Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Simon Hoare Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Baker]

I will give to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), but then I will try to make a bit of progress on the principles.

[Mr Baker]

The right hon. Gentleman makes some legitimate points. The particular point about mandatory coalition is of course an important part of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement strand 1, which we completely respect. We are open to hearing suggestions for institutional reform that will deliver more stable government. Members on the Opposition Benches will know the difficulties in reforming the institutions. The Government are clear that any conversation would need to be led by the political parties of Northern Ireland and would need, in the end, to enjoy cross-community consent to be viable.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend will probably know that the Select Committee was in Northern Ireland last week. I think this endorses and underscores the point he was making a moment or so ago, as he might know about this. The elections were some while ago—an analogue time for a digital age, if you will—and we were hearing from both traditions and both communities a growing sense of worry and anxiety about the impact on the quality of life and on outcomes in health, education and housing for ordinary people in Northern Ireland, who look to their political leaders of all persuasions to deliver for them. There is a growing sense of real anxiety and disappointment that they are being let down yet again.

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle). I think we could have waved at each other last week when he was trapped somewhere in Derry/Londonderry as we went over the hills to get there. At least we are all back safely and able to speak in this afternoon’s debate.

Here we go again. Once again, Northern Irish exceptionalism has to come into play and this place has to step in to fill a gap. My hon. Friend the Minister of State was absolutely right when he said that if this were the service being given to his or, indeed, my constituents in North Dorset, not only would questions be asked in the House, but there would be real and tangible anger. People would feel a sense of abandonment. I think there would also be a growing sense of, “We are the public and we need and want public service, but that can only be delivered at the political level. If the politicians we have do not want to do it, give us the opportunity and we will find some who will.”

There will always be ultras in this sort of debate. I well remember talking to an SNP friend from the 2015 intake when the price of oil was absolutely on the floor. I hope you will give me a moment to expand on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, before you start wondering, “Where the hell is he going with this?” I said, “You must be rather pleased that Scotland decided to stay part of the United Kingdom in the referendum. We’re able to support you and so on because your income as an independent Scotland would have been down as a result of the collapse in oil prices.” A steely glint came into the eye of this person, who must remain nameless—and I can see a steely glint coming into the eye of the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who will speak on behalf of the SNP in this debate—and he said, “Simon, you’re right: the quality of public services would fall. Things would be difficult, and we would have to take difficult decisions, but we would be doing it with an independent Scottish people in an independent Scotland, and that is a price worth paying.”

There will be some who will always say that the price is worth paying—people whose fixed point of principle on one side or the other is so important to them that, no matter how much suffering and pain are occasioned, they believe that it is a price worth paying. I respect those two positions—we always have to have extremes in any debate—but I do detect, as I mentioned in my intervention on the Minister, a growing sense across the communities of Northern Ireland of real anger and disappointment at the failure of politicians to rise to the occasion and to deliver the public service that they expect.

The shadow Secretary of State was right to point out some of the problems that this process, by definition, generates in Northern Ireland. The Government are to be commended for bringing forward the Bill—a common sense act by a sensible Government. But the problem we are going to have—this has been tested in the courts—is that there will be huge reticence among the civil servants. I do not criticise civil servants for that in any way, shape or form, but they will only be able to deliver policies that have already been agreed. If they act ultra vires, there would be a problem because this has been tested in the courts and we know how they ruled on it. Moreover, some of these policies—not all of them—are analogue for a digital age. They do not reflect the cost of living crisis, energy costs and the increase in inflation. They do not reflect the need for fleet action to fill the gaps and address the problems created as a result of covid in education and health, although not exclusively those two things. We need a local Northern Ireland Budget set by Northern Irish politicians in Northern Ireland, reflective of and given cognisance to what they are hearing on their own doorsteps. This process, by its very definition, cannot meet that challenge.

I want to speak briefly about what we, as a Committee, heard from both sides of the community in our visit last week. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) referenced the very real concerns about the absence of a multi-year settlement. We heard from an organisation whose main funding was from the Northern Ireland Office and Stormont. The NIO part of its funding had been agreed and signed off—it knew it had it. It had no idea at all what it would get out of this budgetary process. No idea at all. Notices were going out to their paid staff to say, “We may have to make you redundant. We hope we won’t have to. We hope we will get the money, but we do not know.”

