Disorder in Ballymena

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased that we all share the same tone with regard to current events and what is happening. The policing family are currently having to cope with a great deal, knowing that there may well be further operations in due course. I am pleased that the whole House sends its support.

Noble Lords will have seen, as I have, horrendous images of what has happened within the community. As we saw both last summer and at various points of community tension across the United Kingdom, this is not something that will be solved tomorrow. Community cohesion efforts will have to continue for months and years, to rebuild what has been broken over the last 24 hours. Northern Ireland Office officials have been meeting and engaging with community groups and will continue to do so. With regard to additional funding, I was pleased that the Chancellor, during the spending review, announced an £11 million pot for community cohesion products for Northern Ireland.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I live in Ballymena, and it is awful to see what happened there. It must have taken enormous courage for officers to face the petrol bombs and other missiles that were hurled at them. I salute that courage and I condemn absolutely what happened on the streets of our town.

Is the noble Baroness aware that the PSNI has only 6,200 officers? Had police numbers in Northern Ireland kept pace with those in England and Wales, and with the numbers to which the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, referred previously, we would have had 8,000 police officers. We do not have enough police officers. Officers in the PSNI still face national security risks and police them, and are still at risk of murder and attack every day.

Over the past 10 years, legacy has cost us £160 million. That would have given us at least 3,000 extra officers. The PSNI cannot recruit any more officers within the current budget. Can the noble Baroness tell us not that policing is a devolved matter but what steps His Majesty’s Government are taking to provide real ring-fenced funding for legacy costs, attributable to the long periods of direct rule, in order to allow our police service to recruit more officers, so that officers may police safely and the people of Ballymena and Northern Ireland may be safe?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has raised this issue with me several times and, unfortunately, my position cannot change. This is a devolved matter. At the other end of the building today, the Chancellor announced a record £19.3 billion of funding for the Northern Ireland Executive. We were all delighted to see Stormont return, but it is up to the Executive how they allocate that resource. The Barnett formula has a 24% additional consequential to ensure that there is appropriate funding to recognise the special status of Northern Ireland.

However, the noble Baroness raises a genuinely important point. The New Decade, New Approach agreement announced by the Executive promised to increase the number of officers to 7,500. They are short, and efforts need to be made, which is why we have announced additional security funding of £38 million—an increase from the last Government—to ensure that that amount of money can be ring-fenced to reflect the additional security situation in Northern Ireland, so that other resources can be deployed for the rest of the PSNI.