Points of Order

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Roger Gale

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I thank both hon. Gentlemen for their points of order, and I thank the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) for giving notice of his. While the House Administration does take the lead—

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am on my feet.

While the House Administration does take the lead in the appointment process, it is not a matter for the Chair of the House. The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent has put his point on the record, and I am sure that the House authorities will be able to advise him on how to pursue the matter further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is outrageously out of order—[Laughter.] But I am equally sure that the whole House will want to associate themselves with his remarks about his mum and dad. I add my personal congratulations as well.

[Sammy Wilson]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Last Thursday, the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), made a statement announcing the laying of regulations for the implementation of the Windsor framework, which he stated was part of the Government’s commitment to safeguard the Union—although I think the two things are contradictory, given that the Windsor framework actually divides the Union. In his statement, he sought to justify the fact that Northern Ireland would be subject to some aspects of EU law, and he gave the example of its exclusion from the ban on live exports of animals, which I opposed in this House.

In his statement, the Minister claimed that the Government had offered to establish a sectoral roundtable to consider analysis of the proposed trade ban, but this invitation has not yet been taken up by any of those proposing the ban. I was the one who moved the motion in the House. The Minister in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs had written to me to suggest having a roundtable with the Ulster Farmers Union, and he indicated that the Government had statistics that showed why Northern Ireland should be excluded from the ban. I wrote back to him on 30 January, asking for that information to facilitate the discussion at the roundtable.

Despite that, the Minister claimed that there was no response given, so he gave the impression that I was not prepared to challenge, debate or discuss the implementation of EU law in Northern Ireland. I want to know how that can be corrected. I have corrected it on the record today, but I would like the Minister to correct the wrong information that he gave in his statement. It is quite clear that a letter went to the DEFRA Minister to which he has not responded, either by supplying information or by setting up a date for a meeting so that it can be made clear that there is no unwillingness to discuss the implementation of EU law in Northern Ireland with the relevant Minister.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving at least some notice of his point of order, although I have to say that he has gone rather wider than the information with which I was originally provided. I hope that he informed the Minister that he intended to refer to him in the House.

[Sammy Wilson]

indicated assent.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you. That is not actually a matter for the Chair, but the right hon. Member has put his case on the record.

Bill Presented

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Requirement to Share Apparatus) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Emma Hardy presented a Bill to require providers of electronic communications networks to grant access to their apparatus to other such providers in certain circumstances; to prohibit the installation of new electronic communications apparatus where services can be provided by sharing apparatus; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time Friday 21 June and to be printed (Bill 196).

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Roger Gale

2nd reading & Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I am not too sure why we have the Bill in this form today, with the suggestion that we could have further legislation on 8 February. I suppose the generous interpretation is that the Government still recognise that a lot of work needs to be done to deal with the concerns of the Unionist population. The other interpretation is that this is an attempt to put short-term pressure on my party to come to an agreement on the basis of terms that are unacceptable.

I know that the Government are intent on trying to put the failure of their negotiations with the EU behind them because they have so much internal division with their own party about how they have failed to deliver on the promises of Brexit, but cementing this agreement into the constitutional position of Northern Ireland is not good for a Government who claimed that they wanted to take back sovereignty, and it is not acceptable to Unionists in Northern Ireland who have gone through terrorist campaigns, and shown resolve in terrorist campaigns, in order to stay within the United Kingdom.

We have had all kinds of pressure put on us. We have had threats. We have even heard more of those threats today, such as, “If you don’t go down the route of getting a resolution here, we will have to re-examine the Belfast agreement. We will maybe have to take away the safeguards that were put in place.” With Unionists now not being the dominant parties in the Assembly, it is easy for those who said safeguards for minorities were important in the agreement to dismiss them now. I listened to the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry), and it is little wonder that many people in North Down regard him now as a Sinn Féin cuckoo in the constituency nest, because he talks and argues so much as though he were coming from a Sinn Féin position, rather than from the position of a constituency that is predominantly Unionist.

We have had the threats, including that there might be a change in the agreement that would take away the consensus, or that we might have direct rule that involves the Irish Republic, even though there is no provision for that in the Good Friday agreement. Of course, the Secretary of State has sought to say this at times—or through surrogates. I notice that the hon. Member for North Down echoed the words of the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in threatening that there could be big change that would be detrimental to the Union if we did not come to an agreement quickly.

