My Lords, I will speak to both Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper. When I last brought forward a budget Bill for Northern Ireland, I stated that it would be the last time. Events have made a liar of me. I apologise for that.
In the absence of devolved government in Northern Ireland, the UK Government have a responsibility to ensure good governance and to safeguard public services and public finances. I therefore ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to two pieces of necessary legislation.
The Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill will have all its stages in your Lordships’ House today. However, following engagement with a number of noble Lords, the regional rates and energy Bill will have only its Second Reading here today. All further stages will take place on 19 March, primarily to allow time for further discussion and reflection.
With your Lordships’ permission, I will discuss each Bill in turn, The Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) (No. 2) Bill would put Northern Ireland finances for the 2018-19 financial year on a legal footing and enable Northern Ireland’s departments to continue to deliver public services into the first half of 2019-20. Your Lordships will recall that the UK Government legislated for the 2018-19 budget for Northern Ireland last year. This legislation was necessary to provide a clear legal basis to Northern Ireland departments, enabling them to manage their resources. The resulting Northern Ireland Budget Act 2018, which passed in July, did not direct any spending but rather allocated funds to departments to be spent by the Permanent Secretaries according to departmental commitments. As we approach the end of the financial year, those spends need to be placed on to a legal footing, as is standard practice in any budgetary process. That is what this Bill does.
My Lords, noble Lords will of course understand why, as he said, the Minister has made a liar of himself and had to come back to the House. It is fair to say that it is not the Minister who has made a liar of himself but the circumstances in which we find ourselves. But to be asked to pass these two Bills—and certainly the budget Bill—at Second Reading, through all their stages, only a week or so after the documentation became available and where the detailed publication, as he says, is very hefty indeed, falls way below what I would regard as any acceptable level of scrutiny. It starts to cause real concern as to who is checking what is going on with respect to the money allocated to Northern Ireland.
Will the Minister consider whether steps could be taken to provide some comfort—and more than that, oversight? For example, the Public Accounts Committee could have a specific role to look at the follow-through from what we have voted. I do not believe that the Select Committee in the Commons has the resources to do that. It was not set up for those purposes; indeed, the second Bill may in any case be the subject of an inquiry being conducted by the House of Commons committee. It will probably have its hands full. I say that to the Minister in all seriousness; many of us are concerned that £20 billion is being voted on for Northern Ireland. We understand that it is necessary, but we have no clear, detailed oversight as to how that will be spent and whether it will be spent properly. Given the problem of the renewable heating scandal, we have every reason to be concerned about scrutiny.
That is my first point. The second concerns more specific questions on issues that do not appear in the budget, which people might have hoped to see: for example, the Hart inquiry into historical institutional abuse, which has cross-party support, and which people had hoped would make progress. I would be grateful if the Minister could say something about that. There is also the issue of pensions for severely disabled victims. The last time this was raised, the Minister said that he had asked for a report from the Victims Commissioner. Can he give us some feedback on whether that report has been received? Let us bear in mind that these are elderly and sick people who, sadly, are dying, and need early action rather than considered delay.
My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for bringing forward these essential Bills today. They ensure that public services continue to be provided in Northern Ireland and give departments some certainty going forward. In the unfortunate continued absence of decision-makers at a local level, I welcome the Government taking these necessary steps but I know that they too will recognise that this is far from an ideal situation. Regrettably, this is the third consecutive occasion that expenditure in Northern Ireland has been considered through an unusual, fast-track process in your Lordships’ House, with little scrutiny or knowledge of how allocations to specific departments have been decided. I would much prefer that Bills such as these were being presented in a fully functioning Stormont Assembly by a locally accountable Minister. Equally, I wish that local representatives were able regularly to debate, scrutinise and analyse specific spending, and raise matters relating to their areas. Unfortunately, this is impossible to the same degree right now.
One political party aside, all the other parties want to get back into government and into a functioning Assembly. MLAs were elected to serve the people, but unfortunately they are prevented from doing their jobs. None of us wants to be in this situation, but the people of Northern Ireland must not be punished further because of a political stalemate.
