Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I, too, would like to add my voice of thanks and gratitude to all the various officers of this House—in the Speaker’s Office, the Ways and Means office, the Doorkeepers, Hansard, the various Vote Offices, the Table Office and the Admission Order Office, and all those who make our job in this place so much easier. I thank them and wish them all the very best for the summer recess. Of course, they will still be here working while we go back to our constituencies, but it is important to place on record our thanks and gratitude to them.

I want to draw a couple of matters to the attention of the House. We recently had a budget debate for Northern Ireland. That was a very painful process; it was so punishing that it has probably set back the prospect of restoring the devolution settlement to Northern Ireland. It is very important that we put on record that, even if an Executive were called back, they would not have the resources available that are necessary to run Northern Ireland.

We constantly hear in this place about the necessity of Barnett consequentials, which send money back to Northern Ireland, but under this budget settlement, any Barnett consequentials that Northern Ireland would get would have to be paid back immediately to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury, and could not be used for the things that they would normally offset, such as teachers’ pay, police service recruitment, nurses’ pay and all the things that are now slowly but surely being addressed on the mainland of Great Britain.

That is a significant problem for us. If we take teachers’ pay in Northern Ireland, the average first-year teacher in Northern Ireland will get between £6,000 and £8,000 less than their counterpart here in Great Britain, depending which part of GB they are in. That disparity in wages is atrocious, and we can take that through all the pay arrangements in the various public sector areas, whether it is policing, nursing, junior doctors, teachers or civil servants. It really is quite disheartening for those members of staff. We are fed the idea, “Get the Executive back, get it up and running, and you can address these problems.” But we cannot, because the resource will not be there. It is important that I put that on the record. We do want to see a functioning Northern Ireland Executive, but they have to function under proper circumstances. I am poised to ask the question of how we can address that. It is important to say that there must be a resource somewhere that will allow us to redress this lack of money.

I will address that in the second part of my speech, which is about what I believe to be a national scandal of public waste—even corruption, in some aspects—that must be addressed by the Government. The much-hyped, much-promised HS2 project really needs to be examined closely by this House. In my view, it is depriving this kingdom and its people of billions of pounds of resources, which could be used in a much better way, but which are currently being siphoned off into the single biggest white elephant this country has pursued.

Someone in this House has to stand up at some point and say, “The emperor has no clothes.” With regards to HS2, the emperor has no clothes. It is a waste of public resources. I, for one, am pro infrastructure projects. I want to see infrastructure projects. I would love to see a proper, high-speed rail network from the very far east, from Leeds, right the way down to the capital. That would be great, but it is never going to happen—certainly not under HS2. This is a wasteful, mad and utterly out-of-control project that the House must look at. There was a debate in Westminster Hall about it way back in 2021, in which we called for a full debate in the Chamber. That has never taken place. I have asked Front Benchers for that debate, as have other Members, but it has not happened, though there have been many promises. Neither the Government nor the Opposition want it to happen, and I do not know why.

I asked the Library to outline for me which building companies in Northern Ireland were working on the project. There were many promises given that the project would be a bonanza for companies across the whole United Kingdom, but that has not been the case. Many companies have been left out. Some of the people who have lost out have supported and donated to my party. That is not a personal registered interest—it does not have to be, because the support was for the party—but I put that on record in the interests of transparency and openness. I am making these comments because of the waste to the rail service. The money spent on the project could have be used to plug many of the gaps that colleagues across this House want to be plugged.

On 27 March this year, the National Audit Office, and on 7 July, the Public Accounts Committee, published reports on the subject. They are the most depressing reading, because they confirm our worst fears about Euston’s redevelopment, and other aspects of the project. That forced Lord Berkeley in the other place to say,

“Time seems nigh to cancel both projects, HS2 Euston and the wider HS2 programme, before any further public money is wasted.”

Despite the various requirements for Euston having been known for the last eight years, nothing has happened on that project. In fact, there has been almost a decade of complete waste. There is no agreement about the number or development of platforms, or the station lay-out. No design solutions have been put in place. All the problems were known well before Royal Assent was given to the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Act way back in 2017, yet in madness, the Government pursued HS2. That has resulted in the biggest waste of public money. Eight years into the planning process, we are calling a halt to some of the building. I understand that in recent weeks, the chief executive officer of HS2, Mr Thurston, has had to stand down. He has retired after six and a half years. His legacy is one of blown budgets. HS2 was initially scheduled to start running in 2026, but there will not be a single train running by then. Under the current construction and budgeting guidelines, It could be the mid-2030s or even 2040 before it is up and running.

Meanwhile, the initial budget of £55 billion has been completely blown. In 2019, I sat in this Chamber when the Minister told us that the budget for HS2 would be £55.7 billion. Two months later, the chairman of HS2, Allan Cook, raised the figure to £88.6 billion. A matter of months later, the Oakervee review said, “I’m sorry, it will actually be over £106 billion.” How can the Government be so wrong in their calculations? They are not out by a few million, but by tens of billions of pounds. That is wholly unacceptable and wholly inadequate. HS2 Ltd’s latest report shows that the chief executive receives over £617,000 per year in salary, yet the management of this project has been an unmitigated disaster, and we are no nearer an HS2 train running than we were way back in 2017, when this whole thing started.

Those in charge of HS2 seem to have been tempering expectations recently. The Secretary of State for Transport has had to pause the work on Euston station for two years because, believe it or not, it has already exceeded its budget of £2.6 billion and the cost now stands at £4.8 billion. Meanwhile, the eastern leg of phase 2b, from the west midlands to the east midlands, has fallen in the pecking order and probably will not happen either.

There is no money for nurses, there is no money for junior doctors, and there is no money for police officers. There is little money for education, there is little money for other projects, and there is little money for some of our defence expenditure. Yet, hopelessly, this white elephant keeps getting funded, and keeps getting either silence or support from Members in this House. That has to be called out. The Government must take a long, hard look at this over the summer, and recognise that this white elephant must cease to be funded.