpetuate those human rights abuses by funding prosecutions and defending claims that are having to be brought by Northern Irish citizens to uphold their rights—because this Government will not act. This is a very live issue.
Lady Hermon
May I ask the hon. Lady to take a few moments and reflect on the very significant Supreme Court decision in June 2018, in a case brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, and the very critical comments that the judges made about the lack of appropriate legislation in Northern Ireland? I think I am right in saying that the situation in relation to the abortion legislation in Northern Ireland in the cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality was described as “deeply unsatisfactory”. When Supreme Court judges describe such things as “deeply unsatisfactory”, this country will have to legislate at some stage to comply with that.
Stella Creasy
I thank the hon. Lady. I am only disappointed because I was sort of hoping for a proposal; but I completely agree with the point that she makes. Indeed, she prefigures something that I shall come on to. We are spending money because of our failure to tackle those human rights issues—money that could be going into public services in Northern Ireland, but instead will be spent upholding the situation that she describes. I want to come on to that, and what that practically means for the Secretary of State.
We know that cases are currently going through the courts as a direct result of this situation. In 2013, the mother of a 15-year-old was prosecuted under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 for procuring abortion pills for her under-age daughter. The mother was prosecuted following the appointment with her daughter and a GP. That decision is now being judicially reviewed, so there is a live case, which the UK Government will spend money to defend as a result of the provisions of the Bill before us.
Today, we know that the UK Government have been formally notified that A and B, a mother and daughter from Northern Ireland, are taking their battle to the European Court of Human Rights. They are challenging the refusal to allow women from Northern Ireland access to abortion services free of charge in England and have issued legal proceedings against the English Health Secretary. Six years ago, they were forced to raise £900 to travel from Northern Ireland to Manchester in order for B to be treated at a private clinic. I absolutely share the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) about the importance of value for money within our politics. On the public purse, the crucial thing in this case is that an offer was made to settle with the Government. There was an offer not to proceed with this kind of spending, but the Government have refused. They have ignored the requests to settle this case, even though the law has subsequently changed. That means that public money that could be going on public services in Northern Ireland will be spent contesting that case.
Martin Whitfield
When we look at the cases travelling through the courts and those we can anticipate are going to come forward, we see that there will be only one inevitable conclusion when the judgment comes out. What we have seen over the past few months is pure delay, which has cost money and drawn away from services in Northern Ireland. We know where this is going to end up and it would be better for us to make the change now, in control, and with credit being given where it is due, so that we can move forward and invest properly in Northern Ireland.
Stella Creasy
Again, I do not disagree. I believe that these are issues for the people of Northern Ireland, but I recognise that this situation arises in the first place because of antiquated legislation written in the United Kingdom, so it is right that this place takes responsibility for the antiquated legislation that is causing these human rights problems in Northern Ireland.
The trouble for me with all this is that I know that the Secretary of State agrees, because as she said to the Women and Equalities Committee last week, she agrees that the situation with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is untenable. She agrees that it is an error that the commission is not able to bring cases directly. Right now, because of her Government’s failure to act on these issues, we are in the position that it would take a rape victim coming to court and having to explain their situation to address the laws that we have.
The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is absolutely right when she points to that Supreme Court ruling, which is what should really matter today, because that is where that public-purse money is going. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission took the Government—our own Government—to court. How can we lecture on human rights around the world when our own Government are being taken to court? The Supreme Court ruled that the situation in Northern Ireland was “incompatible” with human rights; that it treated women—UK taxpayers—as “vehicles”; and that it was “untenable” and in need of “radical reconsideration”.
The Court stated:
“Those responsible for ensuring the compatibility of Northern Ireland law with the Convention rights will no doubt recognise and take account of these conclusions, at as early a time as possible, by considering whether and how to amend the law, in the light of the ongoing suffering being caused by it”.
