Northern Ireland Office

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention about the local growth fund. In our Committee session today, we grilled the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is sitting on the Front Bench, about this funding. On numerous occasions, we have noted our disappointment that the relevant Department has been able to shift the spending, but I am sure that the Secretary of State will give the hon. Member an explanation later.

Given the potential impact of having no agreed budget on the delivery of public services if the situation continues into the autumn, does the Secretary of State foresee a circumstance in which he would step up and step in to set a budget for Northern Ireland, should the Executive remain unable or unwilling to do so?

Linked to this are concerns about the Executive’s overspending and budget sustainability. At the end of the last financial year, the Government provided the Executive with a £400 million reserve claim loan to cover departmental overspends in health and education. That follows the £559 million Executive debt write-off by the Government in 2024 as part of the financial package accompanying the restoration of power sharing.

The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council warns that overspending is now becoming normalised, and it describes how repeated bail-outs

“could dull the Executive’s incentive to take difficult fiscal decisions”.

Overspending against available budgets by devolved Governments amounts to serious financial mismanagement, according to Treasury policy. Would the Secretary of State describe the Executive’s actions in the same terms?

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Member accept that the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council has also said that, if spending allocations to the Executive were based on need, the Executive would be entitled to receive between £1 billion and £3.5 billion extra, which is part of the reason for this problem?

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I want to start by thanking the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for the work of her Committee and for the diligence she has applied to the job she has taken on. It is deeply appreciated by Members from Northern Ireland that we have a Chairperson who is totally interested in the work that she is doing. I would not always agree with everything that comes out of the Committee, but she has nevertheless shown a desire to try to get things sorted out in Northern Ireland.

First, as has already been emphasised by a number of speakers, we are approaching this debate at a time when —a quarter of the way through the year—we do not actually have a budget in Northern Ireland, and not for the first time. I do not know, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) has said, whether this is a co-ordinated political plan or an example of the incompetence of Sinn Féin Ministers. If it is a co-ordinated political plan, it is a very stupid one, because not having a budget and not having money allocated to Departments does not just affect the Unionist population in Northern Ireland—it affects everybody. It affects both Sinn Féin voters and Unionist voters. While it may add to Sinn Féin’s argument that Northern Ireland is not a viable state, I nevertheless do not believe that they should be punishing they own constituents to prove that.

We have to look at the context of Northern Ireland. Getting a budget agreed anywhere is always going to be difficult, because there will always be competing priorities and there are always people wanting more. I suspect that the Chancellor has had similar problems and difficulties even in this Parliament, where she is dealing with only one party—there may be a lot of factions within that party, mind you, but it is only one party. It is much more difficult in a four-party coalition where the parties have totally different outlooks and they have to decide how the money is going to be allocated. We have only to look at the current and previous Sinn Féin Ministers, because do not forget: every time a budget has not been agreed in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin have been in charge of the finances. I think that has happened on three occasions. The latest crisis has been caused because the Minister responsible did not consult with anybody before simply deciding on a budget—did not even consult with his fellow Ministers—and Ministers from his own party are now disagreeing with it.

I have some experience of this process, because I served in that post in the Northern Ireland Assembly for four years. The Conservative party gained power here in Westminster in May the year after I took over, and in June the reserves that we had, which were about 3% of the budget, were taken back by Treasury, and we were then given a 2% reduction, so there was a 5% reduction in the budget for that year. The budget had already been agreed, and it therefore had to be rewritten. It was not easy, but it was possible because there was a willingness to work. We consulted and consulted, compromised and everything else, and we managed to get a three-year budget, even against that background. That is why I do not accept the argument that they cannot get an agreed budget just because there are financial difficulties. I do not accept the excuses.

However, I would point out that Northern Ireland has for many years been underfunded, as has been confirmed by the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council review. I am pleased that our current party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), was the first person to raise the requirement to have budgets in Northern Ireland determined on need, and not just on the Barnett formula. There has been some success in that, as we now get the 124%. I accept that the Government took that argument on board, although they had not done so until my right hon. Friend persisted in pushing for that at all kinds of levels. However, even with that increase, there is still an historic backlog.

I am not here to simply say, “Give us more money.” I understand that there are fiscal restraints right across the United Kingdom. However, where a fiscal deficit has been identified, I think it is incumbent on the Government to look at how that can be addressed. I am sure that some people back home will not be very happy with me for saying this, but I think it would be wrong simply to say, “The Fiscal Council has identified between £1 billion and £3.5 billion, depending on whether you compare it with Scotland or Wales, so there’s the money.” If additional money is to be given, it should of course be allocated on the basis that something is given back in return.

