Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

2nd reading
Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna]

I would be happy to give way in a moment if the right hon. Gentleman wants to tell me about any proposals or votes he made in this House with a view to achieving a solution that has the consent and consensus of all the communities. I was not a Member at the time, but I spoke at meetings in this House on a borderless solution being the only outcome without a sense of winners and losers.

As I say, this has been about choices. I do not doubt that the DUP’s concerns are sincerely held but, on the choice to boycott politics, not a single thing is advanced by having no Government. Not a single technical concern about the Northern Ireland protocol or the Windsor framework is addressed by not having a Government. It is a choice, and we want a different choice. We want devolved government based on the common good and Northern Ireland’s huge economic opportunities, and devolved government in which the SDLP can play a constructive role in opposition. To that end, we have already published our detailed triple-lock proposals to protect public services from these sharp, short-term cuts while creating a pathway to much better long-term governance.

If the DUP continues to immiserate our politics, and if the Government continue to press ahead with this budget, more fundamental choices will present themselves. The first choice is to reform Stormont’s Standing Orders to make sure that one party can no longer hold up the formation of a Government. And if the DUP insists on creating the sense that Northern Ireland, as a unit, cannot work, the second choice is to realise the potential of all our people in a new Ireland back in the European Union. Especially when people are told that devolution within the UK is no longer available, the SDLP will pursue that aim vigorously and with honour, based on reconciliation and the potential of all our people.

That is a big choice about our future, but there is also a here and now that this budget does not serve well. Colleagues from across the House have highlighted some of those impacts. On infrastructure, our ability to address climate change, let alone things such as road safety, is hampered. The PSNI is facing its numbers falling to their lowest level, at a time of not just security threat, but increasing complexity of the issues it deals with, particularly on mental health. Across the economy, regions that are doing well are doing well by leaning into their economic potential and their successes, but instead we are cutting things such as the arts sector and Northern Ireland Screen, and we are cutting the budgets of Tourism NI and of further and higher education. All of these cuts undermine all of the flagship strategies about our economic future, particularly 10X. I am not sure where we can start on health and education, and I hope to be able to explore those areas in more detail in a Westminster Hall debate next week.

Schools have not been on the pig’s back at any point that I can remember, but the projected shortfall of £200 million is catastrophic. One of the many things not being covered is a much-awaited pay deal for the most shamefully undervalued parts of the workforce, SEN classroom assistants. That could lead to further strike action, which literally hurts the most vulnerable children, including those at Glenveagh School in my constituency, who have already picked up much too much of the slack of the politics.

In health, we know that a standstill budget is, in essence, a cut and that we are doing nothing. We talked a lot in this House last week about a workforce plan, none of which reaches Northern Ireland. The Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee rightly highlighted cuts to the Northern Ireland Audit Office and NIPSO—the Northern Ireland public services ombudsman. Those are problematic in practice and in principle, because at many times in the past few years those bodies, particularly the NIAO, have provided some of the only scrutiny we have had. They have acted as an effective opposition in some cases to aspects of Government waste and failure to reform.

In practical terms, discretionary spending is all but gone. Even permanent secretaries, who, as we know, do not like to dabble too much in the politics, are asking the Secretary of State to resolve that tension for them and asking how they reconcile their statutory duties with the budget they have. I hope that one of the Ministers can clarify the position. If their section 75 duties are always followed, as they say they are, will they clarify whether those section 75 assessments are content with the scale and depth of these cuts? What steps have they taken to identify and mitigate the impact? Have they received any advice about an overarching equality assessment?

Will the Secretary of State also clarify whether the Government have taken into account the long-standing guidance as well as the Equality Commission’s investigation into failings in the preparation of the 2019-20 budget? What lessons were learned from that? Finally, the UK has been a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of the child for at least three decades, so will he clarify what regard they have given to the UN committee’s recommendation that this budget be withdrawn and replaced with something that protects the rights and needs of children?

The budget is unworkable and it is a false economy. It is storing up so many problems, both in terms of democratic grip in Northern Ireland and in public services. Devolution has never been more needed. People in Northern Ireland feel that they are part of a political game that they are not playing and that is being played on them. I urge all of those with the ability to make these choices to stop practising austerity politics and to stop practising boycott politics, and to do so as soon as possible.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

In calling Jim Shannon, I just want to say: do not forget to leave some time for the wind-ups, Jim.

Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

2nd reading
Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Like other Members, I regret that we are considering this Bill in this place in this way. I regret the lack of scrutiny, innovation and imagination that can come from Budgets being done in this way, and I regret the lack of shame from some about the collective failure that we are again foisting on the people of the region. There is definitely a sense of “same stuff, different day”, because it is worth saying that the way public spending is overseen in Northern Ireland is nearly always convoluted and untransparent. I joined the Finance Committee in Stormont in 2016, and when I was trying to get my head around the process I think had to go seven or eight years back to find a textbook Budget year. The process is so far from transparent as to put people off even understanding what we are doing.

It is also worth saying that this is not a Budget in the way people would understand the use of that term, in that it is not a list of political priorities. Again, that is increasing the cynicism among citizens about our ability to spend on things that matter to them and our ability to address the short-termism and the ingrained lack of responsibility-taking that unfortunately characterises Stormont for many people. Nowhere is that clearer than in health, where many years of this sort of stop-start governance and can-kicking has left that service and the people who deliver it for us in a really parlous state.

No party is without fault in that regard, but the two largest parties deserve the most opprobrium for walking off and staying off the job in late 2016 after the Bengoa report created a little bit of shared purpose and the little bit of hope that we could possibly reform services. What we are doing instead is allowing little bits of the national health service to fall down one by one, bringing all of the downsides of reform and none of the upsides. Just one example of that is the closure of a rehabilitation ward at Whiteabbey Hospital. It is a successful rehabilitation facility and it makes no clinical sense to remove it; its closure will send patient blockages back up the system for each one of those beds that is not reopened due to a lack of decision making. As well as the failures in those people’s lives and the pressures that that builds in the staff who are delivering the services, it will make it harder to achieve buy-in and confidence in health reform in subsequent years when we finally get back to working properly, because people associate the reforms only with closures and not with the enhanced services that they can bring. We know that there are challenges across the services, including waiting lists. Yes, people have said that they are bad everywhere, but they are far worse in Northern Ireland. GP services are facing an existential crisis, and deepening levels of mental ill health are engulfing many parts of the service.

We know that it is not just in health that we are failing people. If the climate targets that we finally agreed in the dying days of the last Assembly are not mainstreamed and given effect through Budgets and plans, they are not going to mean anything. The labour shortages that employers across Northern Ireland are facing are not going to be mitigated by, for example, parents, and particularly women, coming back to work, because there are no Ministers in place to finally get a grip of childcare. Adults with some vulnerabilities but who have plenty of ability to work will no longer be supported by the many European social fund projects. They will fall by the wayside in a crude Darwinian process that seems to be happening at the moment. Projects are failing, and we will have to see which ones survive. Without ministerial intervention, we will keep exporting thousands of students because of a cap on numbers, to say nothing of the challenges in schools that many colleagues have raised.

The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) touched on an issue that underpins all of this. As I say, yes, I am prepared to share the responsibility of failures over decades of devolution, but we cannot ignore the austerity that has been imposed on Northern Ireland, as on other regions, over the past decade and a half. No one pretends that devolution is perfect, but we have to —and our party certainly does—imagine a much better way to run our public services than being dependent on a little bit of a hand-out and being tethered to a vision of an economy that is related to Brexit, deregulation and threadbare public services. The SDLP does not believe that it has to be that way, even when we are operating within devolution. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), said that it was our job to do the bits that we could. To paraphrase Wesley: “You do all the things you can in the places you can for as long as you can.” It is probably simpler than that. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just about turning up, and that is something that devolution is failing to do.

The SDLP has tried to make the constitutional set-up work, and will continue to do so, but it is not the limit of our ambition. Members have given all the reasons why devolution cannot work. They have mentioned the trader support service and the cost that that imposes on the Budget—not the Northern Ireland Budget, but the Budget from the Treasury. That is another cost of Brexit, but they fail to mention the £1.3 billion in increased exports from Northern Ireland to the Republic that have been achieved as a result of the protocol. We would want to caution them: if you take away even the status quo, even the possibility of cut-and-paste devolution in the UK, you have to be aware that people will look at other ways to meet their basic needs. As I have said many times before, and as Hume said, if you ask for all or nothing in governance, you often end up as nothing. We are prepared to work with anyone who will work with us to try to make some lemonade out of the Brexit lemons that we have been handed. There are opportunities and options, and there is space for compromise, both in the EU-UK talks and in the Executive when we finally have Members there.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We come to the last Back-Bench contribution, from Mr Shannon.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

2nd reading
Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman outline where he saw these price differentials? Through my work, I spend half the week in London and half the week in Belfast, and I am not seeing it. I do not think the evidence provided by the retailers is bearing out that assertion. Can he give evidence of the price distortions he says the protocol is causing?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I make the same plea: there are plenty of opportunities to talk about these other issues. We have the Bill in front of us, and I think it would be more fruitful if we directed our comments towards that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Hanna]

You are doing a great job yourself.