That was June 2018, months and months ago—months of continued suffering for the people of Northern Ireland, and yes, in relation to today’s debate, months of continued expenditure from the public purse to keep these laws in place for women like Sarah Ewart, who went for a 19-week scan and was told that the baby she was carrying had a fatal defect, that the brain and skull had not developed properly and that it would inevitably die, either before it was born or moments after.
The horror about these laws is shown by the horror for Sarah Ewart and her family in the treatment that they then experienced, having had that devastating diagnosis. Mrs Ewart said that she was refused advice on how to seek a termination. When she asked about having an abortion at a hospital in Belfast, doctors informed her that it was not an option in Northern Ireland. When she inquired as to where she might be able to go to seek a termination elsewhere, they said they were not even able to give her any information to help her. They said their hands were tied: “We can’t tell you anything. We would be prosecuted if we give you that information.”
Some days later, having consulted as many people as she could and certain that hers was one of the rare and exceptional cases in which an abortion could be performed in Northern Ireland, Mrs Ewart met a second consultant. That woman banged her files on the desk and said:
“I’m not going to prison for anyone.”
That is the chilling effect of this situation on the human rights of the woman of Northern Ireland in 2019.
The High Court has told us that the situation is untenable. We know that the same egregious distress is caused by the situation around equal marriage. So when I see the Secretary of State saying that it is a devolved matter and trying to deny basic Vienna convention rights, I also see the mess we are in today with this legislation, whereby money will be wasted. There are rights that she should be upholding and acting to protect, but instead we will put money into prosecuting people—into raids and court cases. It is denying people their basic rights—rights that other courts will have to uphold. What a waste. What a waste of time, effort, money and, above all, dignity for the people of Northern Ireland.
These amendments and this debate are about the dignity of the people of Northern Ireland and about treating them as equal citizens of the United Kingdom. They are about not shirking our responsibility to those men and women to uphold their rights, not matter how uncomfortable that may be and no matter how difficult some in this Chamber may find it. The sight of Government-funded lawyers defending the denial of somebody’s right to love who they love must stop. The sight of public prosecutions of women trying to help other women have control over their own bodies—other Sarah Ewarts—has to stop.
The Secretary of State may tell me that the Bill is not the right vehicle to address these issues, or that they are all matters for devolution. What she has to tell me is how much longer the people of Northern Ireland will have to wait before their human rights are seen as equally important to the rights of the coalition. I put her on notice: she may not support our amendment, but we will not stop fighting for equality across the whole United Kingdom. I wager that history is on our side, not hers.
Sir Mike Penning
I say this with all due respect: I enjoyed the passionate speech of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I may not have agreed with every word, but frankly I agreed with the vast majority, even though I am a passionate believer in devolution.
I have sat in the Chamber for nearly five hours today, apart from the odd trip to powder my nose. I have intervened on a few Members, but I have made no speeches—I turned up five minutes into Second Reading, too late to speak. That is my fault and no one else’s, but I will try to make up for it now.
I have several points to make about the Bill, but there is one in particular that the hon. Lady might agree with. The first page of the Bill includes a compatibility statement:
“Secretary Karen Bradley has made the following statement under section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act 1998:
In my view the provisions of the Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”
I am not convinced that the provisions are compatible with convention rights, nor am I convinced that the Bill will do what we were sent here to do. Representation through taxation, the principle that Parliament stands for in this democracy of ours, was set out 900 years ago: we are supposed to look at how the taxpayer’s money is being spent. In passing a Bill because there is no devolved Assembly in Stormont, frankly we are offering a sop to Sinn Féin, which will not participate either in this Chamber or in the Stormont Assembly—that is why it has collapsed.
We cannot say that on the one hand we are willing to pass the Bill, but that on the other hand this is a devolved matter; I think that that is the hon. Lady’s point. This type of Bill will keep coming back—she certainly will. If we believe in devolution, in the Union of this country and in the rights of the people of Northern Ireland to be represented not only here but in their Assembly in Stormont, at some stage we will have to bite the bullet and say that enough is enough. If a political party is not willing to participate, we—the Parliament of the Union of this great nation of ours—will have to step up to the plate and do something about it.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Mike Penning
Will the right hon. Gentleman give me two seconds? I am in a flow.