We have had the bribes, and of course we have also had the bullying: “If you don’t go back into the Assembly, people will not get their pay rise.” I have to say to the Secretary of State that it does not become the current Government to use the workers in Northern Ireland as pawns in trying to push us into a situation. He well knows that this is unnecessary, because nearly 50 public sector pay agreements have been awarded in the last year. However, because there is now an opportunity to use public sector pay agreements, they are being used to exert pressure.

As far as we are concerned, and as our leader has made clear, we want to see devolution restored. In fact, devolution stopped only because the Government refused to listen. Furthermore, not only did they refuse to listen but they expected Unionists to stay in positions in Northern Ireland where they would have had to implement the very thing that we believe is destructive to our economy and will destroy the Union as well. That was an act of last resort. Nevertheless, the Government must be aware that the economic impact of the border in the Irish sea must be removed. The shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said today that the red lane was only for goods moving into the Republic and that that surely showed the integrity of the UK internal market. That is not true. There are many businesses in Northern Ireland that will have to use the red lane until they show where their goods have gone.

I spoke to a businessman this morning in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) who told me that he had a consignment of goods come in this week with 151 individual items for which he had to identify the country of origin, change the product codes and provide weights and a whole range of other information. He is a small businessman. He sent me a message he had received from a major supplier in Manchester, where he bought 10% of his goods, who had finally said to him, “I can’t trade with you anymore. It is not worth my while, given the amount of paperwork.” He operates in Newtownards and none of his goods sell in the Irish Republic, yet he is subject to all this. Now he has to look for new supply chains, and it has been pointed out here many times before that the Irish Government are not behind the door in exploiting that. In fact, he told me that officials from the trade body in the Irish Republic ring him up on a regular basis and ask why does not buy from such and such a supplier in the Republic. It is no wonder that we have already seen a 15% trade diversion as a result of this.

This is hurting us economically. In the long term, it is hurting us constitutionally, too, with the application of EU law in Northern Ireland. We have seen it in the last week on animal safety standards, which cannot apply in Northern Ireland even though the law was passed by this House. Regulations on illegal immigration cannot apply in Northern Ireland, and there is a danger of having to introduce passport controls if Northern Ireland becomes a magnet for illegal immigration. We now have Bills being passed by Parliament that extend to Northern Ireland but cannot apply to Northern Ireland, and we cannot tolerate that.

Unless those issues are dealt with, and as the Secretary of State well knows, how could any Unionist be expected to accept that trade within our country continues to be disrupted? It will hurt businesses and, in the long term, our constitutional arrangements, causing divergence between Northern Ireland and the country to which we belong.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) indicated that he is prepared to work to resolve that challenge, and he has indicated that he takes personal abuse for working at it—that is the position in which politicians now find themselves in Northern Ireland. We did not create this problem. The Government created this problem, and courageous people such as my right hon. Friend should not be hung out to dry because the Government are not prepared to take on their masters in the EU.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call Jim Shannon. I would be grateful if he tried to confine his remarks to five minutes.

Northern Ireland (Interim Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Roger Gale

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

In my opening remarks, can I first thank the spokesman for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), for what I regard—this is probably the death knell for him in his position—as a very balanced presentation of the situation we face in Northern Ireland? He recognised, because of the experience he had over the period when we were remembering the signing of the Belfast agreement, the balance that is required there, and the fact that devolved Government in Northern Ireland cannot operate without the support and consent of both communities and their representatives in Northern Ireland.

That is something I think the Minister has still failed to recognise: he does not understand. It is quite clear from some of his remarks today that he does not understand the deep opposition to the current arrangements for governing Northern Ireland, and the difficulties that those arrangements cause for the Unionist population. Quite frankly, we still see the arrangements—whether the Northern Ireland protocol version or the Windsor framework version—as ones that damage our ability to trade with the rest of the United Kingdom to which we belong, and that will lead to divergence in the long run between Northern Ireland and the country to which we belong.