As with any budgetary allocations, challenges are presented—and specifically when allocations are based on historic decisions. When allocations are made by individual departments, we cannot always be certain that the finances will go towards areas that the public might expect to be prioritised. In addition to looking at the amounts being allocated, we must also look closely at how effectively that money is being spent. For example, significant additional money was secured for education as a result of the confidence and supply arrangement. This money was originally meant to go towards front-line services in education. After numerous inquiries, it was eventually revealed that the department allocated this money to finance the Education Authority, which was running a deficit. After further such inquiries to the department relating to spending, a number of my party colleagues met with a series of principals in the education sector. These principals were unanimous in the view that action, in the form of ministerial involvement in the decision-making process, needs to happen soon to rescue their sector from what they describe as an impending crisis.
My Lords, when the business Motion was being discussed last week, I made the point that the method of dealing with Northern Ireland legislation in this place is entirely unsatisfactory. I support the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie, to that effect. We know that budgets are annual events and we know that the setting of a regional rate is an annual event. Therefore, there are no surprises, and it is not as though the legislative business that we have had to deal with in the last few weeks has been so pressing that we could not have made time for these Bills to be dealt with in a proper way.
The other significant point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, was on the absence of any meaningful scrutiny. This is concerning, because for years—literally years—now, nobody has been looking at any of these things, other than the examinations conducted from time to time by the Auditor-General in Northern Ireland. Given that enormous amounts of money are going from this Parliament to Stormont, nobody there is accountable to anybody here, and there is nobody there for them to be accountable to. It is probably a new version of “accountable but not responsible”. Therefore, we have developed this limbo land, where the Government trundle on but without the checks and balances that are the hallmarks of a democracy. I appeal to the Minister, as I appealed to the Leader of the House last week, to prevail upon his colleagues that legislation dealing with Northern Ireland should at least be dealt with in a respectable way and at a respectable time, when we can scrutinise it to the best of our abilities, in the hope that it will find its proper place back in the devolved institutions.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, spoke about the estimates for the Executive Office for the next financial year. As they have for some considerable time, those estimates contain the phrase,
“actions associated with the preparation and implementation of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry Report and Findings”.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noblefriend Lord Empey, and I will be reiterating some of the points he has made in relation to proper scrutiny.
Our debates on Northern Ireland inevitably evoke feelings of the deepest concern and great sadness in all parts of our House. There is no prospect of a swift resumption of devolution, and politicians of all parties shrink from the prospect of direct rule for reasons that are frequently rehearsed. Over a year has now passed without the slightest glimmer of serious optimism regarding the restoration of devolution, and an end to the political limbo—unprecedented in our modern history—into which our fellow countrymen and countrywomen in Ulster have been cast. Even the principal public services that are the responsibility of local councils elsewhere in our country lie beyond their democratic control. In Northern Ireland, Stormont is the upper tier of local government as well as a devolved legislature—something I have often urged the Government to bear in mind.
It was in February last year that the last serious hope of progress came and went. Yet, astonishingly, the Budget Bill before the House today has been presented to Parliament accompanied by comments that anticipate the imminent return of devolved institutions. The Bill’s Explanatory Memorandum, prepared by the Northern Ireland Office, tells us that the Government,
“sought to defer legislation as long as possible to enable the final decisions on the allocations to be made by a restored Executive”,
and to avoid,
“distracting from and undermining the work towards talks aimed at restoring an Executive”.
What work? What talks?
Fantasists must dwell in the Northern Ireland Office. Only they could believe that a breakthrough on devolution was possible while the Bill was in preparation. The House will surely decline to enter the office’s world of make-believe, and accept that, on the ludicrous grounds that it has given, the Bill should now be rushed through Parliament without serious scrutiny, in defiance of our long-standing opposition to unnecessary fast-track procedures, against which our Constitution Committee has so frequently warned.
My Lords, I will speak on the Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No. 2) Bill in particular. I declare an interest, as shown in the register, as the owner of two non-domestic properties in the cities of Armagh and Belfast and the chairman of a company that owns 14 properties in different towns across Northern Ireland. The issue of rates is, therefore, important to me and those who work with me.
