Northern Ireland Office

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

In introducing the debate, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, lamented the failure of the Northern Ireland Executive to agree a budget; indeed, for any of the parties in the Northern Ireland Executive to even agree with their own party on a budget. That, clearly, is a difficulty in terms of providing the services for the people of Northern Ireland.

It would do this House well to ask more probing questions on how, not for the first time, the Northern Ireland Executive have failed to agree a budget. Are there political influences at stake? Sinn Féin controls the Department of Finance. Sinn Féin does not even want Northern Ireland to exist, never mind succeed, so is it really any great surprise that when it is in charge of the Department of Finance there is a stand-off about agreeing a budget? For Sinn Féin, the default position is always to blame the Brits, demand more money and turn that into a political campaign on how Northern Ireland is being treated unfairly. Even if it had all the money imaginable, Sinn Féin would not seek to make Northern Ireland work. It cannot make it work and then say, “But none the less, we need the fundamental constitutional change” which is its raison d’être and what it demands. There are at play bigger issues than a mere failure to balance the books.

On balancing the books, many of the parties that form the Northern Ireland Executive bear much responsibility themselves. When devolution was down and coming back at the beginning of 2024, there were parties now in the Executive who had no interest in getting a durable financial settlement. They had such a stampede mindset that they just wanted back into government. They did not support negotiations to enhance what could have been the ongoing sustaining financially of the Northern Ireland Executive. There were others who just wanted back into the Executive for the very sake of power and preferred to lie about what they had achieved in terms of safeguarding the Union. This was an Executive restored on the basis of the biggest lie for generations in Northern Ireland: that the Irish sea border had been removed. It patently has not been removed. There was much that should have been done by the Northern Ireland Executive parties at the time of going back into devolution to extract the financial settlement that was needed.

Now we have reached the situation where overspend is the norm in Northern Ireland. That overspend is built on an expectation that in due course there will be a bail-out. That has been the pattern throughout the years and that is the expectation of this Executive: in due course, there will be a bail-out or a writing-off of the moneys that have been overspent. It has happened before and that is the essence of the demand again. Are the Government going to do that once more? We have had occasions when past Governments have said to the Northern Ireland Executive, “If we’re going to bail you out, you have to transform and do all sorts of things to save money. Maybe you have to raise some money yourself.” None of that has happened. The absence of that engendered a belief that yet again they can produce the begging bowl and have the overspends written off. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State how clear he is about whether or not that will yet happen again.

Reference has also been made to policing. Yes, policing is grossly short of funding and it is a scandal that, in my constituency and others, if you can muster together three or four community constables you are doing well for a town and multiple villages. It is a scandal, but it does bring one back to the absolute folly of ever having devolved policing and justice. The Government’s attitude today is, “Policing and justice is devolved, so you find the money.” The allocations are wholly inadequate. If policing and justice had never been devolved, the Secretary of State would have had no escape route in terms of finding the money to give policing to the citizens of Northern Ireland. It was a moment of folly, just over 10 years ago, to devolve policing and justice.

There is a real burden that I wanted to come to, and it is this. The Northern Ireland Office’s promotional website states that the Northern Ireland Office has three priorities, and within the second priority are the wonderful words,

“protecting the UK internal market”.

That, of course, is the one thing that this Government have lamentably failed to do. Instead of protecting the UK internal market, this Government have wrecked it, because we now have an internal market that is partitioned by a full international customs border down the Irish sea, courtesy of the very lies I referred to earlier and the Windsor framework. Far from protecting the UK internal market, the Northern Ireland Office has gleefully presided over the sabotaging of the UK internal market.

In a recent survey, the Federation of Small Businesses found that 38% of GB businesses that used to supply Northern Ireland have stopped supplying it. Why? Because of the unbearable paperwork and burdens that are put on businesses in order for them to trade with Northern Ireland. Far from protecting the UK internal market, we have a UK internal market that has been riven by this Government’s actions.

When we look at the small print in these accounts, we see that the Government are going to give the mighty sum of £2.25 million over three years to a body called Intertrade UK, the purpose of which, as the name suggests, is to promote trade within the United Kingdom—and the Government are giving it £750,000 per annum to do so. Intertrade UK has no staff and no offices—nothing. Let me contrast that with InterTradeIreland: InterTradeIreland exists for the correlative purpose of promoting trade on an all-Ireland basis. It gets £5 million a year of British taxpayers’ money. It also gets southern Government money. It has over 40 staff, plush offices and a real programme of work. Contrast that with Intertrade UK—the Secretary of State thinks it is adequate to give that organisation no staff, no offices and £750,000 a year.

Intertrade UK is seeking to promote trade within an economy of 70 million people, and it gets £750,000 to do it. InterTradeIreland is supposed to be promoting trade on an all-Ireland basis for a population of 7 million, and it gets millions upon millions, 40 members of staff, and more. Where is the logic? Other than the logic of wanting to do down inter-UK trade, where is the logic of being so abundantly miserly with Intertrade UK in comparison to the funds being given to InterTradeIreland? When I read that the Government’s second priority in this area is this idea of “protecting the UK internal market”, I see it as a joke—not just a joke, but a very sick joke—because the very opposite has been done to my part of the United Kingdom.

I use this debate to draw attention to those facts and to say to this Government—more in hope than expectation—that one day they will realise that they are the Government of the United Kingdom, and that means promoting the United Kingdom, not promoting the partitioning of it. It means promoting the growth not of an all-Ireland economy, but of an all-UK economy. Sadly, this Government, deliberately and consciously, are failing in that fundamental mission.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I know this is an interesting debate and topic, but Members would be best to keep speeches 100% within scope.