Many people will say that interferes with the devolution settlement, because it means telling people how to spend the money. But I think it should be conditional: if people are looking for additional money, let us see how they are going to use it—to reform public services, to cut expenditure in the longer run, to make services more efficient. The money is given on that condition, and those conditions are measured, and the money is released on that basis. That would be one way out of the current difficulties facing the Executive.

The money would be conditionally given, and it would be given for things that have been promised for some time, I think, but have never been done, either because it was too hard to do them or there was not the money to do them. Reform does require some expenditure up front, even if it is only getting rid of some of the surplus staff or reviewing some of the estate. Looking forward in the estimates, that is one way that the Government should be considering dealing with this particular issue.

Secondly, the Northern Ireland budget is divided between what goes to the Executive—the bulk of it—and the Northern Ireland Office. We have to look at need. Let me just give some examples. On money allocated for agriculture, four times more is spent per head spent in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom, but that is not always reflected in the allocations. That is not because we are giving more generously; it is simply that Northern Ireland has a bigger agricultural industry, and that is reflected in the money that is given. Very often what is happening is that we are simply treated as if we were the rest of the United Kingdom, so we get much less per head, even though the industry is much more important. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) indicated in his intervention that poverty levels will impact the amount of money spent on health. Hence, the needs-based expenditure is more important than simply the block grant.

There are three things I want to raise about the Northern Ireland Office expenditure. First, there is a 25% uplift in the DEL spending—the departmental expenditure limit. According to the papers we have been given, that is attributed mostly to the additional money required for the Finucane inquiry. I have to say to the Secretary of State that there are people who feel really sore about the way that moneys can be allocated to the investigation of one particular death because Sinn Féin has made it such a big issue, while hundreds of families across Northern Ireland have never had a proper investigation into the death of their loved ones.

Yesterday evening I attended a memorial service for Ulster Defence Regiment victims in Northern Ireland: 192 UDR soldiers were killed during the troubles, and 62 were killed after they had retired or left the UDR, and many of their widows and families have never had any proper investigation into the death of their loved ones. Yet for the Finucane family we have had three Stevens inquiries—I remember those from when I was on the Policing Board. Then there was a review of those inquiries to see if they were adequate—the Cory review—and now we have another bout of the inquiry, with a nearly 25% increase in the budget of the Northern Ireland Office to facilitate that. That is not regarded as fair. When inquiries are driven by the political push of one particular party and the Government’s desire to keep them happy, to me that is first of all a waste of funds and, secondly, unfair.

Secondly, part of the budget has been increased to deal with the ICRIR reports and investigations. As has already been pointed out, while there has been an increase for the ICRIR, there has been no equivalent increase for the police service. The police service reckons that it is costing about £24 million per year to facilitate providing the information, yet no allowance has been made for that. That puts pressure on a budget that is already predicted to be in a deficit of £58 million this year. That means fewer police officers on the ground and so on.

Thirdly, as was pointed out by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim, one of the roles of the Northern Ireland Office is to promote the internal market. I do not blame the current Government totally from the mess that we are in; they inherited botched negotiations by the previous Government, but little or nothing has been done to remedy that. When the Assembly was going back, negotiations went on and we got a document called “Safeguarding the Union”, which was totally endorsed by the current Government, even though they were then in opposition.

Part of that was about finding ways to promote the internal market. One thing that was recognised was that if there was disruption to trade, we would need to improve the trade routes, and so a ports fund of £10 million was agreed. Yet in a recent letter from the Secretary of State, it was accepted that although extra money was found for the Finucane inquiry and for the ICRIR, no funding has been allocated to the ports fund, which was designed to improve sea routes across the Irish sea and make them more efficient, so that goods could flow in and out of Northern Ireland in a less costly way.

Will the Secretary of State tell us what exactly is the status now of that £10 million commitment? I met with the port authorities in Larne, who were hoping that they would benefit from that funding. It would have meant that they could widen and lengthen the ramps, take in bigger ships and bring down the cost of transport. It would also have opened new routes to GB. The port authorities put in £10 million, expecting—under the promise that was made—that match funding would be made available from the Government.

Other actions have been taken by the Government that have made the routes more difficult, including the imposition of the carbon tax on shipping. That will be implemented from 1 July, and it is estimated to increase the cost of bringing goods across the Irish sea from GB to Northern Ireland, or vice versa, by around 7%. That, again, makes the route and the bringing of goods in from GB less competitive, on top of all the other reasons why companies do not want to sell to Northern Ireland now anyway—namely, the additional paperwork.

