Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Lady Hermon Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The Secretary of State will know that, for family reasons, we have had a very difficult weekend. I apologise most sincerely to the House for coming into the debate late; it is a tale of delayed flights and tubes.

Will the Secretary of State enlighten the House and the people of Northern Ireland as to why no reference is made to the reduction in MLAs’ salaries? That is what the people at home want to see. We have not had a functioning Assembly for almost 11 months now, but MLAs continue to take their full salary and full staffing allowance. People at home hoped that there would be a signal today in this budget Bill of a reduction in salaries. Will there be such a reduction?

[James Brokenshire]

If the hon. Lady will bear with me, I intend to say something about that issue later in my comments.

Before I do so, I will comment on issues outside the Bill. The figures contained in the Bill do not secure the financial position for the long term, because real challenges remain: there is a health service in significant need of transformation; there are further steps to take to build the truly connected infrastructure that can boost growth and prosperity throughout Northern Ireland; and there are other steps, too. It was in recognition of those unique circumstances that the UK Government were prepared to make available additional financial support earlier this year, following the confidence and supply agreement between the Conservative party and the Democratic Unionist party. That agreement made it clear that we wanted to see that money made available to a restored Executive, which would decide on a cross-community basis how best to use the funding for the benefit of all in Northern Ireland. However, Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances cannot simply be ignored in the meantime, especially given the pressures that we have seen in the continued absence of an Executive.

Therefore, in addition to the Bill, this Government will make available the £50 million for addressing immediate health and education pressures in the agreement in this financial year. Those sums are not contained in this Bill, because they have not yet been voted on by Parliament. If the Northern Ireland Administration confirm that they wish to access them, they will be subject to the full authorisation of this House, as with all sums discharged from the UK Consolidated Fund, via the estimates process in the new year. From there they will be transferred, along with other sums forming part of the Northern Ireland block grant, into the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund.

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[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I join the Secretary of State in condemning the actions of the people who left a viable pipe bomb in Omagh on Remembrance Sunday—on a day and in a place designed to cause maximum harm and shock. It is truly contemptible of those people. I equally condemn the actions of the men who conducted what can only be described as a knee-capping last night in Londonderry-Derry—a city where, even as we speak, there is apparently another incident involving what the police believe to be a viable pipe bomb.

All these awful events are a timely and salutary reminder of Northern Ireland’s past—a past that we all hoped that we had long since left behind, but which I fear we have not always left behind. These events are also a reminder of the propensity of violence in Northern Ireland to fill a vacuum when politics fails, and I am afraid that we are here today because politics has failed. This Bill is, unfortunately, a testament to political failure. It is a failure by the majority parties that were in government together, power sharing in Northern Ireland, and that have fallen out and been unable to come back together. I am afraid that it is also a failure of the Secretary of State’s Government to bring about the restitution of trust and the reconstitution of the Assembly and its institutions.

The Secretary of State has been at pains to say that this is not direct rule. I understand why he wants to emphasise that point—technically, of course, he is right—but that is not what nationalists in Northern Ireland will see in today’s events. That is not how they will characterise it, and that needs to be reflected as they unfortunately now lack a voice in this place for the first time in a long time. The reality is that we are living in something of a twilight zone between devolution and direct rule, with real problems for accountability and transparency, as so many Democratic Unionist party Members described earlier in the debate.

Today’s budget is only a quick fix until the end of March, so there will be a further one. It is difficult to credit the Secretary of State saying that this is the budget that the Northern Ireland Executive would have brought forward in the event of devolution and that this is effectively a continuation of the trajectory set in the budget in December last year. Twelve months have now passed, and it is quite hard to see a direct line of accountability between that indicative budget and the sums before us now.

Let me be clear that we will support the Bill tonight. We absolutely believe that the Secretary of State has no choice but to bring forward this budget, and we accept all the arguments he has made in that regard. Northern Ireland’s public services need to be supported. The roads budget is running out of the money to fill the potholes, and there are significant problems in housing, health and education, all of which need to be addressed with extra resources in Northern Ireland. However, this budget does raise questions about the transparency, accountability and sustainability of this approach. DUP colleagues who raise such questions are right to do so, and other hon. Members across the House will also raise these points.

[Lady Hermon]

The hon. Gentleman has signalled his support for the Bill. Will he also signal to the House his support for the issue raised, quite rightly, by the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds)? When the matter is brought before the House, will the hon. Gentleman, his colleagues and the leader of his party firmly support the termination of representative money to Sinn Féin MPs, who do not take their seats and represent their people in this House?

[Owen Smith]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, that is a slightly separate issue from those we are discussing today. We can discuss that matter on another day, and I will be happy to address it at that point.

