Caroline Nokes
Main Page: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)Department Debates - View all Caroline Nokes's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
The debate will be opened by the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
Many Members across the House have spoken about the financial situation in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) spoke very well about the impact that it has on the lives of people in Northern Ireland.
I would like to touch briefly on the impact that it is having on a particular group of vulnerable individuals, and I declare an interest at this point as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on learning disability. That group of individuals is the people who had the misfortune to be housed at Muckamore Abbey hospital. An inquiry into two decades of systemic abuse concluded two weeks ago and published its report. Some of the findings were absolutely horrific.
The report found that mistreatment became a normality and that patients suffered black eyes, broken bones and severe neglect. These were patients who had learning disabilities and mental health issues. They were some of the most vulnerable people in our society—quite often non-verbal and unable to raise concerns about their treatment themselves. They were subjected to neglect, poor care and a wider diminution of their rights. Many had their lives made miserable by systematic bullying by certain members of staff.
The report raised serious concerns about the attitude of the trust towards patients and the abuse being reported. There was evidence of patients not being washed, with faeces under their fingernails or on their clothes, becoming obese or losing weight dramatically, owing to a lack of care over diet, and other patients were over-medicated and described as being “zombified”. Parents have described seeing their adult children basically disappearing before their eyes in a locked institution that they were unable to access.
The mistreatment of people with learning disabilities on locked mental health wards is unfortunately not contained to Northern Ireland, but this discussion about the estimates given to the Northern Ireland Executive presents an opportunity for Northern Ireland to lead the way. The report spoke of the need for a transformation in social care in Northern Ireland so that people with learning disabilities and mental health issues are treated in the community in a way that is compassionate and sees them as individuals. Given the £185 million set aside for public service transformation, does the Secretary of State share my hope that those who have suffered at Muckamore Abbey hospital, their families and their loved ones might see a transformation undertaken as a result of the report so that people in Northern Ireland, and indeed across the UK, do not have to suffer similarly?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
We come to the Front-Bench contributions. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Mr Paul Kohler (Wimbledon) (LD)
The 2026-27 main estimate for the Northern Ireland Office asks the House to approve spending plans for this politically sensitive region of the United Kingdom. In cash terms, the 2026-27 block grant has barely increased from 2025-26 levels. As the Stormont Executive are warning, that will leave a massive deficit and represents a 2.7% decrease in real spending power.
That settlement arrives against a backdrop in which the Executive overspent their budget by £400 million in the last financial year, covered only by a Treasury reserve advance now being repaid in instalments, with £80 million due this year in the first tranche. We have a Government clawing back money, not investing in Northern Ireland’s future.
On policing, the Government have provided an extra £113 million through the PSNI digital security fund. That figure sounds impressive, but it does not begin to address the operational drain that legacy demands place on day-to-day policing. The Chief Constable, Jon Boutcher, has warned that without the PSNI being funded to service the demands of what is planned to become the Legacy Commission, the entire project will fail, yet when he petitions the Secretary of State he is told that policing is a devolved matter, and when he turns to the Executive he is told that legacy costs arose under direct rule and are a matter for Westminster.
The responsibility bounces between the two, but the PSNI ends up footing the bill. The estimates do not contain any resolution to that deadlock. There is no acknowledgement that the legacy burden is a UK Government, not a Stormont, liability. Let us be clear that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has twice recommended a dedicated ringfenced funding stream to meet PSNI legacy costs, and it continues to do so in the face of Northern Ireland Office rejections.
On trade, it is worth reminding the House that 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. They have been proved correct, as Northern Ireland has borne the consequences of Brexit ever since, with disrupted supply chains and barriers to trade. Of course, the Windsor framework was meant to give Northern Ireland the best of both worlds, with unfettered access to both the UK internal market and the EU single market. The evidence suggests that it has delivered neither.
A Federation of Small Businesses survey found that more than half of businesses trading between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are experiencing real difficulties, with more than a third of UK-wide respondents who moved goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland having stopped doing so entirely. Just one in seven Northern Ireland businesses say that they benefit from dual market access, which is much less than the 71% figure quoted by the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee this afternoon, citing a pre-Windsor framework survey. Some two thirds of Northern Ireland-based businesses say that they have no understanding of the framework and have not taken advantage of it.
Implementation of the Windsor framework is a stated Northern Ireland Office priority, yet the only dedicated line of funding for it in the estimate is an £8.5 million reserve fund, and at the Select Committee today we heard that the Northern Ireland business support service—also known as the one-stop shop—will not come on stream until the next financial year at the earliest.
Finally, may I point out that the estimate transfers £35 million from the Home Office for the immigration health surcharge, yet the Home Office has not published data on the number of asylum claims lodged in Northern Ireland? We are being asked to approve spending derived from a population of claimants the Government decline to count.
Northern Ireland has endured too much and waited too long for a Government who match the scale of their ambitions with the substance of their spending. On the evidence of these estimates, it is still waiting.