Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). I think we could have waved at each other last week when he was trapped somewhere in Derry/Londonderry as we went over the hills to get there. At least we are all back safely and able to speak in this afternoon’s debate.

Here we go again. Once again, Northern Irish exceptionalism has to come into play and this place has to step in to fill a gap. My hon. Friend the Minister of State was absolutely right when he said that if this were the service being given to his or, indeed, my constituents in North Dorset, not only would questions be asked in the House, but there would be real and tangible anger. People would feel a sense of abandonment. I think there would also be a growing sense of, “We are the public and we need and want public service, but that can only be delivered at the political level. If the politicians we have do not want to do it, give us the opportunity and we will find some who will.”

There will always be ultras in this sort of debate. I well remember talking to an SNP friend from the 2015 intake when the price of oil was absolutely on the floor. I hope you will give me a moment to expand on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, before you start wondering, “Where the hell is he going with this?” I said, “You must be rather pleased that Scotland decided to stay part of the United Kingdom in the referendum. We’re able to support you and so on because your income as an independent Scotland would have been down as a result of the collapse in oil prices.” A steely glint came into the eye of this person, who must remain nameless—and I can see a steely glint coming into the eye of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who will speak on behalf of the SNP in this debate—and he said, “Simon, you’re right: the quality of public services would fall. Things would be difficult, and we would have to take difficult decisions, but we would be doing it with an independent Scottish people in an independent Scotland, and that is a price worth paying.”

There will be some who will always say that the price is worth paying—people whose fixed point of principle on one side or the other is so important to them that, no matter how much suffering and pain are occasioned, they believe that it is a price worth paying. I respect those two positions—we always have to have extremes in any debate—but I do detect, as I mentioned in my intervention on the Minister, a growing sense across the communities of Northern Ireland of real anger and disappointment at the failure of politicians to rise to the occasion and to deliver the public service that they expect.

The shadow Secretary of State was right to point out some of the problems that this process, by definition, generates in Northern Ireland. The Government are to be commended for bringing forward the Bill—a common sense act by a sensible Government. But the problem we are going to have—this has been tested in the courts—is that there will be huge reticence among the civil servants. I do not criticise civil servants for that in any way, shape or form, but they will only be able to deliver policies that have already been agreed. If they act ultra vires, there would be a problem because this has been tested in the courts and we know how they ruled on it. Moreover, some of these policies—not all of them—are analogue for a digital age. They do not reflect the cost of living crisis, energy costs and the increase in inflation. They do not reflect the need for fleet action to fill the gaps and address the problems created as a result of covid in education and health, although not exclusively those two things. We need a local Northern Ireland Budget set by Northern Irish politicians in Northern Ireland, reflective of and given cognisance to what they are hearing on their own doorsteps. This process, by its very definition, cannot meet that challenge.

I want to speak briefly about what we, as a Committee, heard from both sides of the community in our visit last week. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) referenced the very real concerns about the absence of a multi-year settlement. We heard from an organisation whose main funding was from the Northern Ireland Office and Stormont. The NIO part of its funding had been agreed and signed off—it knew it had it. It had no idea at all what it would get out of this budgetary process. No idea at all. Notices were going out to their paid staff to say, “We may have to make you redundant. We hope we won’t have to. We hope we will get the money, but we do not know.”

These are not institutions or organisations teaching origami, advanced flower arranging or contract bridge for the winter months. These are organisations that are stepping in for peace building and community building. They are community-led. They are working to help women who find themselves, as the BBC “Spotlight” programme showed, caught in a cycle of the cost of living, leading them to default to extortionist money lenders of the so-called paramilitaries, only to find they cannot pay the money back. They then have to resort to criminal behaviour, being forced to give sexual favours as payment in lieu or seeing their children brought into the ambit of influence of these paramilitaries as a way of paying off debt.

