EU Funding: Northern Ireland

Debate between Laurence Robertson and Claire Hanna

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

In a moment, I will call Claire Hanna to move the motion. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the hon. Lady to wind up at the end.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered replacement of funding from EU programmes in Northern Ireland.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss this issue and, I hope, get clarity for a number of third sector partners and other groups in Northern Ireland and, potentially, areas of opportunity for them. It feels like a very long time ago, but during the EU referendum campaign there were assurances that Northern Ireland would not lose out, doing well, as we did, out of the EU funds, which were based on need. We know that the phrase “take back control” resonated with many people, but it appears to mean taking back control from some of the funds that have traditionally underpinned progress in Northern Ireland and from local decision makers, and handing it directly to London, without any sense of a strategy that local groups can try to support.

In March last year, in the early stages of the community renewal fund, I had a Westminster Hall debate, in which various eyebrow-raising allocations from that scheme were addressed. I am afraid that several of the reservations that people had about process, strategy, co-ordination and transparency have been borne out. It is worth saying that these concerns are not held just by groups that are applying for funding or by my party. The Northern Ireland Executive, as was, adopted the position that the best delivery mechanism for the shared prosperity fund would be via existing structures. Invest Northern Ireland, our economy arm, was very clear that it believed that the funding would be best delivered in conjunction with the programme for government. And the think-tank Pivotal and other respected commentators and business voices made the same point. People are up for change. They understand that it is a reality, and they roll with the punches. But it has to feel transparent, and there has to be a sense of fairness and coherence and that there is more to these allocations than just the whim of Ministers in London.

As I said, Northern Ireland was a net beneficiary in the EU. That is not a secret and is not anything to be ashamed of. Those allocations were made on the basis of need and, in many cases, were a counterweight to the obvious challenges that Northern Ireland faced and to decades of capital underinvestment. That is not just a historical issue: in 2021, the average capital spend per head in Northern Ireland was £1,325, compared with a UK average of £1,407. Of course, all that has contributed to a failure to attract quality investment and foreign direct investment, and decent jobs. That is reflected in our rates of economically inactive people, which are substantially higher than those in other regions.

The founder of our party, John Hume, said many times that the best peace process is a job: the best way to enable people to have hope in their futures and see beyond the things that have divided us in our region is to have meaningful employment—a reason to stay, to get up in the morning and to work together. Those were the opportunities that we saw in European participation, and that is why we continue to work so hard to protect our access to political and economic structures. Funds beyond the block grant, the EU funding as was and the promised successor funds, have been billed and are needed as additional, and they should be an opportunity to realise some of those ambitions, to remove barriers to employment and, in particular at the moment, to allow people to take advantage of the opportunities that the current very tight labour market offers. Unfortunately, that is not what we are getting.

Time is obviously short, so I want to focus on the loss of the European social fund and the European regional development fund and on the replacement, the SPF, and to touch on the levelling-up fund. It is worth clarifying that, as well as those assurances back in 2016, during the referendum campaign, the Conservative party manifesto in 2019 committed to replacing the ESF in its entirety. Northern Ireland got an average of £65 million a year from the ESF and ERDF in the period from 2014 to 2020, with Northern Ireland Departments having the power to manage that in line with UK strategy. That allowed them to align projects that they funded with regional and local strategies, ensuring complementarity and targeted outcomes.

The scenario now is that the UK Government and Northern Ireland Departments are essentially two players on the same pitch, in the same space, delivering the same sorts of projects. That has a built-in inefficiency and means that the results are less than the sum of the parts. That overlapping inevitably applies to monitoring, too. How are we supposed to measure the impact of different interventions in areas like skills if the scheme is only one part of an equation in which all the other Departments are trying to do similar things? It seems that it will be impossible to disaggregate that. The governance is sub-par and the quantum is less, too.

By comparison with the ESF and the ERDF averages, the allocation for the shared prosperity fund in Northern Ireland is £127 million over three years, so we are losing on average £23 million per year from that scheme. That has created this massive gap for funded groups, many of whom just cannot hold on. It is not like in the civil service; people have to be put on protected notice or face closure. Again, there is nothing co-ordinated about any of this. It is not even the survival of the fittest—that the strongest and best organisations will continue—because it is largely the luck of the draw on where organisations are in their funding cycle. Again, this is one more downside of the abandonment of devolution. Engaged and responsive local Ministers could monitor the situation and be flexible and creative with in-year allocation, match funding and bridge funding. They could, in short, protect us from the deficit created by Brexit and this devolution override.

I want to touch on how all this affects specific groups. The NOW Group is a highly regarded project that works across Belfast and further afield, supporting people who are economically inactive because of a disability get into employment. It has 17 years of ESF funding and runs high-profile facilities. If anyone has been in the café in Belfast City Hall, they will have seen NOW Group workers. They help hundreds of people with disabilities into all sorts of sectors, including leading corporates and the knowledge sector. It is a safe bet that any credible funder will keep backing a project like this, but the assurances are just not there. Reserves cannot last forever and, of course, smaller organisations will not have such reserves. In that project, 52 people are at risk of being put on notice and another 800 people with disabilities will be left with no service.

