- Considered in Committee (Order, this day)
- [Dame Rosie Winterton in the Chair]
- Clause 1
- Departmental Functions
- 3:51 pm
- I remind Members that in Committee, they should not address the Chair as “Deputy Speaker”. Please use our names. Madam Chair, Chair, and Madam Chairman or Mr Chairman are also acceptable.
- I beg to move amendment 6, page 1, line 12, leave out “when an Executive is formed” and insert—“when the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly has completed a formal meeting at which substantive business has been transacted”.
- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:Clause stand part.Amendment 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 15, at end insert—“such as providing advice in relation to the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council’s 2023 Report, Updated estimate of the relative need for public spending in Northern Ireland, and the precedent arising from the December 2016 Agreement between the Welsh Government and the United Kingdom Government on the Welsh Government’s fiscal framework”.Amendment 7, page 2, line 21, leave out “may” and insert “must”.Amendment 8, page 2, line 21, at end, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—“(aa) consulting the Equality Commission, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council;(ab) who else is to be consulted;”.Amendment 9, page 2, line 24, leave out from “consultation” to end of line 27.Amendment 2, page 2, line 28, at end insert—“(4A) The Secretary of State must direct a Northern Ireland department to commission a report to provide an assessment of expenditure costs associated with communal divisions for the purpose of developing options for improving the sustainability of public finances in Northern Ireland.”This amendment would provide a report to make an updated assessment of the financial costs associated with a divided society and how they could be redirected to improve financial sustainability.Amendment 3, page 2, line 28, at end insert—“(4A) The Secretary of State must engage—(a) with Northern Ireland departments to explore options to transform public services and the economy in order to identify options for improving the sustainability of public finances in Northern Ireland;
- I rise to speak to amendment 6 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), and to make brief comments on a couple of other amendments.We absolutely echo and share the frustrations of others that we are doing yet another of these Bills in this place. I am struggling to think of a single such Bill—certainly in the three and a half years that we have been here—that was neither a cause nor an effect of Stormont dysfunction, which occupies rather too much time here and limits our potential. We understand the need for interim decision making, but the Bill risks going too far in bypassing Assembly scrutiny. Our amendments aim to address that by guarding against the potential use of graduated responses or the other fairly unedifying stunts that we have seen when the Assembly is being used as a political tool or weapon, and against the cynical use of such Bills to do things that damage public services in the name of reform, as a way to avoid responsibility and scrutiny.The DUP’s new clause 1(3) instances the possibility of the Assembly functioning in some way alongside these new powers in the absence of an Executive. I want to be absolutely clear: there is, as others have said, no alternative in the here and now to devolution under the Good Friday institutions. People are ready to suspend their disbelief one more time and go back in to make that work, but a graduated response allowing these powers to be deployed to do all the grisly stuff through indirect rule, and turning it into some soap opera where everybody is hopping up and down and opposing the changes, will not be appropriate.We cannot set up civil servants to instigate and drive controversial issues only to get them out of the way before everyone goes back in. We absolutely need reform in public services, but we need it to be done with scrutiny, not just as a mask for austerity. It needs to be done in a way that builds public trust so that people say, “Yes, you may lose service A, but you will gain service B and C”. Amendment 6 would support and evidence some of those necessary reforms by designing in a role for the Fiscal Council—a body that we have been hugely supportive of—as well as for the Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commissions as consultees. Those bodies are truly creatures of the Good Friday agreement. They are there for a reason and they should have a role in this as well, to give them a locus and so that, as I say, it is not used in a cynical way.
- I rise to speak to amendment 5, tabled by my party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), our Chief Whip, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), and other colleagues. I hope that the Minister of State has considered it positively, and I look forward to hearing that the Secretary of State agrees with it. He will know that it does not any way undermine the substance of his Bill, but that it will be hugely important in assisting him in gathering information as part of his consultation exercise, as we navigate and chart our course through the myriad issues discussed this afternoon relating to dangers to public finances.I do not think that anyone in the Chamber will disagree that I have probably said enough. The long and short of my aspiration is that the Minister of State, given all the pleasant support he has received from us to date, will look favourably on amendment 5.