I have raised the issue with shadow Front Benchers and my own—I was a Northern Ireland Minister for a considerable period—because we have to address it. Perhaps I will come back to that point after the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
The right hon. Gentleman puts forward the proposition that the only longer-term alternative to the current stalemate is direct rule. One understands that, but it has been argued today that the provisions of the Good Friday agreement and the concept of devolution are not sacrosanct and that they can be overridden. That is an interesting comment, but surely there is another solution. Of the five parties in a position to form a Government in Northern Ireland, four are prepared, on a cross-community basis, to form a Government without precondition. Might this Parliament stepping up to the mark finally lead us to recognise the need for democracy to move on in Northern Ireland, instead of a single faction being allowed to veto the people of Northern Ireland having their own Government?
Sir Mike Penning
I cannot disagree with a single word that my right hon. Friend has said. This cannot continue; we cannot sit in a situation where there is no way of looking properly at how civil servants are spending taxpayers’ money. That is not the principle of this democracy, and it is not the principle on which I was elected to this House. We must have a methodology. If this House voted to go forward with four parties instead of the five, somewhere along the line Sinn Féin would suddenly wake up and smell the coffee. But at the moment we are not challenging Sinn Féin. We are accepting that they have this veto. We are accepting that this House, in this great Union of ours, is not going to challenge the convention whereby Sinn Féin can say, “No, there is no devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland.”
Gavin Newlands
It is a pleasure, Mrs Laing, to see Renfrewshire represented in the Chair.
I rise to speak very briefly at this stage, although perhaps not quite as briefly as the Secretary of State. Despite some disagreement from the Northern Ireland branch of my fan club on the Benches behind me, I stated clearly on Second Reading the SNP’s view, at least, of the commensurate funding that Scotland would be able to receive as a result of the additional Northern Ireland budget allocation.
It should be noted that the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have just simultaneously debated, voted on and passed a motion calling on the Prime Minister to rule out no deal and to extend article 50. That is the first time that this has happened in the history of devolution. But I digress—I just wanted to put that on the record.
I made my point, notwithstanding the comments by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), on the clear and distinct issues present in Northern Ireland, which I wholly accept. But no Scottish MP worth their salt, or Scottish Secretary for that matter, would accept this situation without at least trying to ensure that Scotland received proportionate funding, and it is not cheap to attempt to do so. I outlined my reasoning at length on Second Reading, so I will curtail my remarks at this stage. Suffice it to say that the extra funds announced for this budget, which would amount to £400 million if Barnettised, could amount to 4,100 police officers, 4,500 nurses and 4,400 junior doctors. At this time when the Scottish Government are doubling childcare funding, an extra 5,000-plus nursery teachers could be paid for by Barnett consequentials from all the £140 million, or an entire borders railway with the £106 million change. Or, taken in the round, the extra £3.4 billion flowing from the DUP’s confidence and supply agreement, in addition to the new moneys, could be transformational. It could fund another three Aberdeen bypasses or nearly three additional Queensferry crossings, should we ever need such things.
Sammy Wilson
I am just wondering why so many people would want to bypass Aberdeen that it needs three roads round it.
Gavin Newlands
I pass no comment on Aberdeen, but this road has been a long time coming. The Scottish Government have just ordered it; thankfully there was an opportunity to say that. Sadly, even though the £3.4 billion could cover the cost of almost three Queensferry crossings, it would not even cover the cost of two Chris Graylings.
Clearly, we are unable to pursue this issue any further during the passage of this Bill, but the Scottish Secretary, the Chancellor and the Northern Ireland Secretary can rest assured that pursue it we will.
