Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Mike Penning]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give me two seconds? I am in a flow.

I have raised the issue with shadow Front Benchers and my own—I was a Northern Ireland Minister for a considerable period—because we have to address it. Perhaps I will come back to that point after the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

The right hon. Gentleman puts forward the proposition that the only longer-term alternative to the current stalemate is direct rule. One understands that, but it has been argued today that the provisions of the Good Friday agreement and the concept of devolution are not sacrosanct and that they can be overridden. That is an interesting comment, but surely there is another solution. Of the five parties in a position to form a Government in Northern Ireland, four are prepared, on a cross-community basis, to form a Government without precondition. Might this Parliament stepping up to the mark finally lead us to recognise the need for democracy to move on in Northern Ireland, instead of a single faction being allowed to veto the people of Northern Ireland having their own Government?

[Sir Mike Penning]

I cannot disagree with a single word that my right hon. Friend has said. This cannot continue; we cannot sit in a situation where there is no way of looking properly at how civil servants are spending taxpayers’ money. That is not the principle of this democracy, and it is not the principle on which I was elected to this House. We must have a methodology. If this House voted to go forward with four parties instead of the five, somewhere along the line Sinn Féin would suddenly wake up and smell the coffee. But at the moment we are not challenging Sinn Féin. We are accepting that they have this veto. We are accepting that this House, in this great Union of ours, is not going to challenge the convention whereby Sinn Féin can say, “No, there is no devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

On behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I place on the record our appreciation of the Secretary of State, her officials and the Minister for their co-operation in discussing the detail of the Bill and our appreciation for the additional funding, which is greatly needed to address issues in Northern Ireland.

I echo the comments of the Secretary of State. DUP Members sincerely hope that this evening will be the last time the House will need to deal on this temporary basis with the budget for Northern Ireland. We truly hope that by this time next year we will have a functioning devolved Government and Assembly that can do the job, provide the scrutiny and bring forward proposals for public expenditure in Northern Ireland. We agree that this is not a desirable way to do things—it is not our wish that it should happen this way—but we appreciate the time the House has devoted to it. I wish we had more time for scrutiny, but we understand why we are where we are. The DUP is committed to working towards the restoration of devolved government. The sooner it happens the better.