The subject of this Bill should, of course, be for the Stormont Assembly, as several noble Lords have already stressed. I am a strong supporter of devolution and was very much involved in the negotiations that led to the Belfast agreement. I believe in shared government at Stormont—a cross-community Government comprising Catholics and Protestants, Unionists and Nationalists. That is the best way forward for Northern Ireland. The imposition of GB rule on Northern Ireland is not a solution, but Sinn Féin makes this devolution unlikely. For at least one year it has stalled the creation of devolution. It does not want responsibility for unpopular decisions at Stormont as it prepares for the southern Irish general election, which could be within the next year. The campaign for equality of Irish with English is only an excuse for delaying the restoration of the Executive at Stormont, as only 1% of the people of Northern Ireland speak Irish daily—much less than those who speak Chinese, Polish and Portuguese. It was wrong to link rates and the renewable heat incentive scheme together in the Bill. The RHI scheme is a major and controversial subject in itself and I am glad that the Minister—I hope that he still is a Minister because I have just heard that the Government were heavily defeated by 149 votes in the House of Commons—has decided that the Committee stage of the Bill will be next Tuesday and not rushed through tonight. That is appreciated.
I welcome the decision to keep rates on non-domestic properties to zero plus inflation, as some retailers in Ulster towns—like elsewhere in the United Kingdom—are suffering from online competition and closing down. In contrast, life is buoyant in border cities such as Newry and Armagh, as the Irish cross the border in their thousands each day to do their shopping. The reason for that is, of course, the change in exchange rates following the Brexit referendum. Last year, Irish shoppers spent £415 million in Northern Ireland. It is expected that this year they will spend a further £500 million on daily shopping in Northern Ireland.
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his presentation of these Bills. He commands considerable respect and affection in this House because he is assiduous in his work, he is committed to the business and he is a man of integrity. He clearly demonstrates that by what he says. At the start of the debate, he admitted that the commitment that he had made last year was not one that he was in a position to deliver. We all have some sympathy with him. However, I associate myself with comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, when we last discussed some of these matters just a week or so ago. He said that he would be persistent in raising the same question and the same issue in respect of Northern Ireland until the Government addressed it.
The truth is that there is nothing at all surprising about the tragic state of affairs in which we find ourselves in the politics of Northern Ireland, because most of us here have been predicting it time after time, debate after debate, for almost two years now. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, pointed out that there is not a huge array of people on all the various Benches, but this is not a question of this House. Not only noble Lords and other representatives here from Northern Ireland but the people of Northern Ireland need to understand that the lack of presence is a representation of how people on this side of the water feel about things. I see on the other side of the road hundreds of EU flags, lots of union flags, and flags of Scotland, Wales and lots of other places. In the last few weeks, however, I have not seen a single flag of Northern Ireland, and it is not because we are short of them in Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord must have brought them with him himself, because certainly nobody over here would even have known what they were, never mind be displaying them. The truth is that the interests of the people on this side of the water have moved on for a whole series of reasons, and we have to take this extremely seriously, because when people are frustrated, disadvantaged and do not have the opportunity of making a difference—and many people over here feel they have no chance of making a difference to the difficulties in Northern Ireland—then they move on in their minds and in their feelings. This is a very real danger in Northern Ireland.
We have no devolution and we understand the reasons for that. It would be perfectly possible, however—as the noble Lords, Lord Trimble and Lord Empey, and I have pointed out repeatedly in this place—for the Government to permit the Assembly to sit and debate these issues, and that would inform the conversations that we have on this side of the water in two ways. First, it would mean that there was some holding to public account, if not to legal account, of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. When I was growing up, I had a relatively implicit trust in both the competence and the integrity of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. That has been shattered and blown apart repeatedly over the last number of years, as a combination of incompetence and a lack of integrity has been demonstrated over and over again. If there were Northern Ireland politicians from right across the parties demonstrating in debate their concern for these issues, that would hold Northern Ireland civil servants to account in a way that has not been the case for a long time.