I hope to address the profound concerns about the Government’s mishandling of the wider political process, but I will first talk a bit about the budget. The Secretary of State has effectively said that this is a flat budget for the Northern Ireland Departments in aggregate, with perhaps a 3% uplift to reflect inflationary pressures over the period. But within that headline figure, there are shifts between Departments, with cuts for some and increases for others. I cannot help but bring to the attention of the House—although my thunder was stolen—the quite extraordinary 32% increase on last year’s figure received by the Executive Office, compared with a 3% reduction in the budget for the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs and a 0.3% reduction in the budget for the Department for the Economy. Those are curious decisions that the Secretary of State was not able adequately to explain away to the House. I accept that this is complicated, but those decisions seem to be fairly fundamental.

Such decisions raise real questions about the accountability of decision making in this twilight zone. It is true that there is an increase for education in this budget versus the education recommendations made by the Secretary of State in April and the summer, but that raises a question that the House should ask: who has made the decision to increase education spending in Northern Ireland? There was a decision to cut it, and I am very pleased that that decision was reversed and that there has been a slight uplift in education spending. But someone made that decision. If it was not a Northern Ireland Executive Minister or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, it was a civil servant. That civil servant is wholly unaccountable and does not have a clear line of accountability now to elected politicians in Northern Ireland or to the Secretary of State. So while we may well support the decision, we must ask questions about it.

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[Dr Murrison]

I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] It is sort of a cop out, if he would like to see it that way, in that it is primarily a matter for the House and it is for the House to determine. I made my views on Sinn Féin not taking its seats in this place very, very clear. There should be no confusion about that. In my opinion, they are letting down those who elect them to do a job of work. They are clearly not doing it and people should draw their own conclusions. At the end of the day, however, it is a matter for the House. I hope he will be satisfied with that—I suspect he will not.

[Lady Hermon]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene, particularly as he is drawing his remarks to a conclusion. May I just say to him ever so gently that a large number of people in Northern Ireland would not be crying into their hankies if direct rule were introduced in Northern Ireland tomorrow? I would like him to explain to the people of Northern Ireland, who are extremely angry and very aggrieved that the MLAs received their full salary and their full staffing allowance, what he seems to be advocating: that the Assembly should have some sort of advisory role in Northern Ireland and some sort of direct rule Ministers here. Is he advocating that MLAs will be paid for that advisory role? The people of Northern Ireland will not be amused by that.

[Dr Murrison]

I look forward to Mr Trevor Reaney’s conclusions and it would be wrong to pre-empt them, but we will certainly need to have some way to consult the people of Northern Ireland if we take further direct rule powers. It seems to me that that is right and proper. It is very difficult to see, as a democrat, how one would object to such a thing. It has been tried in the past and it has had some effect. That is the sort of thing I am looking for and the MLAs are elected people. What are the alternatives? One can consult civic society—of course one can and one should—but at the end of the day MLAs are elected and I hope they might be involved in some way, shape or form prior to the restoration of the institutions. Nothing must be done to replace the imperative to get the Executive back up and running. I fear that all the stop-gap solutions may have the unintended consequence of delaying the day the institutions are restored at Stormont, and that would be a great pity. We must always beware of such unintended consequences.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his announcement about the Comptroller and the National Audit Office for Northern Ireland. He is absolutely right, as we try to pick our way through this, that we should have measures to allow this House to scrutinise what is going on, particularly the methodology of the apportionment of funds to Departments in Northern Ireland. I look forward to seeing the documents in the Libraries of both Houses and to the restoration of the Executive in Stormont. May that happen sooner rather than later.

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[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting point. As things stand—under current legislation—the Secretary of State is under a legal obligation to call an election. He does not have to call it immediately, but the Northern Ireland Executive cannot legally be restored, as things stand, unless new primary legislation is introduced, and, in fact, there is an obligation to consider another election. The question arises, of course, as to whether another election would change anything or improve the prospects of an agreement.

In the June general election, our party received the highest vote of any single party in Northern Ireland since 1985, so we do not fear another election. We do not fear another general election here either. We are probably the only party in the House that can confidently say, if there was a general election tomorrow, that it would have no difficulties with the result. [Interruption.] Labour Members, from a sedentary position, mention a possible deal. I vividly remember the conversations with the Labour party in 2010 and 2015—it is interesting to recall all that. That said, we do not want a general election, and we do not necessarily expect an Assembly election to change much in Northern Ireland. The main focus has to be on getting the Assembly and the Executive up and running as quickly as possible.

[Lady Hermon]

I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman could just clarify an interesting point: he and his colleagues, particularly his party leader, have detected within Sinn Féin some disagreement between the party president, Gerry Adams, sitting as a Teachta Dála in the Republic, and the leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill. Are her decisions being repeatedly overridden by the party president?