We began that work by tabling amendments to the Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Act 2022 to introduce an alternative election of First Ministers—[Interruption.] We do that work despite the chuntering from a sedentary position of people who just say no, who just nag from the sidelines, who are blocking good governance, and who, day by day, move more people towards considering and exploring a new Ireland—[Interruption.] Those on the DUP Bench below me have no interest in making Northern Ireland work, have derided and mocked people like me for wanting to do so, and have shown that they are unwilling or unable to do that. Those who vote for that party to protect the Union should really take a strong look at the strategic direction that is being provided and the value that they are being given for their vote.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am going to be less generous than I was earlier. As far as the protocol is concerned, the points have been well heard. Members’ remarks are going much wider than what is in the legislation before us. Can we have a bit of focus, please? There is plenty of meat here.

[Claire Hanna]

I appreciate that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and my focus is exclusively on the restoration of the Executive and restoring government to the people of Northern Ireland. I am outlining the efforts that we made last year with the MEPOC Act to introduce or reintroduce mechanisms that would move us away from veto and confrontation, which have become the political culture.

We sought to equalise the titles of First Minister to clarify the joint nature of that office and to end campaigning that is only ever built on dominating other communities. We also attempted to introduce a change that would allow for the election of First Ministers based on the votes of two thirds of Assembly Members, including broad-based, not majority rule. It is worth saying that had that been voted for last July and extended to the election of the Speaker, we would be back in the Assembly now.

Solutions do exist, and we will engage with any solutions that are serious about ending the deadlock while retaining the core principles that we adhere to of common endeavour and mutual respect. The way that things are being operated at the moment and the tactics of the DUP are destroying trust in devolution, and the DUP is profiting from prioritising victory and veto in a system designed for partnership. As John Hume said many times, “If you ask for all or nothing, you will get nothing.” [Interruption.] DUP Members may think they are being smart by chatting over me, as they do. They reject anybody whose views are not identical to their own, and they will see in the long term where they get. As long as this fiasco continues, the Social Democratic and Labour party will continue to speak up for people who are just trying to get through their days, live their lives, raise their families and run their businesses. We will support the necessary provisions in the Bill that help them do that.

Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna]

The right hon. Member is right to clarify that, but we do need a promotion strategy. As someone with an interest in the language and who is inspired when I hear names and place names, if I want to read a council’s accounts, I go and do it as Béarla—I will read it in the English. The promotion is what will allow the language to be transmitted and to thrive, and the Bill is not as expansive as many people would wish it to be.

I want to address the point made by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson). I really regret the suspicion of Irish by many Unionists, but I do not pretend not to understand the roots of it. Some of that is just about the experience that we have all had in our lives. Few state schools, which the majority of Protestant, Unionist and loyalist children would attend, promote Irish, and trips to the Republic, where Irish-language signs are normal, were not as commonplace. They probably did not spend their summers learning Irish in Rann na Feirste or Machaire Rabhartaigh, as I and friends of mine did. I therefore appreciate that some of it is about cultural experience; that in many cases people perceive Irish language as something to be used for a buttressing phrase in a political contribution; and that some perceive it as a manifestation of aggressive Irish nationalism, but that is not what it is to so many speakers.

Yes, no doubt there has been weaponisation in the past, but some of that is about the failure of political parties over decades to internalise and sell the concept of parity of esteem where it applies to culture, and to tar and tarnish an entire community of people because of the phraseology of others. The reality of the long war and the long peace that we have had is that “their” and “our” cultural archetypes are reinforced all the time with all the decades of suspicion and baggage that many people have. But we have an opportunity, through legislation such as this and more, to fly by those nets, particularly to a generation for whom “us” and “them” does not mean as much as “all of us.”

