Northern Ireland Political Agreement

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

On the way forward on the institutions dealing with the past, we will certainly give consideration to the proposals the hon. Gentleman puts forward. I think we all recognised that it was difficult to reach the conclusions we needed to get to within a structure containing just the parties. We need to reflect on whether we can have a wider, more inclusive process. Of course we will give consideration to whether we can publish a further draft of the Bill in the future, but we have not made a conclusive decision on this.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the linkages between the past and welfare reform. To the end, I was arguing to keep legacy in, and I wish we had been able to do so; even if we could not agree on all the issues relating to legacy, I had hoped that we would be able at least to agree on a fair selection of areas where consensus had been achieved. I could not get everyone to sign up to that, but I will continue to strive to find a way to get these legacy bodies set up, as that is crucial for victims and survivors.

Lastly, I pay tribute to the work that his party did in the talks process, particularly on the legacy matters, but also on paramilitaries. The Social Democratic and Labour party’s call for a whole-community approach to ending paramilitarism will resonate in this House and across Northern Ireland.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

In welcoming this deal, may I ask the Secretary of State to say a little more about what sounds like £500 million of new funding for Northern Ireland outlined in her statement? Will she go a bit further by saying that if there are any further disputes between parties in Northern Ireland, they will not be fixed by more money from Westminster?

[Mrs Villiers]

In these extremely difficult days for the public finances, we thought very carefully about what additional support we were able to provide on top of the Stormont House agreement package, but we did feel that a case had been made credibly and strongly to us that Northern Ireland does face unique challenges in the United Kingdom and that therefore there was a case for additional support, on top of the favourable conditions in relation to the block grant. That breaks down roughly as: £160 million of additional security funding for the PSNI to help it counter dissident republican terrorists and paramilitary groups; £25 million for tackling paramilitary activity and strategy; £3 million for a verification body in relation to paramilitary activity; £60 million for programmes to build confidence and see inter-faith barriers coming down; crucially, as a result of the legislative consent motion passed by the Assembly last night, the savings forgone payments—sometimes referred to as welfare penalties—will stop, and that means that a further £40 million will be added to the block grant for the next two years; and we also have £125 million to support a programme to eliminate fraud and error, which we have already discussed. The Executive believe that that will yield substantial savings, half of which they are allowed to retain, and that that is likely to take the total value of the package to well over half a billion pounds.