Those groups, which are so dependent upon the money that this Budget could provide and that Stormont could reflect, now find their work in jeopardy. I encourage female Members of this place to take a growing interest—I know many do, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi)— in the impact of the budgetary pressures and other deficiencies in the delivery of public services for the women of Northern Ireland. I make no judgment on the merits, but this House has focused on that issue merely in access to abortion services.

There are a hell of a lot of other things going on—bad things—for the young women of Northern Ireland and, by definition, their young children. They look to those organisations to help them and to protect them, to help them be better parents and to keep their kids on the right path. I think we heard from every single organisation that we met—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon confirms that—the anxiety about the effect that this absolute abdication of the delivery of public service is having and will have.

My hon. Friend the Minister will also know of the potential poor budgetary settlement for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which will have ramifications across the whole of Northern Ireland. They need to do so much in order to build on those peace foundations laid 25 years ago by the Belfast-Good Friday agreement. They will have to make a choice. Everybody in this House will understand and readily applaud the determination to continue community policing. We all know the merits of good community policing in our own communities, and those are magnified still greater in Northern Ireland. But you will not be able to have good community policing and good criminal policing. Something will have to give. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) was right to say that there is no magic wand, and Stormont would not, by itself, have the answer to all these problems, but—by God!—notwithstanding the absence of that magic wand, are not the people of Northern Ireland hampered yet further by not having in place MLAs who can take to officials and to debates what they hear on the doorsteps, or in their church halls?

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

At the beginning of 2020, in “New Decade, New Approach”, the UK Government committed to addressing the issue of police numbers in Northern Ireland, and to helping the Northern Ireland Executive with the funding necessary. The Assembly and Executive were restored on that basis. From early 2020 until October 2022, the UK Government failed to deliver on their commitment. The Treasury would not provide additional funding to enable the recruitment of extra officers, despite that being an NDNA commitment. Does the Chairman of the Select Committee understand our frustration? We keep hearing that if we had the Assembly and the Executive back, we could address those issues, but there are many examples where that is not the case. Not least of those is the issue of the UK internal market and the protection of our place in it—another key part of NDNA that was not delivered. This Parliament and Government are not innocent when it comes to these issues.

[Simon Hoare]

I very much agree, and I wrote to the PSNI only today, following our visit, asking it to put in writing in more detailed terms what we heard last week, so that the Select Committee and this place can better understand the implications of that for policing in all its guises. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that those on the Treasury Bench need to step up and honour the agreements reached in “New Decade, New Approach”.

I have always felt that the slight fault line is that when there is a problem or impasse, people say, “I know—we’ll have an agreement! It will promise almost all things to all people; there will be something in it for everybody.” Then they say, “But, you know, we didn’t really mean it. We were just using it as a device—a negotiation stepping stone to get us from one side of the river to another,” and, “Oh, you mean that we will be held accountable for delivering that?” I think in this instance they will be. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues from across the parties in Northern Ireland need no lectures or lessons from me on the huge damage that would be done to community safety, and the criminality that would arise, if the PSNI was not functioning. He can rest assured that as soon as I receive that missive from the PSNI, either the Committee will look at the matter still further and go into detail on it, or I will raise the matter with the Treasury and the Secretary of State.

Let me conclude by picking up a thread from the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention—and this points to what was said by the hon. Member for North Antrim. There is no goose that lays golden eggs—we know that—and there is nobody who advocates for the speedy return of Stormont. Nobody is suggesting that that would solve all the problems of Northern Ireland. However, the fact that an organisation cannot do all the good, all the time, should not stop it from trying to do as much good as it can, as long as it is there to do it. That is the fundamental choice.

DUP Members are fed up, and they are fed up with me saying this—I will not even ask them to nod in support, because I know they are. They are nodding, but they do not even know what I am going to say. It is this: Members on the Treasury Bench have made the error of allowing issues and concerns about the protocol to be conflated with the delivery of functioning devolution. They are two very separate work streams. The protocol offends some in Northern Ireland, but the absence of Stormont affects all, and that is what we should be focused on.