In conclusion, I just say to the Secretary of State that, yes, we do have a budget crisis in Northern Ireland, but I believe that there could be some inventiveness from the Government. My colleague Gordon Lyons, who is the Communities Minister, has suggested to the Treasury that he will lean hard to get efficiencies and savings from fraud in the benefits budget. But he has asked in return that some of those benefits be shared with Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin, which does not seem to wish to attack fraud, has been holding that up, but will the Secretary of State push with the Treasury the case for those savings from fraud that might be identified in Northern Ireland to be shared with the Executive to help reduce its financial pressures? Will he commit to working with Ministers to ensure that any additional funding is used in a productive way so that Northern Ireland can become much more sustainable fiscally than it is at present?

None of us wants to be here. Certainly as a Unionist, I do not want to be here with a begging bowl year after year, but I believe that there is a responsibility on both sides: the Government must recognise that there is a deficit that needs to be dealt with, and that deficit must dealt with in a way that makes positive changes for the future.

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[Hilary Benn]

I absolutely acknowledge the work that Mike Nesbitt has been doing in health, and it shows what can be achieved if minds are put to it. It is a difficult balance between, on the one hand, running the services today and keeping them going and, on the other hand, investing in transformation. In the end, however, investing in the transformation is the way in which we will be able to deliver better public services for the people of Northern Ireland.

I share the concern that has been expressed right across the House at the absence of an agreed multi-year budget, which is creating, above all, significant uncertainty for the funding of public services. I have been talking regularly with the Minister for Finance, who clearly faces a huge challenge in trying to get an agreement, and those conversations will continue this week, because we need to get to a multi-year budget as quickly as possible. I said about a month ago that the Executive needed to come towards the Government and meet us halfway, and there are two essential requirements.

The first relates to the fact that the amount of money currently being forecast as the overspend for this year is going up, beyond the level that we saw in the last financial year. The word “pressures” is heard frequently in Northern Ireland. People say that they have budget pressures. Well, everyone has budget pressures. Quite reasonably, the Government have asked what the nature of those pressures is. Are they absolutely unavoidable legal commitments, are they things we would like to do or are they things in between? Trying to interrogate and understand the nature of those pressures and to see what the Executive tell the Government about that is the first requirement.

The second requirement is a plan for how we will move from this year-to-year crisis—which was very clearly articulated by the right hon. Member for East Antrim in his contribution—because we need to see something that will address this in the longer term. I am much struck by what the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council said in its report on the sustainability of the finances, published on 16 June. It said that

“these immediate issues facing NI’s public finances reflect an unsustainable trajectory resulting from the underlying structural problems in the Budget. These structural issues are visible in the relatively high public sector pay bill, limited revenue-raising”—

a point just referred to—

“and persistent overspends.”

Whatever the size of the budget that anyone has, we have, in the end, a responsibility to find a way of living within that and to raise more revenue if that is open to us. That is what all Governments must do. The current Government have done it in relation to the public finances, and the same is true for the Northern Ireland Executive. In addition to the funding I have already described, there is the £617 million from the UK Government that is going into the city and growth deals, as well as the defence growth deal, which the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), has spoken about in the House; the enhanced investment zone; and the local growth fund.

A point was raised about the local growth fund. I recognise and accept that the change in the profile from revenue to capital has created a difficulty for the voluntary sector. That is why I met representatives of the voluntary sector and said to them, “There is unspent money in the PEACEPLUS programme; you can make a bid to that.” I think about £12 million is available in revenue. The Exec came to the Government and said, “We would like to keep £3 million of that for Go Succeed; we think it is a great programme, and we’d like you to carry on backing it.” We said, “Fine.” That left £9 million available in revenue for the economic inactivity programmes that the voluntary sector has been running. I said to the Executive, “How about putting the extra Barnett consequentials that you now have, including £373 million in the current year that you were not expecting, together with the £9 million? We could then enable those projects to continue.” That is an example of what can be done if we put our minds to it.

The extra capital allocation in the local growth fund may in part be the answer to the question asked about the ports fund. A number of commitments were made in the “Safeguarding the Union” document. I remember a large commitment that Casement Park would be fully funded so that the Euros could be hosted. Well, no money was allocated for it at all. The previous Government were very free with the promises, but they did not do the work to find the money. No funding has been identified for the ports fund, but there is money in the local growth fund. I also point out that Belfast harbour has a masterplan, which I understand it is looking to self-fund, and that the Government have made available an increase in capital funding to the Northern Ireland Executive. If the Executive wish to put money into port infrastructure, they are entirely able to do so.

