Leaving the EU: Funding for Northern Ireland

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effect of the UK exiting the EU on EU funding for Northern Ireland.

I am very pleased to have secured this debate, Mr Hollobone. I welcome the fact that the Minister is here to respond on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office and that the shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), is here. This is a momentous day in the history of the European Union; the declaration made—I am very glad to say—by the Supreme Court will enable parliamentary sovereignty to reign on this issue. That shows how important Parliament is in this matter.

I am here today to represent the majority of voters in South Down—67%—who voted to remain within the European Union, and the majority of voters in Northern Ireland—56%—who voted to remain. They do not want to see our local economy sacrificed to appease the anti-EU agendas of those with no connection to or no interest in Northern Ireland. I also rise to correct the glib “it’ll be all right on the night” hand-waving that some Ministers have offered when asked about the plan for Northern Ireland post-Brexit.

I mean no disrespect to the Minister responding to this debate when I say that some other Ministers, particularly from the Treasury, seem to have been so excited by the prospect of leaving the EU that they have neglected to familiarise themselves with the complex realities now facing the island of Ireland as a result of Brexit. I hope that highlighting the unique importance of EU funding to Northern Ireland will sharpen the Government’s thinking about precisely what their negotiating goals for Northern Ireland should be. I believe it to be of particular importance following the failure of Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist party to maintain an Executive who can represent Northern Ireland’s needs to the Prime Minister directly.

The European Union has been responsible for billions in investment in Northern Ireland over the past two decades—well in excess of what it would have received from ordinary Barnett formula consequentials. In the spirit of not re-fighting the referendum, I will not inundate those here with statistics on how much money the EU has provided over the years, although there are many. However, in the east border region alone, where my constituency is located, through Interreg VA, the EU is currently sponsoring projects to the value of €43.4 million, including €9.7 million for protected habitats and €15.9 million for a project intended to increase the proportion of small and medium-sized businesses working in cross-border research and reconciliation. In total, Northern Ireland was expected to draw down €3.5 billion in the period 2014 to 2020, including PEACE funding, Interreg funding and agricultural subsidies.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I hope that I have not stopped the hon. Lady in mid-flow. Does she accept that, according to all the analyses, by 2020 Northern Ireland would have become a net contributor to the EU and that the Westminster Government have already committed to ensuring that any EU-funded project will be honoured by them?

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[Ms Ritchie]

I do not agree with that contention. The hon. Gentleman should take on board that there was considerable cross-border funding, which is what I was referring to when speaking about PEACE funding and Interreg funding. As the name implies, PEACE funding comes from a special fund established at the European level to assist Northern Ireland with the legacy of the troubles. In fact, if I cast my memory back, the former Member for Foyle, John Hume, along with Dr Paisley and Mr Nicholson, a current MEP for Northern Ireland, came together with Jacques Delors to establish the PEACE funds for Northern Ireland.

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

It is good to hear the hon. Lady raising this debate, but does she agree that a lot of funding from Europe that will stop in 2020 helps us on cross-border issues that bring communities together, whether they involve Donegal working with Londonderry or Newry down on the border? It is absolutely vital to the peace process.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. I have mentioned the work of the east border region, of which South Down and its constituency council are part. Like other cross-border bodies, such as the Irish Central Border Area Network, those bodies bring people from north and south to work together effectively according to the issues that unite them rather than those that divide them. EU funding has been vital to that work.

I will make a little progress. I know that the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who is sitting beside me, is anxious to intervene, but I will let him do so by and by. PEACE funding has helped support 6,000 victims and survivors through the Victims and Survivors Service. It has helped involve 350 schools in integrating education, meaning that 144,000 students and 2,100 teachers have participated in classrooms that mix children from nationalist and Unionist backgrounds. It helps fund work essential to building a truly shared society in Northern Ireland.

As an MP for a primarily rural constituency, I cannot fail to mention the £283 million a year that the EU has provided to our agricultural sector, which the Ulster Farmers Union has described as essential. Within Northern Ireland, EU rural development programmes have allocated €194 million to agri-environment-climate measures and €79 million to support areas facing natural constraints. All that has been put at risk by Brexit and those who supported it.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim)(DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady confirm for the House that she fully understands that all the largesse being spoken about—I welcome that investment in Northern Ireland—is UK taxpayer money anyway?