As the right hon. Member said, we can make language about the richness of communication and heritage and not about an identity marker. That is why so many take such inspiration from the work of Linda Ervine and Turas—Irish for “Journey”—the project that she set up with the east Belfast mission of the Methodist Church. Linda has not changed who she is—she has not changed her identity or her aspirations—but she is connecting many hundreds of people from a Protestant background with their own history and the Irish language. She received an MBE from Her Majesty the Queen for her efforts in that work, where she has taken such a mature approach to these issues. Her views on Irish, like Ulster Scots, are rooted in a real understanding of the entwined nature of nationalist and Unionist history. She said:

“I believe that the people of Northern Ireland have a rich cultural identity, a mixture of native Irish and of the many peoples who made Ireland their home. This rich ancestry influenced our surnames, our place names and our everyday language. Our vernacular of hiberno English reflects this mixed identity. We are native…speakers whose English is littered with beautiful Scots and Gaelic words. The syntax of our speech reflects that of Gaelic. As a people, we are culturally rich, yet instead of embracing that wonderful cultural mix, we separate it into narrow divisive boxes and deny ourselves.”

Many of us should take on board her approach to language and many other things.

I also acknowledge the work of people such as the much-missed Aodán Mac Poilín, who was the director of the Ultach Trust, a cross-community language promotion agency, and an inspiration to me as a late learner of Irish, which I picked up in adulthood. His posthumously published collection of essays, “Our Tangled Speech”, is one of the most nuanced and perceptive books that I have ever read on Northern Irish politics and culture. He argued that to get the sustainable transmission of language, it needs to be embedded in public bodies and have the support of Government and other interest groups. He was also clear about the need to shift our attitudes and learn from our past. He had theories about how nationalists and Unionists have believed each other’s propaganda over the years and found themselves reacting to both the position that they think is being ascribed to them and their opponent’s ideological position, which he believed was why our debate has often got so extreme. He always perceived the Irish language to have been a victim of that. I think the argument put forward by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) would probably concur with a lot of that analysis

I also want to mention the work of the recently deceased Dr Roger Blaney, whose work “Presbyterians and the Irish Language” was a revelation to many people about the work done by so many of that denomination in Belfast to preserve and protect the language because it was at its most vulnerable. It is a matter of fact and the politics that the rights component of language has been a product of the withholding of support. Many Gaeilgeoirs I know over the years were not as bought into the concept of an Irish language Act as they were into that of promotion and the living language. It is a fact that what are seen as small-minded approaches to language and the cancellation of programmes has made people believe that it needs promotion. Organically, the community of Irish speakers is growing in number and in breadth and that is a win for all of us.

We believe that this Bill will help to grow that wider embracing of language. Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine—it is in each other’s shadows that we grow. We are better when we all work together, and I hope that that is something that Members will keep in mind when we vote on the Bill.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Stephen Farry.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will call the Minister no later than 10 minutes to 7. You can see how many people are standing, so if you want to get your colleagues in, please show some time discipline—we cannot have speeches of the length that we have had up to now.

[Claire Hanna]

I will try to be brief, because I appreciate that there are colleagues who have been working on these issues for years and decades, who understand them fully and who wish to advocate for their constituents. I shall build on the points that we made on Second Reading and speak to some of the amendments in my name and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry).

By way of context, we spent Monday discussing the departure from the rule of law and bilateralism that is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. This is another day and another treaty breach. People have to understand that many see this Bill in that context—that it is unravelling the culture of lawfulness that we have been working on for many decades. I say that completely without pleasure and I agree with the chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, who believes that the Bill is unamendable.

I will focus on the setting up of the ICRIR. It relies on the fiction that is being presented, which is that we are doing the same things over and over again. We are here because things have not been done, because the architecture to enable truth and justice has been suppressed, because files have been locked up, because omertà has been practised by paramilitaries, and not because we have done all these things incorrectly. We are taking this action when there is a live and productive programme of investigations. Hon. Members have referred to Operation Kenova, which is an active programme of investigation and inquest.

The Bill exploits a population who are worn down by discussing legacy. They are tired of these issues, the politicking and the revisionism. Nobody is being false with victims. Everybody knows that the possibility of prosecutions is vanishingly rare, but information can come out of these inquests and investigations. That is what people want and it has absolutely not been demonstrated that that will come out of these bodies in any way. That is why victims oppose this. Nobody wants to move on more than victims, but we have a general amnesty masquerading as a conditional amnesty, with perpetrators walking free. As Members have indicated, they will have no licence, which they would have had under prisoner release. Perhaps the Minister will confirm whether the licences of prisoners who have already been released will go under the Bill as well.

We have examples on the books, such as the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, which existed for years. People could clear their conscience and give information to relieve families and give them the dignity of a burial without any threat of prosecution, but people did not do that. Nothing in the Bill or during these days of debates has indicated why we suddenly believe that people will come forward.