Tony Lloyd
This has been an interesting debate so far. I will not name the hon. Members, but some unfortunate references have been made to civil servants in the Northern Ireland Office. I deplore those remarks. I deplore remarks about people who have no capacity in this House to answer for themselves. I deplore the remarks for another reason. Whatever people think about the institution of the Northern Ireland Office, ultimately it is politicians—I make no criticism of politicians when I say this—who make the decisions. Civil servants are there to advise and implement. I want to put that on the record, because it is important that the House knows, and in particular that those who work for us know, that those criticisms are not a uniform view of their behaviour.
Emma Little Pengelly
I know that things can be said, and there is a range of views, but I think that I can certainly speak for everybody on the DUP Benches when I say that over the last number of years, our civil servants in Northern Ireland and across have been working incredibly hard in very difficult circumstances. I can say that because I see it on a week-to-week basis—I wish it was a day-to-day basis, but I am stuck over here most of the time—because my husband is a senior civil servant. I think I speak for us all when I say that we recognise the incredible, hard work that they have done under difficult circumstances, and we applaud them for that.
Tony Lloyd
I strongly thank the hon. Lady for her helpful remarks, which correct the record.
I thought that giving a direct answer to the question posed by the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) was the direct answer. I am not quite sure what more I can do to amplify no, when no means no. Nevertheless, I am always happy to continue to debate these issues. This debate, by its nature, is not necessarily the most appropriate time, but we will continue the conversation anywhere, any time, within reason.
Importantly, I want to refer to the very imaginative amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead said that he agreed with nearly every word she uttered; I agree with every word. It is important to say that, because there are issues of practical humanity involved. I have met Sarah Ewart and other women from Northern Ireland who have sought the safe, legal abortion that women in the rest of the United Kingdom hopefully take for granted, whatever criticisms we make of our health service. That is really important, because the devastation caused to people’s lives by their inability to access things that are taken for granted elsewhere ought to be brought to a conclusion.
People have different views. I am well aware that people in this Chamber have different views on the issues of equal marriage and abortion, but these are basic issues of human rights. It is right and proper that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow has raised these issues tonight, because they need airing.
I will not repeat everything that my hon. Friend said, but any woman who loses a wanted baby is already part of an individual tragedy and a familial tragedy, and many people in this House will know that from their personal experience. For a woman who conceives in hope but finds that the baby she conceives is born, sadly, to die is an immense tragedy. For that to then be compounded by an inability to seek the help and basic guidance that I hope members of my family and people living in the rest of the United Kingdom take for granted is not a tragedy; it is a disgrace. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.
There is an irony in this, as the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) pointed out. Our Supreme Court’s decision was interesting. It was not a judgment, because the Court was not capable of making a judgment, but its analysis and recommendation was absolutely unambiguous on where the law stands. Nobody can doubt what the Supreme Court said. However, the odd thing is that the Supreme Court’s judgment was a narrow one. It said in that case that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission had no competence to take the case forward. Because it was taken on behalf of a real human being, it now falls back on that individual to refight the case through the lower courts, with all the time that will take and all the personal trauma it will cause. In the meantime, many other women will, of course, be denied access to safe and legal abortions that would be available anywhere else.
Ian Paisley
I appreciate the point the shadow Secretary of State is making, and we respect the difference that exists on those views. Will he confirm that the views he has expressed are diametrically opposed to those of his sister party in Northern Ireland and to many members of the Social Democratic and Labour party?
Tony Lloyd
I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that this does not obviate the absolute necessity for this House to recognise that, whatever people’s views, we have to look at our obligations under the European convention on human rights. We have to take that on board: human rights are the human rights of a person in North Antrim just as much as they are of someone in my constituency of Rochdale in the north end of Greater Manchester.
Let me also say that, ultimately, I would of course sooner that this was done in Stormont. Of course we would sooner see Stormont Members take it forward. In the meantime, however, it is not Stormont or Northern Ireland that is in breach of its treaty obligations, but the United Kingdom. Because it is the United Kingdom, the obligation is on this UK Parliament to be the one that now resolves the issue.
