Speaker’s Statement
Wednesday 27th June 2018
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018 Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
I wish to inform the House that I have received a letter from the Leader of the House seeking precedence to move a motion to refer to the Committee of Privileges the refusal of Mr Dominic Cummings to attend a meeting of the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in defiance of the Order of the House of 7 June. I am happy to accede to that request, and I will invite the Leader of the House to move such a motion as the first business tomorrow, Thursday 28 June, after any urgent questions or statements.
Bill Presented
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Karen Bradley, supported by the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, Elizabeth Truss and Mr Shailesh Vara, presented a Bill to authorise the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland of certain sums for the service of the year ending 31 March 2019; to appropriate those sums for specified purposes; to authorise the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland to borrow on the credit of the appropriated sums; to authorise the use for the public service of certain resources (including accruing resources) for the year ending 31 March 2019; and to repeal certain spent provisions.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 238) with explanatory notes (Bill 238-EN).
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Monday 9th July 2018
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House Amendments as at 9 July 2018 - (9 Jul 2018)
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Karen Bradley)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Government have been working intensely to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland since the collapse of the Executive last year. It is deeply regrettable that, despite efforts, the political parties in Northern Ireland have not yet reached an agreement that would enable devolved government. In the absence of an Executive, the Northern Ireland civil service has worked, and continues to work, with the utmost professionalism and commitment to protect and preserve public services in the interests of all communities in Northern Ireland. I commend their efforts.
Many hon. and right hon. Members will have seen the ruling from the High Court last week regarding the Buick judgment. I want to reassure all Members that the Government have noted that ruling and are considering it carefully. As our track record shows, in the absence of an Executive, the Government have already taken, and are committed to take, a number of limited but necessary steps to ensure good governance and to protect the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland. That included providing certainty for Northern Ireland finances with my budget statement to Parliament on 8 March.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
The Secretary of State has quite rightly made reference to a very significant judgment last week in relation to the incinerator in County Antrim. Will she indicate whether the Government intend to appeal that decision yet again?
Karen Bradley
We are considering the position. The judgment was received at 9.30 am on Friday. There has been a little bit going on over the weekend, but we are working very hard on that, and we will ensure that we come to the House with our conclusions and decisions. That decision was not the one that we wanted, and we will obviously consider our position.
Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)
I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is considering the judgment, which deals with a big decision made by a permanent secretary—a civil servant. However, that situation does not accurately reflect the fact that hundreds of decisions across all the Departments are not being made, and cannot be made unless there is a Minister in charge to make them.
Karen Bradley
We need to consider the exact implications of the judgment that we received on Friday. When we have reached our conclusion, I will of course come to the Chamber, when I will be happy to debate it with the hon. Lady, who I know has a particular interest in and knowledge of that issue.
The budget statement that I made to Parliament on 8 March set out headline departmental allocations for the 2018-19 financial year, helping to safeguard Northern Ireland finances by enabling the Northern Ireland civil service to manage and maintain public services throughout the early months of this financial year. This budget Bill seeks to build on that certainty.
As I advised the House on 20 March, the budget position and the vote on account provision approved by Parliament in the Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2018, which provides authority to the NICS to access up to 45% of the previous year’s allocations to allow day-to-day spending in the early months of this financial year, was the first step in the budget-setting process. Further legislation is now required to put that budget position on a legal footing and to provide the legal authority for the NICS to access the full level of funding available for the whole financial year. Without the Bill, the only way for Departments to access cash is for the NICS to make use of emergency powers under section 59 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, although those powers, too, are limited.
Lady Hermon
The Secretary of State is being very generous by allowing me to intervene once again. She will be well aware that the Prime Minister has just completed a lengthy statement to the House on Brexit and what the then Cabinet agreed on Friday. I was particularly struck by the fact that the Prime Minister indicated that the preparations for a no-deal scenario would be intensified— “stepped up”, to use her words. In those circumstances, will the Secretary of State confirm that the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland will have the resources he needs, including additional police officers, to deal with the policing implications of a no-deal scenario?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady is nothing if not persistent. She quizzed me extensively about that matter at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Wednesday. As I said to her then, we have received the Chief Constable’s recommendations and are considering them across Government. She is right to say that we are stepping up no-deal planning, as the Prime Minister stated. It is also worth saying that the deal agreed by the Cabinet at Chequers is one that works for the whole United Kingdom. It is very important, from a Union point of view, that we have a deal with the European Union that ensures that our red lines for Northern Ireland of no hard border on the island of Ireland and no border on the Irish sea are adhered to.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Is the Secretary of State confirming effectively to the House that the financial shortfall identified by the Chief Constable will now be met by additional resources, as required by the Chief Constable when he met the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman is also persistent in his questioning. As I said last Wednesday in front of the Select Committee, we have received the Chief Constable’s report and are looking at it.
The emergency powers under section 59 of the 1998 Act are intended to be used only in the absence of more orthodox legal authority. I do not consider those emergency powers to be appropriate for managing Northern Ireland finances for a second financial year.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Before the Secretary of State leaves the issue of security and preparations for a no-deal exit from the European Union, I am sure she will remember that at the meeting in Downing Street with the Prime Minister and herself, the leader of my party and I presented to the Prime Minister directly information supplied by the Chief Constable of the PSNI on the issue of extra resources. As well as dealing with the issues that have rightly and properly been raised at the Select Committee, it is important that she recognises that the Prime Minister herself made a commitment to look very carefully at that issue, and we expect an early answer on it.
Karen Bradley
For clarification, the report I am referring to is precisely the one presented to the Prime Minister by the right hon. Gentleman and the leader of the Democratic Unionist party. We have received it and are considering it across Government, as we rightly should in that situation.
This Bill seeks to put the budget position I set out in March on a legal footing. It does not direct the NICS Departments on how to use these allocations. In the absence of an Executive, it remains for Northern Ireland Departments to implement their budget positions. How Northern Ireland Departments will allocate their budgets is set out in the detailed NI main estimates Command Paper. Passing this budget Bill does not remove the pressing need to have locally accountable political leaders in place to take the fundamental decisions that will secure a more sustainable future for the people of Northern Ireland.
I will now turn to the Bill itself. The Bill authorises Northern Ireland Departments and certain other bodies to incur expenditure of up to £8.9 billion and use resources totalling up to £9.9 billion for the financial year ending on 31 March 2019. While this is a technical budget Bill, I do not dismiss the constitutional significance of Parliament having to deliver this for Northern Ireland. I therefore draw Members’ attention to two important issues that do not form a part of the Bill expressly, but will be of interest to Parliament as we debate the Bill. First, as I highlighted in my March statement, this budget includes a further £410 million of UK Government funding that flows from the confidence and supply agreement. That is in addition to the £20 million already released in 2017-18 to help to address immediate pressures in health and education.
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)
On the back of the court judgment that was reinforced last week, which has made it virtually impossible for NI civil servants and permanent secretaries to move forward and even to spend the money that they will have, we fear that the confidence and supply money will not be allocated or used correctly if we cannot get decisions pushed through. The only people who can do it are this Government here, because there is no Executive in Northern Ireland to deal with it.
Karen Bradley
As I made clear in my earlier remarks, we are very aware of the Buick judgment and are considering that decision. In respect of specific items of spending allocated from the confidence and supply money, we are looking carefully to ensure that if ministerial decisions are required, we know what decisions are required and how we would go about taking them. To be clear, there is no difficulty in spending the money that has been allocated so far. As and when there becomes a difficulty, we will of course be ready to take actions as necessary.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
On that point, may I appeal to the Secretary of State, particularly in relation to education? I know from talking to schools in my constituency that the additional funding we envisaged would go to the frontline and the chalk face—to the schools—is not seeing its way through. It is being used to plug gaps in the Education Authority’s budget, not in schools’ budgets. This is something we feel it is very important for the Secretary of State to examine and to press home.
Karen Bradley
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we examine all such points. If he wishes to write to me specifically on the instances he has learned about, I will be more than happy to have officials in my Department speak to those in the NICS to establish what has happened. We are very clear where the money needs to be spent. It was agreed in the confidence and supply arrangement, and we are taking the steps that we need to take to ensure the money is spent as intended.
I want to be very clear that this Bill is not legislating for the £410 million. That was approved by Parliament for release as part of the UK Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) (No.2) Bill, while this Bill gives the NICS the authority to allocate that funding. More detail on funding allocations is contained in the supporting Command Paper. Just to be clear, we are following on from the estimates process on which we voted in the Chamber last week. On Tuesday evening, we voted to make sure that the Northern Ireland block grant was properly allocated. Today, we are in effect carrying out the estimates process that would normally be done at Stormont. In the absence of Stormont, we are dealing with this through primary legislation here.
Ian Paisley
I appreciate what the Secretary of State is saying, and yes, by and large, that is exactly what is happening, but it is not quite as benign as that. The Secretary of State has personally signed off a change in the budget by which £100 million has been taken from capital spend to revenue spend. Civil servants are of course very delighted about that, because some of it will go towards redundancy packages for them, but that is not the point. The Secretary of State has taken the decision on advice, so why does she not take the other decisions that are necessary to make Northern Ireland function?
Karen Bradley
I said that the hon. Gentleman was persistent. The decision to allocate spending from the capital budget to the revenue budget was taken to make sure that the budget balanced. It was taken after consultation with all the main parties in Northern Ireland, which all understood that that decision was taken to ensure that the budget balanced and that additional revenue raising from the people of Northern Ireland was not required.
Let me turn to the second important issue to which I would like to draw the attention of the House. As well as placing all Northern Ireland Audit Office audits and value for money reports and the associated departmental responses in the Libraries of both Houses—to be accessible and visible to all interested Members and Committees—I will also write to the main Northern Ireland political parties to highlight the publication of the reports and encourage them to engage with the findings. This is as robust a process as is possible, but the best form of overall accountability and scrutiny of Northern Ireland public finances would of course be that undertaken by a fully functioning Executive and a sitting Assembly in Northern Ireland.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I am sorry to intervene in these sensible discussions, but the Secretary of State has been very generous in taking interventions. Surely one way in which the budgets could be balanced—this would be better and might provide a bit of impetus—would be if the salaries of those in the Assembly who are not doing their jobs were suspended. Perhaps we would get a little bit of movement, and we might have some spare money for the Department of Education.
Karen Bradley
That point has been raised with me on a number of occasions. My right hon. Friend will know that I legislated to stop the increase in salaries that would have happened automatically on 1 April, and we are considering the position with regard to ongoing salaries. I know that he will be surprised, but I am afraid that even cutting Northern Ireland Assembly pay would not quite reach the figure of £100 million that we needed to reallocate from capital to revenue.
Nigel Dodds
I am sure the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) will be very interested to hear the much more substantial amounts that would be saved if we cut payments to Members who do not take their seats in this House. Since 2005-06, £1,023,334 has been paid to date in representative or equivalent Short money to Sinn Féin Members who do not take their seats, and they have got £4,165,000 in office costs and staffing allowances for not doing their jobs here. That has been tolerated by the Northern Ireland Office and by this House for a lot longer than there has been an issue of pay for Members of the Legislative Assembly. I am all for dealing with the issue of MLA pay, but let us deal with Sinn Féin issues as well.
Karen Bradley
I have to say that this is not a matter for which the Northern Ireland Office has responsibility, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. This is a matter for the House, because those allowances are paid from the House. I encourage all right hon. and hon. Members who feel strongly about that matter to take it up with the House authorities.
The UK Government remain absolutely committed to providing Northern Ireland with good governance and stability while we continue our efforts to restore devolved government at the earliest possible time. The people of Northern Ireland deserve strong political leadership from a locally elected and accountable devolved Government, and that remains my firm priority. In its absence, however, the UK Government will always deliver on their responsibilities for political stability and good governance in the United Kingdom. On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
May I begin—I think the whole House will be united on this at least—by condemning the sectarian violence over the weekend in Derry/Londonderry? This has no place in Northern Ireland today. We thought that we had turned our back on that kind of activity.
Let me make it clear from the outset that, although the process of delivering this budget legislation is perhaps an extraordinary one, we certainly do not intend to stand in its way, but we have to raise questions about the nature of the legislation. There is no doubt that bringing forward this budget is a political decision, and it needs to be made crystal clear—I hope both the Secretary of State and the Minister in replying will do so—that this is not part of creeping direct rule. It is important that we establish the point that this is not part of creeping direct rule.
This is a truncated debate and scrutiny is, by its nature, limited. Were we to do the budgetary process for the United Kingdom in this way, the House would quite rightly be incensed. I accept the Secretary of State’s comment that this is almost the last possible time such a budget can be delivered and that it is time-sensitive. However, in that context, the Secretary of State has already referred to consulting the various parties, and the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) has raised a decision that the Secretary of State has made. It is important to record how that consultation took place. In particular, at what point did she consult all the five major political parties—the Assembly parties—because that is an important test of the legitimacy of the decisions within the budget?
Karen Bradley
I am very happy to put that on the record, but I also join the hon. Gentleman in his comments about the violence we saw at the weekend in Derry/Londonderry. I confirm that unusually—I would not normally do this in relation to any legislation or statements in the House—I made sure that all the main parties in Northern Ireland saw the budget proposals before they were finalised, and they were not presented to the House until all five parties had seen them.
Tony Lloyd
I am grateful for that clarification, although I may return to that point later in a different context.
Nevertheless, there is still a question of accountability. In the end, accountability is a function of adequate scrutiny—not simply of the budgetary process at this stage, but of the spending that takes place afterwards. I ask both the Secretary of State and the Minister to consider very closely what the role can now be of the Northern Ireland Audit Office. It is one of the few bodies that has legitimacy, but its legitimacy is itself challenged by the lack of a functioning Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly. However, the Audit Office is certainly one of the few bodies that can put information into the public domain and exercise some stewardship of the spending that takes place and value for money, which is so important in any form of Government spending.
Real questions must also be asked about the way in which decisions are made on spending more generally as the political logjam in Northern Ireland—the lack of a power-sharing Assembly—quite frankly turns such decisions bit by bit into some areas of enormous difficulty and some areas of crisis. The hon. Members for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) and for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) have made points about the recent decision concerning the Mallusk incinerator. The Secretary of State herself mentioned the situation, which has now been through the High Court and the Court of Appeal. I must say to her that I accept people were busy on Friday, but considerable work should already have been done on this because it is important to have legal certainty.
Karen Bradley
I apologise if I was flippant in my remarks regarding the weekend. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we did significant work in advance of the judgment. We need to spend time looking carefully at what was said in the hearing and the judgment so that we can ensure that we react appropriately. Of course, I will discuss that with him before any final decisions are taken.
Tony Lloyd
I am grateful to the Secretary of State, but there is a difficult question about the capacity of the Northern Ireland civil service to make decisions. The Court ruled in the case of a controversial planning decision that is no longer deemed to be legitimate unless there is a further appeal by whomsoever, but this goes way beyond that case, as Northern Ireland Members have said. We need certainty about how money can be spent, what budgetary headings in the Bill can be transformed into practical decisions and whether the civil service has the capacity to make those decisions.
This is not an abstract, theoretical game. It will be a day-to-day game with the possibility of judicial review taking place on any and every occasion. We need certainty. In the mini-budget in March, the Secretary of State talked about seeking legal advice on how the money can be spent, but we need early certainty on the public record so that civil servants know what their capacity is. Beyond civil servants, we need certainty so that the people of Northern Ireland know how their money can be spent, because difficult and time-sensitive issues are looming.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has mentioned the north-south connector on many occasions. The decision in principle has already been taken, so in one sense that ought to be a relatively easy decision, but providing the moneys to make the connector work requires decision making by individuals or a structure that cannot subsequently be challenged in the courts. That is enormously important.
I join the hon. Members for North Down (Lady Hermon) and for North Antrim and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) in their challenge to the Secretary of State on the role of the PSNI. All other things being equal, our country will leave the European Union on 29 March. In her statement earlier, the Prime Minister said that a range of possibilities were being considered, including a no deal outcome. The PSNI Chief Constable has made it clear that that no deal outcome would require further staffing—a serious increase in numbers. I can assure the Secretary of State that that is time-sensitive because it is not possible, even between now and the end of March, to recruit and train 300 new members of the PSNI. It is important to recognise that. It is time-sensitive and, actually, the time is already long overdue.
Ian Paisley
I appreciate what the shadow Secretary of State has put on the record. It is important in terms of the lack of numbers. Under the Patten recommendation, police are down by 1,000, which needs to be rectified. He is right that it will take time. What worries me most—I hope that he agrees—is that, in the top team of the PSNI, six of the nine senior officers are currently on temporary contracts because the Policing Board is not functioning. That needs to be solved immediately for the good governance of policing in Northern Ireland.
Tony Lloyd
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is one of many issues that will be frozen for as long as no Executive sits.
I can tell the House of my own experience of being a part of recruiting police officers. Recruitment and training matters enormously. The confidence of the Northern Ireland public in the PSNI demands highly and thoroughly trained people coming into the service. It is in that context that the views of the Chief Constable must be taken into account. The Secretary of State must do better than simply saying that it is under consideration. We need decisions, and we need them fast.
Lady Hermon
The shadow Secretary of State will be aware that actions speak louder than words. He rightly acknowledges the needs of the PSNI Chief Constable, who made it clear to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee two weeks ago this Wednesday that he needed additional police officers and resources. The hon. Gentleman has colleagues on the Committee. Did he and his party leader take action and write to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland reflecting and supporting the needs and views of the Chief Constable in his request for additional resources? I do not want just to hear words; I want to know that the Labour party took follow-up actions.
Tony Lloyd
The hon. Lady’s comments are very helpful. Better than writing, we raised the matter in Northern Ireland questions. I challenged the Secretary of State—I challenge her again today—to recognise the strength of the Chief Constable’s words and demands and to follow words with legitimate action, as the hon. Lady says. That is the right way forward.
We need Government action on a number of other issues raised in the mini-budget debate in March, including the follow-up to the Hart inquiry. The question of historical institutional abuse will not go away, except, sadly, as victims begin to disappear. It cannot be right that victims whose lives were made massively more difficult, and sometimes nearly impossible, have to wait year after year to find resolution to historical abuse. It is important that there is a clear timetable for consultation. I understand the limitations for the civil service, but given the time-sensitive nature of the inquiry for the victims, we need a clear path for the consultation process on the historical institutional abuse inquiry and the future of the Hart inquiry.
That leads me to the question of pensions for victims of the troubles, which is consistently raised. In fact, this is more straightforward for the Secretary of State in that I believe it is possible to fund it through the Westminster purse rather than through the Northern Ireland purse. One way or another, the amounts of money involved—£2 million to £3 million—would be well containable within any budget. Because of the time-sensitive nature of the question—people whose lives were made difficult are growing older and disappearing—we need firm action.
Karen Bradley
We have debated this matter a number of times in the House. I share the hon. Gentleman’s desire for a resolution, but he will know that the definition of victim has caused problems in terms of how anyone can assist them. I have asked the Victims’ Commissioner to do a piece of work on the definition of victim so that we can get to a resolution one way or another, which I am sure he will welcome.
Tony Lloyd
I welcome the Secretary of State’s words. Bringing this to a resolution is important, but as with all things, another round of consultation cannot be an excuse for inaction. It must be a driver so that we see justice in this difficult situation. Of course there are difficult decisions to be taken—I am aware of the different feelings that exist—but as often in such cases, grasping the nettle and saying that there is a way forward gives hope to the overwhelming majority of people who find themselves in that position. It is important that the House gives a clear signal that that can take place outwith Northern Ireland budgetary considerations.
In the same light, the Lord Chief Justice has made a request for a relatively short amount of money for the legacy inquest. Frankly, he has made it clear to me and to others that he would be able to deliver the outcome of the legacy inquests over the next five years if he is given the £5 million he has requested. If he is not given that money, it will take 30 years. Frankly, in 30 years’ time, consideration of the legacy inquest will be nearly irrelevant. Again, this issue is time-sensitive and it is within the Secretary of State’s capacity to begin to deliver on it.
As I said, we are beginning to move towards logjam. It may not yet be a crisis, but a crisis is beginning to emerge, even if only for individuals. We know that any major planning decisions will be scrutinised at the most sensitive level, but that anything controversial will be challenged in the courts. There are many other issues that need to be dealt with. The hon. Member for North Antrim referred to the inability to deliver permanent contracts for senior police officers in the PSNI. The same goes for the prisons ombudsman and many other similar positions.
In normal circumstances, health reform would apply to every constituency in every part of the United Kingdom. Bengoa reported some time ago now. Northern Ireland has the longest waiting lists in the UK, so it is important that we have action on health reform to begin to deliver the healthcare the people of Northern Ireland want and need. This is a wake-up call to everyone to make sure that MLAs get back to work to deliver on that.
On school reform—the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) referred to the situation in schools—we know things that need to be done in the education system are being blocked because of the present constitutional impasse. One issue that is important to individuals is the mitigation of welfare payments. This was negotiated as a result of the Stormont House and Fresh Start processes and is slowly beginning to lapse. It will lapse completely, I think, in 2020, or perhaps a little later. Individuals are already beginning to fall foul of the fact that this has not been renewed. For individuals, this is now a crisis. Members of this House have made it clear that they would prefer issues such as equal marriage and the termination of pregnancies to be dealt with by the Northern Ireland Assembly, but in the end the pressure for action begins to grow on all sides.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, any budget, even by inertia, contains de facto political decisions. I think that the nods of agreement from the Minister and the Secretary of State indicate that they accept this cannot be a signal towards direct rule. Warm words and aspirations are no longer enough. We need action.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, as we move towards the recess in the next couple of weeks, we really need the Northern Ireland Office to ensure that the impasse does not further jeopardise the good governance of Northern Ireland? People are complaining and campaigning on the basis of, “Let’s get something done.” We need a package of measures in place, as soon as the House returns in early September, to alleviate the problems real people are facing and suffering on the ground.
Tony Lloyd
I hope that we see a groundswell of opinion in Northern Ireland that expects centre politicians —both here in Westminster and those elected to, but not sitting in, the Assembly—to get back to work. Many of the decisions that need to be made in the Assembly are important to the people on the ground, and they transcend the difference between the political parties. The issues faced in the past by John Hume, David Trimble, Dr Paisley and Martin McGuinness were massively bigger than the gap that now exists between the DUP and Sinn Féin. That is not just my opinion; I think that it would be the opinion of most ordinary folk in Northern Ireland. This is a wake-up call for everybody and a time for leadership.
Nigel Dodds
Of course we all share the hon. Gentleman’s desire to have the Assembly back as quickly as possible, but if he casts his mind back, he will recall that the last time we had a major issue and an impasse in getting the parties to agree was during the previous Labour Government. When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were in charge, they took action to implement a form of interim decision making. Does he think they were right to do that?
Tony Lloyd
We need a package of action. It is incumbent on political leaders in Northern Ireland to stand up and be counted. Across the piece, politicians like the right hon. Gentleman have a leadership role in saying, “Get back to the Assembly.” There is, of course, a leadership role for the Secretary of State. I cannot rewrite history, by the way. What I would say is that we saw a move towards a successful conclusion and power sharing was reinvoked. We need movement towards the reintroduction of proper power sharing.
Lady Hermon
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene again. When the Assembly was suspended in October 2002, under a Labour Government, the suspension provisions were on the statute book. They were repealed at the request, I understand, of Sinn Féin in the St Andrews agreement. Therefore, we are not comparing like with like. We are comparing that situation not with a period of suspension of the Assembly, but with a grey area where the Assembly is simply not functioning but is not suspended.
Tony Lloyd
Constitutionally, the hon. Lady is absolutely right. I am not sure, however, that we will make progress by looking to the past. We have to look to the future.
I applaud the Government’s decision to move to the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which will meet in a couple of weeks’ time. It is important that it does so, and certainly my party will do everything it can to make the process work. It would be helpful to recognise a number of things. The conference is one of the institutions of the Good Friday agreement. It is part of the framework of the agreement, which has not gone away. The two Governments, the Irish Government and the British Government, are co-guarantors of the Good Friday agreement. I hope the Minister will make it clear, at a difficult time between our two nations—it is not simply a question of east-west relations, it is about ensuring progress on the north-south agenda too—that both Governments will show leadership in the expectation that it will be mirrored by leadership from the political parties in Northern Ireland.
It is time for a change. The things that are being held up cannot wait for finger pointing between political parties. The Secretary of State has to show real action in the weeks and months to come. Through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, she can begin the process of bringing legitimate pressure to bear on all parties. We have to see real progress if we are to begin to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland the change and transformation that is now needed.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I would just like to make a few comments on Second Reading and then perhaps try to catch your eye in Committee, Mr Deputy Speaker.
First, I would just say to the Secretary of State that I was not indicating earlier that all the financial problems in Northern Ireland would be resolved if we did not pay Members of the Legislative Assembly for not attending. The point I was trying to make was similar to the point made by the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) in relation to Sinn Féin: people are being paid for something they are not doing, and I think that in a democracy that is fundamentally wrong. It is about not the capital but the enormous message it would send. The Secretary of State was quite dismissive at the Dispatch Box, but my point is actually very serious. That point has been addressed in previous times when the Assembly has gone down, and it needs to be looked at again. On the point about Sinn Féin Members being paid and not being present in the House, I know that they stand on that manifesto promise in elections, but I do not think that many people in this country—in these great islands of ours—would understand that situation.
I am a Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire, which needs more police and more funding for police—as a former Policing Minister, I understand that side of things a bit—but there is a difference in Northern Ireland. Policing in Northern Ireland is not like policing in any other part of this country. I have had the honour and privilege of being with NI police on patrol—in uniform as a young soldier and then as the Minister of State for Northern Ireland. We do not have armed police officers on the streets—doing community policing, every single one of them. Our police officers do not have pipe bombs thrown at them on a regular basis. In Northern Ireland, we had side-impact IEDs, threatening behaviour and people needing protection in their homes. Serving officers were moved from their homes, sometimes at a minute’s notice because of the threat against them. A lot of people from England, Scotland and Wales who are listening to this debate will say, “Why is an English MP standing up and asking the Secretary of State not just to look seriously at this, but to find some money for the Northern Ireland police force?” The answer is that it is different, because the police manage to keep a peace in Northern Ireland that the rest of the United Kingdom would not understand as peace. However, that peace in Northern Ireland is a million miles further forward than it has been before.
Previous Governments of both persuasions have found money for Northern Ireland for that reason—to keep the Good Friday agreement. My fear is this—it was my fear when I was in post in Northern Ireland, and many colleagues across the House will have heard me say this: we need momentum and we need to go forward, and stagnation takes us backwards. What we saw in the Bogside in Londonderry at the weekend is an example of stagnation and going back to the old days.
Mr Gregory Campbell
As the police try to move into a much more community-orient role in Northern Ireland, we all support that, but as we speak tonight, police officers in Northern Ireland are having to be deployed to the small enclave of the Fountain estate in Londonderry, where they are under constant attack from petrol bombs, acid bombs and stones. That is not the type of policing we ought to have, but it has to take place, and the police in Londonderry and the Chief Constable need the additional resources to cover that.
Sir Mike Penning
I completely agree. Knowing that part of the world as well as I do, and having meetings there as well as having been there many years ago, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. But there is a problem: we have recruited a lot of police into the PSNI over recent years who have never seen this sort of terrorism and barbaric attacks on our officers, and it has come as a huge shock to them. I remember vividly the terribly sad event of David Black being murdered. I remember speaking to the young PSNI officers who were in and around the area in the aftermath, and they could not comprehend what they were seeing. I remember some of what was written while I was there as a Minister, and people were saying to me, “I didn’t join the force for this.”
