Northern Ireland Office

[Relevant documents: First Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Policing and security in Northern Ireland, HC 184; Second Report of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of Session 2024-26, The Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland, HC 586, and the Government response, HC 1716; correspondence between the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, on the Northern Ireland Executive Budget, reported to the House on 17 June; correspondence between the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on the Northern Ireland Executive budget and the Public Sector Transformation Fund, reported to the House on 3 June.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2027, for expenditure by the Northern Ireland Office:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £14,256,865,000, be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1855 of Session 2024-26,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £9,525,000, be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £14,317,396,000, be granted to His Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Taiwo Owatemi.)

The debate will be opened by the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this timely debate on the spending of the Northern Ireland Office. As I stand here today, it remains the case that Northern Ireland has no agreed budget, despite it being a quarter of the way through the financial year. Executive Ministers have failed to agree a budget, which has left Departments and civil servants forced to rely on emergency contingency powers, with spending limited to 95% of last year’s opening budget. Most concerningly, this leaves the people of Northern Ireland uncertain about the public services they will be able to access in the coming year.

Although the Finance Minister published a draft multi year budget in January, it was not supported by the other parties in the Executive and, frustratingly, that deadlock is still unresolved.

Will the hon. Member also acknowledge that even Members of the Finance Minister’s party are now opposed to the budget he produced?

I recognise that we do find ourselves in a rather ridiculous situation, which impacts directly on the lives of people in Northern Ireland.

This precarious financial situation has serious implications beyond Northern Ireland, and the consequences for the Northern Ireland Office and the Treasury should be of concern to Members across the House. The vast majority of Northern Ireland’s funding comes from the UK Government through the block grant. Executive Ministers have raised concerns about the adequacy of the settlement and are calling for further funding. They cite the current financial year as being particularly challenging for Departments, with the block grant set to drop by 2.7%, before only modest increases in the following years.

We know that the Secretary of State has met the Finance Minister on a number of occasions in recent weeks, and I would be most grateful if he updated us on his discussions with Executive Ministers on urgently finding a resolution to agree a budget, and on the support the Government are providing to enable such a resolution to be found.

I commend the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for all that she does, but this issue of course goes beyond what she is setting out. The Northern Ireland Office is tasked with co ordinating the local growth fund across the Province, yet my local community and voluntary sector are expressing deep concerns about its flawed programme design. They say that the funding structure is inaccessible and unresponsive to local realities on the ground. Does the hon. Lady not agree that, when the Secretary of State gets to his feet, he must explain why the Northern Ireland Office has failed to properly engage with our community sector? Does she agree that urgent steps must be taken by his Department to reform this programme to ensure that these vital funds actually reach the groups who need them most?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention about the local growth fund. In our Committee session today, we grilled the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is sitting on the Front Bench, about this funding. On numerous occasions, we have noted our disappointment that the relevant Department has been able to shift the spending, but I am sure that the Secretary of State will give the hon. Member an explanation later.

Given the potential impact of having no agreed budget on the delivery of public services if the situation continues into the autumn, does the Secretary of State foresee a circumstance in which he would step up and step in to set a budget for Northern Ireland, should the Executive remain unable or unwilling to do so?

Linked to this are concerns about the Executive’s overspending and budget sustainability. At the end of the last financial year, the Government provided the Executive with a £400 million reserve claim loan to cover departmental overspends in health and education. That follows the £559 million Executive debt write off by the Government in 2024 as part of the financial package accompanying the restoration of power sharing.

The Northern Ireland Fiscal Council warns that overspending is now becoming normalised, and it describes how repeated bail outs “could dull the Executive’s incentive to take difficult fiscal decisions”.

Overspending against available budgets by devolved Governments amounts to serious financial mismanagement, according to Treasury policy. Would the Secretary of State describe the Executive’s actions in the same terms?

Does the hon. Member accept that the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council has also said that, if spending allocations to the Executive were based on need, the Executive would be entitled to receive between £1 billion and £3.5 billion extra, which is part of the reason for this problem?

I think there are further discussions to be had about need, the Barnett formula and all those things. I am sure those discussions are happening and that those things are being continually reviewed, but I do agree about the need.

The Executive will repay this £400 million loan over three years—£80 million this year and £160 million next year, with £160 million due in 2028-29. Given the Executive’s track record, are the Government confident that these payments will be met? Northern Ireland Ministers have warned of further overspends, given their continued constrained financial position. The two Departments responsible for the reserve claim are likely to see a drop in their resource funding this year. How will the Government respond to further overspends?

Granting the reserve loan was on the condition that the Treasury conducted an open book exercise on the spending of Northern Ireland Departments. This found that spending per head on policing in Northern Ireland is 166% of what it is in England, spending per head on health, excluding social care, is 152% and spending per head on schools is 140%. On the other hand, spending per head on prisons and probation services is only 79% of that spent in England and Wales. The report presents a number of policy options, and says that the Executive could make savings of up to £3 billion. However, Northern Ireland Ministers contest many of its findings. In his response, will the Secretary of State address the Government’s expectations of the Executive taking forward these options, and tell us what steps the Government are taking to help put Northern Ireland’s finances on a more sustainable footing?

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. As she will know, one reason for that 152% health spending figure is the level of disability and poverty across Northern Ireland. The 152% figure reflects the actual need on the ground, and meeting that need must be the major goal for the Secretary of State to achieve.

I agree that our Committee has seen that the need is greater, and we are working to represent Northern Ireland and the people who live there as best we can.