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[Sammy Wilson]

The point I was making—the Minister knows this, because we have raised it here on a number of occasions—is that the responsibility did lie with the Northern Ireland Executive. The Foreign Office did not like the decisions that Democratic Unionist party Ministers in the Executive made on the protocol infrastructure and only recently have taken over the responsibility to implement that. Even before that happened, civil servants—I do not know whether they did this at the prompting of officials or Ministers in the Foreign Office—were already making decisions about clearing sites in my constituency to build border posts.

The last point I would—

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

Surely it is even more serious than that. The reality is that the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly are now in a position where they have to administer laws that are not even created by this Parliament, never mind by the Assembly itself. This applies in more than 300 areas of law; the way we administer, for example, our ability to trade with the rest of the UK is now determined by a foreign polity, the EU. It imposes laws on Northern Ireland, on which we have no say; there is no scrutiny and no accountability for those laws. So the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland is very real to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive and is one of the fundamental reasons why we do not have functioning political institutions, because our party is not prepared to tolerate a situation where we are treated like an EU colony.

[Sammy Wilson]

Until that situation is revolved, we are going to be faced with the kind of situation we are discussing today. What amazes me is that other parties in the Assembly, which equally will have no say on those laws, meekly accept those powers being taken from them and not being available to them. I have heard many debates in this Chamber about the Government snatching power from devolved Administrations on various Bills, yet we find that some parties in Northern Ireland are happily accepting that they should not have the ability to make decisions on matters that will greatly influence the lives of ordinary people.

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[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman continually raises this issue—sometimes taking a whining approach as well—but under the Executive I remember money going to the airport at Londonderry, Altnagelvin hospital getting the cancer centre and money being allocated for the road from Londonderry—

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

And for the university.

[Sammy Wilson]

I am thinking only of my own experience. Actually, the road was cut because the Irish Government said they were not going to make their contribution to it.

[Colum Eastwood]

It is interesting that people in Derry are entitled to some Government funding—thank you very much! My constituency has the highest unemployment, the highest claimant count and the highest household overcrowding, and it has five of the 10 most deprived areas in Northern Ireland. Maybe some work was done, and maybe some money was spent outside the Greater Belfast area, but it has not had the impact that some might claim.

If people think it is good enough or acceptable just to say that we will throw a few quid at people in Derry—people who have been left behind—after many decades, they are absolutely wrong. The New Decade, New Approach agreement was referenced earlier, and this Government have a responsibility for some of the commitments in it. I think of the expansion of Magee—there is still no funding for that from the Government. There is the Brandywell stadium—there is still no funding for that from the Government. And there is the Northlands addiction centre—we have had promise after promise, but the money is still not in a bank account.

Frankly, I find it difficult to watch people jumping up from their seats and giving excuse after excuse as to why it would not make any difference if we were in government, when people are literally dying on trolleys right now because they cannot get access to the health service. We are abdicating our responsibilities as elected representatives for the people.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The hon. Member consistently attacks the Democratic Unionist party, but might I remind him about the history of his own party? When people were dying on the streets of Northern Ireland in their thousands, his party refused to take its seats at Stormont and participate in a functioning Assembly for very many years. He will argue there were valid reasons for that, but he should at least respect that if we are going to sort out our problems in Northern Ireland, Unionists also have an entitlement and a right to have valid reasons not to participate in institutions when they feel that their rights have been undermined and diminished.