Secondly, if Northern Ireland representatives in Belfast were having to hold the discussion and the arguments in public, even if they were not able to make decisions, people from Northern Ireland would start holding them to account for the fact that many of these adverse decisions were made by those very representatives. When they are not meeting and there is no debate, it is far too easy to pass it across the water to somebody else. I do not, for the life of me, see why the Government are not prepared to allow that degree of accountability, even though it does not have legal force. It would also say to many people in Northern Ireland that those who are being paid to be Members of the Legislative Assembly should be doing not just constituency business in their offices but constituents’ business on the Hill.
Is the noble Lord aware that there was no greater opportunity than to use the MLAs in the run-up to this budget? Instead, there were two or three very brief and perfunctory meetings, of little import, between the civil servants and representatives of the parties. Surely it would have been a golden opportunity to let them go through the process, even if it were for guidance, if for no other reason.
20 of 49 shown
In addition, the Bill provides for a vote on account for the first half of next year, which will give legal authority for managing the day-to-day spending in the run-up to the main estimates process. This year, following discussion with the Northern Ireland Civil Service, the Bill provides a higher than normal level of vote on account, some 70%. This is in recognition of the known increased spending pressures and the lack of Ministers in place to react and respond to emerging or escalating pressures. It also recognises the uncertainty of the political situation in Northern Ireland in the coming months. A higher level of vote on account funding is prudent, providing the practical and legal certainties to protect public services in any and all circumstances up until the point that legislation on the Northern Ireland budget for 2019-20 is taken forward.
Your Lordships will recall that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland published a draft budget for 2019-20 in February. It is important to recognise that this budget Bill does not legislate for that budget position. Those allocations will require their own legislation later this year. The vote on account in this Bill and the draft Northern Ireland budget position for 2019-20 provide the necessary clarity and certainty to Northern Ireland departments to enable them to plan and take decisions in the coming year.
I will briefly turn to the Bill’s contents. In short, it authorises Northern Ireland departments and certain other bodies to incur expenditure and use resources for the financial year ending 31 March 2019. Clause 1 authorises the issue of £16.8 billion out of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund. The allocation levels for each Northern Ireland department and the other bodies in receipt of these funds are set out in Schedule 1, which also states the purposes for which these funds are to be used. Clause 2 authorises the use of resources amounting to some £20 billion in the year ending 31 March 2019 by the Northern Ireland departments and other bodies listed in Clause 2(3). Clause 3 sets revised limits on the accruing resources, including both operating and non-operating accruing resources, in the current financial year. Clause 4 sets out the power for the Northern Ireland Civil Service to spend from the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund some £11.8 billion for the forthcoming financial year. This is the vote on account provision I outlined earlier. It is linked to Clause 6, which does the same in terms of resources. The value is set at around 70% of the sums available in both regards in the previous financial year. Schedules 3 and 4 operate on the same basis, with each departmental allocation simply set at 70% of the previous year. Clause 5 permits certain temporary borrowing powers for cash management purposes.
The Bill would ordinarily have been taken through the Assembly. As such, at Clause 7, there are a series of adaptations that ensure that the Bill will be treated as an Assembly Budget Act once approved by this Parliament, enabling Northern Ireland public finances to continue to function notwithstanding the absence of an Executive.
Alongside the Bill is a set of supplementary estimates for the departments and bodies covered by the budget Bill, which was laid as a Command Paper in the Library of the House on 28 February. These estimates, prepared by the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, break down the resource allocation in greater detail. For those who wish to delve in, they are thoroughly set out in the document of which I have a copy here. As your Lordships will recall, this process is different from estimates procedure at Westminster, where the estimates document precedes the formal Budget legislation, and is separately approved. However, this would also be the case were the Assembly in session.
I also ask the House to give a Second Reading to the Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No. 2) Bill. This Bill would deliver two essential measures: it will enable the collection of regional rates in Northern Ireland, and will ensure fair and appropriate tariffs and cost-capping measures are in place for the renewable heat incentive scheme in Northern Ireland. The bills are not without their controversies, as noble Lords will be aware. However, the measures are necessary.
The first clause of the Bill addresses the issue of regional rates. In the absence of an Executive, the UK Government have set this rate for the past two years. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intimated the rate—an increase of 3% plus inflation on the domestic rate and an inflation-only increase on the non-domestic rate—in her budget Statement of 28 February.
