Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how much funding has been provided by the Department of Communities in Northern Ireland to Christian places of worship excluding cathedrals in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by Steve Baker
Support for the voluntary and community sector is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Department for Communities has the responsibility for matters relating to the provision of funding to Christian places of worship in Northern Ireland.
As the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland set out in his Written Ministerial Statement to Parliament on 27 April, Northern Ireland Office officials and the Secretary of State have worked intensively with the Northern Ireland departments to set a budget for Northern Ireland for the 2023-24 financial year.
The right people to make these decisions are locally elected politicians in a fully functioning Northern Ireland Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly. In the absence of these, it will be for the relevant Northern Ireland department, in this case, the Department for Communities, to manage its funding.