We talk about recruitment. We would need 300 officers for a hard border, if it happened—chief constables always come up with figures for these things. We are short of officers now without any situation on the border, and we have to remember that 10,000 troops could not keep a hard border in Northern Ireland throughout the troubles. I have said before in the House that we can try as much as we want to have a hard border and it will not happen. We will have to use technology, and some of the best automatic number plate recognition is on that border now. There were no customs posts anywhere near the border, particularly in Monaghan and the areas of Middletown where I was. They were way up the road and actually were closed most of the time.
The point I am trying to make is that it is not just about recruiting numbers. They have to be the right people and they have to have explained to them very early on, before they sign on the dotted line and we commit money to training them, that policing in Northern Ireland is very different—they know because they live on the island. I consciously say “the island” because there are officers from the south. They live in the south and are very proud members of the PSNI.
Ian Paisley
The point that the right hon. Gentleman is making is compounded by the fact that each month, the Police Service of Northern Ireland loses 50 officers for the very reason that he identified. For a force the size of the PSNI, that loss is hugely significant, because we are not getting in the experienced officers we need with the skills to deal with the issues. Does he agree with the point that the Chief Constable made to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee earlier this month, which was that nationalists and nationalist leaders in Northern Ireland have to step up to the plate and encourage their community to join the police and to see it as a career for all the community?
Sir Mike Penning
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. If we are going to have a community police force, and we created the PSNI for that reason—we abolished the RUC and created the PSNI—it has to be a force of all the people. For that reason, I completely agree that politicians on the nationalist side have to step up to the plate. Let us be honest about it: there are Catholics serving in the PSNI, but they are continually under threat.
Karen Bradley
I start by apologising to my right hon. Friend—I was not making light in any way of his comments about MLA pay. I know exactly the point that he was making. I also want to put on record my tribute to him as Policing Minister when we worked together in the Home Office. He understood policing in a way that very few Policing Ministers possibly can. I believe that he was Policing Minister when the National Crime Agency started to be able to operate in Northern Ireland, thanks to his work as the organised crime Minister.
Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the news that assistant chief constable Drew Harris of the PSNI has been appointed as the next commissioner of the Garda in the Republic? That is excellent news, and it demonstrates the point that my right hon. Friend made earlier about the whole island of Ireland working together.
Sir Mike Penning
I thank the Secretary of State—I must have a moan more often if I get such nice comments. I know Drew really well, and a lot of colleagues in the House will know him well, too. It is a fantastic appointment, and he will do fantastic work for cross-border policing and community policing.
The Garda police very differently from the PSNI, and I have to respect them—theirs is a sovereign state. However, I was about to come on to the point that if we want to recruit the right sort of people more often, from the cross-border areas and cross-party, we must make sure we protect them. One thing that I hope the Secretary of State will raise with her opposite number is that the Garda do not put in place protection in the south for serving police officers from the Garda or from the north. That is a real concern, which was raised with me many times when I was a Minister. If people were coming from the south who needed protection, the only thing that we could do was take them out of the south and bring them into the north, which is obviously wrong. The Garda do not have the same policies as we do and do not support their officers in the same way. That is not a criticism of them—they just do it differently—but perhaps the Secretary of State could raise that point with her opposite number.
I know that others want to speak, and I do not want to drag the debate out.
Lady Hermon
I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene at the end of his comments. Out of respect, including for the memory of my late husband, who was the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary for 10 years, I wonder if I might just ask the right hon. Gentleman to correct what he said earlier—that the Police Service of Northern Ireland took over after the RUC was abolished. The RUC was incorporated into the Police Service of Northern Ireland and many, many distinguished RUC officers still serve proudly in the PSNI.
Sir Mike Penning
If the hon. Lady had not asked me to correct the record, I would still have done so—I spoke inappropriately, and I apologise. I also pay tribute to her husband for the work that he did in getting us to where we are today. Sadly, he is no longer with us. I absolutely agree—I had ex-RUC officers in my own close protection when I was out there. Interestingly, I had former British soldiers who had fallen in love with Irish girls and stayed.
I just want to touch on the G8 summit at Lough Erne and the volunteers we had coming across from the mainland—from Great Britain. I remember Steve White of the Police Federation—he has left the federation now, but he is a good friend—telling me, “You will not get officers going over”. How wrong he was. Police officers from Scotland, Wales and England want to go and help their colleagues. I am still struck by what happened at the first briefing when I was there, when those green uniforms walked in and every other officer from around these great nations of ours stood up out of respect. It was not once; it happened again when I went to the Police Federation conference, simply because of the massive respect that other police forces have for the PSNI. As we know, quite a few of them get recruited out of the Province and into the other forces. Surely the sensible thing would be for them to go back and serve with the PSNI.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
I rise, rather reluctantly, to speak in this debate. We can all agree that, although it is sadly all too necessary, this budget debate should not be taking place in this House, and certainly that these matters should not be determined by politicians from Scotland, England and Wales. My sympathy is with the people of Northern Ireland who, in being denied their own devolved Assembly, have been let down by many of their representatives and the inaction of the UK Government.
The situation in Northern Ireland is not sustainable, as Friday’s court ruling over the proposed incinerator near Newtownabbey highlighted. In the continued absence of any Ministers, planning permission for the project was issued by a civil servant—a decision that, as we have heard, was overturned by the High Court, which found the incinerator to have been unlawfully authorised. I offer no opinion as to the rights and wrongs of the project, but the ruling is significant and underlines the need to re-establish the power-sharing Executive. The ruling affects today’s Bill because spending can only go ahead on decisions made by previous Executives. Failing that, these decisions have to be made by the Secretary of State, only confirming the state of direct rule.
During this moment, we need calm heads and something that has been sadly lacking in this situation: leadership from the UK Government. We need action now to address this stalemate. It has been 18 months since the people of Northern Ireland had the representation they are entitled to and, indeed, voted for. It is not appropriate that day-to-day decisions affecting communities right across Northern Ireland are being made in Whitehall, rather than in the elected Assembly in Stormont, but we are where we are. The people of Northern Ireland have been let down by some of their politicians, but we have zero desire to see them suffer unfunded public services too, so we will support the Bill in order to allow public services in Northern Ireland to continue without interruption.
The lack of progress to restore the Assembly is extremely frustrating. I hope that the politicians in Northern Ireland can find the strength and desire to get back around the negotiating table, find areas of compromise and work together to ensure that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) hoped the last time Northern Irish budget matters were dealt with, this will be the last time that we in this place are forced to debate and agree issues that should be debated and agreed at Stormont. I should at this point thank my hon. Friend for the great work she has done in this role for the last three years. I am sure that I will be seeking her advice regularly in the coming weeks and months.
The UK Government have to accept responsibility for their failure to restore the devolved institution. I understand that there may have been other important issues for all Departments to prepare for—indeed for the Government themselves to disintegrate over—but the UK Government have failed and continue to fail the people of Northern Ireland. As a result of this inaction, not only have we had 18 months without an Assembly and Executive; we have had five months without any talks taking place.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman said earlier that the lack of an Executive was a failure of political representation in Northern Ireland. Would he accept that the DUP has set no red lines for going back into an Executive, but that Sinn Féin has ruled it out? Will he acknowledge that Sinn Féin is the road block here?
Gavin Newlands
I will not be drawn into that argument. It takes both sides to get around the table and agree a way forward.
I hope that during her Third Reading speech the Secretary of State will outline what recent work has been carried out to bring the parties back round the table and what is preventing this from happening. Can she confirm that all the main parties in Northern Ireland have not only viewed the budget but been consulted on it and had their suggestions taken on board?
I want to comment on the necessity to fast-track this important Bill. We have not had an Executive in place since January 2017, so why could the UK Government not have taken the proper time to prepare for this budget? The explanatory notes state that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee was not given the opportunity to scrutinise the Bill in draft. In addition, even though the budget has been discussed with political parties and businesses, it is unclear if the Secretary of State consulted civil society and trade unions. Over the last few weeks, the Government have shown they lack respect for Scottish devolution with a power grab that ignores the overwhelming vote in the Scottish Parliament. Their failure on this issue of crucial importance to Northern Ireland just proves that they do not care enough about devolution in any part of the UK.
As we debate this budget, it is hard not to notice the elephant in the room: the £1.5 billion survival money the Tories have given to Northern Ireland—care of the DUP—to keep the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street. Given the current state of affairs and developments today, it could be time for a renegotiation. We have never opposed the funding that was provided to Northern Ireland, but it is completely unacceptable that it was not Barnettised, meaning that Scotland lost out on nearly £3 billion of additional funding.
One of the Secretary of State’s clear difficulties is with other parties having the confidence to engage with her, given her party’s relationship with the DUP. The DUP could bring the Government down on a number of votes. They have huge power and influence over the Government, and the Secretary of State, with all that going on, has to act as an independent partner in this process. That is difficult when their very survival rests with 10 DUP MPs who have called for direct rule. On Third Reading, therefore, I would be keen to hear what discussions she has had with the other parties on this issue and whether she believes that they have confidence and trust in the UK Government to act as an independent mediator that can help to restore the Assembly and Executive.
As I have said, this is a sorry situation. This will be the third Bill to allocate resources to Northern Ireland to be approved by politicians who should have no role in this process.
Nigel Dodds
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place and wish him well. We look forward to working with him in Parliament on Northern Ireland issues. He mentioned the DUP and its crucial role in this Parliament. If he applies logic, would he therefore say of Sinn Féin, which is desperate to get into government in the Irish Republic, that in no circumstances should any party in the Republic take it into government, since that would obviously then create difficulties for the Irish Government’s role in the political process?
Gavin Newlands
As I have indicated, I have no intention of getting involved in internal political matters in Northern Ireland. That is for the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to resolve, along with the UK Government.
In conclusion, the people of Northern Ireland will continue to be failed as long as some of their own politicians fail to negotiate a deal and this Government fight among themselves over Brexit, rather than showing the leadership that is badly required. We have to provide the hard-working and dedicated civil servants, who are under great pressure, with the resources they need to run public services in Northern Ireland. I and the SNP will not stand in their way by impeding that progress this evening, but we must thrash out a deal as soon as possible that sees the Assembly and the power-sharing Executive restored.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I welcome the Bill tonight because it secures the money we voted to Departments to keep them running until the end of July and assures them that the full funding will be available until the end of the financial year.
We accept, however, that this is not a satisfactory arrangement. Issues such as budget allocations, how the money is spent and the monitoring of how it is spent all require detailed examination by politicians—that is how we get the accountability that should attach to any budget—but we can see from attendance tonight that there is no massive interest in the House. Indeed, there is a certain irony. For the past year, sitting in the Chamber, I have seen Member after Member stand up and say how concerned he or she is about the Brexit negotiations and the impact that Brexit would have on Northern Ireland, the impact that it would have on the Good Friday agreement, and the impact that it would have on community relations and the people of Northern Ireland. However, when it comes to the budget for the people of Northern Ireland, they are nowhere to be seen. I do not think that that irony is lost on the people of Northern Ireland. The pseudo-concern that we have heard from the Labour party during the Brexit debate represents little more than an opportunity to score political points and, conveniently, to use Northern Ireland as a means of arguing against the referendum result and the people who wanted to take us out of the European Union.
Ian Paisley
Labour Members who are so interested in whether there should be a hard or a soft border could have put on record their concern about the number of officers who have been recruited to the Northern Ireland border service and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to deal with these issues, and how those officers have been recruited, but hark! I hear nothing from the Labour Benches.
Sammy Wilson
There are plenty of other aspects of the budget that could have been related to the concerns that Labour Members have been expressing. In that regard, Scottish National party Members are no different—they too have expressed great concerns.—and the same applies to the Liberal Democrats, who are nowhere to be seen. At least some Labour Members are present, but none of the rest has turned up.
This is not a satisfactory arrangement. I think I should use some of my speech to talk about how we got here, why we are here, and who is responsible for the fact that our budget is being dealt with in this way in the House of Commons.
Sammy Wilson
I am sure that the hon. Lady will have an opportunity to make her point later, when she makes her own speech.
This is the second occasion on which the Northern Ireland Budget has come to this House. On the first, in an act of political cowardice the then Finance Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir of Sinn Féin, refused to bring a budget to the Assembly. Sinn Féin has always liked to hold its hand out for British pounds, but it does not like to make the hard decisions that must be made when it comes to spending money in a responsible way. No budget was brought to the Northern Ireland Assembly in November 2016 when it should have been, and, shortly after that, Sinn Féin collapsed the Assembly.
That was very convenient, because Sinn Féin did not have to make the hard decisions. They wanted the post and the responsibility—they wanted all the kudos that was involved in being head of the Department of Finance— but they did not want to make the hard decisions. It was convenient that the Assembly collapsed—or that Sinn Féin collapsed the Assembly—because that meant that Sinn Féin did not have to put their hand up for a budget.
I have been in that position. When one has to allocate money across Departments, there will always be people who are disappointed, and there will always be criticism. One will be told that one should have prioritised this and should not have given money to that, or that, magically, one should have produced for everyone money that just was not there, which, of course, is not always possible.
The budget came to the House of Commons on the first occasion because of Sinn Féin’s failure to produce a budget; on this occasion, it has come here because Sinn Féin made it impossible for anyone else to produce a budget. Having collapsed the Assembly, Sinn Féin then refused to return to it, appoint Ministers, and enable the Assembly to make decisions about how money was spent and allocated and to present a budget for the people of Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin preferred to engage in a game of blackmail: they would not allow the Assembly to be set up unless all the parties in the Assembly agreed to their agenda, before they were even in the Assembly. Sinn Féin knew that that agenda would have been impossible to deliver had it come to votes in the Assembly—even some of the nationalists would not have voted for it—so what did they do? They sat outside and said, “We have a veto. Under the rules that currently govern Northern Ireland, if we are not included in the Executive that Executive cannot sit, and that Executive will not sit until we get our way and are given promises that the policies we want will be implemented.”
Oddly enough, it seems that Sinn Féin are holding up all political progress in Northern Ireland so that the 4,000 Irish speakers in Northern Ireland can see Irish road signs and can be spoken to in Irish when they telephone about their rates bills, although they can all speak English. We are being held to political ransom. We have Irish broadcasting and Irish schools, and £197 million is spent on all kinds of Irish-medium education. We spend money on Irish festivals, and we allow Irish street names if enough people in the area want them. Despite all that, one of the reasons we are discussing this budget here tonight is that because 4,000 people in Northern Ireland claim to be Irish speakers, Sinn Féin say that unless an Irish language Act makes Irish an official language—which would mean hundreds of millions of pounds of expenditure—they will not allow any progress.
The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) said that he did not want to become involved in an argument about who was right and who was wrong, and who was responsible. However, if he looked at even the surface of what is happening in Northern Ireland, he would be able to point the finger of blame—and, by the way, the blame does not lie with the Government at Westminster, although I know that the favourite activity of the Scottish National party is to blame them for everything. The blame for this should not be laid at the door of the Government at Westminster; it should be laid at the door of those who know that they have a veto, who have used that veto irresponsibly, and who are quite happy for this budget to be pushed through the House of Commons today without the level of scrutiny and accountability that would have been possible in a Northern Ireland Assembly.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Sinn Féin often ask about the Irish language and the funding for it, but very few members of Sinn Féin can speak Irish. Is my right hon. Friend as amazed about that as many of the rest of us are?
Sammy Wilson
It does not surprise me at all. Sinn Féin have introduced this hurdle because they do not want the Assembly to be up and running anyway. I shall say more about that in a moment. Sinn Féin prefer the political vacuum, for a reason. The Secretary of State must bear that in mind, as must the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), who said that he hoped that this was not part of some creeping direct rule. There was a contradiction in his argument, because he then said that we were moving towards a crisis, and that there must be pressure for action. He was right.
There are decisions that need to be made, and we need a process for that. It is clear, however, that one of the parties required to set up the Northern Ireland Executive is determined not to be in that Executive. Its members prefer to sit on the Terrace of the House of Commons, lobbying Ministers and Members, rather than coming in here, and rather than doing their job in Northern Ireland as well. We see them all the time, sitting about this place collecting millions of pounds for not doing their jobs, and at the same time complaining about the outcome of the process. They have pointed the finger at the DUP, and one of the arguments they have made is that my party and those who asked the Government to implement this budget are supporting Tory austerity. However, I can say that we have probably done more to alleviate the impact of austerity in Northern Ireland than Sinn Féin or all the other parties put together, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) has pointed out, the confidence and supply arrangement that we reached with the Government was what resulted in the additional resources the Secretary of State has referred to becoming available to the Northern Ireland budget.
I know that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North would have liked to have had the same benefit. I thought the SNP was opposed to outsourcing, but it appears that it wants to outsource the negotiations on its budget to the DUP, saying to us, “You go and do a deal with the Government and then we will reap the benefits of it.” I think the Government may well be prepared to make the benefits of that kind of confidence and supply arrangement available to the Scottish National party if it is prepared to back the Government in the same way as we have done.
In fact, we had the situation last week when the SNP was so determined to annoy Members of this House that it called votes when we were in the Smoking Room cheering on England to get them through to the quarter-finals—they are now in the semi-finals. What were SNP Members doing? They were doing their best to disrupt our night of enjoyment. They can hardly expect a confidence and supply arrangement from anybody in this House when they behave in that way.
I accept that this is a difficult budget. In cash terms, it is a flat budget. The amount available to Government Departments in Northern Ireland is no different from that in the previous year, and that does present challenges. It presents further challenges when the allocations are based on decisions that the Assembly made nearly two and a half years ago. It set certain priorities, wanting to see over the next five years an extra £1 billion put into the health service, and of course that meant that, since the cake had to be sliced up, other Departments would find that their budgets faced cash reductions.
While this has presented challenges, those challenges have been reduced somewhat due to the additional money obtained for the reform of the health service, the additional money for frontline services in health and education, and the additional money for broadband, infrastructure projects, mental health and areas of severe deprivation. Indeed, some school budgets, or parts of school budgets, have been protected because breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and so on have been able to have money allocated to them from that severe deprivation funding.
Lady Hermon
I want to pick up on the points made earlier by the right hon. Gentleman’s party colleague the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) about schools in his constituency, because I must add to those concerns my worries about school budgets in North Down. The right hon. Gentlemen has called on the Government to boost health and education, and the Government in turn have delivered that through the confidence and supply arrangement, so how on earth can it be that budgets in North Down for primary and special care schools are so stretched? Please will the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) explain that to the principals and parents in my constituency?
Sammy Wilson
It comes back to the point I was making about the allocation of the budget and the way in which decisions are made. First, decisions are based on historical decisions made by the Assembly. Secondly, unfortunately, I have to say—this is why the current system is not acceptable and has to be changed—that when allocations are made by civil servants, we cannot be sure that the finance available will always go to what the public might want to prioritise, because bureaucrats see different priorities. For example, I had a long discussion with the permanent secretary in the Department of Education when we found out that some of the additional money that was available for schools and was meant to go to frontline schooling actually went to finance the deficit of the Education Authority. By the way, after the amalgamation of five education and library boards, that authority was still spending as much on administration as the five boards had spent, even though the idea was that one authority would lead to rationalisation and therefore cut costs.
When civil servants are making these decisions, they will often have different priorities, because they see things from the point of view of administration and bureaucracy, and sometimes that will be more important to them than what politicians would see as the priorities. Politicians are being confronted on a day-to-day basis by parents with youngsters with special needs, teachers who are teaching bigger classes, and headmasters who are having to say to parents, “We need you to provide extra money for books, paper and everything else.” Therefore politicians will often have different priorities.
But here is the point: in the absence of devolution, we do not have people in place who are perhaps tuned into those things as priorities. That is one of the disservices that Sinn Féin has done to the people of Northern Ireland. In its pursuit of its ideological goal involving the Irish language, it is prepared to see bad budgetary or spending decisions, or decisions that do not reflect the priorities of the public.
Paul Girvan
The common funding package used for education has shown up glaring inequalities. There are primary schools in my area that are allocated £2,400 per pupil, yet there will be another sector of education that receives up to £15,000 per pupil. This inequality should not exist. I would have no issue with such policy decisions if we had an Assembly in place, but without an Assembly in place to make decisions, we cannot make those changes.
Sammy Wilson
This goes back to my point about the Irish language. Those inequalities often exist because of the preference given under the Good Friday agreement to Irish language legislation, which has consequences in terms of small Irish language schools. Some secondary schools have opened with as few as 14 pupils, which is very costly and has led to the kind of result that my hon. Friend raises. That cannot be changed by a civil servant. That is a political decision, and that is why we need an Assembly up and running in which such decisions can be made, meaning that we can look at funding inequalities and decide whether we should change the priorities.
What is important is that we have a means by which the budget can be spent. The Secretary of State said that there is no difficulty with allocation, but there is a difficulty, as I have explained, with accountability, and the issue with the Department of Education has already been raised by two Members. Different Departments have reacted in different ways, however, and I am pleased that the Department of Health has allocated the additional money it obtained as a result of the confidence and supply arrangement to frontline services. Thousands of people across Northern Ireland will benefit from the allocation of that money to reduce waiting lists for elective surgery. Some people were facing two-year waiting lists, but will now find their waiting time reduced. The results can therefore depend on how Departments react.
Although the Secretary of State has said there is no difficulty in allocating the money, there is a difficulty in accountability, and I take issue with her on that. I have had conversations with permanent secretaries, and difficulties are emerging in the allocation of spending. For example, the permanent secretary in the Department for Infrastructure told me recently that he would have difficulty making a decision about the York Street interchange, for which money has been allocated in the infrastructure budget. He argued that he would not be able to make a decision on that. We have already seen the difficulties over getting the broadband money spent in Northern Ireland, and we know that there are decisions to be made on health reforms. If the health budget is going to be sustainable in the long run, health reform is required, but in order to spend some of the money in the budget on that reform, a change in the nature of some hospitals will be required, including the movement of some services and the concentration of services in other hospitals. According to the courts, those decisions cannot be made by civil servants; they have to be made by Ministers.
The same applies to the school estate. One way of getting more money into the classrooms is through the rationalisation of schools. We have additional school places in Northern Ireland, but in some areas there is a shortage of school places and in others there is a surplus. That requires decisions to be made about school closures and about opening new schools but, again, those decisions need to be made by politicians. I think the Secretary of State is wrong when she says that we do not have any difficulty when it comes to allocation. We are heading towards that difficulty now.
At the other end of the spectrum, I am already in discussions with officials in certain Departments and someone has already mentioned the number of assistant chief constables who are on temporary contracts. They cannot be given permanent contracts because no one is there to make that decision. Applications for a whole range of disabled parking bays are queuing up for a decision, but there is no one there to make those decisions. That might not be an important issue in the global sense, but it is important for people with mobility problems who cannot park their car outside their door. Then there is the issue of school minibuses. Directives have been issued in Northern Ireland to say that teachers need to have a public service vehicle licence to drive those minibuses, even though teachers elsewhere do not have to have them. Many schools have had to give up providing sporting and other after-school activities. It requires a Minister to make decisions on those issues as well. I could go on.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
My right hon. Friend, and the Secretary of State and her Minister, might be interested to know that we have been waiting several years for the introduction of a weight limit in Hillsborough village in my constituency. Heavy vehicles are damaging the conservation zone and the historic Georgian buildings in the centre, but the village cannot be afforded the protection it needs because we now need legislation, which requires decisions at a ministerial level. Hillsborough cannot be given the protection it requires, even though Historic Royal Palaces has done a wonderful job in restoring and introducing new facilities at Hillsborough Castle. The whole situation is having an impact on many people in Northern Ireland.
Sammy Wilson
I am sure that Members on these Benches could give lots of local examples of decisions not being made on things that matter to individuals and communities because we do not have a local Administration.
I would say to the Secretary of State that we want devolution—we are a devolutionist party and we believe that it is the right thing—but there is increasing cynicism in Northern Ireland about devolution, and the longer we go on without a devolved Administration, the more that cynicism will grow. This is not a case of putting the blame on all the parties and saying that they all need to get together. The pressure has to be put on those who are holding up devolution, the ones who will not go through the doors, the ones who are happy to sit here and sponge off taxpayers, and the ones who are happy to sit in Northern Ireland and complain about no decisions being made while at the same time being the very ones who refuse to allow a situation to develop in which those decisions could be made.
Nigel Dodds
My right hon. Friend is making some powerful points, which I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench are listening to carefully. Just as a marker about decision making might be put down in Committee, such a marker is clearly being put down now, not just by the representatives of Northern Ireland in this House but by business in Northern Ireland. We have heard a lot of talk about business in relation to Brexit. The chambers of commerce, the Institute of Directors and the CBI, which the Secretary of State visited recently, are all saying that it is time to get decisions made in Northern Ireland. That was made clear in a meeting with business representatives that we had two weeks ago. They said, as we are saying, that they want devolution, but in the meantime, there cannot be a situation in which part of the United Kingdom is left without government for 15 months.
Sammy Wilson
That is one of the reasons why I think we will need some intervention. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) made the point quite forcefully that Northern Ireland had faced far bigger and more difficult situations than this in the past. I remember when I was a member of the Executive, as was the Member for North Down—[Interruption.] I mean North Belfast. I am sorry. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North has taken over North Down as well.
I remember when we faced the devolution of policing. Nothing was more controversial in Northern Ireland than the devolution of policing, especially as it was going to be devolved to an Assembly that contained people who had supported the killing of policemen and women. We were prepared to work at that, however, in order to get an agreement and to get policing devolved to Northern Ireland.
I think that that illustrates the point that this party has been flexible all along when it has come to making devolution work. However, no amount of flexibility is going to get us over a situation in which one party, which has a veto, does not want to make the tough decisions, does not want to be associated with any compromise around Brexit and does not want to have to deal with its murky past when it comes to legacy. That party is determined to use its veto to keep the Assembly from sitting to keep the Executive from being formed. A former leader of our party recently gave a lecture when he was appointed visiting professor at Queen’s University, and he made the point that perhaps we are coming to a time when, if the Government are squeamish about direct rule, we have to look again at the rules of the Assembly that allow a veto for parties that are prepared to use it indefinitely and damage even their own constituents in pursuit of their own ideology.
I believe that we will come back next year and have this same debate. We will again have to discuss a budget for Northern Ireland that will be based on decisions made nearly four years ago—as it will be by then—that no longer have much relevance to the changing needs of the Northern Ireland economy. Sadly, that budget will reflect that position, rather than being an up-to-date budget that has been debated by people in Northern Ireland and decided by politicians there.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is an unparalleled pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). Unusually, I agree with quite a few of the things he has said. I definitely agree that it is a terrible shame that there are so few of us in the Chamber tonight, on our Benches and indeed on the Government Benches. Perhaps that is slightly more explicable today, given the events that have taken place. This feels a bit like “after the Lord Mayor’s show,” but in truth, it has felt like this on too many occasions when we have debated Northern Ireland business during this Parliament and the previous one. That should worry us all, and my fear is that the Government are quite content with that state of affairs. I fear that they are content with there being little focus on the issues of Northern Ireland and little appreciation, certainly among the wider public here in Great Britain, of the fact that there is a crisis of governance in Northern Ireland, 18 months after the collapse of the Assembly.
We are making extremely important political decisions today about spending allocations to Northern Ireland that are of import not only to the people of Northern Ireland but to the people of the whole United Kingdom. Although this is the second formal occasion on which we have had a Northern Ireland budget from this Conservative Government, from my recollection it is the sixth or seventh time that we have seen significant amounts of money—millions of pounds—being allocated by successive Secretaries of State. These circumstances cannot continue, because there are consequences that come from a lack of democratic accountability in Northern Ireland, such as civil servants being placed in invidious positions.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a lack of accountability? When the Assembly was not sitting in 2006, we in this place were allowed to ask written questions on a whole range of issues. Today, however, when I try to table such questions, the answer I get is, “You’re not allowed to ask this question.”