[Nigel Dodds]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting question. Certainly, the Irish Prime Minister has had something to say on that in recent weeks and has accused Gerry Adams of doing exactly what she implies, although it remains a dubious proposition in my view. Given that Gerry Adams appointed the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland unilaterally—there was no election, not even among the Sinn Féin elected representatives—to ensure that his voice was heard, it is questionable whether there is any independence there or any diverse view between them and within Sinn Féin about the way forward.

I know that others want to speak, and I will end my speech shortly, but let me say this. When we describe the Bill as a move towards direct rule, we should remember that we experienced a form of direct rule intervention not so long ago, in the context of welfare reform. The House of Commons has control, powers and authority over welfare policy and legislation in Northern Ireland until the end of this year, and that is a policy to which Sinn Féin agreed. When people hear Sinn Féin rail against direct rule nowadays, they should remember that, as part of the Stormont House agreement, Sinn Féin agreed that welfare policy should be transferred back to Westminster. Why was that? Because Sinn Féin did not want to make the hard decisions on welfare that Assembly membership required them to make; they preferred others to make those decisions for them. We hear people talking about the downsides of direct rule and saying that it is a terrible, backward step, but in the case of some issues they are quite happy to pass the powers to Westminster.

I concur entirely with those who have said that the current semi-direct rule cannot be sustained for a lengthy period. I think there is no real dispute about that. We must have Ministers, because Ministers prioritise and Ministers allocate, but this budget does not solve the problem of who is prioritising and who is allocating. At some point very soon we will need Ministers, but that does not mean that we should give up on the negotiations, the talks, and the efforts to get devolution up and running. We will continue to do that, and we will play our full part in it. It would be a travesty, and a big mistake, to allow Northern Ireland to continue in a limbo in which decisions cannot be made. Reference has already been made to the historical investigations inquiry, and community groups and others come to me all the time wanting guidance and certainty about future funding. It is unfair and wrong for people not to be able to have some certainty.

In that context, this House of Parliament must be the place where decisions are made and where Ministers will be accountable. Of course there is a role for the Irish Republic’s Government in respect of strand 2 and strand 3 issues. According to the fundamental principles of the political process that have existed from the outset, strand 1 issues—internal Northern Ireland affairs—are a matter for the United Kingdom Government and the parties in Northern Ireland alone. Strand 2 issues—north-south issues—are matters for discussion between representatives in Northern Ireland and those in the Republic, and strand 3 issues are matters for discussion between the Irish and British Governments. The principles of that three-strand approach must and will be maintained. There will be no role for the Irish Republic in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland in the future. That is enshrined in the Belfast agreement, under the principle of consent.

We look forward to this budget allowing the Departments in Northern Ireland to spend the money that it is necessary for them to spend over the coming weeks and months. We also look forward to working with the Government and continuing to engage with the other parties, particularly Sinn Féin, to try to get devolution up and running as quickly as we possibly can.

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State has indicated the process by which the Bill has come before us tonight. We will support it, but I believe that it should have come before the House far sooner. The fact that we have lingered for so long before bringing this necessary Bill before the House is a reflection of the Northern Ireland Office’s attitude that we must not offend Sinn Féin. Let us make no mistake about this. It bears repeating that we are here today because of the political cowardice of the Sinn Féin Finance Minister. This time last year, he was faced with a challenging budget, but he would not have been the first Finance Minister to be faced with such a budget. All Finance Ministers since 2008 have had to bring forward budgets that were criticised by pressure groups and faced Departments screaming about cuts, but at least they brought those budgets before the Assembly, argued their case and made amendments when necessary so that the good governance of Northern Ireland could be continued. Máirtín Ó Muilleoir refused to do that.

I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) wanted to give Sinn Féin the benefit of the doubt, but I believe that it has opted out in this regard. We have only to look at the history. It opted out of the difficult choice on welfare reform. It let the hated Tories bring in welfare reform, but now it is critical every time there is an issue about universal credit, personal independence payments or any other aspect of welfare reform, although it abrogated their responsibility on that one. The same applies to the changes required in the health service. The Sinn Féin Minister had a report, which she accepted, but she then refused to do anything about it because that would have involved hard decisions about hospital closures. Now the same thing is happening with the budget. The Secretary of State should not be too optimistic that he will reach an agreement in the talks that leads to Sinn Féin going back into the Executive and re-establishment the Assembly. It will continue with its list of unrealistic demands as a cover for the fact that it does not want to get into the Assembly in the first place.