[Colum Eastwood]

That is astonishing, given the fact that we had the Sunningdale agreement, where we had people working in those institutions. They were brought down, frankly, by people associated with the right hon. Gentleman’s political party and other Unionists. That accusation thrown at the Social Democratic and Labour party for not wanting to make institutions work is coming from someone who walked away in the dying hours of the negotiations to bring about the Good Friday agreement. That agreement had to be brought about because the three strands—the three sets of relationships—had to be recognised. We could not have an internal settlement in Northern Ireland without north-south institutions and institutions that recognise the east-west dimensions to our relationships as well, and it is absolutely ridiculous to state otherwise. We now have people in the DUP using the Good Friday agreement as a reason why they cannot go back into government. It is absolutely astonishing, it is wrong and it is an attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

We all, in all our communities and constituencies, should recognise that the European social fund, for example, has gone. That was £40 million into communities, supporting 1,700 jobs and activity right across every single community. The British Government are proposing to give us half of that back, even though they told us that we would not lose a single penny as a result of Brexit. That is 800 jobs in the community and voluntary sector gone. We have councils across Northern Ireland right now considering massive rates hikes, which will put more pressure on ratepayers and small businesses, and it will mean that workers in those small businesses, many of whom are already on the breadline, will lose their jobs.

We also have an opportunity missed today—I think the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) and every other political leader in Northern Ireland will agree with me on this, because they all signed a letter about it—to implement the organ donation law known as Dáithí’s law. The Government missed the opportunity, and I ask them to revisit that. The work done by young Dáithí, his whole family and the people around that campaign deserves support from this Government.

I also put on record my condolences to Alex Easton, his whole family and his family circle. It is an awful tragedy to happen to anyone, and I cannot imagine what that family is going through.

We have proposed a change to the rules around how a Speaker would be elected, which I think could get the Assembly back up and running and at least see Committees meeting. It will not see an Executive up and running, but that is down to a political decision by the DUP. The DUP tells us that the basis of the Assembly is consensus—well, not in my experience. I do not remember an awful lot of consensus in the Assembly in the nine years I was there. The principle of consent is the basis for the Good Friday agreement, and it is a very different thing.

I am saying, as an Irish nationalist who thinks that all these economic and social outcomes will be better in a new Ireland—I think we will get there sooner than some people think, and I thank some of the people sitting to my left for that—and who wants to bring about constitutional change, that the principle of consent is sacrosanct. It is not going anywhere, and it is not changing. This pretence that we have been taken out of the United Kingdom and nobody noticed is the basis of the boycott of the Executive, but I must have missed the victory party, if we are now all in a united Ireland. I did not notice.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Now you’re being childish.

[Colum Eastwood]

No, I am not being childish. The DUP’s argument is that this is a constitutional rupture and the people of Northern Ireland have been taken out of the United Kingdom. That has been said twice by DUP Members in this debate, and it is simply not true. If that is what they want to tell people, it is a very strange way of being a Unionist.

My view is that the Assembly is there to deal with all the problems we have in the health system and the education system. I want to see a united Ireland, and I will work to make that happen, but I have to convince enough people and we have to have a referendum, and that is when the principle of consent comes into play. The two things should not be conflated. A political decision has been made by the DUP, and there are consequences for it. My view is that the DUP has to own those consequences.

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[Mr Steve Baker]

With the leave of the House, I am glad to respond to the debate.

First and foremost, I join other hon. Members in offering condolences to Alex Easton, whose parents Alec and Ann tragically died in a fire in Bangor earlier today. I know the whole House will want to put on record our shared sorrow at this news, and to thank the emergency services who attended. At the same time, I am delighted to congratulate Doug Beattie on the birth of his granddaughter Skyler. I am sure we will be able to find a couple of copies of Hansard to send on to the families.

I am grateful to the Opposition for their comments; When opening the debate the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) said that we were right to prioritise restoring power, and I am grateful to him for that. He asked for an update on the negotiation, which I will give in a moment. We are all agreed that Stormont should be restored—I think that has been a universal theme. The Secretary of State and I have met a wide range of stakeholders and, though of course we are in an undesirable position, we are confident that we have listened to a range of views as we have participated in reaching these decisions with Northern Ireland’s civil service.