Owen Smith
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the things that has apparently fallen into a black hole, because there has been no real explanation why the position has shifted from the situation under the previous Labour Government, when we had direct rule as a consequence of the collapse of politics in Northern Ireland. Under the current state of affairs, we effectively have direct rule, or at least direct rule-style decisions from this place, yet MPs and Assembly Members do not have the capacity to scrutinise decisions. That cannot be allowed to continue, but it has continued for over 18 months.
Over those 18 months, there has been extraordinary and spectacular inactivity on the Government’s part either to provide a greater degree of accountability or to try to bring about the restoration of the institutions in Northern Ireland. It seems as though pushing things down the road and kicking the can into the distance have been the Government’s preferred modus operandi, which is not good for the people of Northern Ireland or for governance across the whole UK.
Ian Paisley
I was always taught that the purpose of the study of history was to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. One of the mistakes made in the 1950s and ’60s was that this place became disinterested in what was happening on the ground in Northern Ireland, and we know what happened then. If we do not learn from the past, we will, through the disinterest of this place, repeat what happened then.
Owen Smith
That is a good point well made, and it applies not only to Northern Ireland, although it is particularly important there. Post devolution, the different constituent parts of the United Kingdom are becoming strangers, and there is all too often insufficient understanding of, or interest in, the differences in policy and practice between the different parts, which is not good for our democracy. That is potentially not good for peace or for the prosperity of the people of Northern Ireland—people who have suffered more than most in our country.
There is another lesson of the past that we must learn. It is a more recent lesson from the previous Labour Government, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair deployed the phrase on many occasions. In Northern Ireland, we have to keep the bicycle moving forwards, otherwise it falls over. In recent months, the bicycle seems to be in serious danger of being left on its side on the roadside, because there is no sense of forward momentum in the peace process. There is no sense that the Government have a concerted plan to get things up and running.
We have repeatedly called on the Prime Minister to get more stuck into the talks in Northern Ireland. I think that she is planning to go there next week, and I know that there is a British-Irish intergovernmental conference coming up, but such things have been called for endlessly over the best part of two years, and this is too little, too late. We may well be reaching the point where something starts to go wrong, because the truth is that just as the gaps between the political parties are growing wider, so too are decisions being left unmade.
We have already heard about the need for health reform. I cannot remember how many years ago the Bengoa report came out, but we have seen no movement towards its implementation. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), the Opposition spokesman, mentioned some of the pressing matters that desperately need to be dealt with, such as the Hart inquiry into historical institutional abuse. There are people who suffered horrendously at the hands of others in institutions and who are desperate to see justice and compensation. All parties agree that that is their right, but there has been no movement on that. There has also been no movement on the issue of pensions for victims, but there is a significant degree of agreement across political parties and across the House about how to take things forward. What about the legacy issues—not just the legacy inquests, but how we deal with the legacy of the troubles? Again, there is significant agreement in this House and across Stormont on how that should be taken forward, but we are not seeing the fruits of that agreement.
The problem with all that is that we run the risk that the apathy in Northern Ireland that many people have talked about will harden into cynicism. On this side of the Irish sea, it hardens into long-standing disinterest. That cannot be allowed to happen. I say to the Minister, the Conservative Front-Bench team and, indeed, to my own Front-Bench team that one of the lessons of history we need to learn is that if we have what is in effect direct rule, we cannot afford to be, as the right hon. Member for East Antrim put it, squeamish about calling it direct rule.
Even those of us in this place who are devolutionists must accept that enough will be enough at some point. What will we do if something goes wrong in Northern Ireland? What if there is a problem with safeguarding in a school? What if there is a crisis in the health service in Northern Ireland? What if a problem such as we have seen in Derry/Londonderry over recent days and hours expands into something more problematic? Who will the people of Northern Ireland hold to account? Who will they turn to for answers? Who will we ask questions of, to satisfy ourselves that the right decisions are being taken? The truth is that the Minister cannot answer those questions, because David Stirling and the civil servants in Northern Ireland are the only people holding the baby and carrying the can. That is not fair to them, and it is not good governance.
Not only am I a devolutionist, but I also served as an adviser under the previous Labour Government in the period when we called a spade a spade and realised that, in the absence of the political talks delivering the restoration of the institutions, we needed direct rule and to call it direct rule. My direct challenge to the Minister is to tell us why the Government are so concerned about acknowledging the situation. I would understand it if he were to stand up and say, “We think that would make it much more difficult to bring about the institutions.” I would understand if he stood there and said, “We think it would deeply damage relations with the Government of the Republic.” However, I suspect that he is not prepared to accept either of those things.
I suspect that the Minister is not prepared to say that we are going to see, as a corollary of introducing direct rule, lots and lots of BIIGCs, because that will not please some Members. However, I think we had 25 BIIGCs when the Assembly was last in abeyance. That would be the corollary, and it would be absolutely the right thing to do to ensure that the co-guarantors of the Good Friday agreement—the UK Government and the Irish Republic’s Government—had a say in things. I do not understand why the Government are so loth to call a spade a spade, to acknowledge that we have direct rule by stealth and to get on with putting in place either direct rule or a plan to get us out of the twilight zone in which we currently reside. It is not good for governance; it is not good for the people of Northern Ireland; and, to put it plainly, it is not sustainable.
Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)
Five hundred and forty-five days ago, Martin McGuinness, the then Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, resigned. That action, which was not agreed with us, Sinn Féin’s partners in government—it was a unilateral decision—triggered the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly. On 24 January 2017, I was in the Northern Ireland Assembly during the last few hours of the sitting. Incredibly, it means there has been no Government, no democratic accountability and no real decision making in Northern Ireland for 531 days.
We talk often of our great British democracy, yet it genuinely grieves me when I look across this House and see the lack of interest in this shocking constitutional crisis happening within the United Kingdom today. That is 531 days without Ministers and Members sitting in the Assembly making the decisions that affect real people on the ground in Northern Ireland.
Nigel Dodds
I entirely share my hon. Friend’s concerns and her views, but I suppose one could look at the empty Benches and the non-representation of most of the major parties in a slightly different way. It puts to rest the idea that there would be widespread outrage and concern here if there were direct rule, because it is quite clear that nobody is that exercised when we have a measure of direct rule. Nobody is outraged enough about it to turn up to speak, to vote or to say anything about it; they are quite happy to go about their business elsewhere and to allow this to go through the House virtually unopposed. I suppose one could look at it in that way.
Emma Little Pengelly
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The reality is that the Democratic Unionist party is a party of devolution. We want to get the Assembly restored. We do not want direct rule, but we need direct rule. The people of Northern Ireland need direct decision making, because urgent decisions are not being made at the moment.
I would say to the Minister and to the Secretary of State that the time has long passed for action to be taken on these important matters. I assure everybody that the Democratic Unionist party wants to get back to work. I understand that all the other parties are in the same position—they want to get back into government and into the Northern Ireland Assembly to do the job they were elected to do—but there is one party preventing that from happening.
There is one party, alone in Northern Ireland—the party that collapsed the Northern Ireland Assembly—saying to all of us, “Unless you meet our demands, there will be no Government.” I say very clearly that this is not a party political point. Whenever we try to highlight the difficulties in Northern Ireland, it is incredibly frustrating that people turn around, just someone in the front seat of a car, and day, “You’re all as bad as each other.” The reality of it is that we would go into government immediately, and many of the other parties are in the same position. But there is one party saying, “If you do not agree to our demands, there will be no Government.”
That is not just sad and frustrating for the politicians and parties in Northern Ireland; it is most sad and disappointing for the people of Northern Ireland. The person sitting on a waiting list in pain, who is trying to get seen and trying to get a necessary procedure, or perhaps to get a test about which they are deeply worried—my colleagues and I speak to such people day in, day out and week in, week out—needs to get help and support, but because there is no decision making on vital issues such as health transformation, they cannot get that support.
Children are sitting in schools that have had to make decisions to lose teachers—to make teachers redundant—because the Assembly cannot make a decision to stop that happening. Families have come in to see me distressed, perhaps in tears, and struggling because they cannot access public services as there are no Ministers in place and no one with democratic accountability who can listen and react to help them. It is those families and individuals who are suffering most because of Sinn Féin’s action in refusing to go into government and boycotting the Northern Ireland Assembly. That is not right, and it is not fair.
I am not opposed to the Irish language, and I know that my party is not opposed to the Irish language. I have the utmost respect for those who want to speak a language and enjoy cultural rights, but it is beyond doubt that the Irish language Act remains a divisive and controversial issue in Northern Ireland. We have said clearly to Sinn Féin, and we said it in good faith, “Get back into government, deal with issues of health, education and public services, and we will commit to continuing to talk about these difficult issues.” Every party in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom has particular things that it would like to see, which might not be shared with other parties. We have to build consensus, and we have to try to find a way through, but what we do not do is throw a tantrum, collapse the democratic institutions and make demands, saying, “We cannot get back into doing our job and working for the people of Northern Ireland, until our demands are met.”
Unfortunately, I believe the Court of Appeal’s Buick judgment gave an untrue and inaccurate perception that decisions were being made in the Departments up until the Court said that could not happen. Huge numbers of really straightforward, non-controversial, benign decisions are not being made. One example is that a Department here made a decision to put funds to one side to celebrate the extension of the franchise to women, and there was an unhypothecated Barnett consequential for the block grant in Northern Ireland. It was not a huge amount of money, about £200,000 to £300,000, for a scheme so that community groups, particularly women’s groups, could celebrate the extension of the franchise to women. Scotland and Wales announced that they would use the funds they got as part of the Barnett consequential to put the scheme in place, so I wrote to ask the Department of Finance whether it would do the same. The response, which I receive all the time, was, “There are no Ministers in place. We cannot make a decision to put a new scheme in place. Therefore this money will be used in a range of different ways.” I hear that all the time, across scores and scores of decisions that are needed in every single Department. That was before the Buick case came to court.
It is not just about the big issues of infrastructure. We have heard about the historical institutional abuse victims, who should get the funds and support they want and need. We have heard about pensions for those who were seriously injured during the troubles in Northern Ireland—I have met them on a regular basis. As I have told the House previously, those who speak to them and hear their stories of the pain they are enduring, day in and day out, will be hugely sympathetic. They need decisions. That group is getting older, but the decisions cannot be made. It is not all about the big decisions; these are everyday decisions.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) mentioned the business community, for which, again, there are a whole range of decisions to be made. The “Streets Ahead” programme in Belfast is not controversial, and everyone would agree with it, but there is no Minister to make decisions, which is crippling the system in Northern Ireland and has been for 531 days.
The Northern Ireland Assembly has a scrutiny role. As I said in November when the Northern Ireland Budget Act 2017 came before the House, I was the last Chair of the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Finance Committee. That Committee performed a valuable role—I am conscious that I am sitting beside my right hon. Friends the Members for Belfast North and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who are former Finance Ministers in Northern Ireland, and they may or may not agree about how valuable the Committee’s role was, but there is no doubt that the Committee’s role in the democratic process, of scrutinising, making recommendations, speaking to the Departments, getting information, speaking to stakeholders in Northern Ireland about what they wanted to see in the budget, and producing those reports, was very necessary. That is not happening now, and it has not been happening for 531 days.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim mentioned the last Finance Minister, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, a colleague of mine in South Belfast. I was Chair of the Finance Committee in the last week before the Assembly fell—my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) served on the Committee with me—and we put on a special meeting in which Máirtín Ó Muilleoir was invited to come along to speak about the budget and the priorities, to give us information on what he was hearing from Departments and stakeholders, and to try to see if we could get the budget through. He did not turn up. He turned around and said, “I am too busy.” Sinn Féin then chose the timing of the collapse. With the greatest respect, it is not good enough for people here to step back and say, “You’re all as bad as each other.” We are dealing with objective facts: who is responsible for this, and who is a barrier to getting government back in Northern Ireland?
In conclusion, we in the DUP are in this House today doing our jobs: standing up for all in Northern Ireland. The DUP will continue to fight for what is best for everybody in Northern Ireland. That is exactly what we have done in relation to the confidence and supply agreement. While others run about for their pet projects, we did not come to the table and say, “Here are our pet projects. Fund those.” We made it a priority to get funds for everybody in Northern Ireland, across the communities—for health, education, infrastructure and anti-poverty work. That is what we do and will continue to do. While others such as Sinn Féin boycott this House and the Northern Ireland Assembly, I say clearly to the Secretary of State and the Minister that they should work with those who want to work for Northern Ireland, who are doing their jobs for the people of Northern Ireland and who want to continue to do everything they can to build a better and brighter future for all, across all communities, in Northern Ireland.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
At the outset, I wish to take a moment to pay tribute to the life of one of my constituents, Mr William Dunlop, who sadly perished on Saturday in a motorcycle race. He was an immensely talented athlete who had won more than 108 races during his short career as a motorcycle racer. He had achieved four podium finishes at the TT course on the Isle of Man and had won several races in various of Northern Ireland’s most exciting road races. He hails from Ballymoney and from the Dunlop family; his uncle Joey was a world-renowned motorcycle racer and his father Robert perished a few years ago in front of William’s very eyes at a motorcycle race in the constituency of East Londonderry.
William Dunlop was a gentleman. He was a young man who had a young partner and a child on the way —another bouncing baby to enjoy. Unfortunately, he perished so tragically at the Skerries road race in north Dublin on Saturday evening. It puts into perspective the extinction that lies at one end of motorcycle sport and the ecstasy at the other. Over the same weekend, a colleague of his from County Antrim, Johnny Rea, was successful and has now won, in effect, four world motorcycle championships—this is the largest record and probably will never be achieved again. I want to take this moment to pay tribute to William Dunlop and to his family, as constituents of mine, for the great way in which they have handled this set of tragic circumstances. I hope that Members will take a moment to reflect on that in the days ahead, as the funeral occurs in Northern Ireland.
Turning to the matter before us, it is not sustainable to continue on the road that we are on. Northern Ireland requires effective and good government. I understand the challenges: if we introduce direct rule, it will bring about unintended consequences. There will be things the Government will end up doing that we will not like and there will be things the Labour party will introduce, as amendments, that we will not like. Those unintended consequences are a reality check, saying to us that we must get on with the restoration of devolution, which we all want. Alternatively, in the absence of even talks to achieve that, the Secretary of State and her Northern Ireland team have a duty to get on with the delivery of good government, and that means ministerial decisions. They can call it anything they like. We are not going to be squeamish about what it is called, but, in effect, the Secretary of State needs to take direct ministerial rule into Northern Ireland and start effectively governing.
We are told every day by the Government and by many others that they are committed to “the Belfast agreement being implemented in full.” We hear in the Brexit negotiations, and on devolution and the settlement in Northern Ireland, that the Belfast agreement must be implemented in full. But the fact is that it has broken; it is not being implemented in full. As we so eloquently heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly), one side has decided to break the Belfast agreement and single-handedly to stop the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is an integral part of that agreement, operating. If one part of it is not being implemented, the entire agreement is in jeopardy and we need to have ministerial decisions taken, and taken effectively. I call on the Secretary of State again to step up and make sure that these decisions are taken.
Some points have been made strongly tonight by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) about Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin want all these things done in Northern Ireland, and their Members come to Westminster and they lobby on the Terraces, but they are not prepared to take their seats in here and argue their case. It reminds me of the poem from 1791:
“We’re bought and sold for English gold—
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!”
Sinn Féin are acting in a roguish way. We have to face up to that, as do the public, and deal with that roguish element. We must almost embarrass them into taking on the role that they are elected for.
I have challenged the Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and again here tonight about the budget and how it is allocated. If she is able to reapportion £100 million from one section of the budget to another in order to make it balance its books, she is therefore able to take other decisions. I encourage her to do so, because those decisions are crucial for the good governance of Northern Ireland, which is one of her key priorities. We have mentioned issues to do with policing tonight, and I will not repeat them; suffice it to say that we need decisions taken immediately on policing.
On 15 May, our Northern Ireland Affairs Committee unanimously agreed a report about policing. Its members agreed the following:
“We recommend that the Secretary of State amends the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 to ensure that the Policing Board can exercise its statutory functions now”.
That was in May! We need the Secretary of State to introduce this immediately and to ensure that the Policing Board becomes functional and is therefore allowed to deal with the budgetary pressures, the recruitment issues and all the key needs of the PSNI.
Our report, which was on “Devolution and democracy in Northern Ireland—dealing with the deficit”, reads as a catalogue of shame. We should put some of that catalogue on the record, because Members have talked tonight about where decisions ought to be taken. Our report strenuously lists those issues, Department by Department. It sets out the fact that the industrial strategy consultation was completed in April 2017 but there is no Executive in place to consider it. The report on the small business rates relief was completed in 2016 during a consultation exercise, yet it has not been published because there is no Minister to publish it. The consultation on the apprenticeship levy closed on 23 December 2016, but funding has not been redirected into skills training. That is around £80 million from last year that has not been directed into the proper training and skills development that is critical so that Northern Ireland can rebalance its economy, and that is because a Minister is required to take that decision.
The Licensing and Registration of Clubs (Amendment) Bill was left at the Committee stage when the stumps were pulled on the Northern Ireland Assembly. That issue needs a budgetary decision and a Minister to take that decision. On the minimum unit price of alcohol, again, a Northern Ireland Minister is required to take that decision and introduce something that everyone else in the United Kingdom is enjoying, which is proper controls on that issue.
Our draft tourism strategy, developed by Tourism Northern Ireland, was presented to the Department of the Economy. We need a Minister in place and a budget in place to implement that strategy. A proposal was made to cut tourism VAT specifically in Northern Ireland to deal with the heavy competition that we face from the Republic of Ireland. The UK Government launched the consultation, and the implementation should then be in the hands of the devolved Government. It has not been implemented in Northern Ireland.
The development of Kilkeel harbour is a massive infrastructure project, but the lack of a Minister has caused the plans for the harbour to be halted. Yet we are about to try to take advantage of Brexit and the opportunities it offers for our fishing fleet when we are an independent seafaring nation. That project has run into the sand until we have a Minister to allocate around £450,000 to take it to the next stage.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
I wrote recently to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs about the food processing grant scheme in Northern Ireland. The scheme has been of significant benefit to food producers in other parts of the United Kingdom, but has not yet been implemented in Northern Ireland. The permanent secretary and his team responded by saying:
“At this point in time, DAERA has no plans to launch the proposed scheme in the absence of a Minister. ”
That is yet another example of our biggest industry in Northern Ireland being disadvantaged by there being no decisions as a result of Sinn Féin’s boycott of Stormont.
Ian Paisley
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Our key industry is agri-food products. We produce the best, tastiest and most traceable food on these islands. It is a multibillion-pound industry. Because it is traceable, it offers our kingdom food security. The issue that my right hon. Friend has put his finger on is explained clearly in the budget statement that we got from the Minister. The Northern Ireland budget for the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs is almost going to double this year, from £39 million in 2017-18 to £77 million in 2018-19, but none of the critical decisions, one of which was highlighted by my right hon. Friend, can actually be processed. Money is set aside for agri-food development, but those decisions cannot be processed because there is no Minister in place to take the key decisions.
This is a catalogue of shame and there is no one here to cry about it. A few weeks ago, we were hauled over the coals by certain Members for social policy issues, yet here we are discussing issues of poverty, employment and people’s livelihoods, and I do not hear a murmur, yet it is a catalogue of shame.
I shall go on, because the catalogue is atrocious. The York Street interchange was a key issue that we put on the confidence and supply budget, and we are setting aside around £400 million to £500 million to develop it. That project is paused owing to a legal challenge. A substantial scheme that would usually have ministerial accountability and then be allowed to proceed cannot actually go ahead. That is critical, because it shows that a paralysis is developing in the Departments. We are going to end up with government by judicial review. In fact, we are going to have governance stopped by the people running the courts. I respect judges and I respect lawyers, but they are not elected to stop the process of government. The people have elected Members to this House and they expect the Government in this House to take these key decisions.
The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the north-south interconnector. Planning permission was granted following an independent report prepared by the Planning Appeals Commission. That decision was made by the civil service in the absence of a Minister because it was in the public interest, but it has not been implemented because it needs the next step, in which the Minister actually signs off the decision. That project has now been paused. Many Members from various parties have talked about maintenance projects and capital spending projects for schools and hospitals. The report says, time after time, of a host of capital projects, that no Minister is able to sign the project off. It says:
“In absence of Minister, zero-based approach taken”
and that no capital funding will be assumed for capital projects, even the priority ones.
The A5 project is a huge road network scheme in the west of the Province. The project has been paused owing to a legal challenge, and a substantial scheme that would usually have ministerial accountability is not going to take place until a Minister is in place. The next phase of the school enhancement programme for the next four years is delayed because there is no Minister. This is what the civil servants are telling us. Ten school building schemes are currently at the design or feasibility stage, but they have all been paused until a Minister is in place to take the next decision. This cannot go on. This is a catalogue of shame.
I notice that the chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), is present; since he led us through the process and we published the report on 15 May, that section is now twice as thick, with other decisions backing up. Last month, the chief of police brought one of those decisions to us, along with all the issues related to policing. I asked why we have not had the legal aid improvements or changes that are being enjoyed by other citizens throughout the United Kingdom. Once again, those matters were consulted on in Northern Ireland and a report has been brought forward, but it cannot be signed off and implemented because we do not have a Minister to take the decision.
On community pharmacies and setting the tariff for drugs in Northern Ireland, I know that the Secretary of State would solve that issue for us at the drop of a hat, and she could solve it for us, but it is not going to be done because there is no Minister willing to step up to the plate and make the decisions. I could take hours going through the report and putting these matters on the record. I call on the Government to get on with it and start governing.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) in relation to the passing of William Dunlop. We all understand the family’s heartache and wish to convey our thoughts and prayers to them at this time. I have a brother who raced bikes—indeed, he raced with the Dunlop family over a great period of time. He had a very serious accident, but he lives today, whereas William Dunlop and the other Dunlops do not live. We think of the family at this time, and it is important that we do so.
I thank the Government, and particularly the Secretary of State, for introducing this legislation. I echo the frustration expressed by others about the process. I can well remember the story told in my office about the husband of one of the girls, who used to get his hands on what was then referred to as the Index book and circle presents he wanted from Santa. His dad was a pastor and in no way able to fulfil those requests. Ultimately, there was always something that he did not get, and that was the one thing that he really wanted. My parliamentary aide has implemented with her children a three-present rule: the children can ask for only three presents to avoid disappointment. There is a logic to it—it is not an Ulster Scotsism.
I feel like I am circling the Index book of needs for Northern Ireland while knowing that without a working Assembly, there is no way that the man in red—or, indeed, in this case the man with the red briefcase—can get it right, but there are asks that I believe we truly need out of this budget. Even at this stage, I am urging that the red briefcase be used to help the Secretary of State to meet our greatest needs.
The shadow Secretary of State mentioned my name in relation to the north-south interconnector. He shares our frustration that while we have a north-south interconnector, we are not even sure whether we will actually be able to use it. Decisions are made, but there is no process in place to ensure that it actually happens. It is an important project, with great benefits for both the north and the south, but particularly for us in Northern Ireland. I wait to hear from the Minister whether the interconnector will go ahead.
The DUP, as all Members know, made a deal on confidence and supply, securing £1.4 billion for all people in Northern Ireland from all religious persuasions and all political parties. I say to the new Northern Ireland spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands)—we wish him well in his new position—that if he needs any training in how to secure a good deal, we might be available to help him. We can give him some good advice.
We all understand that the 1998 Belfast agreement does not allow for the full budget to be allocated. However, we are at the stage where 95% of the budget can be spent. My first ask is that instead of allocating £20 million of the supply and confidence additional funding, can we please have all the outstanding money allocated? The money is there to be allocated, so let make it happen. Will the Secretary of State please release the money, as it will enable us to do several things that are essential to keep our schools open and our NHS running. Will she allow the release of funds to enable the Education Authority to swallow the budget restriction that has been imposed on schools? That restriction is leading to more pressure on small schools. Even larger schools are being forced to lose teachers. I have wonderful schools in my rural communities, as we all have, but they may be forced to close their doors because they cannot save £40,000 unless they lose a teacher, which effectively means that the school will close.
Can the Secretary of State release funding to subsidise urban and rural primary schools? Many primary schools in my constituency are waiting for extensions and classrooms are bulging at the seams. Grey Abbey Primary School is one that comes to mind right away, and we also have Ballywalter Primary School, for which we have been pursuing the case for some time, and Killinchy Primary School. These schools need help now, not tomorrow and not in five years’ time. Glastry College has been waiting for a new build for up to 10 years. We have been told that it is now on a five to six-year programme, but the school is over-subscribed. The numbers are increasing each year, so we need money to be released for the new build. What happens if we have a process where those expansions cannot happen? We need a Minister in place. We have a Department that effectively cannot make that decision.
The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) referred to education in North Down. She and I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), share a special needs school. Longstone Special School and Killard Special Needs School have particular needs now, not at some stage down the line. The principal at Killard has written letters to all of us to say that work needs to be done in his school right now. Members must understand our frustration.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
My hon. Friend mentioned Longstone Special School, which is in my constituency. I hope that he agrees that this issue should really cut to the heart of the discussion about resources. I had an email from a year 10 pupil at Longstone saying, “We may be special needs children, but can you help us get a library?” A library? We are talking about access to books in a school. That is one of the resource implications that is coming to the fore due to continual underinvestment for our special children who need help the most.
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. Torbank Special Needs School is another that comes to mind along with Longstone and Killard—there are three schools. The school teachers, the classroom assistants and the parents all want to see better resources for their pupils and schools, and we need to encourage them. Things are being held up due to red tape, which means that things cannot be improved, which is immensely frustrating.
Why is the Department for Education’s investment budget being reduced by some 4% in the 2017-18 final budget while most other Departments have had their investment budgets increased? Why is the investment budget of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs almost doubling from £39 million in 2017-18 to £77 million in 2018-19? We had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), the week before last, along with Lakeland Dairies from Newtownards, to look at the capital grant scheme to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) referred. The scheme is in place, the money is there and the skills are in place, but we cannot move it forward because the Department is sitting on its hands and nothing can be done. Madam Deputy Speaker, you can understand our frustration. The Minister is a genuine person who would love to help us, but we need a process in place to make sure that things happen. Let us see if we can move things along.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is holding an inquiry into fishing. Hopefully we will be concluding that shortly. The knowledge that we have gained from that inquiry has been immense. As we move towards Brexit, we are aware that we need the grant system in place to enable capital schemes in the fishing ports of Portavogie, Ardglass and Kilkeel. We need the money in place, but we do not have a Department that is able to function fully. We are out of Europe next year, and we are incredibly frustrated that we will not be in a position to respond.
The annually managed expenditure budget, which is mostly for welfare, shows a 16% increase over the past two years. What is the underlying reason for that increase? No one has mentioned—at least not directly—the local roads budgets for our Departments and our section officers. They have had no increase in their moneys for the past few years. Indeed, those moneys have been decreased over the past couple of years. I am pleased to see that Ballyblack Road East has been resurfaced in the past four weeks. That is good news, but Ballygalget Road in Portaferry has not been done. The Dalton Road estates has not been done either. The reasons for our frustrations are clear. The system does not seem to respond to our needs as the elected representatives of our constituents. We need a Department that can work with us. No white lines have been put down in parts of my constituency for more than two years. We have got to the position where a person knows that they have to be on the left hand side of the road, but there is no white line to tell them where the middle of the road is. People will say that they know that they have to be on the left hand side of the road and that they will not stray, but we understand their frustration when we see such decay and when things that should be done are not being done.
