Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I am grateful to all Members for supporting the expedited passage of this legislation, and I am very grateful for the accommodation made to do so, for all the reasons given. I rise principally to express my thanks to everybody who has participated in the House, including the Front Benchers for their constructive role as critical friends. I also want to place on the record the Government’s appreciation to the House authorities, especially the Clerks who guided us, as ever, in expert fashion.

We would like to thank as a Department again the superb Caroline MacBeath in the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel for the expert fashion in which she and colleagues have drafted this Bill with Northern Ireland counterparts in the Office of the Legislative Counsel, so my thanks to all of them, and also to officials in the Department of Finance in particular. I again want to thank officials in the NIO and across the Northern Ireland civil service, especially the permanent secretaries, for their work together in coming up with this Budget.

I thank colleagues and officials in the Government Whips Office for their support and assistance—[Interruption.] Give him a job? It is too late. Where am I?

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The House of Commons.

[Mr Baker]

Thank you. It has been a busy day and I am grateful that there is some levity, but I would like to finish by saying that we did not want to have to pass this Bill; it is not a Bill that the House wanted to have before it.

In closing my Third Reading speech, and thanking everybody for making this possible so that public services can go ahead in Northern Ireland, I refer to what I said at the end of my Second Reading speech: we are going to need to do better in Northern Ireland, and I know that all of us in this House will play our part in making that happen.