Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

That was a quicker speech than we thought it would be.

May I begin by briefly putting on the record that I think the House should have enormous appreciation for the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound)? During my time in this place since 2015 he has been the steadfast rock with regard to Northern Ireland. I occasionally see him as the political equivalent of the Giant’s Causeway—nobody quite knows why he is there or why he is that shape, but we know that things would not quite be the same if he was not there. The House will miss him, and his interest in and knowledge of the affairs of Northern Ireland and the politics of the island of Ireland will be missed. [Interruption.] Yes, he is going to be a tourist attraction in his own right—and is already listed, I believe, as an ancient monument.

Our thanks should also go to the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd). The idea of the Northern Ireland Office not having a Hurd somewhere near it is depressing and dispiriting, and I wish my right hon. Friend well. Although she is not in her place, as Chairman of the Select Committee I ought to repeat what I said in Committee this morning and express my eternal thanks to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who has done so much on behalf of the communities of Northern Ireland over so many years.

I obviously support this budget. I echo entirely what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) said, and I also echo the concerns of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) with regard to the welfare cliff that we canter towards in a slightly unguided, uncontrollable way.

I will not read it out, but page 5 of the explanatory notes to the Bill sets out clearly why fast-tracking is necessary. We appreciate the reasons why, and we can rehearse and rehearse and rehearse in a rather odd political version of the film “Groundhog Day” the comments, “I wish Stormont was back up and running…Ministers are doing all they can to achieve that…Parties stand ready to come back”, yet we never quite get that over the line.

While we fiddle with that issue, everybody is aware of the problems in Northern Ireland with regard to welfare, the downturn in education and the acute issues with healthcare. If we are serious, and if talking about Northern Ireland as a part of the Union is something beyond words and some sort of abstract, we should worry that we have allowed the eccentric to become the norm and allowed a mindset to develop whereby emergency legislation, sticking plasters and ad hoc solutions have to be found. If this was taking place in Scotland, Wales, North Dorset or any of the counties of England, we would be up in arms. Front-page articles would be written about it and questions would be asked all over the place. The fact that they are not is a cause for concern. How can we ever hope to make the politics of Northern Ireland and public service to its taxpayers as normal and as mainstream in Ballymena as one might find in Blandford Forum in my constituency? We are never going to make the progress on peace, reconciliation and confidence building that is so desperately required.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. He mentioned welfare a few moments ago. That is of particular concern to many people in Northern Ireland, particularly with regard to welfare mitigation payments, which were negotiated by a member of my party when he was Minister. They give rise to great concern, because in four short months, those mitigation measures will fall away. We need to take steps immediately and urgently to deal with that problem.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. People in communities in Northern Ireland today will be worrying about the impacts of the end of the mitigations. They will be among the most vulnerable in the community, who have the least opportunity to ride even a temporary blip or gap in service provision, and they will be the hardest hit. We understand that we are adding to their justifiable reasons for concern and anxiety, because as well as Stormont not sitting, Westminster will not be sitting either. The ability of right hon. and hon. Members to hold the Secretary of State and his ministerial team to account on the Floor of the House, in a Select Committee or in Westminster Hall will be removed from us. A democratic deficit—an accountability vacuum—will be created for five or six weeks, and that presumes that on 12 December, there is a clear-cut result that effectively allows something to resume on Monday 16 December.

We do not know what the result will be; we could be in for weeks of horse trading, with the usually happy time of Christmas and the new year elongating the window when no decisions are taken into early in the new year. Those who can least afford any hardship are likely to be facing it, and having their burden of woe added to, without having any democratic forum in which their concerns can be expressed and the decisions—or lack of decisions—taken by Ministers can be questioned and challenged. That is the icing on the cake of the democratic deficit that is now becoming the norm, and of the tendency to deal with Northern Ireland as a perpetual emergency, which is subliminally, if you will, undermining the path of peace and civil stability that we all wish to see. We have to be careful: we are allowing this psychologically to become the norm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

While we welcome the Bill, in so far as it is necessary, we most certainly do not welcome the circumstances in which Parliament has to legislate. I listened to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), and he made some very important points. It is ironic that Members of Parliament elected to this House from constituencies in Northern Ireland who refuse to take their seats, and therefore do not involve themselves in the process, are the very people responsible for the fact that we are dealing with this legislation today and that we have limited ability to scrutinise it. There is only one party in Northern Ireland refusing to form a Government, and that party is Sinn Féin.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