I agree with David Sterling’s briefing regarding the needs for the 2018-19 budget that was published in December 2017. Some £410 million from the confidence and supply agreement could be spent, with £80 million for immediate health and education pressures and £30 million for programmes to address mental health and severe deprivation. Just today, and over the weekend, the press back home informed us—some of us probably knew this already—that Northern Ireland has among the highest levels of suicide. The constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) has some of the highest levels of suicide in the whole of Northern Ireland, and indeed in the whole of the UK. We want to address the issue of mental health and severe deprivation, but we need to do that with a functioning Assembly and a functioning Department. We had a meeting earlier this year with a number of Northern Ireland charities. We want to address this issue, and we are keen to see the Northern Assembly addressing it, but we have a frustration with the system, which does not seem to have the same capacity or interest.
Let me go back to the budget. Some £100 million is being spent on ongoing work to transform the health service in line with the broad-based consensus fostered by the Bengoa report. As Members have mentioned, there is a £20 million shortfall for pharmacies. Again, we need a Department that can address these things. I brought up the situation involving insulin pumps at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee last week. The Secretary of State will remember me telling her that children under 10 with type 1 diabetes are frustrated because they cannot get their insulin pumps. They are frustrated because there is no process. Their parents tell me that they are worried about the health of their children. What are we doing about the health of our children when it comes to making decisions?
This House will have to take such decisions very shortly, otherwise we will have to find a method whereby the Northern Ireland Assembly and Departments can make them. We need action on the insulin pumps for children under 10 with type 1 diabetes. Northern Ireland, followed by Scotland, has the highest level of type 1 diabetes in the whole United Kingdom—it is higher than that on the mainland.
I have asked—other Members have agreed to this—for the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to hold an inquiry on the important issue of cancer drugs. We should have a cancer drugs fund in Northern Ireland. These decisions need to be made by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The permanent secretary of the Northern Ireland Department of Health understands the issues, but his hands are tied. We need a process to get the cancer drugs in place.
We also need a system for the operations waiting list. If this situation goes on much longer, people will die because they have waited too long for their operation. I hate to say that, but it is a fact of life. Many of my constituents are frustrated. Just last week, a constituent told me that they had waited 54 weeks for an assessment, and that is before they are even put forward for an operation, which might take another two years or so. That is not the way we need to live. Of course, people suggest to them—I feel frustrated with this system—“If you want to go private, we can bring you to the top of the list just next week.” Well, some people cannot do that; they do not have the finances. These people have paid their tax and national insurance for perhaps 50 or 60 years —all their working life—and expect the NHS to respond to them.
The issue of broadband has been mentioned. There are small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency that are run from people’s homes. We want to encourage people to start small businesses. I thank the Government for their policy, and the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland for the way in which they have promoted the idea of people in businesses working from home, but we have now reached a stalemate. We have the money for broadband that we secured through the confidence and supply arrangement, but we need a method of getting that money out. David Sterling also mentioned £4 million to prepare the ground for transformation, and £100 million to be transferred from existing capital funding to address public services and police resources.
I want to put on record my full support for the PSNI, which has a new policy and strategy for Northern Ireland on taking on paramilitarism. That is a good idea that I fully support, as will everyone in the House. Hon. Members will understand why we need a PSNI that is able to respond and to deliver on its project to take on and reduce paramilitarism, and to deal with those who live off the backs of others through their drugs-related and criminal activities. I understand that the Patten commission reported that there were 7,500 police officers at that time. There are now 6,715, so there is a clear shortfall. My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim mentioned the fact that 50 experienced police officers leave every month. I understand that it takes six months to train 100 recruits; in theory, every six months we are falling behind by 400, so hon. Members will understand our frustration. We need money to train officers and to ensure that those officers are in place.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
My hon. Friend will not be aware of this, but I and some of our senior colleagues from the DUP recently had a security briefing from the Chief Constable, who indicated that the threat from paramilitaries is not just one of organised crime, as some on the republican side now pose a very potent threat to national security and are engaged in planning acts of terrorism in Northern Ireland. That is why the PSNI needs resources. It is not only to deal with organised crime, but to counter this very real terrorist threat.
Jim Shannon
I absolutely support my right hon. Friend.
I will give an example of the activities of some paramilitaries. Just this week in my town of Newtownards, a group of people from outside the Strangford constituency came in and tried to assert their authority. We have to be careful with how that goes. They were having a bonfire. Two guys from another constituency came into Newtownards on Sunday morning and sat there in their very expensive Land Rovers or Jeeps. The price of the two Jeeps would probably be the price of somebody’s house. The assets branch needs to look at what those people are up to, take all the money they earned from criminal activities, and make sure they are accountable for their actions. The quicker that that happens the better.
What we are really saying is that a lot needs to be done. Will the Secretary of State release the funding that is not affected by the Good Friday agreement and save our schools, pay our nurses correctly and secure our community pharmacies, particularly in rural areas? We have kept our end of the bargain. We come to this place and do what is best for our constituents. Will someone please make the decision to do what is best for the people of Northern Ireland? End the stalemate. Allow Northern Ireland to function instead of crippling it with an inability to make decisions, or perhaps the punishment of refusing to do so.
My local businesses are suffering—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, the coughing reminds me of your indication to come to a conclusion; I will do so shortly. I just want to say that we need something for our high streets and for the businesses that are struggling to do better.
Karen Bradley
May I suggest that the hon. Gentleman’s high street enters the Great Britain and Northern Ireland high street competition that the Government are running? The closing date is in August, and we would very much welcome entries from high streets in Northern Ireland.
Jim Shannon
The Secretary of State has given me a challenge. I will certainly take her up on it and ensure that Newtownards High Street will be at the forefront of her paperwork, hopefully before the end of July. Although high streets have done extremely well in the last month and their turnover is up, that is perhaps a wee bit seasonal. We need to do something to bring business back, including by taking legislative steps.
I want to comment on the Irish language. Sometime in life, we have to agree to differ on things, and there is something that we cannot agree on in the Irish language. We do not want the Irish language introduced to primary schools against the will of the majority of students, pupils and parents. We do not want Irish street names up in Saintfield. People in my constituency told me that that was a massive issue for them at the last election. We do not want cross-departmental money wasted on the Irish language when it is not necessary, and we do not want the Irish language in the courts, where there is certainly not a zest and an energy for that. What we do want is the right to have an Irish language; we are not against the idea of it. Some £160 million has been spent on it, so it is very clear that we are not against the idea. At the same time, we do not want an Irish language Act. There will not be an Irish language Act, and the quicker people catch on the better.
Although I thank the Secretary of State for this step, it is not enough. Take control; take us back from the brink of school closures. More money than ever should be available. Take us back from the position in which diabetic pumps are available but no one is trained to use them. Take us back to a functioning Northern Ireland that is not held to ransom by those who will not even take their seats to discuss the funding that all people in Northern Ireland need regardless of their age, sex, political views, religious views or anything else. Northern Ireland needs direction. We look to the Secretary of State for that leadership and direction—please provide it.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
If one thing has been consistent throughout this extremely well-informed and passionate debate, it is the roiling, boiling frustration of people who want to see something done, who need to see something done and who want to speak up for their constituents but are prevented. It is crucial that that message comes out loud and clear.
The debate started with a very telling contribution from the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and ended with a contribution about the PSNI from my good friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We sometimes forget that in the absence of political leadership, it is the forces of the PSNI who have to pick up the pieces. In that vacuum, it is the PSNI that we turn to. We must never, ever forget that they are the people who are doing the hard work.
Many people will remember the death in 2011 of Ronan Kerr, a young PSNI officer killed at Killyclogher. I remember that when I stood with Peter Robinson, the then leader of the DUP, at Beragh, about half of the PSNI officers made the sign of the cross and about half of them snapped off a very, very sharp salute. I thought, “This is future of policing in Northern Ireland.” I actually felt that there was some real hope. If we, as politicians, cannot show the same confidence, strength, trust and belief in the future as that cross-community expression of belief, we are letting them down—but, above all, we are letting down all the people of Northern Ireland. I respect the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead. I was his shadow once. I was a very insubstantial shadow because he was a very substantial Minister. He did an excellent job, and I appreciate his comments today.
I welcome the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) to the SNP Front Bench. On behalf of not just my colleagues on the Labour Benches but, I hope, the whole House, I pay our respect and thanks to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who was an excellent Northern Ireland spokesperson for the SNP. I assume that she has been promoted. In the present febrile state of British politics, she could be in the Cabinet for all I know. I consider it unlikely, but who knows? I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments and for the hon. Lady’s work.
I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that I have known the DUP and individual DUP Members for many years. He encouraged them to seek further benefit—further financial advantage and fiscal goodies—from the Government. If there is one group of people on God’s green earth who need no encouragement, it is the Democratic Unionist party. I am sure that they are grateful for his warm advice, but when it comes to upping the ante, they wrote the book.
We heard from the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). Every time I hear the weather forecast, I always imagine some dreadful warning of a gale that is coming from Larne and I know that he is about to get to his feet. What his pupils must have thought in the days when he was a very distinguished economics lecturer, I cannot imagine. I presume that there is an entire generation of deafened people from East Antrim who were taught by him. He talked about a flat budget. I think that there has in fact been a 4.2% uplift from the opening position, so it is not a flat budget from that point of view. However, I entirely understand that doing this tonight simply takes us forward to the end of the financial year. We are not actually solving the problem but simply allowing matters to proceed in the present time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) spoke lyrically and from a position of great strength and knowledge. He talked about the lacuna of scrutiny and the spectacular inactivity that we are suffering from. That is such an important point, and we keep coming back to it—the absence of scrutiny and the inability of questions to be answered. It was also mentioned in an intervention. I look to the Government Benches for some way in which this can be addressed, because surely right hon. and hon. Members must have the right to ask questions, even during this period. When he referred to the fact that we must not turn away, he made a desperately important point.
I am in no way going to criticise the right hon. Member for East Antrim, but he referred to the presence of certain people in the House tonight. Some Labour Members may not be here physically, but the Labour party and my colleagues will never, ever turn our backs on Northern Ireland. We will never, ever shunt this off into the distance. We will always be thinking and concerned about Northern Ireland. If we are not here physically, then, believe you me, we are here mentally and here emotionally. Our commitment is as strong as it always has been, and I hope always will be in future. I suppose that I should, in passing, congratulate the non-abstentionist Northern Ireland MPs who are here tonight. Every single one of them is here present, and the record will show that as much as the television pictures will have shown it earlier on.
The hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly), in one of the most important speeches I have heard for a long time, brought this whole matter to a head: she referred to her constituents. Sometimes, when we talk about political theory, financial matters and fiscal arrangements, we almost operate on an ethereal level where we do not consider the day-to-day needs of our constituents. She talked about the reality of the health transformation programme, which is not going forward because of the absence of a devolved Assembly and an Executive. She talked about the impact on schools and the inability to undertake the cross-community work that I am so proud of and that she is such a strong exponent of. We heard the voice of a constituency Member of Parliament who was not making a political point from some theoretical standpoint or for party political advantage, but speaking on behalf of her constituents—constituents whom we are not serving best at present, in the absence of a devolved Assembly or an Executive.
I would like to associate myself and my colleagues with the expression of regret to William Dunlop. I cannot imagine any family who stand higher in the annals of road racing and motorcycling, nor who have been cursed on the one hand by so much tragedy but blessed on the other hand by so many achievements, than the Dunlop family. There can be no finer example of sportsmanship and achievement in road racing; what a great family. I think that we all extend our sympathy to them. I know that the family will be sustained by the memories of a truly great road racer—not just one, but a whole family.
The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) talked about unintended consequences and called for direct ministerial rule. I looked across to those on the Government Benches to see whether they were leaping forward at that and champing at the bit, longing to do it. I like to think that none us here actually want to see that. I understand the hon. Gentleman making that point out of frustration and anger, but I do not think we have come to that stage just yet. It is infuriating. The shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), and I met Graham Keddie from Aldergrove airport, who cannot move things forward in the absence of even getting something signed off.
We ended with policing. In the years that I have listened to the hon. Member for Strangford, I realise that something has changed: I now understand every word he says. His mellifluous and poetic tones, which I have to say initially were challenging, are now as clear as crystal to my ear. Let us never forget what my hon. Friend—I will call him my hon. Friend—ended by saying: let us get it done, and let us make it happen. I think that the whole House is as one with him.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Shailesh Vara)
The House will recall that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in her opening remarks that this Bill is a limited but necessary intervention in Northern Ireland in the continued absence of an Executive. The Bill will put her Northern Ireland budget statement earlier this year in March on to a legal footing and provide the necessary certainty and legal authority for Northern Ireland Departments to access all available public finances, ultimately safeguarding the continued delivery of public services in Northern Ireland.
I thank right hon. and hon. Members across the House for their contributions today. In particular, I thank those on the Opposition Front Bench for their continued support for the Bill. The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), referred to oversight of Northern Ireland civil service spending. I can assure him that the Audit Office will oversee the spending. If there are any irregularities, they will be brought to the attention of the Secretary of State, and she will certainly ensure that all those who need to know about it are made aware.
The hon. Member for Rochdale also spoke about health funding. He will be mindful that the confidence and supply agreement provides for £100 million for health transformation. In terms of education, he will be aware that two or so weeks ago, the Government announced £140 million for the six schools based at Strule, for integrated education, so there is optimism in that area.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) spoke from personal experience and raised a number of issues. He was an excellent Policing Minister and was one of my predecessors in this Department, where he served with distinction. I want to put on the record the fantastic work that is done by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. These very brave women and men daily put their own safety at risk so that the rest of the community in Northern Ireland can go about their daily business safely. Let us not underestimate the important work they do. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we have only recently received the PSNI business plan and proposals, and we will of course consider them carefully.
Sir Mike Penning
The Minister quite rightly mentions the work of frontline police officers, but we must not forget their families and loved ones. By committing themselves to being in the PSNI, police officers put their friends and loved ones at risk, and we must make sure that we protect them and give them our gratitude, too.
Mr Vara
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The families have the daily worry and concern of their loved ones going out to make sure that the rest of community can get about safely, and it is quite right that they too are recognised and acknowledged.
May I take this opportunity to welcome the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) to his post? I add my good wishes to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who did an excellent job. I do not know what new role she has, but whatever it is, I am sure she will serve in it with equal diligence. I echo the hon. Gentleman’s comments about wanting the devolved Assembly to be up and running, which I think we all want in this House. It has been raised consistently by many Members, and I will come on to that later.
The right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) spoke with his characteristic passion. He is right to speak about the additional funds for Northern Ireland pursuant to the confidence and supply agreement. It is important to recognise that that money will be spent for the entire community of Northern Ireland—all the people there—not on any particular category of people. He spoke about spending on education being flat, but there is actually a real-terms increase for education and health in the budget. I want to put that on the record.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) of course speaks from experience both on the Front Bench and in a previous life when he was involved in Northern Ireland matters. On his references to our being under direct rule, I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not. It is important to recognise that we have oversight at the moment, and it is our duty to ensure that there is proper governance. In pursuance of that duty, we are pushing through the legislation that is absolutely necessary to ensure good governance, which means proper public services. The money we are providing will ensure that those public services have the funding to go with them.
Owen Smith
I appreciate what the Minister has said, but will he explain to the House why the Government are so loth to move formally to having direct rule?
Mr Vara
The hon. Gentleman raises a very good point, and I will tell him why. The last time we moved to direct rule, it lasted five years, and the time before that, it lasted 25 years. The move towards direct rule is a lot easier than the move out of direct rule. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, along with the Prime Minister, will therefore leave no stone unturned in trying to get a functioning Assembly. We need to remember the history.
Nigel Dodds
I, too, appreciate what the Minister has said. He is trying to handle a very difficult situation. The last period of direct rule was five years, so how long—how many years—will he give for the current non-direct rule/non-devolution limbo?
Mr Vara
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I do not know how long, but we are still trying to get the parties involved and we are engaging with them. We have the British-Irish intergovernmental conference coming up soon, and we are liaising with the Irish Government, as is necessary. We are not going to give up on this very easily, as I hope is abundantly clear. He will be aware that as we had the deep conversations earlier this year, it would not have been appropriate to move into new talks immediately. There needs to be a time for people to reflect, pause and come back with different thoughts.
The hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) spoke with care and consideration and gave moving examples. She mentioned the devolved Assembly, and she will have noted the comments I have just made.
I extend to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) my deepest sympathies and condolences, and those of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, for William Dunlop and his family. While the passing of an individual is never easy, it is particularly difficult when there is a young family. We extend our deepest sympathies and best wishes to them all. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will personally extend our wishes to the family.
The hon. Gentleman spoke of the fantastic work done by the police and will have heard my comments to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead. Likewise, I noted the hon. Gentleman’s comments on the devolved Assembly.
To the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I have to say that the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) intended a compliment, and that is how he should take it. The hon. Member for Strangford spoke with his customary commitment and spoke of his frustrations. I want to be clear that the Government are also frustrated that we cannot have the devolved Assembly up and running. Whenever my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are on our regular visits to Northern Ireland, the view comes out strong and clear that people want decision making. I therefore make this last plea to all concerned: think again and start taking those decisions.
Mr Gregory Campbell
The Minister compares the frustrations expressed by Democratic Unionist Members with the frustrations of the Northern Ireland Office, but does he understand the difference? We have done everything to try to accelerate the move towards devolved government and have had no reciprocity from Sinn Féin. The Minister can assuage his frustration and take action to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland.
Mr Vara
I hope that the commitment that the hon. Gentleman has articulated—others have articulated it—to that devolved Assembly will continue. For the Government’s part, we will continue to speak to other parties to see whether we can get the Assembly up and running.
The Government would very much have preferred this legislation to have been taken forward by the restored Executive and a sitting Assembly. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are disappointed that that is not the case. However, at this point, action cannot be delayed further. It is necessary to expedite the Bill to provide certainty on Northern Ireland finances, protect the delivery of public services and deliver on our responsibility to ensure good governance in Northern Ireland.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Committee of the whole House (Order, this day).
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Monday 9th July 2018
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Notices of Amendments as at 2 February 2018 - (5 Feb 2018)
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to consider:
Clauses 2 to 8 stand part.
Amendment 1, in schedule 1, page 13, line 19, after “offences” insert
“other than the prosecution of members and former members of the armed forces for murder, manslaughter or culpable homicide, or for attempt of those offences, if the alleged offence was committed—
(a) more than 20 years before the date of issue of proceedings; and
(b) when the accused person was subject to service law, or was a civilian under service discipline, and engaged in a UK peacekeeping operation; and
(c) if the alleged offence relates to events which took place in Northern Ireland and which have been the subject of an investigation by—
(i) a service police force or a UK police force, or
(ii) a coroner.”.
The intention of this amendment and the similar amendment to Schedule 2 is to remove prosecutions against current and former members of the armed forces for certain alleged offences committed during military operations or in similar circumstances from the ambit of authorised expenditure by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland.
That schedule 1 be the First schedule to the Bill.
Amendment 2, in schedule 2, page 27, line 33, after “offences” insert
“other than the prosecution of members and former members of the armed forces for murder, manslaughter or culpable homicide, or for attempt of those offences, if the alleged offence was committed—
(a) more than 20 years before the date of issue of proceedings; and
(b) when the accused person was subject to service law, or was a civilian under service discipline, and engaged in a UK peacekeeping operation; and
(c) if the alleged offence relates to events which took place in Northern Ireland and which have been the subject of an investigation by—
(i) a service police force or a UK police force, or
(ii) a coroner.”
The intention of this amendment and the similar amendment to Schedule 1 is to remove prosecutions against current and former members of the armed forces for certain alleged offences committed during military operations or in similar circumstances from the ambit of authorised expenditure by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland.
That schedule 2 be the Second schedule to the Bill.
Sir Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for selecting the amendments. I want to say at once to our colleagues from Northern Ireland that I deliberately did not speak on Second Reading. They had some very important issues to raise on the budget and on decision making, but I hope they will understand that when it comes to this particular matter there is a UK issue at stake. Several hundred thousand British soldiers served in Northern Ireland throughout the troubles. The situation we are now confronted with raises issues that, while they are important to communities in Northern Ireland, go way beyond Northern Ireland.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
At the outset of this debate, I hope the right hon. Gentleman knows that Members on the Democratic Unionist party Benches absolutely salute the courage, the dedication and the record of servicemen from across all of the United Kingdom who gave of their time, their duty and, for too many, their lives in defence of Ulster. We salute them, sir, tonight.
Sir Michael Fallon
I am most grateful for that, and in particular for the tone in which it was expressed.
This is not just a UK issue, but it is a long-running UK issue. I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friends who have continued to raise it before the House: my right hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who originally promoted a Bill on the subject, and many others who served in the Province and who have contributed to debates on this issue. Through this Bill we are quite rightly giving large sums of money—hundreds of millions of pounds—to the Northern Ireland Departments, including the judicial Departments, for
“historical investigations and other legacy costs”.
I submit to the Committee that Parliament, even if there were no other concerns, would have every right to debate those sums, but there are other concerns here, which have been well articulated already in this Parliament.
Investigations under way in Northern Ireland are putting servicemen, servicewomen and police officers, whose duty it was to protect the public, almost on a par with terrorists who were content to murder and to maim. There cannot and should not be any moral equivalence between the two. It is now worse than that, however. We are now, through practice in Northern Ireland, discriminating against members of the security forces. Let me put it very simply: can it be morally right that a terrorist suspected of involvement in some of the worst atrocities, such as murdering four troopers in Hyde park and slaughtering their horses, should be given a letter of comfort guaranteeing immunity from prosecution, when those who have served the state to protect our people, in cases that have already been investigated, concluded and dismissed, are now seeing those cases reopened 30, 40 or more years after the event?
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that roughly 300 Northern Ireland veterans are fearful of the knock on the door. All the allegations were investigated fully at the time. What is worse is that under the PSNI inquiry they were reinvestigated about four years ago and most of the veterans were told that there was nothing further to worry about. Some have been rearrested in dawn raids, and a number have been charged with attempted murder. That breaks the military covenant and is a betrayal of our incredibly brave veterans.
Sir Michael Fallon
Absolutely, and some cases have been reopened more than once.
Nobody in this House would suggest that our troops should be exempt from investigation or prosecution for any kind of wrongdoing—of course not. Parliament itself requires, through the armed forces Acts, that any such allegation should be properly investigated by the service police. If there is new evidence concerning recent allegations, then of course they should be looked at. Equally, however, we cannot accept a situation where the whole process begins to be abused by cases simply being reopened for the sake of it, where there is not substantive new evidence. That was the case as allegations accumulated under the Iraq historical allegation apparatus, which was one reason why I shut it down as Defence Secretary and why, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, I laid evidence before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, which eventually resulted in the key solicitor involved being struck off.
In Northern Ireland, the opposite is happening. Allegations of misconduct are being reopened 30 or 40 years later, when memories cannot be trusted and evidence may be hard to come by. Can a court really be sure 45 years after the events exactly what warning was shouted at two in the morning in a street in west Belfast in the early 1970s? These are the kinds of cases that are now being reopened, and I submit to the Committee that Parliament now needs to draw a line. The purpose of amendments 1 and 2 is to introduce a statute of limitations for the first time to say that cases more than—there can be different views on this, but this is what I have said in the amendment—20 years old, so from the date of the Good Friday agreement, cannot now be reopened if they have already been investigated.
Of course, a statute of limitations in itself raises complexities. I understand that. Many issues around it would need to be looked at. For example, we heard much in the previous debate about the bravery of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and the police are not included in this amendment. I understand that there are some reservations about including them. There are complexities, but there is nothing unusual about a statute of limitations. In a previous debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) reminded the House that there are statutes of limitation in commercial law: cases cannot be reopened when companies have dissolved and documents cannot be traced, and it is not possible to properly ascertain the change of responsibility, or rules and regulations from an earlier period no longer apply.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
As the right hon. Gentleman explained, the amendments apply only to the armed forces. I put on record my enormous, deep gratitude for the tremendous courage and sacrifice of all members of the armed forces who served in Northern Ireland—but so too did the members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I think the right hon. Gentleman has to explain to those many members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary —many more members, in fact—who are being investigated time and again in various forms in Northern Ireland why his amendments do not treat those in the police service with any equivalence this evening.
Sir Michael Fallon
I am very happy to accept that particular challenge. My amendment may well not be watertight. I understood that there were some reservations in the PSNI about a statute of limitations. That is one of the complexities.
There are other complexities: if we introduce a statute of limitations in Northern Ireland, why not introduce it elsewhere, where the British military is involved in other campaigns? I am sure that we will hear from the Secretary of State about other difficulties involving the European convention on human rights and so on, but the principle is that there should be some form of limitation. We cannot endlessly go back. Are we to reopen cases where it is alleged that Canadian or British troops shot prisoners out of hand in one of the more difficult days after the D-day landing? Should those cases be reopened? Nobody in this House would say yes. There must come a point when we have to draw a line.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his amendments, but does he agree that we need to tread very carefully, as there are important principles of law here? Our armed forces do not want to be aside from or above the law; they uphold the law. Does he also agree that under the military covenant our armed forces must suffer no disadvantage—that is the test—but that in that important regard they are at a significant disadvantage under the law as it stands?
Sir Michael Fallon
I accept both those points. I made the first one myself—our armed forces are subject to armed forces legislation and no member of the armed forces would want any exemption for wrongdoing or misconduct—but the second point is the more important. As it stands, ex-servicemen and women—mainly servicemen —are being discriminated against by the process.
The Committee and the Government, if they will accept the amendment, or the spirit of it, have an opportunity to declare their will to Northern Ireland—to the judiciary in Northern Ireland, to the legal system in Northern Ireland, to some of the fee-hungry barristers in Northern Ireland—and to our own appeal courts here, that Parliament will no longer tolerate a situation where terrorist murderers are allowed to walk free while ex-servicemen, veterans who have put their lives on the line for the rest of us, fear a knock on the door and can be hauled from their beds, arrested, flown to Belfast, put into a cell and indicted for an offence that might or might not have been committed 30 or 40 years before. That cannot be right.
I make one final point: these ex-servicemen are not the generals or even the colonels who wrote the rules of engagement, planned the patrols and issued the orders, but the ordinary soldiers, the men of the platoons, who went out into the dark, into danger, on our behalf to face up to the terrorist challenge in Northern Ireland. We owe it to them, one way or another, to say that enough is enough and that the hounding of our veterans must now stop. I look to the Government to tell the Committee how they propose to stop it.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
It is a huge privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), not least because, when Secretary of State for Defence, he seriously engaged with us on the Defence Select Committee when we conducted an inquiry into fatalities that arose during the troubles in Northern Ireland. He engaged with us and considered our report—we all on the Committee collectively and appropriately considered the issues at hand—and we can hear that he is one of the growing number of principled parliamentarians who recognise there is an issue that we need to address. He also fairly outlined some of the deficiencies in the amendments. I say that not as a criticism but drawing on comments he himself made.
Our report was very clear, in its second recommendation, that the Government should extend any proposal to the brave members of the RUC. We have heard many honeyed words this evening about the bravery and sacrifice of police officers, both past and present, and many Members have put forward their views on the noble cause that police officers served in our community in Northern Ireland, and yet, of course, they are absent from the amendments. There are various reasons for that. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the complexities, but the complexities applying to police officers past and present in Northern Ireland apply similarly to Army veterans. It is not the case that those complexities are confined to Army veterans in Northern Ireland or in the rest of Great Britain and do not apply to the police; they apply equally, and they are twofold. There should be no amnesty for terrorists, and there should be no equivalence between the honourable actions of service personnel and the actions of those who went out to commit murder and mayhem in our streets.
Many who have served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Police Service of Northern Ireland or the Army, and who live in Northern Ireland, will never countenance the day when their service is treated as if it were in any way comparable with what was done by those who sought to destroy our society, and I think that they are right. However, I recognise that dealing with that issue opens up another panoply of legal complexities.