While the Minister may be prepared to accept the compromise, as he says, of some EU law applying to Northern Ireland as the means of having what he described as an “infrastructure-free border”, we do not see it as an infrastructure-free border. An infrastructure is being built in Northern Ireland, and further infrastructure will be built. Indeed, as I pointed out during Northern Ireland questions earlier today, it is not just in Northern Ireland that we are now going to have that infrastructure; we are going to have it in Cairnryan, Liverpool and Holyhead for goods moving from Northern Ireland into GB. I am afraid that is not what he or I campaigned for when we campaigned to leave the European Union. I do not think he should expect Unionists to compromise on being part of the country that many of them fought and died to remain in during a terrorist campaign of over 35 years in Northern Ireland.

The Minister’s second point was that, despite calls for the Assembly to get up and running, he is concerned—I will quote his words back to him—

“about the long-term sustainability of public finances in Northern Ireland”,

as well as that the pressures are “extremely challenging” and the Northern Ireland Executive have “difficult …decisions” to make. However, he knows that even if the Executive were up and running, and working splendidly, and everyone was co-operating and prepared to make the hard choices, there still would not be enough money in the pot.

The Minister knows—he actually referred to this—that the Fiscal Council has already made it clear that, in relation to the application of the Barnett formula, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that falls below the needs assessment on which public finance, spending in Northern Ireland and the block grant should be based. We are below it, and we are falling further below it. We are continuing to fall, and the gap is getting wider. When that happened and it was identified in Wales, there was immediate recognition of the problem. Wales had not actually fallen below the percentage, although it was moving towards it, and the Holtham commission made recommendations that ensured not only that a floor was set for moneys to be made available in Barnett consequentials for Wales, but that there were transitional arrangements.

I think this is important, because a lie is being spread around Northern Ireland. The Minister says he is not hectoring us today about getting us back into the Assembly, but I am afraid he does plenty of hectoring when he gets across the water, including putting on Facebook, or wherever, about chanting with groups to get back into Stormont, when he knows full well that getting back into Stormont is not going to grow the purse, change the financial situation or make it any easier. The extremely challenging difficulties for long-term sustainability will still be there, so let us not fool anybody.

I do accept that the Assembly had some responsibility for the situation we are in, but when I was Finance Minister in Northern Ireland we always balanced our budget. In fact, we were able to get three-year rolling budgets, so there was certainty for Departments, and we were able to make efficiency savings of 3% almost every year. However, some bad decisions have been made, and the fact that Sinn Féin could not get any of the parties to agree to the budget proposals brought forward when the Executive was functioning is an indication that there is such a role there. The Finance Minister was not capable of delivering a budget on which we could reach agreement, hence the overspend that has occurred. The impact of all that is that even if the Assembly were up and running, the detriment to public services in Northern Ireland would not disappear.

Let us look at some of the implications of the current budget and draw some comparisons. This year, Whitehall Departments will have an increase of 1.8% in resource spending. People argue that is not enough—it does not meet inflation, pay pressures and so on, and I accept that—but in Northern Ireland resource spending will fall by 0.9%.

For education, the budget in England will go up by 6.5% in the next year; in Northern Ireland it will fall by 2.7%, and £100 million of that fall is on special education. Almost every week we see people coming to our constituency offices who are desperate about their youngsters, who need support because they are autistic or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or one of many other educational disadvantages, yet they cannot get assessed, let alone get support. Of course, the pressure on teachers’ pay will further add to school budgets.

In health, over the period to 2024-25 spending in England will go up by 32.9%. In Northern Ireland it will go up by 18.1%. So, again, we will fall further behind even though we have the difficulties and waiting lists that we currently face.

In policing, the Government have recently been boasting that they have reached their target of 20,000 extra police officers in England. In Northern Ireland, despite the promises made in New Decade, New Approach, as a result of the budgetary pressures we have a fall in police officers to well below what Patten recommended was needed to police Northern Ireland.

To add to that, although the Minister knows that Northern Ireland is not being fully funded—the Fiscal Council has told him that—that the Barnett squeeze is getting greater and that the gap will increase, we are being told that if there are any Barnett consequentials for Departments in Northern Ireland this year as a result of, for example, the Government nicely agreeing to pay increases, Northern Ireland will not get them, because they will be used to repay the overspend on what is already accepted to be an underfunded budget. It was last year, the year before and the year before that—in fact, I think it goes right back to 2017. That is what we are facing.