It is fair to say that the amnesty is a variation on a theme. We have been down this road before. My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle asked about files that have been sealed for decades and will be sealed for decades to come. How are people supposed to believe that the same Government who do that are suddenly interested in advancing information to them? As we all know, national security means whatever the security agents want it to mean. We know that they were intimately involved with both loyalist and republican paramilitaries—it is a fact. Although Members may wish to shut down the inquests, court cases and civil actions that establish that, it is a fact, as has been acknowledged by many people. How are people supposed to believe that the same Government who are suppressing that information suddenly want to advance it?

We know that the first motivation is the protection of security force elites, but we can call a spade a spade: this applies equally to paramilitaries. There is a joined-up quid pro quo between the sets of victim makers that keeps all this behind closed doors. Our amendments seek to address that.

The Bill outlines reviews that are not compliant with article 2 of the ECHR. They are a sham and are half-baked. The ruling on “flexibilities” because of reconciliation has been ruled out by a number of witnesses to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. It is also clear that the Secretary of State will be the person who can appoint all the commissioners who will be involved in the process of investigation. I refer to my earlier points about the fact that they have been actors. Essentially, victims are being told, “Move on because Brandon Lewis and Boris Johnson want you to move on, and they will create all the people who will help to facilitate it.”

I want to be very clear: the SDLP does not propose that we do nothing, and we are not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We have worked with integrity on the issues for many years. We supported Eames-Bradley, which was imperfect; we supported Stormont House, which was imperfect; and we supported Haass-O’Sullivan, which was imperfect. The Government committed to Stormont House in December 2014 and committed to it again two and a half years ago, under this Prime Minister, so they cannot say that it has been done on anybody else’s watch. We are asking for the principles of that agreement to be enacted, which would address the issues with the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ireland. It was a bilateral treaty that had obligations for the Irish Government as well.

Government's Management of the Economy

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) for bringing about this debate and giving us an opportunity to reflect on what has not been working in economic management, on the erosion of public services and on the unsustainable damage that we have been causing to the environment over the last decade, and to find new social democratic approaches that transform the economy for the benefit of everybody. The last 12 months have shown us that the state has to be one that protects what is important; the market cannot do that. This time has also shown us what it is possible to achieve when the will exists to do so.

Members have set out how threadbare public services had become, and how close to the financial edge many people had been living—through the gig economy, and through the punitive and pointless gouging of the welfare state. Existing inequalities have been exposed. Generational injustices have been exposed, with students facing tens of thousands of pounds of debt for Zoom degrees. Caring burdens have fallen to women, and we will see that working through into workplace equality over the months and years to come.

Similar divergences in fortune are happening in parallel before our eyes in business. Small businesses and the self-employed—the red blood cells of our economy—are facing unimaginable challenges, cash and debt crises, while online organisations and other monoliths are posting massive, eye-watering profits that are largely untaxed. I repeat the SDLP’s view that one-off windfall taxes should be applied to those businesses that have benefited so much from the pandemic.

Solutions exist, but we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot wander back into the distorted thinking of short-term management of sovereign debt over absolutely every other policy outcome. This Government have to learn—and I fear, from previous contributions, that they have not—the lessons of the 2008 crisis and of every other recession of the last 100 years. Sharp spending falls will choke the ability of families to spend, and that will have knock-on effects on businesses, jobs, growth and tax revenue for public services.

A real living wage is overdue. The rhetoric does not match the reality; work is no longer a way out of poverty. The universal credit uplift should be maintained. Short-term savings in public spending will be dwarfed by the long-term costs of managing intergenerational poverty. Even before covid, in economic terms Northern Ireland was at the top of all the bad economic charts and at the bottom of all the good ones, and the parties at home absolutely have to come together to create political stability and support the economy at home.

The last 12 months have shown that people can come together with solidarity, passion and innovation. This is our generation’s rethink opportunity. We need to build an economy that works for more people that is based on wellbeing, not just on GDP.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We are able to go back to Nadia Whittome.

Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Debate between Nigel Evans and Claire Hanna

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

That noise may have been a passing motorbike.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) [V]]

It is very clear that, alongside BAME communities, women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. They make up the large majority of workers in those sectors that are unable to operate and in very many cases they are obviously carrying much larger roles in caring, both informally and formally. Northern Ireland already had the lowest levels of employment for women, and that is in the context of the UK, even before the pandemic, slipping down gender inequality rankings. Will the Minister be advocating for specific targeted economic support for women to address the structural inequalities that are being very much exacerbated by covid-19?