The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—the esteemed Chairman of the Defence Committee—and I have regular discussions about how we can obviate some of the legal constraints that apply to a statute of limitations. I think Members should take the opportunity to read the legal submissions from which our inquiry benefited—from Professor Richard Ekins of Oxford University, Professor Kieran McEvoy of Queen’s University Belfast, Professor Peter Rowe of Lancaster University, and Professor Phillipe Sands QC of University College London.
What can we take as an overarching lesson from the varied range of views that were expressed, which included disagreements? This Parliament is sovereign. This Parliament can set our laws, create the circumstances around natural justice, and outline what a criminal justice process should be. It can inject some equity and fairness into that process, in a way that complies with article 2 of the European convention on human rights, or article 3, in the case of torture. I think that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks was right to refer, in his amendment, to previous satisfactory investigations. No one is trying to obviate the rules of natural justice in this country, but he is right to suggest that we should stand firm when, again or again or again, a knock comes at the door.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), to the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) and to the former Member of Parliament for Aldershot, Sir Gerald Howarth, all of whom have been steadfast champions of the notion of protecting those who protected us.
We talk very loosely about 90% of all troubles-related killings being carried out by terrorists, with 10% attributed to state forces, but we can state categorically that each and every one of those that fall within the 90% were crimes, carried out by terrorists who were involved in state subvention. We cannot say that of the 10%. We cannot say that of those who put their lives on the line to protect all of us. We need only look across at that door to see three plaques in memories of three Members of this House who were cut down by terrorists in this country. We do not have to look too far away.
I know that memories fade, and I know that people talk about the price of peace. I do not remember any legal constraints or complexities being raised too strongly in the House in 1998, when the prisons were opened. I do not remember too many legal complexities bothering those boffins in Whitehall when they constructed the on-the-runs scheme. Time and time again in the pursuit of peace, to please those who tried to destroy this country, legal minds and successive Governments have created conditions that have allowed the doors to open for terrorists.
I praise the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks—and I say that meaningfully—as the principal parliamentarian to support this continual quest. He tabled the amendments in the knowledge that they were not perfect, and that this was a journey that we would have to make together in a committed and principled way. It is right for Parliament to set conditions that provide protection for those who protected us and who have no equivalence with those who tried to destroy this country, in a way that does not legally extend an amnesty or state immunity, because as a state we will have discharged our duty. We are talking about cases where there has been an investigation and where we are satisfied that the information gathered is exhaustive, and it is natural justice for those being prosecuted who served this country that we should move on.
I respond to the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks not to detract from the thrust of what he is attempting to achieve or the principled spirit of what he has outlined, but to stand at one with him in recognising that this is a wrong that needs to be righted, and that it cannot be constrained or confined to Northern Ireland alone; he has outlined the implications right across this country, and indeed in theatres beyond this country.
I hope that the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman brought forward these amendments will continue to feature as we navigate the legal and moral complexities and do what is right, in the interests of our veterans, our current armed forces personnel, past and present, and those who served in the RUC, the PSNI and others. If we can get collective agreement tonight that that is our direction of travel and that is what we want to achieve, and that we will be honourable and earnest in our quest to protect those who protected us, he will have our support.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Karen Bradley)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson); he is always a profound speaker, and he captured the spirit today, and the whole Committee was, I think, enchanted by his contribution. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon). His time as Secretary of State for Defence was more than distinguished; he was an absolutely superb Defence Secretary. He stood up for the armed forces and the military in a way that few could, and I want to put on the record how much I enjoyed working with him. I was once his Whip, and he was quite difficult to whip, I have to say, because he was very determined in what he wanted to achieve, but we worked together very well and managed to get some significant changes to legislation through, and I enjoyed working with him immensely.
I also want to put it on the record that this Government will always salute the tremendous heroism and courage displayed by members of the armed forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary throughout the troubles in Northern Ireland. Operation Banner was the longest continuous deployment in British military history, lasting from 1969 to 2007. During that period, over 250,000 people served, more than 7,000 medals for bravery were awarded, and the RUC was collectively awarded the George Cross for valour. As I said to the annual Police Federation for Northern Ireland conference in May, without the contribution of our armed forces and the RUC, and—in so many cases, their sacrifice—there would, quite simply, have been no peace process in Northern Ireland. For years, they stood between the rule of law and the descent into anarchy, and by their actions ensured that the future of Northern Ireland would only ever be determined by democracy and consent, never by violence. All of us in this House and beyond therefore owe them an enormous debt of gratitude, something we must never forget.
We remember the more than 1,100 members of the security services who were murdered, and the many thousands more who were maimed or injured, physically and mentally. And as this Government have always made clear, we will never accept any kind of moral equivalence between those terrorists who sought to destroy the rule of law and the security forces whose job it was to maintain the rule of law.
We will also continue to reject any attempt to rewrite the history of the troubles in order to justify or legitimise republican and loyalist terrorism. Let us not forget the bare facts: 60% of deaths in the troubles were caused by republican terrorists; 30% by loyalist terrorists; and just 10% by the state, and the vast majority of those were entirely lawful.
For most of the period of Operation Banner, the role of the armed forces was to support the civil power in maintaining the rule of law against the terrorist threat. Northern Ireland was not an armed conflict, and we should be careful in the language we use to describe what was happening in a part of our own country. In upholding the rule of law, the armed forces were at all times required to operate within it while being fully accountable to it. This is what set them apart from the terrorists, who operated outside the law.
Lady Hermon
Will the Secretary of State put on record the Government’s admiration for the integrity and independence of the judiciary in Northern Ireland? As she will know, its members were often targeted. Some of them were murdered and many were injured, yet despite all the threats and the violence, they continue to serve Northern Ireland independently and with great distinction.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady alludes to one of the points that I am going to make later on my concerns about the amendment, but I am very happy to put that on record. I have met members of the judiciary in Northern Ireland, and it is an extraordinary experience to visit the law courts in Belfast and to compare the protection around those courts with what we have in Great Britain, where people can enter the courts freely, attend the public galleries and be part of the judicial process. I have seen the levels of security that apply in Northern Ireland precisely because of the level of threat to members of the judiciary that she has mentioned.
I shall continue with my point about the so-called on-the-runs. I want to be clear that, whatever its shortcomings, the scheme never amounted to an amnesty or to immunity to prosecution. All that the letters issued at the time stated was whether an individual was still wanted by the police on the basis of the evidence available at the time. This was confirmed by the independent inquiry into the scheme carried out by Lady Justice Hallett in 2014. In the case of the alleged Hyde Park bomber, the problem was that he was given a letter in error stating that he was no longer wanted, when in fact he was wanted by the Metropolitan police. That enabled his defence to argue an abuse of process, which was upheld by the judge and caused the prosecution to be stayed. However, in responding to Lady Justice Hallett’s review, the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), could not have been clearer when she said:
“If there is considered to be evidence or intelligence of their involvement in crime, they will be investigated by the police, and if the evidence is sufficient to warrant prosecution they will be prosecuted.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 779.]
My right hon. Friend also made it very clear in 2014 that the scheme was now at an end.
The current imbalances are of course taking place under the current mechanisms for addressing the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past, over none of which the UK Government have any direct control. Indeed, there is widespread consensus that the current mechanisms in Northern Ireland are not working effectively for anyone— for veterans or for the victims of terrorism. That is why in 2014, after 11 weeks of discussions with the main Northern Ireland parties and, as appropriate, with the Irish Government, we brought forward proposals for new bodies, designed as set out in the Stormont House agreement. Significantly, during those talks there was no support for simply drawing a line under the past or for the introduction of amnesties for troubles-era offences, which, to comply with international law, would have had to apply to all sides.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I urge the Secretary of State to realise that the protagonists in this bitter debate are sometimes trapped by their own rhetoric? The truth of the matter is that one side wants there to be an amnesty for one group of people, but not the other, and the other side wants the reverse. If she likes, she can come to the conclusion that there is no support for a drawing of the line for everyone, or she could conclude that it is up to the Government to take a lead and draw the line for everyone in the knowledge that those who cannot speak out for that policy could nevertheless live with it.
Karen Bradley
My right hon. Friend feels strongly about this matter and has considered it in depth in his role as Chair of the Defence Committee, which has started a new piece of work on it. In my discussions with representatives of veterans and victims groups in Northern Ireland, the firm view that this was not the time for amnesties. I well understand and will discuss the steps that could be taken, but I caution him about his interpretation of the comments that he has heard. That was not what I saw with my own eyes or in the evidence that I have received, but I understand his view. We are consulting, which I will come on to in a moment, and I would welcome the Defence Committee’s views on the consultation. I am also happy to work with him on the inquiry that he has started.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
To echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for the sake of clarity, this debate is not between two sides that want an amnesty. For the record, the DUP does not support an amnesty for anyone connected with Northern Ireland. We do support a statute of limitations, which is not an amnesty. This House should never equate the men and women who stood on the frontline—I had the privilege of standing beside them—with those who skulked in the shadows. That is not what this debate is about.
Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman has been a leader in this area for many years, and I pay tribute not only to his personal experience, but to his leadership on this matter and his role in the Stormont House agreement and other matters since. I also want to put on the record my thanks for his help and support when I was the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and he was the Northern Ireland representative on the first world war steering group. His leadership there has led to some magnificent and wonderful commemorations in Northern Ireland and a real bringing together of communities to recognise the sacrifices that were made 100 years. I had the privilege of being in northern France two weeks ago for the Somme commemoration—perhaps it was only last week, but it feels like a lifetime ago—which was a wonderful tribute to him and his work.
Dr Julian Lewis
Just for the sake of clarity, the Defence Committee has never used the word “amnesty” and has always used the phrase “statute of limitations”. However, the point I made earlier applies equally if that phrase is substituted for “amnesty”. One party, as it were, wants it for one side but not the other, and vice versa. It is disappointing that the Government’s response to the Committee’s report was originally going to have a special section in its consultation exercise to consider the possibility of a statute of limitations, but they went back on that pledge that had been given in writing in their response to our report.
Karen Bradley
I am of course happy to discuss the matter again with my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that the language and terminology that are used are incredibly important in this debate. With a statute of limitations, we tested this with political parties, victims groups, veterans groups and others in Northern Ireland. To be legal, there would have to be a statute of limitations on both sides, and it would have to include a proper process of reconciliation. We were unable to find representative bodies that were able to accept that as a conclusion. It would therefore have been misleading to put it as an alternative approach in the consultation document—I make it clear that this is on a specific consultation on setting up the institutions agreed at the Stormont House talks.
As set out in the Conservative party manifestos at the last two general elections, the Government believe that the proposed new legacy bodies provide a better way forward than the current mechanisms. They will address the legacy of the past in ways that are fair, balanced and proportionate and that do not unfairly focus on former members of the armed forces and the RUC. As I have said, we are now consulting on those bodies, and the consultation runs until 10 September. I encourage all right hon. and hon. Members with an interest in these matters to make their views known in the consultation. The House has my full assurance that all representations on this matter will be properly and carefully considered. As our manifesto at the last election stated clearly, any approach to the past must be fully consistent with the rule of law.
Earlier, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary answered a question from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) by confirming that the Ministry of Defence has set up a dedicated team to look specifically at how this matter is addressed. We all want to make sure that those brave heroes who gave so much to defend us are treated properly with dignity and respect. It is right that the Ministry of Defence should look at this for the armed forces across the whole United Kingdom, not just in the Northern Ireland context.
The ongoing consultation is one reason why the Government are unable to accept the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks. First, it would be wrong to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation. Secondly, the Government do not believe this Bill is the right vehicle for such amendments. This is a Budget Bill designed to ensure that the necessary funding is available to ensure the continued delivery of public service in Northern Ireland. That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) about the independence of the judiciary. When we start looking at how the amendment would work and how the direction would happen, we see that it would impinge on the independence of the judiciary. Again, I am very nervous about starting to make such decisions in this House, although I well understand the sentiment behind the amendment and why my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks has posed the question.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the Government cannot accept the amendment because it would undermine the rule of law. The effect of the amendment would be to remove the ability of the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland to prosecute former soldiers for the next 12 months, even when new evidence came to light which the original investigation could not have considered and that the prosecution believed could lead to a conviction. Again, that goes to the point made by the hon. Member for North Down. This would significantly undermine the independence of the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland and the exercise of the statutory functions of that office. Decisions made by the DPP are rightly based on available evidence, and it would be manifestly wrong for financial considerations to influence decision making, as proposed in the amendment. Although ultimately it would be for the courts to decide, the likelihood is that these amendments would be incompatible with our obligations under article 2. As such, should the amendment be made, I would be unable as Secretary of State to certify the Bill as compatible with convention rights for introduction to the other place.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is explaining what the practical and legal obstacles to this amendment might be, including the operation of the European convention on human rights. If the Government concede that there is no moral equivalence between the actions of terrorists and the actions of the military, should not the application of the law also recognise that in some way? If this amendment is not possible, what other means might there be to ensure that brave members of the armed forces are not unnecessarily and wrongly pursued nearly half a century later?
Karen Bradley
I do not wish to detain the Committee for significantly longer than I already have, but I suggest that I spend some time with my right hon. Friend explaining the thinking behind the Stormont House institutions and how we would get to a situation where there was not this disproportionate focus on the armed forces and law enforcement.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
Let me begin where the Secretary of State ended, in saying that there can never be moral equivalence between the acts of the broad mass of those young men and women who were asked to serve in Northern Ireland at the behest of our society and those who instead sought to damage, maim and kill through the paramilitary groups of either side. As with other Members, I wish to pay tribute to those who served our nation. I wish also to follow the words of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) in recognising as well the important role of the RUC during the troubles.
I recognise the argument put forward by the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), and he rightly was struck by and acted on the claims farming that he saw as a result of the situation in Iraq. However, there is no equivalent that reads immediately across to the situation in Northern Ireland, and it is important to establish that, even though I recognise that his motives are honourable in what he proposes.
I again follow the Secretary of State’s line in saying that there is currently a consultation on the historical inquiries, and it is important that that is allowed to take place and to go forward. It is important that we take the opportunities of the Stormont House agreement to move forward in the way that she outlined. In the debate on Second Reading, I said that we should make progress with exactly those kinds of institutional arrangements. It is important that we bring things to a rapid conclusion in the interests of victims on all sides.
The right hon. Member for Sevenoaks was challenged by the hon. Member for North Down on why the RUC/PSNI has been left out of the amendment. It is helpful to quote Mark Lindsay, the chair of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, who says:
“Let me be clear: This organisation is totally opposed to any legislation which proposes an amnesty”—
a loaded word—
“for any crime. That’s any crime, whether committed by a police officer or terrorist from any side of the divide. Society must now decide, whether the solution is a political solution or a criminal justice solution.”
He goes on to say that it would be a “monstrous injustice” to his members were we to go down those lines. It is important that we listen to those words.
I met Mark Lindsay recently, and one point that he made to me was about the enormous importance of the Police Service of Northern Ireland having the trust of people across all communities. One way to damage that trust would be to open the PSNI up to the accusation that it somehow gained special treatment for its members, when the Police Federation for Northern Ireland does not want that kind of special treatment. That is important.
In response to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), I should say that even the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, Arlene Foster, has expressed her own doubts about going down this road. She makes the point that the DUP has not been pushing for this as a party, and her concern is that it could lead to demands for a wider amnesty. That is important because, as the Secretary of State said, she has to sign off the legislation as compatible with the UK’s human rights obligations under international law—not things that we can change or arbitrate; things that we have signed up to as part of the UK’s global commitments. These are things that the UK signs up to as exemplars to be applied not just here in the United Kingdom but all around the world. They give us the freedom to criticise those who transgress human rights obligations. A strong body of opinion—I know this opinion was given to the Defence Committee—makes it clear that if the state is seen to act partially in a way that denies victims access to justice, it is transgressing its obligations under international law. In particular, if in doing that the state is seen to be partial and to be protecting state actors while not offering the same kind of procedure to others, the state is, in that partiality, accused of breaching its wider human rights obligation.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
The comments by the leader of my party were directed specifically at the legacy proposals for Northern Ireland. To legislate for a statute of limitations on the narrow ground of Northern Ireland would not in our opinion be appropriate, because it would exclude deployments in the Gulf war and Afghanistan. It needs to be done on a UK-wide basis. My party would be supportive on that basis, but not if it is exclusively about Northern Ireland, because that would open it up to the risk that it would be used by others to try to bring about an amnesty, which is not what it would be.
Tony Lloyd
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification, which leads me to begin to bring my remarks to a conclusion.
I stand strongly with the Secretary of State on the fact that the consultation process is already abroad. That consultation process now should be allowed to come to its full conclusion. That is the right way forward both for this House tonight and more generally for this country. In the context of Northern Ireland, it is important to take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks that the possibility of seeing a wider amnesty will defeat the ambitions of victims of the violence during the troubles and those who were left bereaved by that violence. It could, of itself, allow off the hook those whom we would all want to see—even these years on—brought before our justice system and the courts. Within that, it is right and proper that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks recognises the force of the argument that this is the wrong vehicle. It is the wrong occasion for this and it will almost certainly lead to the wrong kind of rules—temporary at very best. I do hope that he will consider very seriously whether this is the right approach on this occasion.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I believe some form of consensus is emerging that a statute of limitations might be the correct way forward, especially if it could be applied in a wider context than just the Northern Ireland scenario. I know that the Conservative manifesto at the last election talked about protecting troops from malicious charges such as had been posed most irresponsibly and on an industrial scale in relation to Iraq by invoking the law of armed conflict for future conflicts and ensuring that the criteria of the civil law could not be applied to them. That is where a problem might creep in in connection with Northern Ireland, because there is no way in which the law of armed conflict could be said to apply to that situation, which was internal to the United Kingdom.
We heard from the Secretary of State that, earlier today, the Defence Secretary made the very welcome announcement that a dedicated unit is being set up inside the Ministry of Defence to try to grip this problem, and I think that it will try to grip it at every level—not just for Northern Ireland, but for these wider conflicts. However, for this evening, I will obviously concentrate on the Northern Ireland situation. I wish to start by making brief reference to the report previously produced by the Defence Committee, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) in his very strong contribution to this debate a little while ago.
Our report entitled “Investigations into fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British military personnel”, HC 1064, was published on 26 April 2017. The Government response, HC 549, was published on 13 November 2017, and there was a Westminster Hall debate on these reports on 25 January 2018, all of which bear future study. The Defence Committee has put in our entire report as evidence under a covering letter to the consultation process that is going on.
Dr Lewis
I see the Secretary of State acknowledging that fact. She will know that the Defence Committee was particularly disappointed about something that I mentioned earlier in an intervention. In the Government’s response—the one that was published in November 2017—they reprinted two of our recommendations and it gave the following answer to them. The recommendations were as follows:
“It is clear from the experience of these legacy investigations that, unless a decision is taken to draw a line under all Troubles-related cases, without exception, they will continue to grind on for many years to come—up to half-a-century after the incidents concerned… Accordingly, we recommend the adoption of Option One—the enactment of a statute of limitations, covering all Troubles-related incidents, up to the signing of the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which involved former members of the Armed Forces. This should be coupled with the continuation and development of a truth recovery mechanism which would provide the best possible prospect of bereaved families finding out the facts, once no-one needed to fear being prosecuted.”
This is what might be termed the Nelson Mandela solution, which of course proved to be such a success in South Africa.
Lady Hermon
At the very beginning of the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution, he summarised what he felt was the attitude in the House, which was that there was a consensus on a statute of limitations in Northern Ireland. May I just say that I am not in that consensus? I do not support a statute of limitations in Northern Ireland for the armed forces alone. I would like the right hon. Gentleman to address the really critical question. There is a fundamental principle of the British legal system that no one is above the law. How would he reconcile the amendment to which he is speaking with that fundamental principle?
Dr Lewis
I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s making her own position clear. I trust that, in the remarks that I am about to make, I will address precisely that point. It relates in particular to the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. If I fail to mention that later, I hope that the hon. Lady will leap up and remind me to do so. I just wish to continue with my theme for the moment, which is the Government’s initial response to the passages—the recommendations—that I just read out.
The Government said:
“While the Government believes that the most effective option to address Northern Ireland’s past is to implement the proposals set out in the Stormont House Agreement, the Government acknowledges that others have different views on the best way forward, including approaches such as that proposed by the Committee which do not involve recourse to the criminal justice system. As such, the Government intends to include within its forthcoming consultation on the draft Northern Ireland (Stormont House Agreement) Bill a section entitled ‘Alternative approaches to addressing the past’. This section of the consultation will discuss alternative ways forward and include a description of the Committee’s recommendation. The consultation will invite respondents to give their views on ‘the potential effectiveness and appropriateness of alternative approaches such as amnesties and a statute of limitations to address the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past’. Following the consultation’s conclusion, the Government will consider all views carefully to inform next steps.”
Now, all I can say is that the Committee was greatly encouraged by that positive response, and we were then considerably discouraged by the fact—which may or may not be connected with the change in Secretary of State—that we subsequently found that the consultation was not going to include the section as described officially in the response to our report. That seemed to be a step backwards.
I have heard it said time and again—this evening and in previous debates on the subject—the rather obvious truth that there is no moral equivalence between terrorists or people accused of terrorist offences, and people accused of having committed offences when they were members of the armed forces or security forces trying to protect the people of Northern Ireland. As I said, that is an obvious truth; there is no moral equivalence. However, it can be argued—and I feel that it must be argued—that there is a legal equivalence, because everybody who is accused of a crime is, in a sense, equal before the law. But something strange and particular happened in the context of Northern Ireland, and that was—this is where I come to the intervention of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon)—the passage of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. If I understand the Act correctly, and I think I do, it means that nobody can serve more than a two-year sentence, no matter how heinous the crimes that they committed, in the context of the troubles in Northern Ireland, which presumably means that, in practice, no one will spend more than half that length of time—12 months—in jail. Whether it be a question of pursuing terrorists decades after the event or of trying to pursue security personnel or members of the armed forces decades after the event, at the end of that whole process, even if anybody is found guilty of a crime that would normally attract a life sentence, they will end up spending no more than 12 months in jail.
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
I am listening to my right hon. Friend’s argument very carefully. It is not just a question of how much time some of these accused former servicemen may spend in jail—it is about the question mark hanging over them in later life, and their fear that when they go back to court in Northern Ireland they will not be protected. They get all kinds of memories coming back, and feel very afraid. So in a sense, their sentence is already a life sentence while the current legislation continues.
Dr Lewis
I entirely agree with every syllable of what my right hon. and gallant Friend says. We are now in a perverse situation where people are being pursued decades after the event without any scintilla of a suggestion that new evidence has been found. They are put through this disproportionate and agonising process, and at the end of it, in the unlikely event that they were found guilty, any sentence that they served would in no way be proportionate to the crime. The whole process has been undermined, because while one might make a moral, political or legal case to pursue someone to the ends of time for a capital crime—a crime of murder—if one knows right at the beginning that at the end of that huge process they are going to serve only a derisory sentence, that has to call into question the legitimacy of the proceedings.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend have sympathy with my constituent, Dennis Hutchings, who is facing that situation as we speak despite the fact that witnesses are no longer around and that Dennis is terminally ill? He is the perfect example of what my right hon. Friend is speaking about.
Dr Lewis
I cannot comment on that particular case since it is now sub judice, but cases of that sort fall squarely within the situation that I am describing. As my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) said, it is the process of pursuit, proceedings and trial, rather than the actual derisory sentence at the end of it, that amounts to cruel, unusual and almost certainly unjustified punishment that is inflicted so long after the event.
Nobody is suggesting that crimes that would be called war crimes, if this were an international rather than a civil conflict, should be excused and that people should be put above the law; but the provisions of international law can be met by combining a truth recovery process with a statute of limitations. If people who had committed heinous crimes years and years ago were, at the end of the process, going to serve a proportionate sentence, one could perhaps make out an argument that the matter should be allowed to proceed to the end of time. However, given the way in which terrorists, on the one hand, and armed forces personnel and security forces, on the other, have all been swept up into the concept of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act, meaning that they will serve, at most, a derisory sentence if eventually convicted—which most of them will not be—the way to proceed is the Nelson Mandela solution.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) said, his amendments are not perfect, and there will be concerns, but when is the right time for us to defend our veterans? When is the right time for those in this House to speak out and say, “Enough is enough”?
I have to declare an interest. It was not 30 or 40 years ago that I got on the troop ship from Liverpool across to Belfast docks. It was 42 years ago that I and the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards went across to Northern Ireland. I was petrified, like most young people were when they went into the armed forces and into combat. I was not going abroad—we were not going to Afghanistan, Iraq, Aden, Borneo or Malaya. I was going to another part of the United Kingdom to protect a community from terrorism. It was a policing role. I have never quite understood why we issued the general service medal for those who went to Northern Ireland, because it was part of the United Kingdom. It was not an operation, as we have heard. We were not on ops; we were assisting the RUC to protect the community. Sometimes that community turned on us, and we lost a lot of good friends and soldiers. Some we have never found. I have spoken in the House before about my captain, Captain Robert Nairac, whose bravery everybody should understand.
We are not here this evening to just accept what the Secretary of State has said and give it carte blanche. The Secretary of State has no idea what I am going to say, and other colleagues are waiting to argue for these amendments as well, but the Secretary of State and the Opposition Front Benchers have already made their mind up, before hearing from gallant colleagues who have served and colleagues who have never served but have constituents who are under threat day in, day out of a knock at the door or a letter. Perhaps that letter will come to me; perhaps I am one of those people. I am probably one of the older ones who served back then. I went in 1976, and the forces that were out there—some were volunteers for the Ulster Defence Regiment, which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was serving in—were doing a fantastic job. The RUC was doing a fantastic job. At one stage, we had 10,000 soldiers putting their lives on the line in the Province to keep people safe.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I, like my right hon. Friend, served out there, in ’75, and I recall serving in the Bogside when we used to have to accompany the RUC there; they would not go were the military not with them at the time, patrolling in the same area. We were dealing with circumstances that are very difficult for modern generations to understand. We had to do so under a very different set of rules, and my concern is exactly his: that we are now judging on the basis of a wholly different set of criteria.
Sir Mike Penning
My right hon. and gallant Friend understands this so well. It was not so much that the RUC could not cope, but the threat to them was so great that we had to patrol with them. I did not serve in Londonderry or Belfast, even though I have been accused of doing naughty things in Belfast by the IRA and Sinn Féin. I served in Monaghan, Keady and Middletown, where we were in the RUC post, sometimes with the RUC and sometimes on our own.
It was a very difficult time, but we were not conscripts. We were young people who volunteered to serve in our armed forces. When I joined up, I knew that I was going to Northern Ireland. Basically, every 18 months you would go to Northern Ireland if you were from an infantry regiment. We knew we were going to go, and we knew how difficult it was going to be, but—this is the big but—I expected those who sent us to look after us. I honestly feel at the moment that veterans, and not just those from my day, do not feel that this House did the right thing for us, and they passionately feel that we are letting them down.
If this evening’s debate is not the answer and these amendments are not the right ones, I say to colleagues around the Chamber—I am so disappointed that some of my Labour friends who served in the armed forces are not here for something so damn important—that the people who did the right thing for us and for Northern Ireland are flagrantly being let down, day in and day out. They are told there is another consultation, that we cannot do it—that there is technicality here, and the judges will not do it—or that Sinn Féin will use this against us. I don’t give a monkey’s. The Commons should stand up for our veterans, and if we do not vote for that this evening, there is something seriously wrong.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
It is a great honour to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), who made an extremely moving speech.