I will not go on at any greater length, but I hope I have made the Labour party position very clear. We would support any action in this Chamber to resolve the two issues of equal marriage and of the safe and equal abortion for women in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Secretary of State, emboldened by that commitment, will recognise that justice can now be served only by moving forward to prevent the experiences of the Sarah Ewarts of this world, to prevent a mother facing potential criminalisation because she wants to help her daughter, to help women who try to obtain the morning-after pill and are under investigation by the PSNI and to move our world forward and put those in Northern Ireland in the same position as I would expect for my own constituents.
Karen Bradley
This has been an interesting debate with some passionately held views clearly expressed.
Let me touch briefly on the comments made by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), who talked about the moneys allocated in the written ministerial statement. Clearly, we are not voting on those today; we are voting on the vote on account. Let us be very clear what the Bill is. He needs to recognise the unique pressure that Northern Ireland faces, particularly because of the lack of Ministers for more than two years. These matters need to be resolved, but they need to be resolved in Stormont by a devolved Executive dealing with these budgetary pressures. I am sure that he will understand why the written ministerial statement included the additional money—it was because of the unique pressures faced by Northern Ireland.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) was thoughtful, as always, and passionate about the matters he cares so desperately about. I know of his support for our veterans and retired police officers who served in Northern Ireland during the troubles, and he has campaigned for them long and hard for many years. I assure him that I want the situation to change. I want things to be different, because none of us wants the current situation to continue. That is why we have consulted on how we can best take forward legislation in this place, as agreed in the Stormont House agreement, which he will know so well having served in Northern Ireland just before that took place. Of course, the Stormont House agreement happened when my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, was a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office.
We want to take that work forward, and I would very much like to work with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead on the responses to the consultation. We have had more than 17,000, and we are still working our way through some traumatic, difficult and individual responses. I would like to work with him personally to get his expertise and wisdom fed into the process so that we can ensure that those brave service personnel and retired police officers who made sure that peace was possible are treated with the dignity they so rightly deserve.
I turn now to amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who told me that she has put me on notice. I do not think it is the first time she has done so, and I am sure that it will not be the last. I know how hard she campaigns on this issue and how much she cares about it. We have debates on it and I will not rehearse the conversations we have had. She knows my personal position, but she also, I know, understands the constitutional situation and that what we all want to see is a restored Government in Stormont that can then take forward the measures that she has talked about and those brought to the Supreme Court when the Executive were taken to court.
The shadow Secretary of State talked about the UK Government. Clearly, legally the UK Government are always the defendant in such cases. We are the member state that is signed up to the treaties. However, it was the position of the laws of Northern Ireland as set out by the Executive and the Assembly that was challenged following the 2016 vote when a push to change the law on fatal foetal abnormality, rape and incest was defeated in the Assembly, with the majority of the then Assembly Members voting against that change.
The shadow Secretary of State also talked about the legal standing of the Human Rights Commission, and I have said on the record on a number of occasions that what came out from the Supreme Court judgment was an anomaly in the law that nobody knew was there. In 1998, when the Northern Ireland Act was passed and the Commission was established, everyone believed it had the same legal standing as commissions in other parts of the United Kingdom that were established at around the same time as devolution happened around the UK. Clearly, that is not the case and steps therefore need to be taken to address that point. I agree that we do not want women who are victims of the situation having to come to court and make the case themselves.
Gavin Robinson
Just on that brief point, which I raised with the Secretary of State last week: in the interests of clarity, transparency and the scrutiny that the Chair of the Select Committee has asked for, will the Secretary of State provide details, after this evening, to confirm the point about an error in the grounding legislation for the Human Rights Commission? She knows that in Northern Ireland, unlike in England and Wales, we have a separated Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and Human Rights Commission, and that the Equality Commission does have standing. Will she provide detail and clarity to confirm the position she has taken, which is that it is an error in the law?