- Stephen FarryI cannot promise to be quite as brief as my colleague, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), but I will try. Essentially, I want to speak to those amendments that stand in my name: amendments 2, 3 and 4, which are all focused on the issue of financial sustainability. We recognise the line that the Government have put into the Bill, and I seek to encourage the Minister to take it forward in a substantive way.
- 4:00 pm
- We are making three suggestions in that regard, the most significant of which relates to a potential financial package for Northern Ireland. Such a package needs to be on an invest-to-save basis, and directly linked to a very select number of areas: health, education, the economy, skills, infrastructure, and climate change mitigation would be our proposals in that regard. I acknowledge that we have to learn lessons from previous interventions from the Government through financial packages, and that the package will have to come with conditions. It will need to be linked to a very clear plan from an Executive about how reform will be taken forward—it would need to be over several years—but we do need to have transformation in Northern Ireland, as many people have acknowledged in this debate. Of course, before we can do transformation, we need to have a stabilisation of the finances, and we cannot do any of that in the context of a burning platform where we are in a spiral of cut after cut and decline after decline.
- We have the Bengoa report as the template for health transformation. It will take investment to make it happen, but through investment we will have much better outcomes for the people of Northern Ireland, and it will be on a more cost-effective basis. There is a real incentive for the Government to buy into this; if we do not invest, we will see waiting lists in Northern Ireland getting even longer. I would make the point that our waiting lists are already the longest in the UK, not by a small margin but by a very significant gap.
- The same applies to education. We have a massive problem of educational under-attainment in Northern Ireland. That is a major drag on our economy, as well as a blight on some people’s long-term economic and life opportunities, and the education funding gap between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is widening ever further. The Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker)—who was one of his predecessors in the Northern Ireland Office, and currently chairs the Education Committee—has particularly reinforced that point about the growing gap in funding.
- We have to grow our economy, which means investment in skills, and also investing in the right skills. The Government themselves are being very clear about the need to tackle Northern Ireland’s disproportionate level of economic inactivity—again, as part of the wider mission across the UK. If we can address those issues, the productivity gap between Northern Ireland and Great Britain will narrow; if we do not, it will widen, with all the attendant consequences that will flow from that. We have to take full advantage of the opportunities we have, including dual market access, the potential trade mission, and the trade conference that the Government are doing. I understand the reluctance and scepticism around this issue, but frankly, I do not see any alternative if we are to break that vicious cycle.
- I would use the analogy of a business that is struggling, where the business model is out of date and is not functioning. One of two things will happen: the business will die, or it will restructure. Often, if a business wants to restructure, it has to seek external finance to do so, but again, that finance will come with conditions around how that restructuring is taken forward. We have proposals in with the Government, and we welcome further engagement in that regard. I appreciate that such engagement is probably best done on a structured basis with the Northern Ireland parties; it should be done as quickly as possible, but there does need to be some sort of structure to that.
- Amendment 2 relates to the costs of a divided society, which have already been mentioned by my colleague, the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). Our amendment seeks the commissioning of a revised, updated report from a Northern Ireland Department—importantly, as a prelude to action finally being taken in this area. There are some very significant costs arising from duplication and, indeed, distortion in Northern Ireland’s public expenditure profile, which is linked to the legacy of division and violence, and ongoing patterns in how services are provided. It is apparent in four particular ways. One is direct costs. For example, our policing costs and public order costs are higher than the rest of the UK. Secondly, we have some degree of parallel provision, done either implicitly or in some cases explicitly by Government, for different parts of the community. It is not just at Assembly level; it happens with councils, too. Education would be the most clear-cut example in that regard, but it is far from the only one.
- Thirdly, there are contextual issues, such as the environment in which public agencies are operating. A clear example is the provision of housing in Northern Ireland, where trying to navigate around patterns of segregation makes it slightly more difficult—perhaps much more difficult—to provide new social housing. There are issues of territoriality of land for redevelopment. We need to get past that if we are to deliver housing more efficiently and effectively. Like elsewhere, there are real pressures on housing for people. Finally, there are opportunity costs from division and lack of political stability for tourism, inward investment and wider economic opportunities.