I plan to be brief, but I first want to thank the Secretary of State for Defence, who, in reply to my Question 1 this afternoon, said that he would set up a dedicated team at the Ministry of Defence to look at the situation of all veterans. I have sponsored two Adjournment debates on this subject, and I have also set up an informal parliamentary support group to look at the interests of veterans from all theatres.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) on the way in which he moved his amendment. I underline the comments about his time as Defence Secretary, during which he worked tirelessly to try to stop some of this nonsense going on, particularly in respect of Iraq and Afghanistan. His amendments are a genuine attempt to try to move this debate forward and to propose a constructive suggestion.
I very much hope that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will do two things. First, I hope she will work with the Secretary of State for Defence to make sure that the unit being set up really starts to make a difference. Secondly, the consultation that she set up did not actually say anything about looking at a statute of limitations. She mentioned the word “amnesty”, but, as the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) made very clear, we are talking about an amnesty, but not a statute of limitations. In this case it would affect Northern Ireland, but I would extend it to all veterans from all theatres so that they knew where they stood and that, after a period of time, it would not be possible for them to be subject to the knock on the door. The qualification would of course be that that applied unless any new evidence became available.
Sir Hugo Swire
Would my hon. Friend not say that all veterans who find themselves in such a position today, tomorrow or in years to come should be looked after properly by the Ministry of Defence—provided with support, including if necessary counselling, and with security and an escort, particularly if they are going back to zones in which they are accused of committing these crimes—so that they do not feel they are not wanted, and do not feel isolated and forgotten?
Sir Henry Bellingham
My right hon. Friend is 100% right on that point, but we hope very much that there will not be any prosecutions in the future, or any further arrests.
The key point is that our security forces, as has been pointed out, served in Northern Ireland with the utmost professionalism and dedication in an incredibly febrile, tense and dangerous atmosphere. Young soldiers were sent over—volunteers: we are talking not about conscripts, but professional soldiers—and they were the envy of the entire world. Does the Secretary of State believe that any other army from any other country in the world would have showed the sort of restraint that our Army showed in Northern Ireland, as indeed did the police?
Some 10% of the killings in Northern Ireland were carried out either by the police or the security forces. That is a staggering figure. One has to bear in mind that every single case was fully investigated. Soldiers were operating under the law of the land—not under armed forces law under the Geneva convention, but under our own law—with the yellow book or the yellow card, and every instance was fully investigated at the time by the military police, the RUC or other authorities. That compares with the terrorists, who operated under no known code, and whose only aim in life was to kill and to maim, so how can there ever be any equivalence? How can we talk about amnesties, when our armed forces were operating under the rule of law and under the law?
I want to refer quickly to two cases. I will not mention the names, because they may well be sub judice, but I want to illustrate my concerns. First, the leader of a small patrol went into a village after a shooting incident the day before. The platoon had come under fire. A small patrol of four soldiers went into the village in a follow-up operation after an arms find. A suspicious individual was challenged but did not respond. All four members of the patrol opened fire and that person was killed. It was actually a tragic case of mistaken identity. It was fully investigated at the time by the military police and the RUC. All the evidence was pulled together. The rifles and the rounds were subject to forensic examination. After a period of months, all four members of the patrol were completely exonerated and no further action was required or taken.
We fast-forward to 2012. Under the PSNI investigation under the Historical Enquiries Team, the corporal major who had commanded that patrol was asked to go to Northern Ireland to be questioned, which he did. It was explained to him that there was no new evidence and that the existing evidence had disappeared—the rifles had long since been thrown away or whatever, and the forensic evidence was no longer available. After four days of very polite questioning, he was told that there would be no case to answer. He asked whether he could get on with his life and go back to his family and was told that he could. Fast-forward three more years and there was a knock on the door. Eighteen officers arrested him and took him to Northern Ireland. He has now been charged with attempted murder—I will not go into any more details because he has been charged.
I went to a veterans dinner last weekend at the Royal Anglian Regiment. There were more than 100 people at the dinner. Every single person who came up to me said, “What is going on? Can we not do something about this? Many of us live in fear.” In a speech given that evening, a former regimental sergeant major gave an example from Londonderry in 1972 that illustrates the difficulties that our soldiers faced, the fear they were up against and the appalling decisions that had to be taken on the spur of the moment.
In this second case, soldiers went into the crowd to snatch a demonstrator who had been throwing rocks and bricks at the police and soldiers. They snatched the demonstrator and the crowd became inflamed. The company of soldiers turned around and started moving backwards. One of the soldiers was hit on the back of the head by a rock. In those days, the helmets were not as effective as they are now and he fell down with a cracked skull. The crowd surged forward and were about to lynch him. My constituent and four other soldiers opened fire on the crowd and killed an individual. That was fully investigated at the time. It was found that they were operating under the yellow card or yellow book but that incident is now being reinvestigated. No fewer than 10 people at that dinner now fear they are among the 284 Northern Ireland veterans, men in their 70s and 80s, who may well get the knock on the door as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks said.
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson
I commend the hon. Gentleman for what he is sharing with us, which is the reality of the situation. Does he agree, however, that it is not just about the veterans attending that dinner? It is about the young men and women who are looking in on what is happening, considering joining our armed forces and doing what many of us have done in the past—stepping up to the plate and serving the flag and the country. Might they just think again about serving this country if there is a prospect that they might face prosecution if they seek to defend themselves, the public and their comrades?
Sir Henry Bellingham
I thank my right hon. Friend—I will call him a Friend—who makes an incredibly important point. At that dinner, a number of former members of the Royal Anglian Regiment made the point that they were trying to encourage and recruit young people. Can they really do that when those people might go into a theatre of war and act in accordance with orders, the law of armed conflict or the law of the land, but be arrested many years hence?
I do not know what the answer to this dilemma is, but I do know that very many people out there are incredibly angry and very worried, and they are looking to this Government to come up with constructive, innovative and workable solutions. If we do not do that, we will not be forgiven in a hurry.
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Lindsay, for calling me in this debate. This is a deeply personal issue on which I have worked for some time. I welcome the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon).
I am cognisant of the fact that there are real issues with what has been put forward—I do not dispute that for a minute—but I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said. If I was still a soldier watching this place, or if I was a veteran watching this place, I could not help but go away thinking that this place still—still—simply does not get it when it comes to what we owe those who have served.
This issue is nothing to do with some of the things that have been mentioned tonight. There has been a crassness to the terminology at times. I in no way speak of the Chair of the Defence Committee, because we have been tumbling around these terms and I would understand that from him, but there is the idea that we have conflated the idea of an amnesty with that of a statute of limitations. They are fundamentally and critically different, yet they have been interposed as if this is some sort of game or legal language that we have to get around to ensure we do right by our servicemen and women.
Sir Hugo Swire
On that point, does my hon. Friend not agree that it was unfortunate that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman kept on inappropriately using the word “amnesty”?
Johnny Mercer
That is exactly what I am talking about.
Before I came to this place—I have spoken about it before, so this will not be a shock to anyone—I really struggled with the inauthenticity I saw from both the Government and Opposition Dispatch Boxes. Incidents such as the one that has just been referred to serve to highlight that. Up and down the country, there are people watching this who are veterans of Northern Ireland, of Afghanistan, like me, and of Iraq. They will be thinking, “Have these guys got my back? Do they really get it when they can’t even get the terms right? Does that give me the confidence that the Government will apply themselves to ending this ridiculous charade of prosecuting our soldiers? I’m afraid it does not.”
What happens to the amendments after I have finished speaking is up to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks, but I have to lodge again my profound and personal disquiet with the Government’s policy. I feel a personal shame with regard to the historical allegations issue. I feel that I am part of a Government who are essentially promoting a cowards’ charter when it comes to looking after our servicemen and women. My right hon. Friend talked about how he made a political decision to close the Iraq Historical Allegations Team. I worked on that issue for a year before he did that. Every single civil servant and lawyer in his Department told him it could not be done, but he took the executive political decision that he was elected to make and closed it. We need some of that political courage to be brought to the issue in relation to Northern Ireland.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
I apologise for intervening because, characteristically, my hon. Friend is making a very good speech. We serve together on the Defence Committee, which is now looking into this matter. We heard at today’s Defence questions that the Ministry of Defence is now looking into this matter, too. Does he agree that we are not going to give up on this? We are going to keep coming back debate after debate, motion after motion. We are going to harry the Government, on behalf of the veterans, until they do the right thing and provide protection for those who protected us.
Johnny Mercer
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I must say that when I started the process on IHAT, I found it a pretty lonely experience. That has now changed significantly. There are people in the Chamber who have campaigned on the Northern Ireland issue for a long time and it is deeply heartening to see the support this issue has got, certainly among Conservative Members. I thank him and others who have been here for much longer than me who have provided me with that support; vice versa, I have given any support that I have been able to give.
The problems with this process are so well known. It is late and I do not want to send everyone to sleep by going into them, but this process does not work for anybody. It does not work for the soldiers who are being investigated or for the families in finding out what has happened. The idea that it does is, I am afraid, for the birds.
Sir Michael Fallon
I will respond briefly to the debate because I sense that the Committee wants to decide what to do about the amendments. We have had a very good debate in which strongly held views have been expressed. While there may be disagreement about the precise provisions of the amendments, there is no disagreement in this House about the problem: the moral equivalence that is now being extended by the process of historical investigation between the terrorist and the servant of the state. There is no disagreement that we are now clearly in breach of our own armed forces covenant, and there is no disagreement that the deepest unfairness of all is the reopening of cases that have already been investigated when those involved have been told that no further action will be taken.
I understand that our colleagues from Northern Ireland do not support the precise wording of the amendments, which is one of the reasons why, very reluctantly, I will not press them to a Division. They do, however, support the direction of travel, and I hope that they will continue to work with us on the principle of some form of limitation for those cases that have already been investigated.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), I welcome today’s initiative by the Ministry of Defence and the consultation to which the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland referred, but I would give her this warning, which echoes what has been said in the debate: the House will not now rest on this matter. She said that the Bill was the wrong vehicle, and that might well be the case, but it is for the Government now to find the right vehicle so that we act on the views expressed tonight and see, finally, that justice is done for those who served to protect us.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand pat of the Bill.
Clauses 2 to 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedules 1 to 2 agreed to.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Bill read the Third time and passed.
Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Jo Churchill.)
Public Accounts Commission
Ordered,
That Martyn Day be discharged as a member of the Public Accounts Commission under section 2(2)(c) of the National Audit Act 1983, and that Douglas Chapman be appointed.—(Paul Maynard.)
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Tuesday 10th July 2018
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House Amendments as at 9 July 2018 - (9 Jul 2018)
Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill
Wednesday 18th July 2018
(5 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the Whole House Amendments as at 9 July 2018 - (9 Jul 2018)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
My Lords, with regret and despite our best efforts to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland political parties have not yet been able to reach an agreement to enable an Executive to be formed. As a result, and as noble Lords will be aware, it has fallen to the Northern Ireland Civil Service to continue to deliver public services in the interests of all communities in Northern Ireland. I join my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in commending the Northern Ireland Civil Service’s ongoing professionalism and commitment in these trying circumstances.
I assure the House that the UK Government have noted the recent Buick ruling and the questions that it has raised on the wider ability of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to continue to take decisions in the absence of an Executive. Both the NICS and the UK Government are considering the judgment very carefully indeed.
In the continued absence of an Executive, the Government have taken all necessary steps to support the Civil Service, to ensure good governance and to protect the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland. Of course this is not the first time that I have asked the House to consider a budget for Northern Ireland and I therefore beg noble Lords’ forgiveness if the explanation that I am about to provide is a little familiar to some of you gathered here.
Noble Lords will recall that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State provided a Northern Ireland budget for 2018-19 in a Statement to Parliament on 8 March. That budget position set out headline departmental allocations for the 2018-19 financial year providing the necessary certainty to the Northern Ireland Civil Service to manage and maintain public services throughout the early months of this financial year.
Building on that certainty, Parliament then approved as part of the Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipations and Adjustments) Act in late March 2018 a vote on account, which essentially provides the Northern Ireland Civil Service with the legal authority to actually incur expenditure and allocate funds in line with this budget position in the early months of the financial year. As is normal process with a vote on account, the limit is set to a maximum of 45% of the previous financial year’s allocations. As a consequence, further legislation is now required to provide the legal authority for the Northern Ireland departments to access the full funding available for the whole financial year. Without such legislation, the only avenue available would be for the Northern Ireland Civil Service to deploy the emergency powers under Section 59 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to allocate resources. The Government are committed to avoiding that necessity.
In order to put my right honourable friend the Secretary of State’s budget Statement on to a legal footing, to provide the Northern Ireland Civil Service with the legal authority to fully access available funds, and to avoid the need for the Northern Ireland Civil Service to resort to using emergency powers, I ask that noble Lords consider this necessary budget Bill.
This is a short, technical Bill. It would authorise the Northern Ireland departments and certain other bodies to incur expenditure of up to £8.9 billion and to use resources totalling up to £9.9 billion for the financial year ending 31 March 2019. The figures in this schedule of the Bill are in keeping with the Secretary of State’s budget Statement of 8 March.
While the legislation sets the headline departmental allocations only, it does not prescribe how the Northern Ireland Civil Service departments allocate these funds. In the absence of an Executive, it is for the Northern Ireland departments to implement their own budgets. How the Northern Ireland departments allocate these budgets is set out in a detailed main estimates Command Paper.
While this is a Northern Ireland budget being brought forward by a UK Government, it does not and should not be taken as a move towards direct rule. Nor does it remove the pressing need to have locally accountable politicians in place to take the long-term decisions needed to secure the future for the people of Northern Ireland.
While this is a technical budget Bill, we recognise the constitutional significance of Parliament having to deliver this for Northern Ireland. I therefore draw noble Lords’ attention to two important issues that do not form a part of the Bill expressly but which will be of interest to your Lordships as we debate the Bill.
First, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State highlighted in her budget Statement, the overall figures allocated to departments include a further £410 million of UK government money from the £1 billion supply and confidence agreement. To be clear, the figures in the Bill include the £410 million. The Bill is not legislating for this amount. It was approved by Parliament for release as part of the UK main estimates Bill. This Bill simply allows the £410 million to be spent by the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and details of how it will be spent are set out in the Northern Ireland main estimates document. It should be noted that this is on top of the £20 million already released in 2017-18 to help address pressures in the areas of health and education.
Secondly, there is the matter of the accountability structures in place. In addition to placing all NIAO audits and value-for-money reports and the associated departmental responses in the Libraries of both Houses to enable accessibility and visibility to all interested Members and committees, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will also write to the Northern Ireland political parties, highlighting publication of the reports and encouraging engagement with their findings. This is as robust a process as is possible in the circumstances. However, the best form of overall accountability and scrutiny of Northern Ireland’s public finances would, of course, be that undertaken by an Executive and a sitting Assembly in Northern Ireland.
The UK Government remain committed to providing Northern Ireland with good governance and political stability while efforts continue to restore devolved government at the earliest possible opportunity. Northern Ireland and its people deserve strong political leadership from a locally elected and locally accountable devolved Government. This remains our firm and absolute priority for the weeks and months to come. That said, in the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, the UK Government will always deliver on their responsibilities for good governance and political stability. On that basis, I beg to move.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, before I begin my remarks today I will briefly pay tribute to my colleague David Ford, the former leader of the Alliance Party and Justice Minister, who has stepped down as an MLA. David is a person of great integrity and honour, who made many personal sacrifices as leader of the Alliance Party. Given how controversial the devolution of policing and justice was at the time, it is thanks to David’s skill and leadership that it was so stable during his tenure as Minister for Justice. Northern Ireland will miss his political judgment and courage, and from these Benches we wish him all the best in his retirement.
I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill before the House today. However, I deeply regret that it has been necessary for him to do so. There seems to have been little, if any, progress made to restore the power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland since the last budget Bill was discussed in March.
In recent years, the run-up to the 12th has been largely peaceful. However, last week we witnessed levels of violence we have not seen for many years. I pay tribute to the bravery of the fire officers and police officers in Northern Ireland for their courage and professionalism in recent days and for all they did to protect the public during this upsurge in violence. This repugnant behaviour came from a minority of thugs who care nothing for their local communities. Local residents are sick and tired of violence, and the vast majority of people want this violence to be stopped—and as soon as possible. We know all too well in Northern Ireland that violence can easily fill the vacuum created by an absence of a political process.
I recognise and welcome the joint statement from the leaders of the main political parties to condemn the recent violence, but I am deeply concerned that most of the political parties, and indeed the Government, have shown very little leadership in recent months. It is extremely disappointing that there is virtually no visible evidence of any progress towards recreating an Executive since we debated the previous budget legislation in March. At that time the Minister stated:
“We are in a period of reflection”.—[Official Report, 27/3/18; col. 756.]
He hoped that this period would be short. That was four months ago, and I wonder how much longer we need to reflect on the issues in contention, when politicians in Northern Ireland, so many of them present in this Chamber today, have overcome much more difficult issues in the past. There currently appears to be no impetus for the parties to actually get round the table and resolve their differences. The obstacles to forming an Executive are minimal, but the political will is lacking and party-political advantage by both the DUP and Sinn Féin is being put ahead of the wider good.
In the meantime, it is the people of Northern Ireland who are bearing the brunt of the stalemate at Stormont. In the absence of an Executive, key decisions affecting economic planning, infrastructure, health, education, housing, transport and the local environment are not being taken. There is also no prospect of social issues, such as abortion and equal marriage—issues that affect ordinary people’s lives—being resolved at a devolved level. Does the Minister agree that a further consequence of the continued absence of an Executive is that important social issues, such as abortion, continue to be unresolved? The Minister previously said,
“we should not be relying on a Victorian law. It is time for change”.—[Official Report, 23/5/18; col. 1024.]
So are the Government giving active consideration to taking some of these issues of disagreement off the table by legislating at Westminster?
The Minister told me during the debate on the previous budget Bill in March that,
“there is no alternative model ready to be pulled off the shelf”.—[Official Report, 27/3/18; col. 757.]
Can he now say whether serious consideration is being given to the proposals from the Alliance Party to kick-start the talks process? Can he say what concrete measures the Government are planning to take during the summer to bring the parties back around the table? In earlier legislation, the Government took powers to reduce MLA salaries. They have not yet used these powers. Alliance has produced detailed proposals to allow some functions of the Assembly to take place without an Executive. Have the Government given serious consideration to these proposals, which are made with the intention that they would operate in parallel with any talks? This would at least provide some sort of democratic oversight and engagement, which is, sadly, very much lacking at the moment. As has been said in many previous debates—indeed, it was said by the Minister this afternoon—the Civil Service in Northern Ireland is doing an excellent job, but continued government by civil service is neither desirable nor sustainable.
I asked the Minister in the debate in March whether the Government would consider legislating for the funding of legacy inquests, and to provide compensation for victims following the historical abuse inquiry, as well as pensions for victims and survivors. What consideration have the Government given to these matters in the intervening months?
The Good Friday/Belfast agreement was entrusted to the political parties in Northern Ireland, as well as to the British and Irish Governments, for safekeeping. On these Benches, we remain committed to devolution and we want to see the Executive restored, but we must beware of making the best the enemy of the good. The best solution is, of course, to have a fully restored Executive—I do not think that anybody in this Chamber would disagree with that—but doing nothing, or not giving proper consideration to all alternative proposals to bring back some confidence in the democratic process, is simply not sustainable.
As Brian Rowan wrote in the wake of the violence of the 12th:
“What happened was a reminder of a still imperfect peace and a wake-up call to shake all of us out of our complacency”.
For the sake of the people in Northern Ireland, the Government must now take urgent action to inject some urgency into the talks process and end the current political impasse.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, one of the primary duties of any elected body, whether it is a local authority, a regional authority or a national parliament, is to deal with budgetary matters, to scrutinise them, to assess them and to determine how budgets are spent. This is the second occasion in a few months when a budget has come before this House which has not been scrutinised or subject to the views of elected representatives, but has been produced here as a fait accompli without any proper scrutiny. I accept the logistics of there being no alternative to having this measure before us today, but it is a sad reflection of the absolute, complete and total failure that has been the hallmark of events in Northern Ireland over the last couple of years—not the last few months. This is not a new phenomenon; it has been happening for some considerable time.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, has just reflected on some of the events that have occurred on the ground over the last few weeks. One of the outstanding issues is police pay. We depend on these people, who are out there being shot at, stoned and abused. I quote the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, which has now,
“formally submitted its pay claim for 2018 with no sign of Officers getting what they are entitled under the 2017 recommendations”.
What provision has been made in this budget for a possible pay rise? How is such a pay rise to be implemented, or will the issue just sit here while the morale and position of the police continue to be left in this vacuum? I do not believe that is satisfactory in any set of circumstances, and the House is entitled to hear a positive response from the Minister as to how this is to be dealt with. Other pay rises for other public sector workers have been resolved, but this one has not. There are few groups of people in public service, in Northern Ireland or anywhere else, who are entitled to have their pay rises resolved over the police.
The noble Baroness also mentioned the Hart inquiry, which dealt with historical abuse. We raised this in the debate we had in March. I entirely accept that there is more than state involvement here. There is the responsibility of various Churches and other organisations, which may have insurers, which have to play a role. However, the people who were abused are being abused all over again. Some of them are reaching advanced years. Some of the people who have suffered most have recently died. This is moving away from them, despite the absolute unanimity from all parties and MLAs. There is not a single one that disagrees with the distribution of resources as a result of Judge Hart’s inquiry, yet we are still sitting here paralysed and these people are suffering once again.
I also ask the noble Lord whether any provision has been made in this budget for an appeal that is to be heard on behalf of the RHI boiler owner-operators. They are appealing against the cap that was put on them by the Assembly last year. That appeal is coming up in October. Has any provision been made in these estimates for that appeal being lost because, if it is, we will go back to the regime that was originally installed by the then Minister, Mrs Foster? That could have significant budgetary implications. We know that that whole escapade is one of the most disgraceful and disreputable examples of grossly inefficient government. In fact, as the Minister and her £85,000-a-year adviser admitted that they had never even read these few pages of legislation, the people of Northern Ireland are entitled to some explanation and also to know whether any provision has been made for that.
We also have the biggest challenge of all, which has barely been mentioned. That of course is Brexit, which is coming up. I know the Prime Minister is visiting tomorrow and Friday, and I welcome that. I hope other people will not describe her arrival as a “distraction”, which happened on the last occasion she went. We keep being told by the Minister that the Government are consulting people in Northern Ireland. Are they consulting Members of this House? I do not know which people are being consulted. I hope the Government are consulting, but can they tell me who they are consulting? I do not know, apart obviously from Members of Parliament in the other place, which is right and proper. They are entitled to be consulted, and should be, but they are not the only people who represent or have a view. Who else is being consulted? We are at a critical point and, whatever the shenanigans at the other end of the building earlier this week, this matter is not resolved. There is no guarantee that the present proposals will resolve it. I believe that a functioning Assembly could unlock a series of opportunities to resolve the matters. Sadly, we seem to have abandoned any significant attempt to bring that about.
When we last debated these matters—this is going back into last year—the Minister said in a number of interventions that the Government were going to think outside the box. The sad thing is that the Northern Ireland Office does not have a box outside which one can think. It has a sarcophagus, which was sealed hermetically in ancient times, and no one dares let any light or fresh air into that box to bring in new ideas. There are no new ideas. Has anybody heard of a new idea coming forward in the last number of months? I have heard nothing. We are at a complete standstill and this is being allowed to go on and on. Great damage is being done. When it could be so helpful to the Government’s efforts on Brexit, you would surely think that a serious effort would be made to resolve it and find alternative ways forward. There is no new thinking; that is the problem.
I want to move to another serious matter, which is the question of health. In the last statistics, produced on 31 March, 269,834 people were waiting for a first consultant-led out-patient appointment. That is out of a population of 1.8 million and it is the worst figure by far in any area of the United Kingdom. Of those 269,000 people, 83,392 had been waiting for more than 52 weeks. Imagine that it is your husband, son, daughter or sister who has significant problems. Waiting for a year for an appointment—over a year in many of these cases—is a life-and-death decision. Because Northern Ireland has the worst health figures, not a single health target has been met there in years. Whether it is on waiting for A&E or no matter what, not a single target has been met and these figures are getting progressively worse.
There is one step that the Government could take on health, which would not take a lot of new thinking or set a precedent. The Minister will recall that when Stormont got into trouble over welfare reform, the power over welfare was brought back here and, when the matter had been resolved, it was then sent back to Stormont. We are talking about a Northern Ireland budget, which is the job of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and we have had to take that back here because it is the only way to keep the lights on. I appeal to the Minister, on humanitarian grounds, to do something for these people whose lives are endangered. I have heard anecdotally of cases where I am absolutely convinced that the delays have caused deaths. On humanitarian grounds, I ask him and the Government to take the power over health back here in the short term, pending the final re-establishment of devolution. What more important issue could there possibly be? What political sacrifice are we making? Who is going to be annoyed? Who do we not want to upset by taking the health power, so as to have a Minister who can take decisions—after the decision of the court in the Buick case, which means that civil servants cannot take decisions?
I believe that it would be appropriate to bring that health power back here now. It could be done in September. We could then at least resolve some of the worst aspects of the health issue back home, by having somebody who could take decisions. When devolution is restored—we hope—the power can go back. We have already done that with welfare, and we are now in the middle of doing it for finance. There is no reason why it cannot be done for health. This should not be a political thing; it is a humanitarian thing, and I think there are lots of people back in Northern Ireland who would warmly welcome it.
I appeal to the Minister: if there is any new thinking, please tell us what it is. Even if there is none, this is not something that would arouse great hostility in this House or in the other place, and I believe that it would be warmly welcomed by the people of Northern Ireland.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I first thank the Minister for giving us the statement today. I know how reluctant he was to do that, and he has done the best that can be done with what is essentially an impossible and depressing task. My remarks are designed to help ensure that a year from now he does not have to do it again, and I hope that he will accept them in that context, and that spirit.
The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, mentioned the retirement of David Ford. May I say how strongly I echo those remarks? I, and other Members of your Lordships’ House who sit on the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, will greatly miss him. I am glad that the noble Baroness paid him that tribute, because she was absolutely right. The devolution of policing and justice was a difficult, complex, dangerous task, and he played a major role in getting it right.
I support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, about health, and I add one footnote, which is a comment on devolution as well as on the period of direct rule. Everybody in the United Kingdom knows that we are told that we have such major problems with our health service because of our ageing population. But that does not apply in Northern Ireland. Ours is a relatively youthful population, so there is a question mark over why the figures are as dire as the noble Lord said—and they are dire. This is as difficult and sensitive an issue as the noble Lord said, and the need for a policy is pressing. His analogy with how welfare reform was handled not long ago was interesting and powerful.
As is openly stated in paragraph 43 of the helpful Explanatory Notes to the Bill, we are meeting on the wilder shores of the Sewel principle. This has been made an even more difficult moment by the recent judgment of the judiciary in the Buick case, which basically means that, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has just said, civil servants can no longer make decisions. The judgment was provoked by a relatively small case involving an incinerator in County Antrim, but the implications are massive.