Mencap in south Belfast and far beyond has run ESF projects on social inclusion for decades and was well on track to exceed the target set by ESF of supporting 13,000 people by 2023. It is concerned by how limited the scope of SPF is compared to what they were able to do under ESF. The East Belfast Mission described well what is at stake:

“Our programmes have a long track record of being more successful than government initiatives”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Hanna]

That again illustrates the confusion that people have about what was selected. Will the Minister confirm whether any criteria additional to those specified were applied? Were they applied consistently to all projects? Will the transparent list that she will publish include any changes in ranking that occurred as a result of new criteria?

Again—for future learning—it was announced that there will be a round three of levelling-up funding. An enormous amount of work goes into the applications, including, as people will know, many thousands of pounds on proposals and engaging the strategy board. Will the Department therefore develop a reserve list from round two applications? That could prevent some groups from having to run up the same professional fees and pouring in the same time, particularly when they are being left in the dark about the criteria. Further, can the Minister clarify what consultation was held with the Northern Ireland Departments and other funding bodies to address the overlap in applications under levelling up and other schemes? Finally, does the Minister think that the spread of applications in Northern Ireland is appropriate?

A lot of these issues are very technical, but they are vital to achieving the things that we all want to achieve for Northern Ireland and for progress. They are also vital to people having some faith in this progress—that they have not had their eye wiped, essentially, by funds being promised, removed and not adequately replaced. That is not the case at the moment. People see this as a net loss from what we enjoyed before Brexit, and that should concern the Department.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

We have until four minutes past 5, but it is not essential to take up all the time.

Black Friday: Financial Products

Debate between Laurence Robertson and Claire Hanna

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) very much for introducing the debate, and I congratulate her on having not only a genuinely good track record of action on consumer protection, but much better behaved infants than I have ever had, which is not to be sniffed at.

I associate myself with many of the remarks and proposals that the hon. Member and others have made, including about understanding that individuals and families are ready for a meaningful Christmas, and acknowledging that many are able to make, and are facilitated in making, difficult choices and balancing things this year and every year. However, we also have to acknowledge that Black Friday and the associated financing is not a generous offer and an attempt by retailers and financiers to make Christmas dreams come true. It is, in many ways, exploitation of those natural human instincts to try to provide for family. Black Friday is no longer just one day in November; it is a month-long—and often longer—bombardment of advertisements, deals and “ways to pay” that go far beyond traditional methods.

Research published today by Which? indicates that some 99% of Black Friday deals that it assessed were in fact available cheaper elsewhere in the calendar year. At the heart of this is driving people to make more purchases. We could spend this debate talking about the negative impacts of Black Friday alone on people, on the planet and on smaller retailers, which perhaps do not have the same marketing infrastructure as larger ones, but probably the most acute impact, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow outlined, is the results and the risks of predatory lending.

Citizens Advice has likened buy now, pay later to quicksand—easy to slip into and very, very difficult to get out of. As I said, at the heart of the concept is encouraging people to spend money that they do not have by putting the hard landing of any purchase on the long finger. The hon. Member for Walthamstow is correct to highlight the habit-forming tactics that mainstream this means of purchase and steepen the slippery slope by which many people slide into debt. She highlights the very interesting statistic that it increases sales by up to 30%. Evidence bears out the concerns that Members have expressed, with 75% of buy now, pay later users being under the age of 36—this tactic is clearly marketed particularly at Gen Z—and four out of 10 of them struggling to repay. That matches what we already know about the financial security of many in that demographic, who are already in or at risk from the gig economy, with its inadequate and unsustainable or unfixed incomes.

The services we are discussing are, in many cases, clearly harmful to the individual consumer, but also to the planet. Members outlined that the vast majority of buy now, pay later purchases relate to clothing, which drives the acutely unsustainable fast fashion market in which literally tonnes of clothing, often produced in dubious labour conditions, quickly ends up in landfill after a tiny number of wears—the product is often designed to be worn a small number of times. There is a wider impact. Fashion website Boohoo offers shoppers five different ways to pay for a £30 dress, which again underlines that this is not about facilitating a special Christmas purchase or a big purchase, such as a TV, that a household needs; this is about driving a pattern of spending that locks people into unsustainable purchasing habits.

As one investor in a buy now, pay later start-up explained:

“It increases the basket size and it also reduces dropped baskets”.

Some of that is marketing; it is what business does. It is the logical extension and development of the economy we have. However, as in many other areas of the market and the economy, we have an obligation to try to protect people from technologies and marketing techniques that are far beyond what any of us are used to.

This is a big and emerging problem and, like a lot that relates to technology and online, the market may be moving faster than regulation can, but it is not an unsolvable problem. The hon. Member for Walthamstow outlined many ways, alongside FCA regulation, to intervene and slow this down, including obligations on retailers to adequately display and explain the background of the products they serve. For example, in Sweden, the home of Klarna, it is already illegal to market buy now, pay later ahead of other types of up-front payment.

It is welcome that the Government acknowledge this issue and that regulation is required. It is important that we have forums such as this one to correct the view that this is not a widespread consumer problem, because it is. We know very well the depth of the debt problem. After all, credit is debt—that is what it is. As others have explained, people will always want to use credit, but in many cases it will be for a long-term purchase that will have benefits in life. In the vast majority of buy now, pay later cases, that does not apply. I support the motion and all efforts to regulate and protect.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

We come to the Front-Bench spokespeople. I would like to leave two or three minutes at the end for the mover of the motion to wind up the debate.