Just last week, I spoke to a school principal who said, “If there’s a pay increase for teachers, as the education budget has been cut by the degree that it has, I cannot afford to pay it unless I sack teachers.” It will be the same with nurses and right across the public service. Indeed, at a time when cuts are biting, the Department for Communities has said that it has got a £27 million deficit, so it does not have the money to recruit the extra staff it needs to process benefits, because of the increasing demand for them.

Those are all the consequences. So given the scale of the gap, let us not pretend that, somehow or other, if the Executive were up and running tomorrow, fairy dust would just fall on Northern Ireland and all of those fiscal problems would disappear—they would not. That is not a reason for not wanting devolved Government back, but it is an indication that we should not be selling the lie to people in Northern Ireland of, “Get back into government and suddenly all of the problems that you are facing—in health, education, communities, policing and everything else—will disappear.”

One of the reasons for amendment 5 is that the DUP recognises that, in order to look at the long-term sustainability of public services in Northern Ireland, we need to know what the Fiscal Council is saying and put in place an arrangement—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I do not wish to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but Committee consideration will follow this stage, so I would be grateful if he confined his remarks to Second Reading.

[Sammy Wilson]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was not going to go into the amendment in any detail—we can do that later—but I just wanted to refer to the fact that the Fiscal Council had made its comments.

When we look at the Bill, as has been described by a party leader in an earlier comment in Northern Ireland, we see that most of it is actually about ways of raising finance and advising how there should be consultation. Clause 2 talks about the consultation on different ways of raising finance as if that is how we will fill the gap. That takes money out of an economy that the Government have already damaged through the protocol, with the difficulties that has caused to Northern Ireland businesses and the costs that people there now face as a result of it being more difficult to get goods from the cheapest source—GB—with which they would normally have traded. Now they have to buy more expensive, and probably lower quality, goods from an EU supply chain. There are also the extra costs on businesses, and indeed the extra cost on the public purse, because £500 million now has to be devoted to the trader support service to help companies over the hurdles caused by the protocol.

Is the answer simply to raise more finance in Northern Ireland? I accept that people in Northern Ireland have things such as free prescriptions that, it could be argued, we could well look at. I remember a debate about free prescriptions. As Finance Minister, I was not keen on them, but I was told at that stage—it was true—that the cost to be spent on administering the distinction between people eligible for free prescriptions and those who were not would hardly compensate for the amount of extra money.

However, let us look at the extensive source of revenue that we do have in Northern Ireland: the rates. It has been estimated that even if we increased rates by 107%—if we more than doubled them—which would have a massive impact on households in Northern Ireland, we would raise only about 5% more revenue to the block grant that we have at present. The argument could be made if rates in Northern Ireland were much lower than those in the rest of the United Kingdom, but actually they are higher than those in Manchester, Sunderland, Liverpool and many other parts of England. So it is not as if we do not already tax people in Northern Ireland where we can to a level that is commensurate, we believe, with their ability to pay.

Clause 2 is included in the Bill to say, as has been widely spread around Northern Ireland, “If the Assembly is not up and running, it is more likely that other ways of raising revenue will be imposed on people in Northern Ireland, so get your politicians back, because otherwise you’ll be charged for things for which you weren’t in the past, or given extra charges on things you are being charged for at present.” I must say to the Minister that that kind of blackmail is not the way to restore the Assembly.

The Assembly will be restored when, first of all, the terms of the Belfast agreement are adhered to so that the views of Unionists, as well as nationalists, are respected, and Unionist Ministers are not required to sit in the Assembly and implement the very arrangements that we then come here and complain will destroy us as a part of the United Kingdom. I hope Members understand that. That is what is being asked of Unionists: to go into the Assembly under court direction and implement the Windsor framework, even though we know that in the long term it will be detrimental to the Union. We will talk about amendments later, but departmental officials will have to make some very controversial decisions. That will require some ministerial direction, hence why we believe there should be provision in the Bill for ministerial direction of civil servants, so that difficult decisions can be made and we can try to make some reforms.