On 9 July in the other place the Secretary of State, when questioned by Lady Hermon, the Member for North Down, seemed to be saying that the Government were considering an appeal—or at least that they were not ruling one out—in the context of that ruling. It is now 18 July, and I have not heard that the Government have changed their mind on that; as I understand it, it is still under consideration. I tried to check with the Northern Ireland Office today. I strongly support the case for an appeal. I do not mean this as a criticism of the Northern Ireland judiciary. I have sometimes heard some dry and droll comments in this House about that judiciary, but I do not say this for that reason. I just think that the principle is so important. If we are stuck with a period of direct rule, although it is a bad thing in principle for civil servants to make decisions, it is simply not practical for a modern Government to be in a place in which some basic moves and decisions cannot be made. I know there are issues of expense, but I hope that the consideration that is apparently still going on in the NIO leads to another appeal because it is a ridiculous place for us all to be in.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, also mentioned Brexit. It is the big problem about the restoration of devolution, which we all wish to see. Everybody knows there are a number of other issues. In recent times, the Irish language Act has possibly been the most difficult, but there is also equal marriage, abortion law reform, legacy issues and, in my opinion, libel law reform. They could technically all be dealt with by this House at this time. It would be better if they were dealt with locally as a means of moving this forward, but difficult as all those issues are, the thing that is really causing the blockage is the mood of politics as it is affected by Brexit. It has been polarising in Northern Ireland, not so much, as some speculate, because the unionist middle classes have suddenly decided that they would rather be in the European Union and in Ireland, but the stunning rise in the DUP vote in some of the most prosperous areas of Northern Ireland in the general election makes one realise that there has not been a great mental shift among that class of people, but that Brexit has inflamed and aggravated large sections of even the moderate Catholic and nationalist community. That creates an opportunity for Sinn Féin and therefore it is quite likely that we will not see a return to devolution until this question is moved to a safer place.
I want to put it on record to see whether the Minister agrees that the Chequers White Paper has many problems. People hate it and love it from different angles, but I do not want to engage in that line of debate. I simply want to make the point that the section on Ireland has been taken by many serious commentators north and south, unionist and nationalist, as moving the question of the Irish border towards a saner and better place. Until that is done, we are unlikely to get progress in the talks. I really hope I am wrong, but it is a merit of that paper that many people of different views in Dublin and Belfast seem to be saying that it is going to make handling the Northern Ireland border easier. I say that as somebody who believes that it is a serious question but that it has been exaggerated.
I groaned when I had to listen to the Irish Foreign Minister saying on “The Andrew Marr Show” a few weeks ago that there could be no checks on the island of Ireland. Anybody who knows anything about travelling in Ireland knows that at this moment, before Brexit, there are significant checks on the Irish side of the border. I am quite certain that many millions of people listening to Marr simply did not realise how inflated that rhetoric was. I can see that the debate around the border has been inflated, but that does not mean it is not a real problem. A lot of people previously alarmed by it believe that the proposals in the White Paper help shift us towards a better, safer place in terms of the Irish debate on the border. This may be helpful. I will be interested in the Minister’s views.
Finally, the Government have decided, quite correctly, to hold a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference with the Irish Government later this month. It is in the Good Friday agreement, and for that reason, among others, this meeting should be held. It is perfectly clear—I will be interested in the Minister’s views—that fundamentally in the agreement that body is designed to focus on east-west issues rather than on the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. Let me remind the House, as this document does with its talk of £8 billion or £9 billion, that without the UK subvention, which is probably somewhat more than that, Northern Ireland just does not function. It is paid by the United Kingdom taxpayer, not by taxpayers of any other country. It is true that the Irish Republic could take up this slack but, as Irish papers have said in recent days, that would require paying no pensions to anybody in the island of Ireland, and no Irish Government are going to decide to take up the slack from the UK taxpayer and not pay any pensions to anybody in the island of Ireland. For economic reasons alone, it is appropriate that the focus of this meeting should primarily be on east-west grounds. That would be entirely right and within the context of the Good Friday agreement.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I welcome the Northern Ireland Budget (No. 2) Bill and I acknowledge that, in the continued absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, this legislation is essential, as it will secure money allocated to departments to keep them operational. It also provides departments with the necessary reassurance that full funding will be available until the end of the financial year.
This is now the second budget Bill that has been laid before your Lordships’ House for consideration. Although this is welcome, it is far from ideal. Issues such as specific budgetary allocations and the monitoring of money—how the money is spent—require detailed scrutiny, analysis and examination. This is the standard level of accountability one should expect when dealing with a budget. Naturally I would much prefer if we were in a situation where Bills such as this were being presented in the Stormont Assembly by a locally accountable Minister.
For a lengthy period, we had devolved government where such accountability existed. Contrary to what some people would wish us to believe, it is worth repeating that much progress and much work has been achieved. Northern Ireland has travelled a considerable distance during the last 10 years. This is progress we must continue. Equally, during that time, we had a situation where locally elected representatives were regularly able to debate and analyse spending, and were thus able to raise specific matters relating to local areas. Unfortunately, this is not now possible to the same degree. The reality is that there is little prospect of a return to local decision-making at present. Most of the parties in Northern Ireland, however, want to get back into government and into the Assembly, but one party is preventing this. Regrettably, instead of a fair and balanced solution, the party that collapsed the devolved institution 17 months ago and refused to return to it, continues to halt progress in re-establishing devolved government.
MLAs were elected to serve the people. However, unless all the parties agree to one party’s list of preconditions, they are prevented from doing their jobs fully. Sinn Féin has placed the fulfilment of its demands ahead of governing in the interests of everyone. None of us wants to be in this situation. However, the people of Northern Ireland should not be punished further because of one party’s agenda.
This budget, as with any budget, presents challenges. Specifically, challenges are presented here when allocations are based on historical decisions taken by the Assembly. When allocations are made by individual departments, we cannot always be certain that the finances will go to areas that the public might expect to be prioritised. For example, after inquiries with the Department of Education, my party discovered that some of the additional money that was made available for education and was meant to go towards front-line schooling, had been allocated by the department to finance the deficit of the Education Authority. This is one instance where civil servants prioritised administration first.
While the budget and the current situation present their challenges, those challenges have been reduced considerably by the £410 million of extra new money as part of the Democratic Unionist Party confidence and supply agreement with the Government. The DUP has sought to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, not just for narrow sectional interests. There is £100 million to progress health transformation, £20 million to tackle deprivation, £10 million for mental health services and £80 million to tackle health and education pressures. Had this money not been included in this budget, the public would have felt the impact of a much more severe settlement.
Senior civil servants have been tasked with taking the majority of the decisions within departments for the past 17 months. However, in a number of instances, decisions are not being made. We have a situation where a growing number of decisions still need to be made on education, health, infrastructure and public services. These decisions in many cases are about allocation and prioritisation. Decisions need to be taken on school places and teaching staff, and new school enhancement and development programmes have been paused. When inquiries are made with the various departments regarding decisions that have yet to be taken, the reply is often the same: “There are no Ministers in place. We cannot make a decision at this time”.
Reference has been made to a recent High Court judgment. The examples that I mentioned previously referred to decisions taken before that case ever reached court. The court ruling could impact departments further and could have far-reaching implications for the decision-making processes. So I ask the Minister: do the Government intend to appeal the court ruling as it deals directly with a key decision being taken by a Permanent Secretary, as the noble Lord, Lord Bew, has referred to? Equally, has that court case now set a precedent? Could we see further such cases being taken to trial and decisions already made by civil servants being reversed?
I am sure all Members of this House will wish to condemn the violence of the last few weeks in Londonderry and east Belfast, which has been orchestrated by sinister elements in the paramilitaries. Budgetary decisions need to be taken urgently on policing. This is a vital issue, raised by the chief constable of the PSNI when addressing the committee in the other place. Additional money is urgently required to train more officers. I join the noble Lord, Lord Empey, in asking the Minister whether there is any special mechanism that can be invoked to obtain additional money to help the much pressurised Police Service of Northern Ireland.
I recognise and have previously welcomed the actions taken and commitments given by the Government. Given these recent developments, though, further action is required to deliver good government in Northern Ireland. Can the Minister today provide some assurances to departments that relevant ministerial guidance, direction and decision-making authority will be provided? The people of Northern Ireland need these assurances because, when urgent decisions are not being made, this impacts on them. We must not allow a situation to develop where the decision-making process grinds to a halt.
We will all continue to work hard towards our aim of seeing a return to locally accountable government in Northern Ireland. In its absence, my party will continue to work hard for everyone, as it has done in relation to the confidence and supply agreement. We will also continue to press the Government on all these important matters in the coming days and weeks. I support the Bill and trust that the Government will make every effort to restore the Assembly and Executive as soon as possible.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the briefing that he gave us yesterday. It was very helpful although it did not actually come to any firm conclusions. I find this whole process rather curious. I cannot think of any other topic in the British Parliament where neither individual Members nor the Minister can have any influence at all on what we are debating. As I understand it, the Minister has no power to change anything. We have no powers; we cannot vote anything down or change any of the headings. I cannot think of any other occasion when we are completely neutered in terms of what we would like to achieve and the Minister cannot do anything either. Of course this is a consequence of the very sad situation in Northern Ireland where we do not have a functioning Executive. All of us would like the Executive and the Assembly to be up and running so that these decisions could then be made speedily by locally elected politicians. I would just like to ask the Minister this: is there any method by which the people of Northern Ireland can actually have an input into the process whereby the budget is set or will be set in future? In other words, has there been—or could there be—any consultation that would enable the people of Northern Ireland to take up the issues? Some of those issues have been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Empey—for example about the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Other noble Lords have raised other issues. Is it not important that the people of Northern Ireland should have some chance at least of an input into what is going on? At the moment, nothing can be done.
I would like to raise two specific issues. I understand that the Assembly was reasonably supportive of integrated education. I think that it is a key issue indeed. By leaving it to officials, are we not denying the wishes of the Assembly to increase the resources going into the development of integrated education in Northern Ireland? The Minister will argue that people can listen to what we are saying and, when the Assembly and Executive are restored, they will perhaps take note of what was said. If that is so, it is a very complicated process. But at any rate, I would like to put on record my belief, shared by many people I know in Northern Ireland, that integrated education is important and that as many parents as possible should be given a choice over whether or not they would like their children to be in an integrated school. The evidence is that the majority of parents would like to have that choice, but many are not able to exercise that choice at the moment.
My other policy issue is a slightly different one. It concerns refugees, and child refugees in particular. I do not want to go into the whole debate about child refugees, except to say this. The Government—the Ministers close to this issue—have wanted to get local authorities to offer to provide foster places for child refugees up and down the country. There has been a response, and I believe it has been a much more positive response than the Government have acknowledged, certainly in the cases of England and Wales and to a certain extent in Scotland, where I understand there is also a willingness. But my question concerns Northern Ireland, where I understand people are willing to be more supportive of refugees and to accept them into local communities. Even if district councils in Northern Ireland want to do more on behalf of child refugees, is there any way for money to be made available for it?
It seems to me that we are in a total logjam on this one. It is the wish of the Government that local authorities do more for child refugees. I believe it is the wish of most people in this country that we support doing more, yet in Northern Ireland there is no mechanism for taking it further. We can wait until the Assembly is restored, but I think the situation is more urgent. I would like to feel that the people of Northern Ireland can share their commitment and do as people up and down the country in England have done by making more resources available to child refugees. I think I have made my point; it is just a pity. If there were an up-and-running Assembly, some of us would make a beeline for Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive and ask them: “What about child refugees? What are you going to do about them?” At the moment, all we can do is voice our concerns here in the House.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, I echo the remarks of my noble friend Lady Suttie and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, in respect of the contribution made by David Ford during his time as a Member of the Legislative Assembly and, indeed, as Minister of Justice. I also echo the concerns that have been raised in respect of the recent violence in my own part of Belfast and in other parts of Northern Ireland. These two things are not unconnected. One thing that we all recognised, throughout past years, was that when politics was not working, other people stepped into the vacuum. Power was exercised by some people outside of democratic politics.
When David Ford was the Minister of Justice, there was remarkably little debate about justice. He addressed policing and—not always to people’s pleasure—he addressed the legal system and how much lawyers were paid. He also did a lot of work on prisons. In many ways, public debate became much more thoughtful, reflective and quiet because he was there. It is easy to forget that he was there because he was prepared to take a considerable hit and a lot of criticism, as those in the two major components of politics—unionism and nationalism—were unable to reach an agreement about who the Justice Minister should be. He was prepared to make sacrifices to ensure that the Executive and the Assembly continued.
Now that we do not have that contribution, we have drifted into a totally unsatisfactory situation. Let us just reflect. Clause 5 says that the provisions in the Bill are to take effect as though this was the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is not the Northern Ireland Assembly and it is not even remotely like it. Let us remember that there are no nationalists at all in this Chamber. When people talk about alternatives to devolution and think about some or all powers being brought back to this Parliament, we need to remind ourselves that the solution that would be proposed by nationalists and republicans in Northern Ireland would indeed be that powers should be taken back but taken back to joint authority with the Irish Government. If we had a reasonable representation of the people of Northern Ireland in this House or the other place, that would be the debate that would be had, and we must not forget it. I do not say that because I support that position— I do not—but we have to be realistic about it.
We have drifted into this situation. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, rightly pointed out, it is now 17 or 18 months since we had a devolved Administration in Northern Ireland. In January 2017 the Assembly was stood down. We had a debate about Northern Ireland in February, in which I spoke. We then had a debate in March, in which I again spoke, and we had another debate in April. We did not have one in May because we had an election. We debated it again in June, and on 18 July last year we had a debate on Northern Ireland that centred particularly on justice and security. We talked about the problems of the paramilitaries and said that, if things were not resolved, those problems would get worse. A year later that is absolutely the case. None of this should be a surprise.
However, there is worse news than that. In the Northern Ireland Act 1998, to which the Minister referred, there is a very clear injunction on the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that if the Executive falls, within seven days—not seven weeks, seven months or indeed 17 months—he or she will propose a date for an election. There might be a delay in that election of a reasonable period, but no judge anywhere would in any way regard the period that there has been as reasonable. Does that mean that one cannot move to direct rule? It would be very difficult to carry support across the community in Northern Ireland for a move to direct rule without at least implementing what was in previous agreements and in the Northern Ireland Act 1998—that is, an election. If an election did not produce or result in the formation of an Executive, I could then understand how there would be a need to move to direct rule or whatever arrangement was proposed, but I think that it would be very difficult politically, and possibly even legally.
My personal view is that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has effectively been operating ultra vires for months. On any reasonable reading of the 1998 Act, it is quite clear that there should have been a decision to have an election long before now. Would an election bring about any change? I have no idea. In the last few years I have given up predicting the outcome of elections in any part of the world, and not just elections but referendums as well. We have no idea whether it would bring about a change. The last election did change the overall political balance in Northern Ireland, but whether that was or was not a good thing is open to question. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, asked whether there is any way in which the people of Northern Ireland can have a say about some of these issues. There is a very obvious way in which they can have a say and that is by having an election, whatever the result—good, bad or indifferent.
This legislation carries us through in terms of the budget until 31 March 2019. A couple of days before that there will be quite an important development: Brexit will happen on 29 March. What we are saying is that this would carry us through to the other side of Brexit. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is getting excited about the possibility that Parliament might not be here over the next few weeks to debate the issues of Brexit, because Brexit is so important. The people of Northern Ireland have had no representatives debating Brexit over this whole period. Now we are speculating over the possibility that Brexit may have already occurred before their representatives are back. This is a wholly unsatisfactory, unreal and possibly illegitimate position to take according to the legislation, never mind any political agreements.
I ask the Minister what undertakings have been given. Enda Kenny, the former Taoiseach, said that the Prime Minister, Theresa May, gave an undertaking that there would not be a move to direct rule. We have legislation that makes it clear that a date should be set for elections. How can Her Majesty’s Government justify not making any moves and allowing drift? And there is a further problem. If there were a move to hold elections, that would not immediately give civil servants political accountability unless a Government were formed.
A lot of nice things have been said about those in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and I am not going to say nasty things about them. However, all my experience of them has been that they are very conservative in their decisions. They do not take risks. The last time they took a serious risk was probably over DeLorean, and that did not work out terribly well. It is not a question of whether or not something is legal, but this case referred to by other noble Lords puts a blight on any creativity by civil servants. They are not going to take a risk that they might be out of order. Whatever the legalities, and even if there were an appeal against them and the appeal was won, it would not take that sense of caution away from civil servants.
The Government, if they do not move, are simply creating more and more problems for themselves and for the people of Northern Ireland. The Government have to take a decision. Although I am sure that he is not in a position to take such decisions when he gets to his feet today, I plead with the Minister to tell his colleagues, including those at the most senior levels, that whatever their preoccupations about Brexit for the United Kingdom as whole, there are things going on in Northern Ireland that cannot be allowed to drift if there is going to be any responsible government and any reasonable outcome.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, I commence by agreeing with the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, in the tribute she and other noble Lords paid to David Ford, as Minister of Justice in Northern Ireland. As a former Minister of Home Affairs in Northern Ireland, I know very well the challenges that he faced, and the dangers he would have experienced. It is right we place on record a tribute to what he did. I did not belong to the political party that he belonged to, but in politics one has to respect things when they qualify for respect, and he should be respected.
The background to this debate is that we have no Assembly or Executive at Stormont. Why is that? It is because the Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister, Mr Martin McGuinness, resigned, and that automatically meant the resignation of the Executive and the downfall of the power-sharing Assembly. This Bill, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, means that funds end on 31 July 2018, and that is why we are urgently proceeding with it this afternoon. The budget then goes on to 31 March next year—a fairly important week for the United Kingdom, and especially Northern Ireland, where we have both the Brexit decision and the final budget. No extra funding is involved in this measure, but I want to join the Minister in paying tribute to the Northern Ireland Civil Service for the way in which it has helped to administer Northern Ireland in these difficult 18 months, where we have had no devolution in the Assembly or the Executive. It is only proper that we pay tribute to the service that civil servants have given across Northern Ireland to the entire community.
One of the reasons why no Executive has been formed in the last 18 months is the red lines stated by the Sinn Féin party. Some in Northern Ireland say that Sinn Féin does not want to be in the Executive until after the next southern Irish general election, because it does not want to have responsibility for making governmental decisions prior to that election. However, other reasons have been given. The red lines include same-sex marriage, abortion, and, as has been mentioned, an Irish language Act. For me, the first two—the marriage and abortion issues—are matters of individual conscience and should not be party policies. When we negotiated the Belfast agreement, in which the noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Alderdice, and I were involved, we made sure that there would be a petition of concern, whereby no one community could impose its will on the other community. But when it comes to matters of personal conscience, it is not about one community imposing its will on another. For example, today in Northern Ireland, many Roman Catholics and Protestants are united against abortion, while many other Roman Catholics and Protestants are united for it. It is not an issue that should be subject to a petition of concern but should be a matter of personal conscience.
When it comes to the Irish language, you would think that it did not exist in Northern Ireland, but of course it does. Unionist Governments and subsequent systems of government in Northern Ireland have financed the teaching of the Irish language in every school that wants it. Not only that: they have financed and promoted the creation of schools where Irish is the only medium of teaching and learning. Irish is promoted in a big way across Northern Ireland. So what is this Irish language Act that Sinn Féin wants? What more does it want than the teaching of Irish and the creation of all-Irish schools? Is it a quota system for Irish speakers in the Civil Service? That would be discrimination. Is it the provision of Irish interpreters in hospitals and GP practices? We need to have clarification, because the people in Northern Ireland do not know what is meant by the Irish language Act. If these provisions for people who speak Irish are made, others will require similar interpreters. After all, more people in Northern Ireland today speak Polish or Chinese than Irish on a daily basis. That is the position on the ground.
As one who helped to negotiate the Belfast agreement, of course I prefer devolution as the basis for the system of government in Northern Ireland: a power-sharing devolution, with local people making local decisions. But if that cannot be until after the next Irish election or until the red lines are removed or met, the only two ways forward are a new election, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, mentioned, or direct rule. Contrary to what the Minister said, I see the measure before this House today as another step towards direct rule. After all, it is a decision being made by us here in Westminster and not by a devolved Assembly in Stormont. In practice it is already direct rule.
If we had another election in Northern Ireland—and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has already yielded the fact that he is not a good judge of election results, and we know why—I doubt very much whether there would be real change in the political situation there. Secondly, I think it would be a very divisive election because of the Brexit issue, which has divided Northern Ireland. Thirdly, I fear that the election turnout would be very small indeed. Elections to Stormont have been having reduced turnouts in recent years because people on the ground are getting bored and tired of the deadlock in Northern Ireland.
Regrettably, I have to say, as someone who prefers devolution, the way ahead must be to grasp the challenge of direct rule soon. Although it will be criticised by nationalists, as has been mentioned, it will be welcomed by the large majority of Catholic and Protestant people on the ground. They want to see the deadlock broken.
Mention has been made of the £1 billion for Northern Ireland gained by the DUP in their supply and confidence agreement with the Conservative Government. How much has already been transferred to Northern Ireland? I have heard the figure of £410 million. When will the balance be made available? No one has ever mentioned that. I suppose it will be before the next election, but the problem is that the next election could be sooner than we expect. So when will we get this £590 million that was promised us? I do not want to see it slipping away, because of a general election.
This £1 billion was dishonestly presented by nationalists as funds for the DUP. It was called the “DUP money”. That is dishonest politics at its worst. It was stated clearly at the time that it was to be for the benefit of all traditions in Northern Ireland for programmes such as infrastructure. I am no defender of the DUP. More than any other person in Northern Ireland, I have contested elections against the DUP: in local elections, in Stormont elections, in European parliamentary elections, and for 20 years in our national Parliament here in the House of Commons. So I do not defend the DUP, but in fairness, I think we should hear when the rest of that money, which it successfully negotiated with the Conservative Government, will be coming to Northern Ireland. It was mentioned that some of that money was to go into infrastructure. Living near the border in Armagh, I know about the traffic deadlocks in that old city. I am horrified to find that of the MLAs—Newry and Armagh had six of them, but there are now five, and they claim they are all working even though Stormont is not in session—not one has asked for any of that £1 billion to be spent on required bypasses at Armagh city.
I keep saying southern Ireland, because I live on the border and what is called Ireland these days makes no sense to me. Living on the border suggests I am going to travel down to Ireland and that is crazy. I am travelling down to the south of Ireland—that is where it is and always will be geographically. The reason Ireland came into being was due to the Conservatives. The 1948 Act said it was the Republic of Ireland, but on the day in which the United Kingdom signed up to join the treaty of Rome, Jack Lynch—because the Republic of Ireland was joining the same day—asked the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, if he minded Lynch signing as the Prime Minister of Ireland. Heath agreed. Up to then, legally, it was the Republic of Ireland. From that day onwards, the country to the south of where I live became known as Ireland. I find that odd, because I live on the island of Ireland, and I am proud of it.
I regret that the Dublin Government refuse to discuss the economic challenge of Brexit with our Government, because the Republic, more than any of the other 27 nations in the European Union, will suffer most. It is a challenge that needs to be met and discussed. I was recently at a meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in Sligo, just south of the border. I was interested to find that people there, from Sligo, Monaghan, Leitrim and Cavan, were saying that they would suffer much from Brexit and were tired of listening to the Dublin politicians talking about the border. It was interesting for me as a unionist to hear nationalists in that area say this. They said, “It’s all right for the people in Dublin and Dún Laoghaire to complain about the border, but we live at the border and we are the ones who are going to suffer, because the common agricultural policy allocations from Brussels to Irish farms will be reduced in our area”. There are no farms in Dublin or Dún Laoghaire; it is easy for them to ignore the issue.
I welcome the new British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference—some people objected to it. I hope that, when it meets, it will consider the issue of Brexit and how it affects the economy on our island: Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. There are major problems there. An impoverished Republic of Ireland is not to the advantage of Northern Ireland. Before the conference meets, I want to remind people of the relevant chapter of the Belfast agreement.
When we negotiated the agreement—as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, will know because he was in charge of strand 1 talks on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party—we expelled and excluded the Dublin Government from all strand 1 talks. They were not allowed to be involved in the internal affairs and devolved issues of Northern Ireland. I specifically and successfully argued—it was included in the Belfast agreement—that, when it came to reference to the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, it should state clearly that there can be no talks at the conference about the structure of devolution. That is stated clearly in part 5 of the agreement, which deals with the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. I advise anyone who thinks that the Dublin Government can use that conference to discuss devolution or the internal affairs of Northern Ireland to look carefully at page 15 of the Belfast agreement. This conference should be a matter of co-operation between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland and certainly not a forum in which to raise the issue of devolution in Northern Ireland.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I echo the warm remarks made about David Ford by my noble friends and the noble Lords, Lord Bew and Lord Kilclooney, for which I thank them. He is a remarkable politician who has served Northern Ireland well over many years. I wish him a long and very happy retirement from Northern Ireland politics.
Almost everyone in Northern Ireland voted in support of the Good Friday agreement. That brilliant piece of political architecture led to the intervening years of relative peace and stability. So much was achieved by a coming together of widely differing views that Northern Ireland was looking forward to a bright future—that is, until the leadership of the country broke down in mutual recriminations and name calling, fit for a children’s playground, which I would liken it to were the consequences of their actions not so appalling for the very people they purport to serve. Both the DUP and Sinn Féin must carry the blame for the consequential mess that they have left behind—their leaders are entirely responsible for it. Something needs to be done to make them both see sense, and urgently.
It seems to me that the only party advocating sensible solutions to break the impasse is the Alliance Party. Under the leadership of Naomi Long, it is suggesting a range of measures needed to bring the Assembly and the Executive together again. These include the Secretary of State legislating quickly to help in devolved matters such as the Irish language and equal marriage, which we have heard about from noble Lords this afternoon. On reserved matters, reform of the petition of concern could see it be limited to matters of a constitutional nature and to institutions which were established under the Good Friday agreement.
It is felt that significant reform of the petition of concern would future-proof the Assembly to deal with other social policies and equality issues and prevent any one party being able to evade scrutiny or accountability to the Assembly. In fact, as we have heard from a number of noble Lords today, scrutiny and accountability have gone by the board since January 2017. This is an absolute disgrace considering the amount of money given to Northern Ireland to enable it just to function without proper government.
Is the Minister prepared to seek multi-party talks, which should be led by a totally independent facilitator? The time has certainly come for this to be considered: so bad have things become in Northern Ireland now, it is imperative that this is quickly implemented. Alongside this attempt to bring the two factions together, there is a need to reconvene the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which we have heard about; to reconstitute the Assembly departmental scrutiny committees; to re-establish the Northern Ireland Policing Board; to recall the Assembly to meet in plenary to vote on the legislation that had almost reached the statute books; and, finally, to establish a cross-party Brexit committee. The latter suggestion would enable MLAs to re-engage on issues of substance and make them take some responsibility in return for their large salaries.
That brings me to the budget. A great deal of money goes to Northern Ireland and I very much want to know what has been happening to it since January 2017, when the Assembly collapsed. In fact, the total budget for Northern Ireland is around £10 billion. This amount is for an area not much bigger than my county of North Yorkshire—how it would love to get even a small portion of that. According to the figures for 2016-17, Northern Ireland gets public spending per head of £11,042, versus the UK average of £9,159 and the England average of £8,898.
Noble Lords may say that there is not a lot of comparison between these figures and my county, but what I do know is that, had the absolutely disgraceful scenes we have seen in Northern Ireland in the past days happened anywhere else on this side of the Irish Sea, major questions would have been asked about our security. The fact that hooligans, ludicrously calling themselves “loyalists”, could get away with building an enormous bonfire close to houses—80 pallets high, I was told—beggars belief. Then we have dissident republicans throwing dangerous fireworks at Gerry Adams’ home—what an outrageous act—when there were young children nearby.
Once again, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has had to take the brunt of all this mayhem—the noble Lord, Lord Empey, referred to this. Their numbers have dropped to around 6,600, nearly 400 below what their chief constable said he needed in his 2014 resilience review and 900 below the number recommended by Patten. Also, as we have heard, the PSNI has been due a pay rise, which has been delayed yet again, probably due to the lack of an Administration. Nevertheless, that is extremely poor, given the amount of pressure the police are constantly under in Northern Ireland. The chief constable has asked for extra funding— £60 million over five years—to deal with current legacy issues and, of course, Brexit. Underresourcing has left them unable to cope with any surges or increases in terrorist activity or serious public order incidents. The police need more funding. The Police Federation for Northern Ireland is already paying for its well-being projects out of its own funds, whereas those in England and Wales are being paid for by the Government here. Will the Minister please look into this and give the PSNI the same consideration as England and Wales?