Turning to the protocol, as hon. Members know, it has always been our preference to resolve the issues through talks. The Foreign Secretary and Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič speak regularly and Government officials have technical talks. The Foreign Secretary and Vice-President Šefčovič spoke on Monday 16 January and have agreed that rapid scoping work should continue, which we are very pleased about.

We welcome the agreement reached recently on the EU’s access to UK IT systems that provide live information about what goods are moving across from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. That agreement has provided a new basis for further constructive discussions with the EU to come to a negotiated solution on the protocol. We are of course proceeding with legislation, but I would like to take a moment to elaborate on the situation we face.

It is sometimes impressed upon me by some of the harder-line Unionist commentators that we should simply tear up the protocol. I am not sure what political world they think we operate in—I am not talking about Members of this House, but some individuals outside it. The world is rather more complicated than that. Ministers do not have unfettered power to tear up treaties, nor should they. That is why we proceed with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

On the point about border posts, the reality is that we are in the happy position where legitimate interests on both sides are now being recognised: the legitimate interests of the EU and Ireland to have their market protected—that is what the border posts are for, even in the circumstances that the Protocol Bill has to become an Act and be used—and the legitimate interests of Unionism and Unionists. I put on record my heartfelt thanks to the present Taoiseach, Mr Varadkar; I know I will not be thanked by some Unionists for that, but he has had the statesmanship to move his position and recognise the legitimate interests of Unionism. I am grateful to see Opposition Members nodding; it is very good news.

Given the position we are in, where we are very willing to recognise the legitimate concerns of the EU and Ireland and they are increasingly willing to recognise the legitimate concerns of Unionism, this is a moment when we ought not to goad one another. I have fought hard enough in this place over Brexit, but we are tantalisingly close to recognising that we are friends and partners and that we can look after one another’s interests and go forward in the spirit of goodwill.

I encourage everyone, rather than rehearsing the arguments and grievances of the past, to look to a future that is tantalisingly close to being very positive, with a deal that we can all accept. With that in mind, I want to say gently to those of us who fought for Brexit, those of us who are Unionists, that when a deal comes—I do believe it is when, but there is a lot to be done—if that deal is acceptable to the Eurosceptic cause and to Unionism, we are all going to have to sell it to people. It will be no good to just denounce border infrastructure, which is there for the red lane, to protect the interests of the EU. Denouncing what has been done, when we have the green lane and arrangements for unfettered access within the UK, will not be enough. I mean that most sincerely, because if one thing has come home hard, even now—I think I have always known it, given when I joined the Royal Air Force—it is that even after 25 years of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement giving us some welcome peace, the politics of Northern Ireland, as hon. Members from Northern Ireland know better than me, is not to be taken for granted.

The politics of Northern Ireland is a grave thing; too many graves. That has been realised across the European Union. People realise that it is a post-conflict society with, as we have heard, an enforced coalition between the two poles of debate on the pre-eminent constitutional question that caused the conflict, so things are not to be taken lightly. That is why I am happy to put on record my admiration for the current Taoiseach and his predecessor, Mr Martin, with whom I get on well. I look forward to meeting Mr Varadkar. On the protocol, we are tantalisingly close to a success of which we can all be proud and then move on. Let none of us do anything to spoil the prospects of that success.

I turn to the overall points made about spending. Notwithstanding what was said about the Barnett formula and so on, which we support, it must be said that per head public spending in Northern Ireland is the highest of any region of the UK at 21% per head more than the UK average. The Northern Ireland block grant is at record levels, averaging some £15 billion a year over the next three years. On top of that, if we look at the new deal for Northern Ireland at £400 million, city deals at £617 million, the New Decade, New Approach financial package at £2 billion and the forthcoming Peace Plus at £730 million, that adds up to about £3.5 billion of extra funding. That is reflective of Northern Ireland’s special status. But it cannot really be said that Northern Ireland is in any sense neglected.