The second section of the Bill, specifically Clauses 2 to 5, concerns the administration of Northern Ireland’s renewable heat incentive scheme. I need to be clear that this is a devolved matter. We are taking forward legislation at the behest of the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy. Without legislation, there will be no legal basis to maintain the payments to participants in the scheme.
The tariff levels set out in this legislation are based upon analyses of the additional costs and savings of operating a biomass boiler in Northern Ireland following extensive consultation, assessment and analysis under- taken by the devolved Department for the Economy and through detailed discussions with the European Commission. These rates are significantly lower than previous tariffs. The European Commission is clear: the tariff rate cannot deliver a return higher than 12% per annum. For participants with lower usage needs or higher capital costs who have returns below 12%, the Bill introduces a voluntary buy-out scheme.
As I have said, these tariffs, and indeed this scheme, are not without controversy; I appreciate the desire of noble Lords to consider this significant and complex subject in more detail. There will be a Committee stage, on Tuesday of next week, where these proposed RHI measures and the amendments that noble Lords have tabled can be addressed separately. I will ensure in the intervening period that my officials, together with officials from the Northern Ireland Civil Service, are available to engage directly with issues that your Lordships may wish to raise on this matter. In addition, my officials will issue a detailed question-and-answer script addressing commonly asked questions; this note will be distributed to interested Peers shortly.
In conclusion, I hope your Lordships will recognise the necessity of the actions that I have presented today. On that basis, I beg to move.
A broader point is that there are issues not in the budget for which there appear to be all-party consensus. Might it be possible in the circumstances to see whether other decisions could be taken? When I raised this matter with officials they said that they could in principle but, before committing to something, one has to identify where the money is coming from or what else is being cut. I raise as an example—as it has been raised with me—the medical school at the McGill campus in Derry, which people had hoped would be progressing by now. The site and buildings are available, but students are leaving Northern Ireland to go to other universities, mostly in Scotland. As the Minister will know, the problem when students go outside of Northern Ireland for training, is that very often they do not come back. There is a need for places within the Province.
On the rates Bill, we accept that a simple decision has been taken to increase the business rates by inflation and the domestic rates by 3% plus inflation. Most of us recognise that as a fairly understandable formula and I suspect most people will accept it. Regarding the RHI, it is clear that, since the scheme was set up, the tariff has been set on two separate occasions at a value well outside either value for money or state aid criteria. This has led to the situation in which we now find ourselves. I am sure that all Members engaged in this debate will have received similar emails to the ones that I am receiving, from people who fear they will be substantially damaged and, indeed, distressed by the proposed cap. We will debate that in detail next week; I just make the point that it needs to be determined.
The fact nevertheless is that the Minister and officials encouraged people to take up high borrowing. The banks participated in that encouragement, relying on a comfort letter from the Minister and the support of officials. Understandably, people are saying, “We took decisions in good faith on the basis of 20-year guarantees from government Ministers, which are now being reversed”. Naturally they feel angry. Having said that, I suspect some people were quite fly at the beginning, saw a good deal coming down the track and took advantage of it. This raises a second question: why were these deals not cross-checked in any way? Why were there not investigations to ensure that they were compliant with both the spirit and the letter of the scheme? That seems a legitimate concern.
I have two final points to raise. The first is one that officials explained to us but it would be helpful if the Minister could do the same: how does the Northern Ireland scheme differ from those on mainland GB? Certainly, all the letters and emails that I have received express concern that people in Northern Ireland feel disadvantaged compared with those in GB. I know there are reasons for it, but it would be good to have them put the record. The second point relates to the buy-out scheme, which the Government are proposing to introduce. On the face of it, it could resolve the problems for some people by enabling them to get a capital sum that could discharge their liabilities. But, given that the circumstances of different contracts are variable, there may well be people for whom that buy-out is not appropriate; I mean people who have acted in good faith and not unreasonably. The question is whether the Government may at some point have to consider some kind of distress help for genuine cases, although I appreciate that how you establish what is a genuine case might be quite difficult.