Another major concern is education in Northern Ireland. A huge amount of money is provided for this—rightly so—but how much of it is going into integrated education? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that major consideration should be given to this. Shared education in Northern Ireland is not the same as integrated education. It means using others’ facilities; it does not mean shared in the sense that students of both schools use those facilities together at the same time. Only integrated education can overcome the years of segregation that Northern Ireland schools have had to endure, with their consequent underpinning of difference between the communities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, who is not in her place today, has been the greatest supporter and instigator of integrated education, and her wise words and total commitment to it will be sorely missed in this House when she retires in a few days’ time. Northern Ireland owes her a massive debt of gratitude for all she has done to promote these schools for future generations of Northern Irish children. They are all fortunate indeed to have had her as their champion and will continue to do so.
Some of the funds authorised in this budget are drawn from the £1 billion agreed as part of the Government’s confidence and supply arrangements with the DUP, as we have heard. How has this expenditure been authorised? Apart from the debates in this House and the other place, what other scrutiny has been, or will be, applied to this expenditure—indeed, not just to this expenditure, but to all spending decisions that will flow from this budget? Can the Minister inform us what the current status is of the remainder of that £1 billion? If it is not going to be spent to help all the people of Northern Ireland, I hope it is sitting in a bank account gaining a decent amount of interest. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, commented on that.
This budget has no Administration to deal with it, only the Northern Ireland Office, and it has had to defer many decisions because there is absolutely no leadership from the politicians who should be held responsible for allocating the huge amounts of money we pass to Northern Ireland. I urge those politicians now to do the right thing: come together, iron out your differences around a negotiating table and get on with the job you were elected to do.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, this has, to say the least, been an interesting debate. Having listened to some of the speakers, I detect a degree of real honesty in attempting to deal with the issues that persist in Northern Ireland. I also detect a degree of misinformation from some of those who have spoken. However, not least, I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, reminisce about the times that he fought the DUP—and lost, incidentally. But that was then and this is now. Therefore we have to move on, as we are being constantly urged to do, and my party, the DUP, is up for that—for moving on and taking Northern Ireland forward and into a new place. The whole Province yearns for that, no matter which side of the debate people come from. Let us move on to a better place, a better future and better prospects for the future generations of Northern Ireland. The DUP is up for that—it has been and it continues to be.
The Bill before us today is vital because we have to pass this budget in order for general public services to function. It is vital to ensure that the day-to-day running of departments can continue. It is, however, a Bill that should have been brought forward by the Finance Minister for the Northern Ireland Executive and debated by the Northern Ireland Assembly. That is the proper place for it, and we regret that that is not happening.
It was perhaps an early warning sign of Sinn Féin’s unwillingness to govern for the good of everyone in Northern Ireland that the Sinn Féin Finance Minister in the Assembly, before it was collapsed, failed to bring forward a budget. It was the single most important job for any Finance Minister and for the then Minister, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, and his party ducked taking tough decisions. Sinn Féin never liked taking tough decisions. Sometimes tough decisions, and indeed unpopular decisions, have to be taken, but Sinn Féin is not up for that.
Budgets will always contain making tough choices and prioritising often scarce financial resources. I am pleased that, as a result of the extra resources secured for Northern Ireland by the DUP, this is a better budget settlement than would otherwise have been the case. The increase in resources for health represents an extra £71 million for patients in Northern Ireland. We know that demand, as always, continues to increase, but it demonstrates not only the benefits of the extra funding secured but the need to ensure that the long-term process is carried out.
Similarly, the 4.3% increase for the Department of Education represents an extra £36.5 million for schools—and we do not exclude integrated education; we never have. The DUP has sought to deliver for everyone in Northern Ireland, not just for narrow sectional interests. We see some of that funding delivered through this budget. There is £100 million to progress health transformation, £20 million to tackle deprivation, £10 million for mental health services and £80 million to tackle health and education pressures. Had this money not been included in this budget, the public would have felt the impact of a much more severe budget settlement.
I turn to another issue. Last year in another place, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health stated,
“the hon. Lady is right when she says there should be genuine choice. We do not want anyone to feel that they cannot have an abortion, any more than we want them to feel that they have to have one. We really want women to be able to make informed choices and to feel empowered to have the child, if that is what they would like to do. The important thing is that we empower women. That is the whole purpose of what we are trying to do here—to empower women and allow them to make choices that are safe for them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/11/17; col. 1307-08.]
Given this very clear commitment on the part of the Government not to incentivise women to have abortions or not to have abortions but to empower them equally to make whatever choice they prefer, I would like to ask the Minister how this relates to the free abortion services provided for women from Northern Ireland in England.
When announcing the proposal in another place on 23 October, the then Equalities Minister stated:
“The funding will be accessed via a grant scheme that will be administered by the Department of Health. The cost of this service will be met by the Government Equalities Office with additional funding provided by HM Treasury. A small number of procedures will continue to be provided through the NHS where this is necessary for medical reasons. NHS providers will also be reimbursed by the Department of Health”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/17; col. 6WS.]
In this context, will the Minister please explain how the relevant resource is being allocated to equally empower women from Northern Ireland to decide to continue their pregnancy as to terminate it? Clearly, if the Government in England are only offering finance through the Government Equalities Office, with additional funding provided by HM Treasury, to empower women to make a particular decision in relation to pregnancy—namely, termination—it is not about empowering women per se but rather concerned with incentivising them to abort. I am sure that the Minister would agree with me that that would be inappropriate.
In raising this issue, however, I note that in the Scottish Parliament on 31 October 2017 when the Minister, Aileen Campbell, was asked by an MSP how free abortions for women from Northern Ireland would be funded by the NHS in Scotland she responded saying:
“However, it is also important to recognise that the Scottish Government will receive consequentials because of the new spend that is required to fund the equivalent policy that the UK Government announced for England. Those consequentials will be used to fund the service in Scotland”.
Mindful of this, can the Minister tell us what the budget consequential is for Northern Ireland and whether, if the balance of resource in other UK jurisdictions is being spent on providing abortion rather than supporting women to continue with their pregnancy, the Northern Ireland consequential could not be spent to try to balance things out from the Whitehall perspective, empowering women to keep their babies, so that the net effect of the money across the UK as a whole is not effectively to incentivise abortion? I recognise that the Minister may not be able to answer that today, but I am quite prepared to accept an undertaking from him that he will write to me on that matter.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
My Lords, it has been an interesting, short and fascinating debate. I add my tribute to my noble friend Lady Blood, who is due to retire in the next week. I have known her for just over 21 years. She played an enormous role in the Good Friday agreement as a leading member of the Women’s Coalition, but since then as well. I know no one who is less prejudiced than May Blood and I wish her well. I know she will continue her good work in Northern Ireland even though she might not take a regular part in your Lordships’ proceedings. We will miss her.
Similarly, I add my tribute to David Ford. I have known him for over 20 years. He has been a great servant of the people of Northern Ireland and a great Minister. He introduced the changes in security and became the first homegrown Minister responsible for security in Northern Ireland. Again, I am quite convinced that David will play his part still, even though he might formally be retired.
I understand and accept that the Bill is necessary, but I do not welcome it. The Minister said that it is short and technical, and indeed it is—it is both those things. But it is also a monumental symbol of failure because, at the end of the day, this has to go through, but it is effectively going through because events have proved to have failed in Northern Ireland. It is a failure that civil servants have had to take big decisions affecting people’s lives for nearly two years in Northern Ireland. Even their decisions are now suspect because of a court case. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, that there should be an appeal because if they cannot take decisions because of the law then no one will and, frankly, that is crazy.
If noble Lords read Hansard for the debate on the Bill in the other place, they will see that every single Member of Parliament—all, of course, on the unionist side in the House of Commons—referred to individual services in their constituencies and on a wider scale in Northern Ireland now being affected by the absence of an Executive and an Assembly: the health service, education service, planning, the environment, roads, highways and so forth. It is also, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, quite obvious that there is now no nationalist voice in either Chamber of the British Parliament, mainly because members of Sinn Féin decided not to take their seats in the House of Commons. It does not mean that there are not literally hundreds of thousands of Catholic and nationalist people who should be represented in our British Parliament but are not. Anything that we and the Government do must be predicated on the basis that both the nationalist and the unionist communities will be comfortable with it.
I noticed in the papers the other day that Derry City and Strabane Council was concerned about the future of its airport. It meant that the chief executive of the local authority had to write to the Permanent Secretary of the Northern Ireland Civil Service to see if he could come up with a decision—I do not think he will—on the future of that airport. I had to take a decision on it myself when I was Secretary of State. It is hugely important to that part of Ireland, including the Republic of Ireland, which borders County Derry. Things are becoming intolerable.
One of the difficulties we have is that, in all these 18 months—and presumably in the months that lie ahead—there has been no accountability for the decisions that have been taken. There is no imagination to try to work out what sort of accountability there could be in the absence of devolution. Any Member of Parliament in the House of Commons or the House of Lords cannot table a Question about the domestic affairs of Northern Ireland, which is wrong. MPs and Members of this place should be able to do that. The Northern Ireland Select Committee could take a wider role in the absence of devolution. There is a case—the Alliance Party has made a good case, as has the Select Committee—that there is a role for Members of the legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland to meet at least to question Ministers on the budget and other issues that affect people in Northern Ireland. When I was Secretary of State with responsibility for finance in Northern Ireland there was no Executive, but I went to Stormont and was questioned for two days about the budget. Why can that not happen?
However, it is all inadequate because the only answer, inevitably, is the restoration of the institutions of the Good Friday agreement—the Executive and the Assembly. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, was absolutely right. We have not seen any new ideas. Nothing has changed over the last year as to how we can try to tackle this situation. I repeat some of the things that have been suggested and some of the things I have suggested over the last year.
The Prime Minister is engaged on other matters. I can understand the pressures she is under and the pressures that the Taoiseach is under. However, all the negotiations that led to success in Northern Ireland had the detailed involvement of two Prime Ministers in trying to persuade political parties to come to a deal. No proper attempt has been made by either Prime Minister to do anything thing like the Prime Ministers in the past, including John Major and Tony Blair, did to move the situation. That should happen despite Brexit.
All the parties should meet in a proper round-table forum. I know that there has been a problem and the two main parties are reluctant to do that, but there would not have been a Good Friday agreement or a St Andrews agreement if all the parties had not met together, irrespective of their size. They can talk about significant issues relevant to the parties within their own community. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, mentioned the Alliance Party and gave us a list of possible things we could do to look at these matters. Why can they not be discussed in a proper forum of all parties? It has not been held.
Going into a couple of rooms in Stormont House and talking to the different parties for half an hour is not all-party talks. They have to be proper round-table talks and they have to go on and on. You cannot make peace and political process part-time. It has to be a full-time thing—that is what we have discovered in Northern Ireland. We have taught the world how peace processes can operate—in the Philippines and elsewhere. Of course, there should be the possibility of an independent chair. It has been dismissed for some reason; I have no idea why. We should be able to have another George Mitchell. No one will be quite as good as him but there must be a person somewhere in the world who is able to take on the task, if it is agreed by the parties, of course.
There have been occasions when parties have been taken elsewhere. Sometimes it works; sometimes it does not. It failed in Leeds Castle. I was there. It succeeded in St Andrews. I was not there. Perhaps there is a correlation between the two—I do not know. It is worth a try. The problem, of course, is trust—or lack of it. The political parties in Northern Ireland currently do not trust each other, but it was always thus. A number of Members of your Lordships’ House have said, “Look at the issues we had to deal with 20 years ago, or since”. They are hugely more significant than an Irish language Act and other issues that are now deadlocking the process. I think there is a role for this Parliament, possibly in taking on issues such as the Irish language Act. Perhaps there should be a commission on it and then this Parliament could take it through.
Perhaps this Parliament could deal with the legacy issues that the Minister has asked the people of Northern Ireland to look at. We can help out. It is right that the two Governments meet together. The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference is part of the Good Friday agreement. It is not—nor should it be—joint authority, but it gives opportunities for the two Governments, who are guarantors of the Good Friday agreement, to try to break a deadlock. No one is suggesting for one second that the Irish Government should suddenly take part in chairing the negotiations on strand 1 of the Good Friday agreement—the institutions. I chaired them for two years and would not allow any Irish Minister in; it was not their business. The business of the Irish Ministers was, together with the British Ministers, to try to persuade the political parties that they had to come to a deal—not to interfere with the internal affairs of the United Kingdom: that was for British Ministers alone—and talk about ways of breaking that deadlock.
I was a direct ruler for five years. I did not care for it much. In fact, the less pleasant parts of the media there called me “Direct Ruler Murphy” from time to time. I did not care to be doing it, but it had to be done. Somebody had to take a decision as a politician. I was a Welsh Member of Parliament taking decisions about issues of grave importance in Northern Ireland. I do not want direct rule. No one wants it because, once you get it, you cannot get out of it easily.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, referred to health and to welfare. There is a slight difference because although welfare was technically part of the Northern Ireland budget, it was still effectively following the British model while the health service is totally devolved. These things are worth looking at. There is a possibility that you can bring in very limited direct rule, by bringing in a sunset clause that says you can have direct rule for six, seven or eight months and bring down the deadline. Let that be the deadline for the end of the talks. However, we must have new thinking because there is so much at stake. The Good Friday agreement itself is at stake. Every party that decides not to take part in the institutions of the Good Friday agreement is ignoring that agreement.
As a number of noble Lords have said, in Northern Ireland, more than in any other part of the United Kingdom, when there is instability and uncertainty, where there is a vacuum, violence will fill it. We have seen that in the last couple of weeks, from both sides, loyalists and dissident republicans. That would not happen if we did not have an Assembly in Cardiff or a Parliament in Scotland. It happens, though, if we do not have an Assembly in Northern Ireland. We cannot take any more risks. We cannot drift any more. We must come to a conclusion. I know we cannot do it in the next few weeks. There is Recess; it is summer. However, there is no reason in this wide world why, when September comes, Parliament starts again and politicians return from their holidays, there cannot be a renewed, proper effort to restore devolution and restore those institutions. In the absence of restoration, I cannot believe what is in front of the people of Northern Ireland.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
My Lords, I echo the tributes paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Blood. She grabbed hold of me in my first week in the Northern Ireland Office—I do not mean that figuratively; I mean quite literally—took me aside and explained some issues about education, which she was most passionate about. She will be missed here but I do not doubt that her voice will continue to be heard. I also pay tribute to David Ford. He fulfilled an extraordinary role in the Assembly and did good work. His voice also must continue to be heard in the councils where his experience can be drawn on. I suspect both have long careers ahead of them where they may yet give great service to Northern Ireland.
It is not often that I get my own words repeated back to me but, again, it is a sign that I have been doing this for quite some time that my words are now being interpreted. It is in itself quite a pleasure. I am never quite sure if I did indeed say certain things but I will take them on board.
This was an extraordinarily wide-ranging debate. I think the best way I can address it is like building a jigsaw. I will start with the outside square edges and then try to build into the centre. I will begin with a very categorical statement. It is a rhetorical question. How many more times can I do this? The reality is not many. The budget that rests in Northern Ireland, and which we are moving forward today, is based on the priorities set by the outgoing Administration. However, we are moving further and further away from that particular piece of certainty. It is like pulling apart a piece of toffee. It is still holding together but it is getting more and more tenuous and it will break. We cannot extend it too far.
Some have said that nothing has changed, but actually a lot has. The people of Northern Ireland are growing weary of the situation there. Their priorities are not being acted on. We are having to interpret them—often within legally challenged constraints, with more constraints yet to come—and we are trying our best to deliver against objectives that are becoming more and more difficult to maintain and to deliver at the very time when there are greater challenges ahead.
I will come on to speak about the money within the budget, but I want to stress one other thing. It might seem an odd thing to say in the middle of a debate about the budget, but money is not everything. Money is not the whole answer to this dilemma. The reality remains that we need full scrutiny and a situation where the Civil Service is not exposed to legal challenge, where it is given the support of democratically elected politicians. We also need the nuances that are brought in when we have to interpret how money should be spent, rather than historically gazing over our shoulder at how it was once spent and how we might be able to continue to spend it.
I echo the words of many noble Lords today who said that they speak with some regret. There should be no doubt that I too speak with some regret: I have no desire to be taking forward a budget for Northern Ireland. That responsibility rests more naturally and sensibly elsewhere. I shall try to address some of the more fundamental points raised by a number of noble Lords. It is appropriate, in this week of all weeks, as we recall the violence of the past few days, to consider exactly what a struggle we are witnessing inside Northern Ireland. Many noble Lords have said today that if there is a vacuum, violence will fill it: we are seeing evidence of that again already.
I emphasise that the Government have spent a considerable sum of money. Since 2010, almost £250 million has been invested in additional security services in Northern Ireland. Since 2015, £25 million has been invested through the fresh start agreement. Would it not be great if the money did not have to be spent on those things? Think of what we could do with a quarter of a billion pounds. Yet, sensibly and necessarily, that money has been made available and will continue to be made available. On the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, about the wider legacy issue and pensions, which I know is a matter dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who is of course not in his place today, we have referred this to the Victims Commissioner. We are looking for further guidance on this point, but we cannot lose time: we need to be able to move forward, so once we are in receipt of information from the Victims Commissioner we shall take that on board and move forward with it.
When we talk about the importance of re-establishing an Executive, these are matters that rest more comfortably in the devolved sphere, but in the absence of that, we cannot allow this simply to drift. I know that the word “drift” has been used by a number of noble Lords today: we cannot allow that drift to continue. In the past I have used the phrase “thinking outside the box”. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, condemned me by saying that it is not a box but a sarcophagus. From the papers over the last few days, I recall that a great, black sarcophagus has been found in the depths of Alexandria and there is a great fear of what will happen when it is opened. Will it be like some kind of Pandora’s box, when all the horrors of humanity pour forth? As I said a moment ago, I cannot keep doing this; we are at stage where change is coming. The question is what form that change will take.
The noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, put forward a number of issues, not least of which is whether there can be an independent chairman. I note that his noble friend Lord Hain has already referred a name to me in that regard. I emphasise, as I did in the past, that we cannot set aside any of these issues. A number of noble Lords asked about the evolution in Northern Ireland: what can happen next? Noble Lords will know that there are broadly three options: we are at that tripartite road. We can continue to try, as best we can, to string out that piece of toffee, hoping it does not snap in the middle: that is one option. I am the living embodiment of that today. The other options are, of course, to move towards an election, and that is certainly on the table—my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has not in any way ruled that out. The final option, of course, is direct rule. Some today have said that this budget itself represents a form of direct rule. In truth, it represents a necessary and essential step to preserve good government in Northern Ireland.
Noble Lords will be aware that we have reached a critical stage: the previous budget Bill allowed us to allocate funds—45%. We will reach the point over the summer where we will have spent those funds, and we therefore need to move forward to ensure full allocation of the total amount of money. That will be a critical reality check for the civil servants in Northern Ireland. Of those three routes, one will have to be taken: the question is when and how it will unfold. The greatest hope of all is the magic option: that each of the parties will come back together again and be able to broker a deal that will address all these issues. I note, as a slightly ironic comment, that the last time all the parties were gathered together in Belfast was at the PinkNews awards only a few weeks ago: that, in itself, is a reminder of how far many of those parties have come over the last short period.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, and many others, spoke of the importance of the court cases that are coming up, and the question of an appeal. That is being strongly and actively considered by the Northern Ireland Civil Service, which will have to move that forward. It is being actively considered by ourselves. As many noble Lords noted today, if we are found in any way not to be able to act in this regard, we will be in a very difficult position indeed. That is also true in regard to the RHI case: that would place even greater constraint upon us. We cannot be in a situation where good governance can be delivered neither by an absent Executive, nor by the UK Government in our current formation, so we will need to make progress to deliver, and to be cognisant of the realities of what those court cases will mean.
The noble Lords, Lord Empey and Lord Murphy of Torfaen, asked about the role of the Prime Minister. I can state today that the Prime Minister will be spending the next few days in Northern Ireland. I can also confirm that she has spent much time speaking with the parties. The point I make to noble Lords is that it is not just a question of what happens inside that room, and drawing the people into the room; it is how the individuals in the room communicate with their supporters outside the room. There is a bigger test here that we need to be able to wrestle and bring to the ground.
On the question of the supply and confidence money, the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, was quite right to stress that it does not rest in one single community; it is for all communities. Of the £1 billion total which has been set aside, £430 million will have been spent as we progress this budget Bill. Some £20 million was spent in the last period; that leaves £410 million. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, was quite right to stress that much of that money will rest inside the health spend and the education spend: that is additional spending that would not be in Northern Ireland but for the supply and confidence fund. Importantly, £10 million of that is for mental health issues. It is also important to stress that, as a consequence of the Prime Minister’s commitment to funding for the NHS, there will be a significant Barnett consequential uplift in Northern Ireland—a figure, I imagine, of around £760 million, if my maths is correct, during the period 2023-24. That is jam tomorrow, not jam today, but it represents a significant investment of money which I hope will be available for health in Northern Ireland.
On the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the Government have made funds available for the accommodation and housing of refugees and refugee children in Northern Ireland. If the noble Lord will allow, I will write to him in greater detail, to make sure he has all the information he is looking for. I am also very cognisant of the importance of integrated education. It is important for me to stress that that is, of course, a devolved matter and one which I hope will be able to be progressed. I suspect that if the noble Baroness, Lady Blood, is taking some time off from here, she may well wrestle some of these issues to the ground in Northern Ireland—she will be welcome there, I hope. We are supportive of the idea of an integrated educational approach in Northern Ireland, cognisant of the devolution settlement itself.
The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, continues to ask me challenging questions, to which I do not always have appropriate answers. To take up some of his points, we cannot right now place upon the shoulders of civil servants the pressures they have had to withstand—the two impending court cases and appeals stand testimony to that—and we must therefore move forward with a new way of thinking. I am conscious, as he rightly points out, that civil servants are conservative—with a small C—and that is why we end up with very cautious spending, rather than the spending that elected representatives might be willing to embrace. I am conscious that we need to make sure that we are in a position where the realities of the challenges in Northern Ireland are dealt with.
I was struck by the note raised in the debate by the noble Lord, Lord Bew: the demographic time-bomb which many of the home nations are wrestling with is not actually the same challenge in Northern Ireland. I would be fascinated to understand more about that. I am going to do my own investigations to understand more about exactly how that will work in practice. In so recognising, it therefore means that the solutions to the challenges of Northern Ireland cannot be taken from a textbook. They need to be tailored to the situation that we witness.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, took us again into the back story that brings us to the point we have reached. It is a reminder that many of the challenges that we face today have a lengthier pedigree. Importantly, the noble Lord stresses the value to the communities of Northern Ireland of this additional supply and confidence money. We need to make sure, however, that that money can be spent. There will come points when we cannot, by our current methodology, create funding proprieties to spend all of the money. It simply will not be deliverable under our current arrangements so, although the £1 billion will remain an important sum of money, unless we can make some serious progress, it will remain at least partially underspent.
As to where the money that has not yet been spent is, I do not think it rests in a big bank account somewhere, but it might do. The reality is that it is money that is fully available to the communities of Northern Ireland, which will be spent delivering the very good work that the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, stressed throughout his speech. It is important to remember that that money can indeed do good things. Making sure that we can spend it will be the ultimate test.
The noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, raised a number of technical points about how we could move things forward. I admire the points that were being raised and I recognise that, if we could do them, we would make some progress. I fear that the first step in that process is a challenging one—how we get from where we are to delivering against them. We need to be in a situation soon, however, where a lot of these issues are addressed, I would hope, by an incoming, re-established, sustainable Executive. We need to be conscious that this is a necessary step.
The spending of monies will continue to be scrutinised, as it has been before, by the various bodies that are responsible for auditing in Northern Ireland. Those figures and reports are made public and I will ensure that, when they are published, a note of that publication is registered with your Lordships to make sure that they are fully aware of them.
I note with some curiosity the question of libel law reform from the noble Lord, Lord Bew. I would like to learn more of that, so I am going to invert tradition and ask him to write to me, so that I can learn more about what he had in mind. He was also correct in stressing the importance of how information can be used and misused. He was absolutely correct when he was talking about the checks around the Irish border. We need to be clear that we are not talking about a borderless border; there are still realities that interface between Northern Ireland and Ireland itself—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, would say, the Republic of Ireland—depending on how they touch together. The purpose of the British-Irish Council is to deal with east-west issues. That is its principal purpose and what it should continue to do, within the context of the Good Friday agreement.
The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, carefully raised the issue of abortion and wider abortion services. He also gave me an opportunity to write to him, and I will take him up on that kind offer. That is more appropriate, so that I can be absolutely clear what the answers are and make sure that I am not short-changing him in any way. I note again that the figures quoted are serious contributions to Northern Ireland financially, and that they stem from the passing of this particular budget Bill.
I conclude with the remarks of “Direct Ruler Murphy”, or the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. I like it as a term although I recognise exactly what it means. I hope there is a recognition that we are not going to shirk responsibilities. We have not been successful in delivering what needs to be delivered. There is enough blame to rest upon a number of shoulders, and we do not claim ownership rights over all of it. We will, however, need to make progress. I am not invoking the sarcophagus of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, but rather the needful elements that we must embrace; in the next few months each of the issues raised by the noble Lord will have to be seriously considered. We cannot continue to move forward on the basis that we have established so far. It is now without the underpinnings to give it the confidence of the people of Northern Ireland or, indeed, wider democratic confidence itself.
Lord Empey
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but he goes back to his analogy in his three-way split: the current position, direct rule or a restoration of devolution. That worries me, because it does not introduce any new thinking. The answer in the short term will have to be somewhere between those different options. I was hoping to hear that there would be a look at options, whatever they might be, before we close all those doors. I raised a question about police pay and the Hart inquiry. Perhaps the noble Lord would write to me on those matters.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I thank the noble Lord for this intervention. We have not reached a fork in the road; technically, we have reached a trident in the road as there are three options. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, we must find new ways to travel along those roads. There need to be new ways of thinking about this so I cannot, in good conscience, rule out any of the issues that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, has brought to the debate today. Each of those may yet play its part and will have to do so sooner than might have been the case had we not been where we stand right now, cognisant of the challenges of delivering this budget within the timescale that we have. I am very aware of that.
I am aware that policing is a devolved matter, but it deserves a greater response than trying to swipe it away with that statement. I will again take the opportunity to write to the noble Lord and give a fuller answer.
A number of noble Lords raised the question of MLA pay. In short order, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will be addressing that matter. It is time to do that.
In finally responding to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, I am aware and pleased that he is able to support the necessary steps, recognising that it is what it is, which is necessary. The measure is short and technical, but it also recognises that we do not wish to be where we are. That is something I am very conscious of. I have no desire to stand here and do this again, fun though it is.
I am going to slightly change the tone of the debate, because that might be useful. Many noble Lords will know one of the poets of Northern Ireland whose name is Carol Rumens. She wrote “Prayer for Belfast” and I am going to read it, because it is perhaps apropos today:
“Night, be starry-sensed for her,
Your bitter frost be fleece to her.
Comb the vale, slow mist, for her.
Lough, be a muscle, tensed for her.
And coals, the only fire in her,
And rain, the only news of her.
Small hills, keep sisters’ eyes on her.
Be reticent, desire for her.
Go, stories, leave the breath in her,
The last word to be said by her,
And leave no heart for dead in her.
Steer this ship of dread from her.
No husband lift a hand to her,
No daughter shut the blind on her.
May sails be sewn, seeds grown, for her.
May every kiss be kind to her”.
Royal Assent
Thursday 19th July 2018
(5 years, 9 months ago)
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