I will make three points about the process by which we came to the Budget. First, it has been drawn up as a result of intensive engagement between our officials and the Northern Ireland civil service. We are grateful to officials on all sides. The Government have also taken on board many representations that we received in correspondence and in person.

Secondly, I stress again that we believe this overall Budget is a fair and appropriate settlement that reflects the key pressures facing Northern Ireland. I mentioned per-head spending, and I will not repeat myself. Thirdly, it has been said on many occasions that the Bill does not preclude a functioning Executive from making changes to the Budget allocations, should one return. Of course, we are beyond the point at which it is possible to restore the Executive without an election so we would have to legislate. We all fervently hope that the Executive could be restored without an election, and the Secretary of State is considering all his options.

I turn to the important point about the PSNI made by the leader of the DUP, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson). As the right hon. Member will know, its main budget is allocated by the Northern Ireland Department of Justice. The Budget gives the Department of Justice a 3.1% uplift on its 2021-22 budget. In addition to the block grant, the UK Government provide the PSNI with the additional security funding that it needs to tackle the substantial threat that we face from Northern Ireland-related terrorism. The UK Government contribution for 2022-23 will be £32 million

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I do not dispute the Minister’s figures—my point was not about those figures and I was not challenging them—I was simply pointing out that, in relation to New Decade, New Approach, there was an agreement to recruit additional police officers to bring us up to the level that was agreed way back when the Police Service of Northern Ireland was formed. It was clear that the Treasury would provide the additional funding required to ensure that those extra officers were recruited. My point is simply this: that has not happened.

[Mr Baker]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Member for clarifying that point. I will write to him on that. The PSNI is close to my heart, and I am extremely grateful to all the people who work for the PSNI for everything that they do to keep us all safe.

The Opposition spokesman the hon. Member for Hove, the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) all talked about education funding. According to information published by the Treasury, identifiable public spending on education stood at £1,759 per head in Northern Ireland for the 2020-21 financial year. That compared to £1,428 per head for the UK as a whole over the same period. That was 23% higher than the UK average. That reflects our commitment to Northern Ireland and to education.

The Department of Education projected significant levels of overspend, but this Budget has actually delivered an increase in education spending of just under £300 million. We recognise that pressures above that level of increase will require difficult decisions to be taken, but we believe that those decisions are deliverable within the legal framework that we have set out in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2022 and the accompanying guidance.

I was grateful to the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) for his point about efficiency savings that could be made in education. My goodness, yes there are some. Again, that integrated education could even be a question in the 21st century is extraordinary to me. There are certainly savings to be made. That level of additional funding represents around a 12% increase on the previous year, excluding the additional funding allocated for covid. That really is as much as could be afforded in the light of the £660-million black hole that we were facing. Overall, that demonstrates just how unsustainable Northern Ireland finances have become and the need for reform.

The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) mentioned women’s healthcare, particularly the misery of endometriosis. Once again, this is a shocking situation to be in. The hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) talked about the lack of collective shame. In this day and age, we should be ashamed of the state of public services in Northern Ireland. For far too long we have been just grateful for peace and have not done enough to highlight across the whole of the UK what needs to be done to serve the people of Northern Ireland because, my goodness, they deserve good services.

This Budget provides £7.28 billion in funding for the Department of Health. That is an increase of £228 million on 2021-22 spending, which included significant covid-19 funding. It is an increase of £786 million compared with last year’s funding, excluding the one-off covid uplift. As with education, there will be difficult decisions to take on health. Decisions on the reform of healthcare will be difficult. The Bengoa report, as we have discussed, should be carried forward. Too many years—six—have gone by without progress. We need to see Executive return as soon as possible.

I will make one more point before I conclude. I responded to the hon. Member for Foyle in an earlier debate on the addiction rehabilitation centre. I can tell him that the Government stand ready to respond to a proposal submitted by the Executive. I know it is frustrating; I am frustrated because I want to give him the answer he wants. We are waiting on that Northern Ireland Department of Health business case.