With these remarks, my message to the Minister is that I understand the reason this has been brought forward and I recognise that services in Northern Ireland have to be maintained, but I hope he will agree that quite a lot of questions need to be answered.
While the current situation presents considerable challenges, those have been reduced significantly by the welcome additional money obtained for the reform of the health service and for front-line services. On health transformation, the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Health recently made it clear that £100 million was invested in health transformation funding last year, and a further £100 million will be invested this year, as a result of the confidence and supply arrangement. This must be welcomed by all, because it provides an opportunity for the rolling out of multidisciplinary teams and other measures that will save money in the long term. These substantial amounts of money are going directly into transforming the health service, and I welcome that.
While always remaining challenging, there is positive news for our schools, with increased spending on front-line services. I trust that key services such as health and schools can also benefit from regular monetary round allocation in year. For homes and businesses struggling with slow—or no—broadband, the ultra-fast broadband project is also moving forward, along with a clear pathway for spending the £150 million secured through the confidence and supply negotiations. I look forward to the tender process starting and the infrastructure being laid. This investment will make a real difference—according to independent estimates, it could be worth over £1 billion for our local economy.
There is also good news for areas of deprivation, with £20 million from the confidence and supply deal being allocated to help some of the most vulnerable communities. This budget reflects the priorities of an Executive of more than three years ago. Indeed, if we look closely at the heads of spending for 2018-19 and 2019-20, we see that they are virtually identical. Very little is new, because of the current situation.
This legislation allows permanent secretaries to take decisions that could redirect spending. Senior civil servants have been tasked with taking the majority of the decisions within departments for over two years. However, in a number of instances key decisions are still not being made. A growing number of key decisions still need to be made on health, education, infrastructure and public services. In many cases, these decisions are about prioritisation—for example, decisions still need to be taken on school places and teaching staff.
Given all available information, it is clear that further action is required in order to deliver good government for Northern Ireland. Can the Minister provide some assurances to the departments that the relevant ministerial direction and involvement in the decision-making process will be provided? The people of Northern Ireland require further assurances, because at the minute, they are only receiving the bare minimum level of governance. We cannot allow the decision-making process to grind to a halt.
My party will continue to work towards a return to locally accountable government. I am of the firm belief that, with political will on all sides, it is possible to see local government back up and running. In its absence, my party will continue to work hard, here and in the other place, as it has done in relation to the confidence and supply arrangements. We will continue to press the Government on all of these matters in the weeks and months ahead.
Turning to the Northern Ireland (Regional Rates and Energy) (No.2) Bill, I have reservations about the level of the domestic rate increase, which is above the rate of inflation. In fact, it is the rate of inflation plus 3%. In some cases, this will cause considerable difficulty for households that do not qualify for housing benefit on their rates but are still in low-paid employment and wish to stay in employment. However, it was initially proposed that the increase would be much higher, and in that regard I am grateful to the Government for listening to the concerns expressed by my colleagues in the other place.
I welcome and appreciate the efforts made by the Government in relation to city deals. These projects could lead to a potential increase in employment and opportunities for local businesses; I hope and trust that the relevant measures will shortly come before the other place and your Lordships’ House.
On the renewables scheme, I thank the Minister for arranging briefings on this very complicated matter. The issue is controversial and far-reaching, and its consequences will be felt by a lot of people for a long time. I honestly do not know of anyone who can say that this scheme has in any way been a success. In fact, the way it was set up and ultimately abused by some was disgraceful; fundamental change was required. Why was this not stand-alone legislation?
It is important to say that the scheme was not abused by everyone. As we all know, some certainly did abuse it and their subsidies were rightly cut. However, many people entered into the scheme in genuine good faith and, as a result of the information they were given, ultimately installed more expensive boilers, expecting to get a return at some point in the future.
The historical problems associated with the RHI tariff are the subject of an ongoing public inquiry, so it would be wrong to press those matters in too much detail today. However, the Minister will be aware of our concern that there has been a lack of proper scrutiny of the new proposals. There needs to be further scrutiny, even after this has gone through, so that there can be an opportunity for revision if at any point the figures are proved to be wrong.