These are not institutions or organisations teaching origami, advanced flower arranging or contract bridge for the winter months. These are organisations that are stepping in for peace building and community building. They are community-led. They are working to help women who find themselves, as the BBC “Spotlight” programme showed, caught in a cycle of the cost of living, leading them to default to extortionist money lenders of the so-called paramilitaries, only to find they cannot pay the money back. They then have to resort to criminal behaviour, being forced to give sexual favours as payment in lieu or seeing their children brought into the ambit of influence of these paramilitaries as a way of paying off debt.

Those groups, which are so dependent upon the money that this Budget could provide and that Stormont could reflect, now find their work in jeopardy. I encourage female Members of this place to take a growing interest—I know many do, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi)— in the impact of the budgetary pressures and other deficiencies in the delivery of public services for the women of Northern Ireland. I make no judgment on the merits, but this House has focused on that issue merely in access to abortion services.

There are a hell of a lot of other things going on—bad things—for the young women of Northern Ireland and, by definition, their young children. They look to those organisations to help them and to protect them, to help them be better parents and to keep their kids on the right path. I think we heard from every single organisation that we met—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon confirms that—the anxiety about the effect that this absolute abdication of the delivery of public service is having and will have.

My hon. Friend the Minister will also know of the potential poor budgetary settlement for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which will have ramifications across the whole of Northern Ireland. They need to do so much in order to build on those peace foundations laid 25 years ago by the Belfast-Good Friday agreement. They will have to make a choice. Everybody in this House will understand and readily applaud the determination to continue community policing. We all know the merits of good community policing in our own communities, and those are magnified still greater in Northern Ireland. But you will not be able to have good community policing and good criminal policing. Something will have to give. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) was right to say that there is no magic wand, and Stormont would not, by itself, have the answer to all these problems, but—by God!—notwithstanding the absence of that magic wand, are not the people of Northern Ireland hampered yet further by not having in place MLAs who can take to officials and to debates what they hear on the doorsteps, or in their church halls?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

At the beginning of 2020, in “New Decade, New Approach”, the UK Government committed to addressing the issue of police numbers in Northern Ireland, and to helping the Northern Ireland Executive with the funding necessary. The Assembly and Executive were restored on that basis. From early 2020 until October 2022, the UK Government failed to deliver on their commitment. The Treasury would not provide additional funding to enable the recruitment of extra officers, despite that being an NDNA commitment. Does the Chairman of the Select Committee understand our frustration? We keep hearing that if we had the Assembly and the Executive back, we could address those issues, but there are many examples where that is not the case. Not least of those is the issue of the UK internal market and the protection of our place in it—another key part of NDNA that was not delivered. This Parliament and Government are not innocent when it comes to these issues.

[Simon Hoare]

I very much agree, and I wrote to the PSNI only today, following our visit, asking it to put in writing in more detailed terms what we heard last week, so that the Select Committee and this place can better understand the implications of that for policing in all its guises. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that those on the Treasury Bench need to step up and honour the agreements reached in “New Decade, New Approach”.

I have always felt that the slight fault line is that when there is a problem or impasse, people say, “I know—we’ll have an agreement! It will promise almost all things to all people; there will be something in it for everybody.” Then they say, “But, you know, we didn’t really mean it. We were just using it as a device—a negotiation stepping stone to get us from one side of the river to another,” and, “Oh, you mean that we will be held accountable for delivering that?” I think in this instance they will be. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues from across the parties in Northern Ireland need no lectures or lessons from me on the huge damage that would be done to community safety, and the criminality that would arise, if the PSNI was not functioning. He can rest assured that as soon as I receive that missive from the PSNI, either the Committee will look at the matter still further and go into detail on it, or I will raise the matter with the Treasury and the Secretary of State.

Let me conclude by picking up a thread from the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention—and this points to what was said by the hon. Member for North Antrim. There is no goose that lays golden eggs—we know that—and there is nobody who advocates for the speedy return of Stormont. Nobody is suggesting that that would solve all the problems of Northern Ireland. However, the fact that an organisation cannot do all the good, all the time, should not stop it from trying to do as much good as it can, as long as it is there to do it. That is the fundamental choice.

