Budget Resolutions

Jim Allister Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, sitting here for three hours for a three-minute speech is a bit like the Budget—there is not much in it for working people. Of course, the Budget is fundamentally controversial because it increases income for benefit families but increases taxation for working families. That is the summary of this Budget. It is a Budget born in controversy because the abiding and yet unanswered question is: since the Chancellor knew that tax receipts were up, why did she continue to conceal that in her Downing Street doom loop speech? There has not been an answer to that.

There is much in this Budget to disappoint. For hard-working family farmers, there is a big disappointment. The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy) laid out very clearly the disappointment of many of us at the fact that the death tax will continue for family farms. Every Member has an opportunity tonight, on resolution 50, to take a stand on that issue and I trust that many will.

On devolution, yes, there are Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland of £370 million. The problem is that the money is already spent, because Stormont so mismanages its funds that it has already overspent by £400 million. The money is gone. We have the tragic situation of the Chief Constable in Northern Ireland saying this week:

“devolution has simply not worked for policing in Northern Ireland…We have lost out as a result of devolution.”

That is the sad commentary, and that means that people in my constituency are less safe than they should be. Instead of having 7,500 police personnel as promised, we are down to 6,200 because of Stormont’s mismanagement, by and large, of the money it gets. There will probably come a point, I suggest to the Treasury, when it will have to put the Stormont Executive into special measures so that they can understand how to balance their books and account for matters as they should.

This Budget talks about four AI growth zones for the whole country, but there is none in Northern Ireland. Will the Minister tell us whether that is because Northern Ireland is going to be subject not to UK law but to the EU’s AI law? Is that why we are being excluded from those growth zones? Are we going to have another Irish sea border, this time in AI?