Karen Bradley
I will of course be very happy to provide the hon. Gentleman with more information on that point. Everybody believed that the Human Rights Commission had legal standing. The HRC took the case believing it had legal standing, but it was only during the Supreme Court judgment that that point was clarified. I am very happy to share the information on that point with him.
Returning to the point raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow about the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 and the amendment to section 4 that she pressed to a vote and that this House accepted late last year, clearly the Act cannot change the law in Northern Ireland. The guidance I have issued on what I expect the Northern Ireland Office to do is very clear, but it cannot in itself change the law. I do not have the power to do that through that Act of Parliament. However, I do keep under review the obligations we have on the matter.
I want to be very clear and to state very clearly that the UK Government remain committed to their obligations under international law, including the European convention on human rights. It is important to recognise that it is for the devolved Administrations across the whole UK to ensure that their domestic laws and actions are compliant. The observance and implementation of international obligations, and obligations under the European convention on human rights, so far as they are otherwise within the competence of the Assembly, are matters for the Northern Ireland Assembly.
If I can make one final important point, I support the principle of the amendment on same-sex marriage, which was not selected today, and I have been clear on the record that I want changes to the legislation relating to abortion in Northern Ireland. However, those are matters for a restored Executive. We want a restored Executive to progress legislation on that issue as one of the first things they do.
Maria Caulfield
Given that this is the second year that this place is bringing forward a Northern Ireland budget Bill—there is another Northern Ireland Bill tomorrow—and given that the debates we have had with the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and on the veterans issues raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), does the Secretary of State not think that passing all the stages of a Bill in one day does a disservice to the people of Northern Ireland? We need proper scrutiny of the Bill through the normal process that any other Bill would have.
Karen Bradley
What we are doing today is effectively the estimates process. The moneys we are voting on today have all been voted for and properly scrutinised in this House. We are confirming the departmental spending in 2018-19, so for this current financial year. That spending was done on a proper statutory basis, with the moneys having been properly voted through this place and properly scrutinised in this place in terms of the block grant given to the Northern Ireland Office. What would happen normally is that the Northern Ireland Assembly would hold an estimates day, which would probably be about the same length of time. At the end of it, it would vote on the estimates. We are therefore effectively doing the same thing, but we have to do it through primary legislation because we are unable to do it in any other way in the absence of the Assembly sitting.
I know that that is not satisfactory and I know it does not feel right to those of us who are used to the full scrutiny of Bills, but I gently say that we are probably giving the Bill about the same amount of time it would have had in the Assembly if it was sitting. This is a very technical Bill. It is about making sure we agree that the spending that has already happened has been done on the proper legislative statutory footing and that we agree that more spending can take place next year without going into any further details about the allocations, merely that we accept that 70% of prior year spending can be spent by the Department without the need for further legislation. I hope that clarifies the point further.
Tony Lloyd
The Secretary of State is touching on an important point. Of course, the retrospective nature of the Bill and the estimates comparison are significant. With other departmental budgets that come through the House, there are different mechanisms of scrutiny, which do not apply here. The Secretary of State has heard the profound argument from both sides of the House that if this happens in the future—like her, I hope it does not—we should begin to think about a better way of separating the Second Reading process and the detailed scrutiny.
Karen Bradley
I absolutely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I gently say that this is a very technical Bill that is putting spending that has already happened on a statutory basis. It is about money that has been scrutinised in this House, which we have voted to be allocated to Northern Ireland in previous debates. We are talking about putting the decisions that civil servants took and the money that we have agreed that they can spend on a proper statutory basis. I absolutely understand the frustrations about a lack of scrutiny—I want more scrutiny. However, the right, constitutional way to do that—the way this House has agreed we should do that—is to have an Assembly and Executive sitting in Stormont doing the appropriate scrutiny.
I return to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. I know how strongly she feels about this issue, and I know that she wants to see change, but this is not the Bill to do it in. This is a technical Bill. She wants success in what she is trying to achieve, and I therefore urge her to withdraw the amendment.