[Lady Hermon]

Is it not the case that Sinn Féin has opted out since the Brexit decision? It has played on that decision, making a calculation that it will stay out of the Northern Ireland Assembly while playing up fears of a hard border and a hard Brexit to provoke talk about a border poll, which plays well to their constituency. However, as the Secretary of State has often said, there is not going to be a border poll because there is no evidence that people want to change the status of Northern Ireland.

[Sammy Wilson]

That brings me to my next point. The Secretary of State must be clear about Sinn Féin’s strategy. It prefers the chaos of having no Assembly and no direct rule. That suits it and its republican agenda. It is our preference to have Ministers appointed in Northern Ireland, but if we are not going to have that, we have to move towards a situation in which Ministers can take charge of the Departments in Northern Ireland and plan for the future, in the interests of good government and stability, and to ensure that Sinn Féin’s chaos theory of politics is not put into practice.

This is a challenging budget. There has been an increase in cash terms, but there is no real-terms increase. We accept that there have been difficulties in the rest of the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland cannot be totally exempt. However, we have put forward a good argument and been successful in highlighting the particular issues in Northern Ireland that need to be addressed, which are different from those in other parts of the United Kingdom. Some Labour Members argue that we need to spend more money on public services, but they seem to be reluctant to see it spent on public services in Northern Ireland. They must explain that inconsistency, however; I merely need to highlight it—[Interruption.] I see the Scottish National party’s spokesperson turning round. Her party makes exactly the same point, but perhaps its Members’ difficulty is that they are angry that they never got in on the act.

This is a challenging budget. I have posed a question to the Secretary of State, because I have experience of this. The Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister has always somehow been exempt from reductions when it comes to budgetary decisions. Many people will find it incomprehensible, at a time when we do not have a First or Deputy First Minister, that the Executive Office should get a 32% increase in its budget. I imagine that most of the budget was drawn up by the Department of Finance, and it is also significant, at a time when the Department of Education is getting only a 1.5% increase and the Justice and Agriculture departmental budgets are going down, that the Department of Finance should be getting a 10% increase. One wonders what influences there have been. These are questions that could and should have been dealt with by the Assembly. We would certainly like to hear the Secretary of State’s explanation of why public-facing Departments such as Education and Agriculture are facing reductions in their budget allocations.

The amount of waste in the education budget in Northern Ireland was mentioned earlier. The 1.5% increase in the education budget will be challenging for schools. I know this from representations that I have had from headmasters in my constituency. We rationalised the administration of education by doing away with five boards and having one education authority, but that still absorbs a disproportionate amount of the education budget. More money is held at the centre by the Department of Education and by the Education Authority.

There is of course another approach that would not involve spending another penny. The Secretary of State and the Chancellor could address the £500 million that was allocated under the Stormont House agreement for a shared future in education. That is not new money, yet the Treasury has tied it up in such a way that it cannot be spent on that shared future. Take the big joint campus at Omagh, which would have allowed for a huge amount of expenditure on education in western Northern Ireland. There is no clearer example of a shared future campus, yet the £140 million allocated under the shared future agreement cannot be spent. There are schools in my constituency with a mixture of Catholics and Protestants that are crying out for expenditure. They are integrated schools in all but name, but as they do not happen to have the right title ahead of their name, the money cannot be spent on them under the shared future programme. I want the Secretary of State to take that up with the Treasury. As we have heard today, even when there is a big problem in the education budget, we still have a huge number of school sites and a huge amount of land that are not being sold by the Department of Education, which could raise revenue that would be available to the public purse in Northern Ireland. We have a tough budget, and the Northern Ireland Assembly could have worked its way through it, but it has not. These are the sorts of questions that have to be asked.

As for the future, I know that the Secretary of State is reluctant to be the one who introduces full direct rule again, but we are going to hit the same problem next year due to Departments’ lack of ability to plan for spending if we do not have Ministers in place. If there is no Minister in place, how can Departments look at new initiatives that may cut expenditure or introduce efficiencies? They cannot. So what will we do? We will trundle along, spending money in the same way as we have always done, because that is all that the civil servants will be authorised to do. The Secretary of State will soon have to grasp the nettle and say that we need Ministers in place who can look through the programmes that Departments need to undertake, who can plan for the future, and who can tell civil servants that they can do things with ministerial authority.

We welcome the announcement that £50 million to deal with pressures in health and education will be available this year, but the hundreds of millions of pounds of infrastructure money can be spent only with planning, which can be done only if Ministers are in place. I tell the Secretary of State not to dally any longer. Do not hold out hope that the cowards in Sinn Féin will take the reins of government and make the tough decisions. They will not, which unfortunately means—we do not relish this—that decisions will be made by Ministers here.