DUP Members are fed up, and they are fed up with me saying this—I will not even ask them to nod in support, because I know they are. They are nodding, but they do not even know what I am going to say. It is this: Members on the Treasury Bench have made the error of allowing issues and concerns about the protocol to be conflated with the delivery of functioning devolution. They are two very separate work streams. The protocol offends some in Northern Ireland, but the absence of Stormont affects all, and that is what we should be focused on.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

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[Sammy Wilson]

I am sure that feeling will be widespread across the constituency, as Alex—a former member of my party—is well known and loved there.

I share the Minister’s view on at least one point he made at the start of the debate—namely, I would have preferred it if this Budget had been discussed in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and if decisions about priorities and spending had been made there. Unfortunately, that has not been possible because the Northern Ireland Assembly cannot function, because the very basis of the Northern Ireland Assembly has been destroyed. The Assembly has to work on the basis of consensus, but that consensus has been destroyed by the protocol. We hear ad nauseum from the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), who chairs the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, that we should all be back and we cannot have any more Northern Ireland exceptionalism, but Northern Ireland has been made exceptional by decisions that he has supported—namely, that Northern Ireland no longer remains fully part of the United Kingdom as a result of the protocol.

Furthermore, even though I, my party and our representatives, as Unionists, believe that the protocol is damaging to Northern Ireland’s position in the United Kingdom and to our economy, had we been sitting in the Assembly today, we and our Ministers would have been required to implement the very thing that we say is damaging us, making us exceptional, removing us from the rest of the United Kingdom, causing huge economic burdens—I will mention some in a moment—and being a drain on the Northern Ireland Budget. Yes, we would like to see this legislation debated and these decisions made in the Assembly, but until the basis of the Assembly is restored—that is, until there is cross-community consent for decisions that have to be made—that will, sadly, not be possible and this House will be required to intervene.

It is quite right that the Minister has taken a decision. I do not criticise him for leaving it so late, because he could not have done it before. Indeed, this Budget crisis originated not in October last year, but at the very start of that year—ironically, when the Assembly was fully functioning, and we had a Finance Minister in place, an operating Executive and Ministers who could make decisions about priorities—when, for the second time, Sinn Féin failed to present a Budget that could have the support of any party in the Assembly. There have been only two Sinn Féin Finance Ministers, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir and Conor Murphy, and neither has ever been able to bring forward a successful Budget. There is this idea from the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee that these things would be resolved if only the Assembly were functioning—but the Assembly was functioning, and this was not resolved.

[Simon Hoare]

I understand why the right hon. Gentleman is trying to say what I said, but I am afraid he is missing the mark. What I actually said, if he had heard me, was that I appreciate entirely that a functioning Stormont would not be able to solve all the problems, but that surely solving some—or at least playing an active part in trying to solve some, even if they cannot do all—is better than nothing.

[Sammy Wilson]

For any problem to be resolved, as the hon. Gentleman knows full well, we need a Budget that Departments work from. The Northern Ireland Assembly has collapsed twice in the last four years. On both occasions, it collapsed without a Budget; that is a fact. It collapsed without a Budget because the Finance Minister could not present a Budget that people and other parties could sign up to. On both occasions, the Ministers responsible were Sinn Féin Ministers. All I am saying to the Chairman of the Select Committee is that we could not have had a functioning Assembly. Leaving aside the principle of consent, we could not have had a functioning Assembly because the Assembly did not have the authorisation to spend money on Departments because of the failure of Ministers.

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[Sammy Wilson]

Until that situation is revolved, we are going to be faced with the kind of situation we are discussing today. What amazes me is that other parties in the Assembly, which equally will have no say on those laws, meekly accept those powers being taken from them and not being available to them. I have heard many debates in this Chamber about the Government snatching power from devolved Administrations on various Bills, yet we find that some parties in Northern Ireland are happily accepting that they should not have the ability to make decisions on matters that will greatly influence the lives of ordinary people.

