Northern Ireland

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are various things about Northern Ireland that make it unique within the United Kingdom. The history is one, and the land border is of course another. That is why it has a specific type of devolved government, which we hope to see restored, and why we will be consulting on various other policy areas as well.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am a little surprised by the First Secretary’s statement, because he left out the most important part of the agreement. He said that the DUP will support the Government on votes on the Queen’s Speech, the Budget and so on, but he left out the only bit that the Government really care about, which is that the DUP will support them on all motions of no confidence. That is what the Government have bought with this money, isn’t it? They have bought continuing support on all motions of no confidence, because the only way to bring down a Government under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is a motion of no confidence. All the rest is irrelevant. Now that the DUP has effectively become a party of government, and not a party of opposition, surely, surely, surely it should surrender its right to Short money.

[Damian Green]

I am quite surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not recognise that the addition of large sums of money for promoting infrastructure, for helping people with mental health problems and for helping particularly disadvantaged communities is the most important part of this agreement. It seems to me to be the most important part of the agreement because it will actually help disadvantaged people in Northern Ireland. If he does not accept that that is important, he will lose some of his socialist firebrand credentials, which he loves to parade.