While we await the report of the public inquiry, one of the issues on which it makes recommendations may be how we scrutinise measures such as this going forward. We would have hoped that Parliament could set an example on that. Will the Minister address the concern about the timing of this proposal, coming as it does so close to the end of the financial year?
My Lords, I give my support to these Bills.
That report came out three years ago. I am aware that there has been a consultation, which has now closed. We have had a report and now a consultation, and so it goes on. These people were abused 40 or 50 years ago in some cases, and due to the political limbo that has been created—let us not blame whoever it is—they are being abused all over again, because they are not getting any help at all.
I know that, apart from the state having a responsibility, some of the churches and orders whose members were responsible for some of this abuse also have a responsibility, and their insurers clearly do as well. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that in the financial year about to begin, there is, at the very least, provision in that budget for interim payments to be made. These people are getting on in years and they are suffering again. There is unanimous support in the political parties for this matter to be resolved—not a single elected Member objects to this—yet we are still confronted by the fact that nothing has happened and these people have received nothing. It is inhuman and entirely unsatisfactory, and I appeal to the Minister to ensure that some progress is made in the financial year about to begin.
I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about bringing together the rates Bill and the RHI matter. They are two entirely separate matters, and they should not be in the same piece of legislation. I do not know how the Public Bill Office allowed it, and they should be separated; there is no reason for them to be linked.
Another issue in the estimates is that the Permanent Secretary in the Department of Health announced that he was going to start work on the development of a cancer strategy. This is something that Northern Ireland sorely lacks, and I welcome it, but as he said, there is no reason to believe, unless a Minister or somebody else is responsible at the end of the process, that decisions can be taken. I have repeatedly given statistics to this House on waiting lists—they are growing and growing and growing. In every category they are worse each quarter than they were the quarter before. They would not be tolerated in any other region of the United Kingdom. We are now up to 289,000 outpatients waiting for a consultant’s appointment. Of those, 95,000 have been waiting for over 12 months. For some procedures that are not life-threatening, people were told last week that they may have to wait 10 years. Where are we going with this? There is nobody there in a position to implement the many reports that have been produced and deal with things as they have been developing.
Another matter the Minister might address is that we are now getting into the habit of turning capital into resource, whereby we are taking money out of the capital budget to put into the revenue budget. The Treasury used to go mad if anybody proposed doing that, but now it seems to be the done thing—it is commonplace. On top of that, we are borrowing through the RRI initiative, and the interest payments in this budget are now up to £51 million a year. That is becoming a burden in itself. Something is radically wrong when we are in the position of having to move money from a capital budget into a revenue budget when we have huge infrastructure issues to resolve, such as our road system and many others. We are also confronted with large sums of money being allocated to the legacy proposals—£150 million is supposed to be ready to support the historical inquiries unit, which is a catastrophe, and that would not cover even half its life. Yet we are short of nurses: this week we are flying people from England into some of our hospitals in Belfast because there are no nurses to look after the wards. Think of the cost of that. We have got our priorities entirely wrong and I hope we can get some accountability and scrutiny into this place.
I appreciate that at least the RHI committee stage will be taking place next week, which will give us an opportunity to go into more detail because it is a complicated subject. It was a catastrophic failure of administration and incompetence, against the background—as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, said—of people being given guarantees by the Government. I do not quite know how we get out of this. It is a big problem, and it requires scrutiny.
We are dealing with such a complicated matter, with two Bills and all their stages being taken in one evening. I do not know about those who may have looked at it, but it is exceptionally complicated, and not something you can deal with on the hoof. It requires a committee to examine it in detail and resolve it, because there are big issues of principle involved. In all of this, there will be casualties if we do not watch how we handle this. I welcome that we will have a further opportunity to go into this in more detail next week, but I appeal to the Minister to prevail upon his colleagues to treat legislation regarding Northern Ireland with some parliamentary respect, so that at least in the interim, when we are waiting—we hope—for devolution to be resolved, people can feel that somebody is looking after their interests.