[Simon Hoare]

The point about the democratic deficit is important, as everybody would understand. Does the right hon. Gentleman share my understanding that both Westminster and the EU are very alert to this, and that the EU is keen to find ways, such as Norway has, whereby the views of directly elected Northern Irish politicians, business organisations and others will be taken into account and canvassed in order to shape rules, which may apply to businesses, standards or whatever it may happen to be within Northern Ireland? I appreciate that that does not hit the sweet spot that he would like to see, but we should all draw comfort from the fact that everybody recognises that there is an issue with the democratic deficit and that there are models whereby it can be addressed.

[Sammy Wilson]

I am amazed at the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. As far as I know, he is a member of the Conservative and Unionist party, and as a Unionist, he should be interested in that sweet spot. Simply to hand over power and then find some complicated mechanism to ensure that maybe someone’s voice is heard and considered, while laws from outside are still imposed in our country and a foreign court adjudicates on whether they have been applied properly, does not hit the sweet spot with me, and it should not hit the sweet spot with him; otherwise he should take “Unionist” out of the title of his party membership.

Let me make one last point, about the size of the Budget. Unless there is a radical movement in the EU’s position, the situation could continue for some time. It is important that Ministers consider some of the points that have been made by the education sector, especially in Northern Ireland. Youngsters have fallen behind as a result of covid, and have been locked out of schools. Many of them—and I know this from my own constituency—are youngsters who are most disadvantaged in education anyway, and there should be a discussion with the education sector about what can be done to introduce additional help, especially for youngsters who have fallen behind as a result of the covid closure of schools.

There will be further discussions after the Bill progresses, and I hope that many of the priorities articulated in the Chamber today will be considered. I understand that there are certain sides on a cake, but I do not believe that the cake is big enough. If we consider the existing pressures—teachers, wage increases for public servants, the cost of energy and so on—some of them are universal and apply across the board in the United Kingdom, but given the size of the public sector in Northern Ireland even a Barnett consequential does not fully compensate for the increase in costs that the Northern Ireland Administration faces. Those are the kind of issues on which I hope we can have continued discussion with the Minister in future.

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[Simon Hoare]

If the hon. Member would like to set out in a short email or letter to the Committee the scope of the inquiry that he envisages and the reasons that underpin it, I will take that to Committee colleagues in the not-too-distant future and see what, if any, progress we can make on it, because he makes a valid point.

[Gavin Robinson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

It is what is known as the Barnett squeeze: it started off at 29%, it was 25% in 2002 with the Northern Ireland Executive, and it is currently sitting at 21%. Over the next 50 years, it will be 6%. That 6% higher sounds great, but it is not when we assess the relative need of people in Northern Ireland and the disproportionately higher level of public services. The pay parity issue in 2019 and 2020, when nurses went on strike for the first time in the UK in Northern Ireland, illustrates the point entirely: pay awards were being agreed in England, but the funding was not being sent to Northern Ireland to pay nurses the money that they deserve.

In September, the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council was as clear as it could be when it said that, by 2030, Northern Ireland will have public spending below relative need. The tensions we hear about today, and the pain we experience in individual aspects of public services, indicate that we are quickly getting to the point where we cannot provide the public services that people in Northern Ireland need at the funding levels that we have. In the next spending cycle from 2022 to 2025, Northern Ireland will see a 3.6% increase in spending, but in England, there will be a 6% increase. The squeeze will get worse.

I say all that not to be boring—I do not like economics; I do not find it that interesting—but because it is crucial. In Northern Ireland, the headlines will be, “Parliament rushes through a Budget Bill.” The Bill is a snapshot in time that crystallises what has happened over the last 10 months, determines what will happen for the rest of the financial year and sets out projections for the next six months. It misses the fundamental point, however, that unless there is a total and earnest recalibration of how Northern Ireland is funded, the situation can and will only get worse. With or without an Executive, and with or without a protocol, this will only get worse, and public services in Northern Ireland will stall. They will stall and get to a point where it is irretrievable. As an elected representative who believes in raising issues that are of huge importance to the people I have the privilege of representing, I cannot let this evening pass without raising those fundamental issues.