I will make one last point, which relates to one made by the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). Can we not look at ways to better use public money? I say that with some knowledge of the steps that Unionist Ministers have taken in the past in recognition of the fact that there are better ways. The Altnagelvin cancer unit, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), is a good example. It was indicated to us—I was Finance Minister at the time and the DUP held the health Ministry—that we could not afford a cancer unit in the north-west and the Irish Government could not afford a cancer unit of their own in the north-west, so we co-operated. They provided some of the capital and we provided some of the capital. They provided some of the running costs—they still do—and we provided some of the running costs. So this idea that Unionists are not willing to look at how we can make reforms, take decisions and make public finance more sustainable is just not on.

I look forward to the day when devolution is restored and we can work in a co-operative way, but it will not happen until there is respect for the Unionist view in Northern Ireland. And even when it does happen, it will not be effective if the resources are not there to enable us to make the kinds of changes that are required.

Sustainable Energy Generation: Burning Trees

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Roger Gale

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I apologise for being about 30 seconds late to the debate. There are a number of reasons why I am interested in the topic. First, the cost of the renewable energy initiative in Northern Ireland was £25 million, yet it led to the collapse of the Executive, no Government for three years and a public inquiry that, in the end, did not come up with any negative recommendations. Yet here we are discussing the initiative as it applies in England—burning wood pellets at a subsidy of £1 billion per year. I ask myself why, if it led to the collapse of Government in Northern Ireland, a public inquiry and a long period of no Government, are we not jumping up and down at the cost of a £1 billion per year subsidy for an RHI scheme?

Secondly, I am keen on protecting the environment yet, as we have heard from speaker after speaker today, we have here a form of renewable energy that destroys the environment. It destroys woodland and the habitat of the animals, birds and flora that rely on that woodland. When we look back at a number of the renewable schemes that we have today, we will ask ourselves why we did not see their environmental impact. I know it is not the subject of our debate today, but if we look at the environmental damage done, for example, to provide windmills in Scotland, some 13 million trees have been torn down already to provide the sites and peatlands have been dug up and huge concrete bases and roads have been put in those upland areas, destroying many of the drainage systems there. In my own constituency, I noticed 3 metres of peat being taken off a hillside at a time when curlew and other birds will be nesting in those hillsides. Many people genuinely believe that we have to go down the road of having renewable energy, but, very often, the focus on it simply being renewable means that we ignore the environmental consequences of such energy provision.

The third reason that we should be concerned about such energy generation is the billions of pounds of subsidies that we have talked about. Who will eventually pay for the increased cost of electricity? It will be the consumer. At a time when we are talking about energy crises and the difficulties people are having in paying their energy bills, many of the schemes we are introducing are adding to the bills of households and industry for energy production. That is why the debate is important.

As many people have pointed out, there is an irony in that if we had produced a similar amount of electricity from coal at the Drax station, we would have had 18% less carbon emissions. Had we used gas, we would have had 50% less carbon emissions. This obsession with moving away from fossil fuels sometimes obscures the very fact that we are not actually achieving our goals.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

One thing that does not seem to have been taken into account yet is the carbon cost of moving so-called renewable products across the world. Is it not an irony that we are shipping stuff across an ocean into the United Kingdom at a time when we are trying to control the use of domestic carbon products?

[Sammy Wilson]

That is another of the ironies in this debate that is being ignored. We ignore the fact that we are taking a forest from one country and bringing it over to burn it in our country, and we are paying the cost of that. I will conclude at this point, but I hope that today generates a wider debate on the whole use of renewable energy.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Roger Gale

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons & Committee: 2nd sitting
Wednesday 8th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the Minister not recognise the incompatibility of the two statements he has made? He wants to adhere to the letter and the spirit of the Belfast agreement, yet he is prepared to set aside one of its most fundamental parts—that, on controversial issues and issues that one community feels threatens its identity and the things it values, there should be a mechanism whereby there is a difference in the majority vote. He seems not to understand that the protocol and the terms of this Bill set that very vital safeguard aside.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. Before we proceed, let me provide this clarification. The Minister referred to withdrawing an amendment, as did the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry). At this stage, there is no need to withdraw amendments, because none of them has been moved. It is only the lead amendment that has been moved.