Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Kyle

2nd reading
Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for that intervention from the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and I am grateful for the fact that his Committee, or the majority of it, made it to Northern Ireland last week, while the shadow Foreign Secretary and I were snowed in. I know that some members of the Committee were struggling to get there. I am pleased that he did and that the Committee was able to complete its inquiries.

We have six hours of protected time here today, but it would take six hours to prosecute what landed us in this situation. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct —as is the Minister—to say that the best way to move forward from this particular moment in time is to have Stormont, and devolution, up and running, carrying out the required scrutiny of public services and with long-term strategic planning and political oversight and processes also up and running. However, I remind him and others, in fairness to those in the DUP, that they were raising these concerns about the protocol from a position within a devolved Administration long before they withdrew the Executive and then again failed to appoint a Speaker last year. There was a fantastic six-month window of opportunity in which to resolve these issues before the Executive collapsed, and that is the missed opportunity that has led us down the path on which we find ourselves today. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct to say that we need to get the institutions up and running, but I cannot forgive the negligence that allowed this state of affairs to emerge in the first place—and that negligence, I am afraid, started here, and in Whitehall and Downing Street.

This Bill will legally be considered a Northern Ireland Assembly Budget Act, but it serves only as a sticking plaster until the Assembly returns. If we keep passing Budgets for Northern Ireland in this way, the problems facing public services will keep building. We are also asking a huge amount of the civil servants in Northern Ireland who are now effectively running Departments. They are the ones who will have to make the choices about where the savings that this Budget requires can be found.

I want to raise the issue of education again, as it is the Northern Ireland Education Department of which this Budget is asking the most. I am sure that everyone here follows the reporting of BBC Northern Ireland. Last week, its education correspondent Robbie Meredith revealed that the Education Authority, the body that delivers school transport, meals, maintenance and support for special educational needs, is struggling to find £110 million of savings. In the authority’s view,

“The majority of the options available to save £110m in less than three months of the remaining current financial year would lead to highly unacceptable and detrimental risks to our children and young people and therefore could not be recommended for implementation.”

The fact that these discussions are happening behind closed doors and not receiving the attention they deserve from politicians shows that something has gone very wrong. It is my view that education is the greatest way of levelling up any part of our country, so any cuts should receive so much more scrutiny than is available here today.

To sum up, we need to accept the need for this Bill to allow public services to keep functioning for this present financial year. This process, however, is unsatisfactory for everybody across Northern Ireland. As the Secretary of State has said, he will start preparing a Budget for next year. I would welcome discussions with him about how to improve the scrutiny of taxpayers’ money. Of course, the best solution would be that Stormont is restored and that local representatives can agree on a Budget with political accountability. I would welcome an update from the Minister on progress on addressing the issues that are holding that back.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Kyle

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I echo the Secretary of State’s comments in congratulating everybody who has taken part in our debates and thanking them for their commitment to all stages of this Bill. We have had vigorous and sometimes difficult conversations, and we have heard some heartfelt explanations of how these issues have touched so many people’s lives.

However, the grinding reality is that, following Second Reading and the hours in Committee, the Bill still has no support from any Northern Ireland party, and it still has no support from any victims group in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, a statutory body established as part of the Good Friday agreement, says the Bill is still unlikely to be compliant with human rights law. How can Ministers bring forward a Bill that fails stakeholders so comprehensively?

The Opposition have been responsible in trying hard to propose workable solutions. I hope Ministers will acknowledge that even when, last Wednesday, the Government could not carry the Committee of the whole House on a key amendment, we acted responsibly and worked constructively to try to solve that challenge with the workable manuscript amendments that are now part of the Bill.

Even though we have done our best to improve the Bill, we cannot agree with it as it stands on Third Reading. Our concerns are simply fundamental. The amnesty that the Bill gives to those who committed crimes during the troubles is too easy to earn. Amnesty is set above investigations, and the investigations are downgraded to reviews. Most fundamentally of all, the Bill gives more rights to people who committed crime during the troubles than it does to their victims. For those reasons, we will be opposing it on Third Reading.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call SNP spokesperson Richard Thomson.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Kyle

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have informed the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland of my intention to raise this point of order. In July last year, he released a Command Paper on the troubles in Northern Ireland and the related legacy issues. In his statement to the House, he said that he would be

“introducing legislation by the end of the autumn”,—[Official Report, 14 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 390.]

but no legislation came forward. At the last oral questions, just before Christmas, I asked him where the legislation was and he replied:

“We have not had pauses”.—[Official Report, 8 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 366.]

This week, a Government briefing to the PoliticsHome website about that legislation said that

“a government source told PoliticsHome that they needed more time to ‘get it right’ and that the legislation might not make it onto the statute books until late spring or early summer.”

That strikes me as a clear breach of the ministerial code, which is clear in its intent. Ministers should talk about legislation and how legislation will be handled in this place by talking to this place in an oral or written statement, preferably an oral one so that we can cross-examine it at the Dispatch Box.

Can you confirm, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether you or Mr Speaker have been informed of any intentions for that legislation? If not, it is a discourtesy to Mr Speaker, to the House and certainly to all people in Northern Ireland, for whom anxiety has been provoked by talk of the legislation.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. He raises a number of issues. Decisions about when to make written or oral statements are obviously for the Government rather than the Speaker, but as he will know, Mr Speaker has repeatedly made it clear that substantial policy announcements should be made first to the House. I would expect the Government to observe that in relation to this important issue.

With regard to breaches of the ministerial code, if the hon. Gentleman wished to raise that, it would obviously be a matter for the Cabinet Office. I will ensure that Mr Speaker is aware of his point about possible changes to policy, but I hope that the Government Front-Bench team have heard that and will feed it back to the Northern Ireland Office.