My right hon. Friend is drawing attention to a matter that has been raised numerous times. Does he agree that, to add insult to injury, what does not get mentioned very often, in the House or outside, is the fact that the House pays those Members not to attend and represent their constituents and gives them expenses for office costs, flights and hotel bills?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I appreciate that intervention. I know that from time to time Members express concerns about the pay of Members of the Legislative Assembly. I rarely hear a concern expressed about the paid lobbyists of Sinn Féin who are omnipresent in the coffee shops or outside on the Green but are absent from these green Benches, failing to fulfil their responsibilities to their constituents. Yet they alone are responsible for Northern Ireland’s not having a functioning Executive.

On 21 October—this month—the Assembly met, and representatives of a number of parties turned up. Shamefully, representatives of Sinn Féin were not among them. They absented themselves, and I have to say with some regret that the Alliance party also absented itself. This is the party that describes itself as the bridge builder, the party to bring people together, but on an occasion when we were bringing our elected representatives together at Stormont to try to break the logjam, the bridge builders were nowhere to be seen. They were absent without leave.

I hear lectures from some Alliance party representatives about how we should be doing this and that and restoring Stormont, but when they had an opportunity to show their presence and highlight the fact that Sinn Féin alone is holding the people of Northern Ireland to ransom, yet again the Alliance party gave Sinn Féin political cover by absenting itself from Stormont.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Limbo; the hon. Member for North Dorset described it as another thing earlier. I cannot accept that for my constituents. This is not British democracy functioning for the people of Northern Ireland. I have every sympathy with the Secretary of State, and I commend his and his team’s efforts to bring the parties together to try to get an accommodation and to try to restore devolved government. We do not believe that the fault for that lies at the foot of the Secretary of State; it lies at the door of Connolly House in west Belfast, the headquarters of Sinn Féin, which is responsible for us having no Government.

I will briefly touch on two particular aspects of the budget, both of which speak to public safety in Northern Ireland. The first is the Police Service of Northern Ireland. One of the successes in recent years has been the progress in the level of public support for policing in Northern Ireland and the transformation of the police service. However, having met the Chief Constable recently, I am worried about police numbers. I know that the Government have said that they are recruiting more police officers—it is a big part of their platform for the general election—and I know that the PSNI is engaged in some recruitment, but the demographics and the turnover of experienced police officers are not being matched by recruitment. We will want to sit down with the Government after the general election to look at that, because there is a need to increase the number of officers available for community policing, which is crucial for the continuation of public confidence in policing in Northern Ireland.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland gave evidence at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee this morning, and I asked a series of questions about the required number of police personnel. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, looking at policing both in the past and at present, we appear to need in excess of 1,000 additional personnel?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is what the Police Federation for Northern Ireland and the Chief Constable have been saying, so we need to consider police officers and the recruitment process.

My final point on public safety relates to the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service, which is headquartered at Lisburn in my constituency and comes under the remit of the Department of Health. Of course, the Department has enormous pressures on its budget and on how it manages staff, so I have every sympathy, and the priority in the Department must be the health service and health service reform. However, I am nevertheless concerned about the downwards trend in funding for the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service. In 2019-20, the budget for the fire and rescue service is £74.1 million, but it was £81.6 million in 2011-12, so there has been a significant cut.

Earlier today, we had a debate on the report on the tragic circumstances of the fire at Grenfell Tower. None of us wants to see that kind of situation, but the cuts in the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service leave me concerned, as a public representative, about its capacity to respond to that kind of emergency situation. I will not go into all the detail of how those cuts are having an impact, but they are.

We have seen whole-time crews cut in Northern Ireland, which means that in many locations crews cannot deploy without part-time firefighters being available to provide them with the full complement they need to attend an incident. That is a matter of concern. That is in no way to question the professionalism of part-time firefighters—far from it—but it is an unsatisfactory situation for the fire and rescue service to be in, because it can result in delays while full-time fire crews wait for their part-time colleagues to arrive before they can respond to an incident.

That is a having an impact on response times for fire crews in Carrickfergus, Portadown in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), Omagh, Enniskillen, Newtownards in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and Armagh. The cuts are also having an impact in Londonderry. It concerns us that the capacity of the fire and rescue service to respond to major incidents is being diminished in Northern Ireland.