Asked by: Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, pursuant to the Answer of 16 January 2019 to Question 207548 on Northern Ireland Office: Brexit, for what reason calculating a specific allocation would be disproportionately difficult in relation to estimating the amount of funding her Department has allocated to preparing for the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by John Penrose
The Northern Ireland Office has not specifically allocated any funding for no deal preparations.
A number of staff across the Department work on both EU Exit and non-EU exit related work. Where staff spend some or all of their time working on EU Exit, this includes work to prepare for all potential exit scenarios, including no deal. It would therefore not be possible to accurately calculate or estimate how much staff time is spent solely on preparing for a no deal outcome.
Asked by: Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how much money his Department has allocated for preparations for the UK leaving the EU without a deal to date; how much of that funding has been made by way of ministerial direction; and for what functions that funding has been allocated.
Answered by John Penrose
EU Exit affects a number of work areas across the Department and will therefore encompass a proportion of workload for many staff, the amount of which will vary over time. Many of the same staff spend a proportion of their time preparing for leaving the EU (a) with and (b) without a deal. Those proportions vary continuously over time, so calculating a specific allocation would be disproportionately difficult.
Asked by: Vince Cable (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on the Northern Ireland economy that would be caused by the introduction of passport or ID checks on entry for passengers travelling from Great Britain.
Answered by Chloe Smith
We have been very clear that we want to protect the Common Travel Area (CTA) arrangements that have served these islands well for nearly 100 years. We are supported in that determination by the EU, the Irish Government and parties in Northern Ireland. This means no routine immigration controls on journeys from within parts of the CTA (Ireland and the Crown Dependencies (Isle of Man; Jersey; Guernsey)) to the UK.
We have been equally clear that as we exit the EU we will not countenance a situation that places new barriers between constituent parts of the United Kingdom. There is therefore, no question of any new passport or other checks on people travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As the Secretary of State said in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference there must be “no border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland or anything that fractures the internal market of the United Kingdom which benefits Northern Ireland hugely”.