Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Peter Kyle and Gregory Campbell

2nd reading
Monday 10th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for setting out the measures in the Bill. Northern Ireland Departments are in a challenging position, and this budget will at least give them some certainty to allow public services to remain functioning, but that should not take away from how this budget has been received in Northern Ireland. Civil servants, who have to make decisions based on it, are operating in the most difficult of circumstances. I pay tribute to them, as the Secretary of State did. They should not be in this position.

This Bill will not create new money, but will allow Departments and public bodies in Northern Ireland to spend within the limits the Secretary of State set out in the written ministerial statement in April. It confirmed that the Government will no longer require the £297 million overspend from the 2022-23 Budget to be repaid to the Treasury this year.

Before going into the allocations before us, it is worth reflecting on the situation in Northern Ireland and how power-sharing might be restored. On my recent trips to Northern Ireland, there has been a pervading sense that the Government have allowed things to drift since the celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. We have a new agreement with the EU in the Windsor framework, but Stormont has not been restored. Indeed, the main purpose of the framework was supposed to be answering the concerns of the Democratic Unionist party so that Stormont could work again. When we passed the previous budget, there was a clear expectation that a new agreement would lead to the restoration of the Assembly and the Executive. Instead, Westminster has had to step in with the Northern Ireland (Interim Arrangements) Act 2023 and, now, this second budget Bill.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Was the hon. Gentleman’s attention drawn to a report in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday, where a Marks & Spencer senior executive pointed out that some of the issues they were promised would be resolved through the Windsor framework and the green lane and the red lane are far from being resolved?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s intervention. He will know my personal view, which is that the outstanding issues relating to the Windsor framework and the protocol could be resolved from within the Executive and the Assembly. However, there are clearly outstanding issues. I hope that the Government will help to resolve them. They have said in various forms that they are willing to engage with different measures from legislation through to other sets of negotiations. I hope that they will happen apace and that the hon. Member and members of his party and all parties in Northern Ireland are as involved as is physically possible so that there can be the engagement that I believe was lacking in previous negotiations.

As an Opposition, we always want to be constructive when it comes to Northern Ireland, and I am grateful for the Secretary of State’s acknowledgment of that. We are concerned, though, that the wrong lessons have been learned from the Windsor framework negotiations. On Wednesday 21 June—for the benefit of our friends in Hansard, who are working so hard, I refer to volume 734—the Secretary of State said:

“The one thing that I did learn from the Windsor framework negotiations is that confidentiality in modern-day British politics and western politics is key in trying to get anything over the line.”—[Official Report, 21 June 2023; Vol. 734, c. 779.]

I am not sure that that holds true in the present circumstances.

There is a strong argument that the secrecy of the Windsor framework, after months of secret talks, left it lacking local ownership and local legitimacy. I understand that the Secretary of State is not going to spell out every detail of what the Government are doing, but providing some basic information would reassure Parliament, the public and, above all, people in Northern Ireland and those who represent them here in Westminster and in Stormont. I would be grateful if the Secretary of State confirmed whether he intends to bring forward primary legislation to address the Windsor framework. Is that still on the cards? He has mentioned it several times. I noticed in his answers to recent oral questions that that is still open for debate. It would be really good to know whether the House will be getting primary legislation—it has been requested and he has hinted at it—and when we could expect it. Are the Government instead seeking a renegotiation with the EU?

There is also the question of whether the Irish Government have a part to play in this. I was interested to read that student nurses in Northern Ireland will now be funded by the Republic. Is the Secretary of State having discussions about other financial contributions in these extremely challenging times?

Another option available to the Secretary of State is calling an election, but I am sure he agrees that it is highly unlikely that that course of action would resolve the current impasse. We do need to know what the way forward will be and what the Secretary of State believes will see Stormont return to active service on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland.

Returning to the Budget before us, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee inquiry into the funding and delivery of public services has been extremely informative. I join the Secretary of State in thanking those who serve on the Committee for the work they do. The Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), has always said that we should decouple the issues surrounding the protocol from the public finances and restoration of Stormont. The evidence before his inquiry has been illuminating. Even before Stormont collapsed, the inquiry found that long-term pressures on public services were not being addressed.

I also pay tribute to the excellent work of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, which has moved the debate forward on the sustainability of public finances. It is impressive that such a new institution has already become such an authority. In its report on this budget, it says that

“the NI Civil Service believes that Departments may still need to find £800 million in cuts and additional revenues not to overspend again, given other budget pressures.”

That is a huge amount of savings to find when Northern Ireland is facing the same challenges as the rest of the country. We should put on the record the views of some of those who have already been most affected by those decisions. In particular, the challenges facing the Department of Education highlight the deficiencies in setting a budget from Westminster in the way we are today and as we have previously.

Following the intervention by the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), I will go into a little more detail on that. I hope that the Secretary of State or Minister of State will respond in winding up. These comments, by the Department of Education permanent secretary, Dr Mark Browne, come directly from an extraordinary press release on the Department’s very own website:

“The Department’s vision for all children is that they will be happy, learning and succeeding. Delivering on this is particularly challenging in the current budgetary context, especially in terms of addressing the needs of our most disadvantaged children and young people.”

In its assessment of the budget, the Department said that the 2023-24 allocations result in a non-ringfenced resource funding gap of £382 million, equivalent to 14.8% of the final budget allocation required for 2023-24. It states:

“Managing resource shortfalls of this magnitude will undoubtedly have a significant and adverse impact on the Department’s ability to deliver educational services in 2023-24.”