[Ms Ritchie]

I do not necessarily agree. Money is pooled. It is about the pooling of sovereignty and moneys in the European Union, so it involves money from other European Union countries. I caution Members that there is absolutely no guarantee that we will get equivalent funding from the Treasury post-2020. Unfortunately, the Chancellor’s assurance that all EU funding will be guaranteed during the Brexit process is of little reassurance to the people of Northern Ireland.

First, we must remember that that assurance is merely political and could be reversed with a simple press release from No. 10. Nor would it be the first financial promise broken in the wake of Brexit. We all remember those red buses that said “£350 million for the NHS”, which disappeared like snow off the ditches before the final votes were even tallied. The fundamental issue for Northern Ireland is that the promise to match EU funding is grounded in the premise that we can break away from our important trading partners without hurting our already fragile economy.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not also recognise that a fundamental economic issue for Northern Ireland is rebalancing the economy away from the public sector? Brexit provides an opportunity for a more outward-looking export-based economy and will help rebalance it.

[Ms Ritchie]

Although I agree that we need to rebalance the economy in Northern Ireland, I do not think that it is valid to argue that we should do so by denying our access to 27 European countries’ important export markets, particularly at a time when it is difficult to secure export markets in south-east Asia.

I will not mince words or shy away from predicting the obvious: post-Brexit, the British Government will simply not be able to carry on as if it were business as usual. Despite the promises of the leave campaign, the only certainty that I foresee in the years post-Brexit is more and greater austerity as exporters, importers and employers take the hit of new tariffs and restrictions. The Chancellor indicated as much in a recent interview with the German media in which he made it clear that outside the single market, Britain will have to move away from the European social model to become something entirely different.

Are we really expected to believe that in the new social model that the Government are preparing, Northern Ireland’s structural and infrastructural funding will not be cut further? That is one absurdity too many, and the public in Northern Ireland will never buy it. The only way to protect PEACE and Interreg funding is to retain Northern Ireland’s eligibility for EU funding, whether in the north’s own right or by virtue of our relationship with the Irish Government. Even if funding could be guaranteed, I still want to impress on the Minister the importance of funding coming not only from the Irish or British Governments, but from the EU.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

My hon. Friend is right to emphasise that EU funding for Northern Ireland is significant not only in terms of the quantum but in terms of the priorities and purposes that it is used for, because it has been able to reach parts and sectors that otherwise might not have been supported.

On the north-south issues, does my hon. Friend recognise that the north-south bodies established after the Good Friday agreement by and large discharge and dispense much of European funding, and that post-Brexit they will have to be considered for replacement? That will open up a significant element in the negotiations that are likely after the election.

[Ms Ritchie]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very helpful and erudite intervention. He is absolutely right, because the Good Friday agreement was high-wired not only into human rights provisions but into membership and continued membership of the European Union. North-south bodies—I can think of Tourism Ireland, which is a special EU programme body, or Interrail Ireland—could be hollowed out as a result of Brexit, thereby dismantling not only those very bodies but the processes through which funding can be dispersed.

That funding comes directly from the EU. It has brought much wealth, much income and much upgrade to our local community sector and our local infrastructure; indeed, it has been vital in regard to infrastructure. The important point is that everybody works together, right across the community, for the benefit of all. That has been one of the compelling imperatives of the European Union’s involvement in the north of Ireland.

All these issues must be stabilised and joined up into a wider strategy that has buy-in from the Executive and society. Also, and again I say this with no disrespect to the capability of Front-Bench Ministers, no British Government—regardless of the size of their majority—will be able to provide Northern Ireland with the same level of political dependability as the EU can. Policy can change quickly here and commitments made by one Chancellor today can be scrapped by another Chancellor.

We need only observe how quickly British Government orthodoxy on the benefits of the EU has transformed into British Government orthodoxy on the UK’s need to enter the global market alone. We heard some of that today, in the statement by the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, and we have heard it for the last seven or eight months in this House. That kind of weathervane politics might be sustainable for a wealthy region such as the south-east, where a resilient private sector is well established and there is less difficulty in securing overseas investment, but in Northern Ireland, alas, both local businesses and international investors need to know that when a programme says it will run until 2020, in reality it will run until 2020.