How have financial allocations to the Northern Ireland departments been determined? How will increased spending affect those public services to which extra resources have been given? Above all, to what extent will this Bill help reverse the current “decay and stagnation” in the public services, of which Mr David Sterling, head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, has recently spoken. These questions cannot be answered because the necessary information has not been made available to Parliament, and the Northern Ireland Office’s unacceptable delay in producing the Bill has prevented its examination in committee. The Explanatory Memorandum states unapologetically:
“Due to the need to implement the Bill urgently, the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has not scrutinised the Bill in draft”.
It is extraordinary that the Secretary of State should have approved such conduct.
The same criticisms apply, perhaps even more forcibly, to the other Bill being rushed through Parliament. It will make drastic changes to the Province’s renewable heat scheme, adding still further to the huge controversy with which the scheme has been surrounded since its start. The livelihoods of small businessmen are being placed in jeopardy. Yet this Bill is to be denied full examination by Parliament. However, it is good news that there is to be a separate Committee stage in this House next week. The Government should give an unequivocal pledge today that these are the last major Northern Ireland Bills that they will bring forward without making adequate information and time available to enable both Houses of Parliament to carry out their work of scrutiny and debate, which is all the more essential in the absence of devolved government.
I referred at the outset to the feelings of sadness with which the affairs of Northern Ireland are surrounded. I feel especial personal sadness this month. On 30 March it will be exactly 40 years since Airey Neave was murdered. I had been his political adviser for nearly two years. Those who killed him have never been brought to justice, and the crime has taken its place alongside so many other terrorist atrocities for which no one has been punished. Forty years ago, efforts to restore power-sharing devolution had failed. Thanks to Airey Neave, the Conservative Party had a plan to put the public services vested in Northern Ireland as the upper tier of local government back under the control of elected representatives, pending the return of devolved government. After the 1979 general election, the Northern Ireland Office scotched that plan. It would not necessarily serve as an exact blueprint for Ulster today, but perhaps the initiative that Airey Neave proposed should spur us to contemplate new approaches to the government of a part of our country which meant a great deal to him, and which deserves better government than it possesses today.
Has the reorganisation of local government, from 26 councils down to 11 super-councils, resulted in savings, as was suggested at the time? There seems to be a growing democratic deficit in local government in Northern Ireland. People no longer know who their local councillors are; it used to be that they were known individually. Some of the new super-councils are making major decisions in committee, where even the media are often excluded. Approval of the committee’s decisions is at monthly council meetings by a nod of the head, without proper public debate. There needs to be greater transparency in the affairs of some of the 11 new super-councils in Northern Ireland.
The RHI scheme is a problem area, due to a decision of the European Union. Here I quote the Secretary of State, Mrs Bradley, in the other place:
“As I said, this situation has resulted from a decision of the European Commission on state aid rules, and failure to do this”—
to pass the Bill—
“will mean no subsidies being paid to anybody”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/19; col. 1012.]
The European Commission, therefore, is very much a problem when we discuss the whole of the RHI scheme. As the decision on the scheme must be made by 1 April 2019, as we have been told, but we are leaving the European Union in advance of that on 29 March 2019, will the Minister say whether the EU rules on state aid still apply after 29 March 2019?
Finally, the problem with the RHI is that almost 2,000 businesses feel that they were badly misled by decisions made by both the DUP and Sinn Féin at Stormont. Both were involved, not just one. The problem appears worse, as people in the rest of the United Kingdom will be getting £20,000 per year for a biomass incinerator, whereas their equivalents in Northern Ireland will be getting only £2,000 per year. Likewise, the scheme in the Republic of Ireland will be more favourable than that in Northern Ireland.
People in Northern Ireland who got involved in this scheme on the recommendation of politicians now feel very aggrieved at this unfair treatment. These RHI proposals are very complicated and we will debate them at greater length in Committee next week. However, many feel that they were misled. A number might be forced into bankruptcy—it is as serious as that. The form in which the changes in the RHI scheme are presented, almost as an afterthought to announcing the annual rates, is mischievous, to say the least.
I oppose this Bill, and should either Her Majesty’s Opposition, who are not particularly present this evening, or the Liberal Democrats, who also are not noticeable by their presence—there must be something going on in the other place—propose amendments next Tuesday, I will probably vote with them.