Let me turn to PSNI funding. I once again pay tribute to the officers of the PSNI who, every time there is disorder in Northern Ireland, show extraordinary courage in protecting the public from those who are setting fire to buses, throwing bricks and burning people out of their houses. I had the chance to thank some of those officers when I returned to Northern Ireland the week before last, following the disorder. They are very brave. From memory, I think some 42 officers were injured in the recent disorder.

I appreciate the financial pressures faced, but this is a devolved matter. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim said that he thought it was a profound mistake to have devolved responsibility for policing and justice. I respectfully disagree with him. The trouble with the call for ringfencing, which we have heard from other sources this evening, is this: we either believe in devolved Government—the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland taking decisions about how the money is spent—or begin to move back towards a ringfence; once we have a ringfence for the PSNI, it will not be long before someone says, “Can I have a ringfence over here?” In the end, we have a choice to make. I believe in devolved Government in Northern Ireland, and the Government believe in devolved Government in Northern Ireland. There is a matter of principle here: the funding is available to the Executive; it is for them to decide how much they allocate to policing as opposed to other priorities.

[Sammy Wilson]

I accept the argument that the Secretary of State is making. I served on the Northern Ireland Policing Board during the change from the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the PSNI, and was on the finance committee of the board. We had continual battles with the then Secretary of State, who was no more generous or flexible than a devolved Minister would have been. Devolution or no devolution, the fiscal and the financial situation is the same. I suppose the difference is that, when it comes to putting on pressure, the Secretary of State here is perhaps a bit more remote than the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland.

[Hilary Benn]

I will reflect on that point. I do not know in what sense the right hon. Gentleman uses “remote”; if it is geographical, I agree with him entirely. I acknowledge that, as he said from experience, agreeing a budget is difficult in a power-sharing system. It is difficult. He told the House an interesting story about being faced with reductions in budget and it being possible to come together and agree one. All Governments have to deal with the financial and fiscal circumstances they find, but when we take office, we have a responsibility to fulfil the tasks that are in front of us, which include balancing the budget. He also made interesting points about conditionality. How do we ensure, in return for whatever support a Government give—we have seen a long history of lumps and bumps of money, restoration after collapse, and so on—a consistent, measurable path to balanced budgets year after year, and an end to boom and bust in times of crisis?

We have increased the additional security funding, which, from memory, I think was flat for about 10 years under the previous Government. This Government came in and decided to increase the additional security funding. The point has been raised in the Select Committee about the comparison with the counter-terrorism policing grant that is available in England and Wales. However, if we divide the grant by the population, we get £19.42 per head of funding; if we divide the additional security funding for Northern Ireland by the population of Northern Ireland, we get £19.61 per head. When people ask why Northern Ireland is not eligible for the counter-terrorism grant, the answer is that it is getting the same funding per head from the additional security funding. It is for the Chief Constable to decide how best to use that money.

Let me turn to legacy funding. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, speaking for the Opposition, is right that the sum was identified some time ago. It is actually £232 million, because £18 million of the £250 million has been set aside for part 4 of the legacy Act. In addition, the framework agreement, to be given effect by the troubles Bill, will enable the Irish Government to commit a further €25 million for legacy mechanisms. We are talking regularly to the ICRIR and the Treasury on a business case, but I say to the hon. Gentleman that the caseload faced by the legacy commission is entirely the product of the piece of legislation that the previous Government passed.

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[Hilary Benn]

The hon. and learned Member shakes his head. With respect, I am afraid that it is a self-evident fact.

[Sammy Wilson]

Would the right hon. Member accept that international trade is much different than trade within the country that we belong to? If the impediments are stopping trade within our own country, of course that is much more serious than companies deciding that they are not going to sell to countries abroad.

[Hilary Benn]

I would indeed accept that point, if it was not for the fact that a decision had been made to leave the European Union when there is an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was the fundamental problem that had to be solved, and none of the alternative suggestions would enable us to do this.

I want to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) about the Muckamore hospital report. I think that every single Member of the House was deeply shocked by what we read in that report, and our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by the mistreatment that has been revealed. I think the answer to the very reasonable question that she put is that we all hope to see all the many recommendations in that report implemented.