Stella Creasy
The Secretary of State, by refusing to recognise her responsibility to uphold the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland, is creating a situation by which public money will potentially be spent on cases like the one that Sarah Ewart was involved in. What is her message to Sarah Ewart and all the other women she is letting down by refusing to stand up for their human rights?
Karen Bradley
I do not accept what the hon. Lady said. We have appropriate and proper separation of the judiciary and Parliament. The prosecuting services in Northern Ireland, the police and others must decide what investigations they undertake, based on the law as it stands. Her concerns are with the law, and I understand that. I very gently say to her that I and the UK Government are committed to all our obligations under international law, including the European convention on human rights. It is for the politicians whom the people of Northern Ireland elected to do the right thing by those people. I understand how strongly the hon. Lady feels about this issue, but this is not the right vehicle for what she wants to do. I urge her to withdraw the amendment.
Stella Creasy
I recognise that this is a spending Bill and is not the right place for this, but I want to put the Secretary of State on notice that until she recognises her responsibly for human rights, this House will take every single opportunity to speak up for the Sarah Ewarts of Northern Ireland. She clearly will not, but we will.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 2 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedules 1 to 4 agreed to.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Third Reading
Karen Bradley
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I will keep my remarks to a minimum, as we have had a long day and considerable debate on the matters raised. We have heard some very passionate and heartfelt contributions from right hon. and hon. Members. I thank them all for their contributions. I also thank the Minister and the Whips for their work, the Opposition and SNP spokespeople and all the officials who helped to put the Bill together.
This is not something any of us wished to do again. We want to see a devolved Government in Stormont because many of the matters raised today should rightly be dealt with by politicians elected by the people of Northern Ireland—that is what we want to see—and I very much hope that I will not be back doing a budget Bill again for Northern Ireland. That said, I am grateful that the House has supported the Bill so far and I hope that it will now support its Third Reading.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I place on the record our appreciation of the Secretary of State, her officials and the Minister for their co-operation in discussing the detail of the Bill and our appreciation for the additional funding, which is greatly needed to address issues in Northern Ireland.
I echo the comments of the Secretary of State. DUP Members sincerely hope that this evening will be the last time the House will need to deal on this temporary basis with the budget for Northern Ireland. We truly hope that by this time next year we will have a functioning devolved Government and Assembly that can do the job, provide the scrutiny and bring forward proposals for public expenditure in Northern Ireland. We agree that this is not a desirable way to do things—it is not our wish that it should happen this way—but we appreciate the time the House has devoted to it. I wish we had more time for scrutiny, but we understand why we are where we are. The DUP is committed to working towards the restoration of devolved government. The sooner it happens the better.
Tony Lloyd
Some of the principles in this debate do not divide the House. Some are clearly matters of enormous importance. What has come through time and again is that the process of examining the competence of the budgetary process is not written into the procedures of the House, and I urge the Secretary of State to think about how we can make accountability and transparency more efficient, even in this coming year, because there will be further stages of the budgetary process for 2019-20. That is my first point.
Secondly, while I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for not pressing her amendment, I think that she raised an enormously important issue. Let me say gently to the Secretary of State—I hope she will take this on board—that at present the remedy for the United Kingdom’s failure to honour its obligations lies with the United Kingdom Government, and it is the United Kingdom Government who must search for that remedy.
My final point concerns something on which the whole House is agreed. The people who are being let down by the lack of a Stormont Assembly are not the people of Rochdale or the people of the Secretary of State’s Staffordshire Moorlands constituency, but, ultimately, the people of Northern Ireland. With that in mind, I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that a real effort and a real emphasis are directed towards all-party talks to bring that situation to a conclusion.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill
Wednesday 6th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House amendments as at Tuesday 5 March 2019 (PDF) - (5 Mar 2019)
Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 12th March 2019
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2019 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House amendments as at Tuesday 5 March 2019 (PDF) - (5 Mar 2019)