In the last decade, foreign direct investment has been a great success story for Northern Ireland and our economy is beginning to reap the benefits. The Government should be under no illusions: that has been possible because of EU funding, its role in supporting many communities, and in many cases by the EU financially underwriting the process of regeneration. I have first-hand knowledge of that as a former Minister for Social Development with direct responsibility for urban regeneration, which relied on a complement of European funding. An example of that regeneration was the Peace bridge in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan).

A vote of confidence in Northern Ireland from the EU has led to votes of confidence from businesses across the world; be in no doubt about that. However, even if funding from the Treasury could match EU funding, both in scale and in reliability, there would still be questions about how the character of the projects being supported would change post-Brexit, because one of the stated aims of Interreg funding is to minimise the impact of economic and social borders within the European community. That is of huge importance to border areas such as South Down, which is in the county of Down, where decades of neglect by policy makers locked communities out of their fair share of economic progress.

I just need to look at what is happening with the southern relief road in Newry, which carries a lot of cross-border vehicular traffic from Warrenpoint port. That port is the fifth largest on the island of Ireland, one of the biggest ports in the UK and a prominent member of the British Ports Association. Warrenpoint exports and imports, and 46% of what it does comes from the south of Ireland and goes there. That process relies on European funding and so will the southern relief road, which is essential to get round the bottleneck of Newry, because that relief road is a Trans-European Transport Network.

A similar tourist project that will rely on European funding—indeed, it had already received European funding through Interreg—is the Narrow Water bridge project, an infrastructural project that brought communities in South Down and in County Louth together, as part of the peace dividend.

Outside the EU and with a British Government potentially relying on the votes of my Unionist colleagues to the right for support in the Commons, can we really be assured that future investment in the north will have the same ethos of cross-border integration? How will the increasing number of cross-border trade organisations continue to function? Does it mean the end for effective examples of co-operation, such as Tourism Ireland? That is why the European Union is important, because it is a “non-aligned” source of funding in Northern Ireland.

EU funding weakens those who would further divide the people of the north and strengthens those working towards integration and reconciliation. That has clearly been the value of Interreg and PEACE funding. Perhaps it also explains why the political parties of Northern Ireland took the positions they did ahead of the referendum. Ultimately, given that none of the Government’s 12 stated Brexit goals are incompatible with retaining the EU’s funding for Northern Ireland, why risk jeopardising the north’s economic regeneration by shifting the tectonic plates that it is founded on?

Recognising Northern Ireland’s unique constitutional settlement and the importance of the EU to that settlement would not require the British Government to compromise any commitments on either Brexit or the Union. Rather, recognition of the north’s unique constitutional position would serve as fulfilment of the principle of consent—a principle that the British Government accepted, along with the Irish Government, when all the parties in the north, except the Democratic Unionist party, signed up to the Good Friday agreement.

I am an Irish nationalist and I make no apologies for that. However, even as an Irish nationalist, I do not wish to see questions of identity in the north being further clouded and troubled by the injection of a new European dimension. Indeed, if the Prime Minister really is as committed to the Union as she claims, one must question why her Government would make the Unionist community in the north choose between their link with Britain and their membership of the world’s largest economic bloc.

The British Government must engage urgently with the Irish Government on establishing an arrangement whereby the north can maintain some form of that associate special status membership of the European Union. Ideally, trilateral work would occur, involving both Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive—if we had one—before article 50 is triggered, so that we could go to the rest of the EU with a concrete plan to preserve Northern Ireland’s special status. Given the EU’s historic support for the peace process, and the pride that Brussels rightly takes in its role in helping to bring about peace, I can only predict that such a measured plan would be well received.

The arbitrary timetable imposed by the British Prime Minister may not allow enough time for such a plan to be developed before article 50 is triggered, especially in light of the DUP and Sinn Féin collapsing the Assembly. Nevertheless, that is no excuse for the trilateral work to be put off for any longer.

I do not expect the Minister who is here today to be able to give me extensive reassurances on this issue, and I am well aware of the “omertà through clichés” that has been imposed on Government Ministers as we approach negotiations with the EU. However, I hope that he can feed back to his colleagues within Government the concerns that I have expressed, answer some of my questions, and provide me with further details in writing.

I also hope that the Northern Ireland Office will be fully included in the internal discussions that the Government are conducting, both in the Joint Ministerial Committee and at other levels, so that the institutional memory and experience of that Department is heard in the somewhat more gung-ho meeting rooms of other Departments.