Debate on the Address

Debate between Christopher Chope and Gavin Robinson

Wednesday 17th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Robinson]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that comment.

Moving on to public services, over the last number of years we have been campaigning about the fact that public services in Northern Ireland are constrained because the Barnett formula has not served us well and we have been getting less than what the Independent Fiscal Commission for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council have accepted that we need. Therefore, year on year public services are being reduced in Northern Ireland and year on year we are not getting the sort of uplift required to ensure that our constituents benefit from devolution.

New Members of this House will probably not have experienced the protracted agony around devolution in Northern Ireland and the importance of getting it restored five months ago, but one part of that restoration was ensuring that sufficient public finances were available. There is a key opportunity—though not mentioned in this King’s Speech, I hope it is something the incoming Government will focus on—to draw upon the lessons of the Holtham commission in Wales and upon the positive uplift there, to provide us with what we need to reform and transform public services.

At the moment, the challenges are not about how we grow and develop the provisions for our people, irrespective of their community background, in Northern Ireland, but about what special schools we close, what hospitals we close and what services we stop providing. As somebody who speaks for our corner of the United Kingdom in this place, I ask for earnest engagement on public services and public funding in Northern Ireland.

Devolution was restored on the basis of an agreement that we reached with the previous Government, but that agreement was supported by Labour in February of this year. The “Safeguarding the Union” document, which allowed devolution to be restored, contains within it key and significant commitments and we look forward to the new Labour Government’s honouring them. Their Members supported it at the time in February. They know its importance. While I see reference in the King’s Speech to resetting relations with the European Union—as I said earlier, we should have good relationships and we should build upon those good relationships with near neighbours—we need to carefully nurture the arrangements that were agreed in February and need to be delivered. This is about removing barriers within our own country.

We can focus on relationships with others outside, and we should, but not to the detriment of that which makes this country work. There are opportunities on regional connectivity and to build on the Union connectivity review. The proposed creation of a council for the regions and borders looks quite like the East-West Council that was agreed back in February as part of the “Safeguarding the Union” document. We will have to study the detail. If it is a rename and a re-badge, that is fine, but we need to talk about how we move people and products from one part of our country to another. Where is the connectivity review work on the A75 moving from Northern Ireland into Scotland and down towards Carlisle? How do we think about this as a national endeavour? There will be newly elected Scottish Members of Parliament on the Labour Benches who will take keen interest in ensuring that the Union works across the United Kingdom, and we want to play our part in that.

I have spent the last eight years on the Select Committee on Defence. I have spoken many times of the contribution of Thales from my constituency and the next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and how important they were in the initial weeks of the defence of Kyiv particularly and Ukraine more generally. However, the eye has been taken off the ball on support for those industries that are key within my constituency and important for Northern Ireland as a whole in the Defence sphere.

Hon. Members will have seen negative briefing in the last 24 hours around Harland & Wolff. I want to see a very clear commitment from this Government that they believe in the contracts that have been awarded to Belfast and in the renaissance of shipbuilding in Belfast, that they adhere to the commitments of the national shipbuilding review to building skills and opportunities throughout our United Kingdom and that—irrespective of the ups and downs, highs and lows of any individual company—the aspiration and the economic benefits of retaining shipbuilding and growing the shipbuilding capacity in Belfast are highly important. So, too, is the issue of Boeing wishing to bring Spirit AeroSystems back into its company. Significant issues arise from that for the economy of Belfast and Northern Ireland, as Spirit AeroSystems is the largest private employer, with high-skilled manufacturing jobs, in my constituency, but it services the entirety of the United Kingdom. Like previous Business Secretaries, the Government need to focus on that. I am not suggesting that they are not, but there is a huge opportunity in the next six months, and we need to land it to secure what is important for us.

Finally—I realise that I am going beyond the suggested time limit, Mr Deputy Speaker—there is a proposal for a football regulator. Good. We will have the debate in the next weeks and months—it will probably come from my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) —about whether that football regulator should be for England or, in this national Parliament, for football within our country.

If I did not close with this, I would probably have one less vote come the next election. My constituent Davy Warren, who used to serve me in the newsagent’s on my way to school, texted me to say: “Gavin, support England if you like on Sunday. They’re not your team but they’re the only team from our country, so support England if you like, but remind them all that Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’ is a Northern Ireland football team anthem.” The green and white army were very happy to lend that anthem to you all, but we will reclaim it. I gently remind the House that the last time Spain faced a home nation in any significant final or competition—my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford was there, and I was not born—Northern Ireland beat Spain.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Christopher Chope)]

To make his maiden speech, I call Warinder Juss.