My Committee has recently conducted inquiries on policing and security and on legacy, which the Government directly fund. The Police Service of Northern Ireland currently receives £37.8 million a year directly from the Government as additional security funding. This ringfenced funding was introduced in 2011, and until last year it was specifically used to address the threat from Northern Ireland related terrorism, but this ASF has now been broadened to cover all national security threats. The increase we have seen over the current spending review period may be to cover the broadened remit, but no information is publicly available about how the level of funding is determined by the Government. While we know that publishing some information may not be possible due to security considerations, my Committee has called for greater transparency, and I would be grateful for the Secretary of State’s response to our recommendations.

The recent riots in Northern Ireland are of great concern, and they will be of serious concern to Members across this House. I take this opportunity to commend the PSNI and the emergency services for their response to the disorder. The PSNI was already facing a constrained financial position, so I welcome the additional £4 million provided by the NIO to meet some of the costs it incurred. Could the Secretary of State provide more detail on, and has he had any correspondence about, the funding that I have heard has been provided by the Irish Government for community cohesion following the riots.

Finally, I turn to the issue of legacy and the work of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery, which I will refer to as the ICRIR. This body was set up under the previous Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. It is responsible for investigations of legacy cases to provide information to victims, survivors and their families about troubles related deaths and serious injury. For the present financial year, the ICRIR is receiving £232 million over the whole spending review period. However, Peter May’s recent review of the ICRIR raises some serious concerns about its capacity and governance. According to the review, cases are being paused due to a lack of resource which, in a recent Committee session, the ICRIR disputes. It says that the current funding levels “are not sufficient” to support its view of what is required under the legislation, with “real concern that they will not have the means to deliver case outcomes within any reasonable timeframe”.

The ICRIR has also seen three finance directors in the past year, with the review describing “a low level of maturity in terms of its financial and corporate governance.”

The review notes that the ICRIR is submitting to the Treasury a new business case seeking additional funding. Will the Secretary of State update us on the status of that? The Secretary of State told us that confidence in the ICRIR will be gained “if it provides answers to families who have been looking for them for so long”.

Does he share my fears about the impact that pausing cases will have on victims and families who have already been made to wait decades for answers about their loved ones? Can he also assure the House that confidence in the commission’s financial management and governance arrangements has improved since the review?

I congratulate the Chair on how she is raising the issue in this debate and how she has handled the legacy inquiry. Does she agree that there must be an answer to the concerns raised by the PSNI that it does not have any additional moneys to provide that information to the ICRIR with regard to legacy? There is also a funding issue there. Both the PSNI and the ICRIR have raised the issue of funding, saying that they are not being given the money to enable them to give the evidence they hold and manage to help the people who are waiting on those cases.

I thank the hon. Member for that contribution. It has been very clear from the Committee’s evidence sessions that, to cover the legacy issues it is still dealing with and will have to deal with, the PSNI is taking resource of time and money that it cannot afford, which impacts on what it can provide on the street, so I too would like to highlight that point.

We want to see a stable Executive, backed up by fair and sustainable public finances, reflecting the needs of the people of Northern Ireland. I am concerned that the Executive’s financial constraint and the funding pressures facing the PSNI and the ICRIR are having a very real impact on people’s lives today.

In introducing the debate, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, lamented the failure of the Northern Ireland Executive to agree a budget; indeed, for any of the parties in the Northern Ireland Executive to even agree with their own party on a budget. That, clearly, is a difficulty in terms of providing the services for the people of Northern Ireland.

It would do this House well to ask more probing questions on how, not for the first time, the Northern Ireland Executive have failed to agree a budget. Are there political influences at stake? Sinn Féin controls the Department of Finance. Sinn Féin does not even want Northern Ireland to exist, never mind succeed, so is it really any great surprise that when it is in charge of the Department of Finance there is a stand off about agreeing a budget? For Sinn Féin, the default position is always to blame the Brits, demand more money and turn that into a political campaign on how Northern Ireland is being treated unfairly. Even if it had all the money imaginable, Sinn Féin would not seek to make Northern Ireland work. It cannot make it work and then say, “But none the less, we need the fundamental constitutional change” which is its raison d’être and what it demands. There are at play bigger issues than a mere failure to balance the books.

On balancing the books, many of the parties that form the Northern Ireland Executive bear much responsibility themselves. When devolution was down and coming back at the beginning of 2024, there were parties now in the Executive who had no interest in getting a durable financial settlement. They had such a stampede mindset that they just wanted back into government. They did not support negotiations to enhance what could have been the ongoing sustaining financially of the Northern Ireland Executive. There were others who just wanted back into the Executive for the very sake of power and preferred to lie about what they had achieved in terms of safeguarding the Union. This was an Executive restored on the basis of the biggest lie for generations in Northern Ireland: that the Irish sea border had been removed. It patently has not been removed. There was much that should have been done by the Northern Ireland Executive parties at the time of going back into devolution to extract the financial settlement that was needed.

Now we have reached the situation where overspend is the norm in Northern Ireland. That overspend is built on an expectation that in due course there will be a bail out. That has been the pattern throughout the years and that is the expectation of this Executive: in due course, there will be a bail out or a writing off of the moneys that have been overspent. It has happened before and that is the essence of the demand again. Are the Government going to do that once more? We have had occasions when past Governments have said to the Northern Ireland Executive, “If we’re going to bail you out, you have to transform and do all sorts of things to save money. Maybe you have to raise some money yourself.” None of that has happened. The absence of that engendered a belief that yet again they can produce the begging bowl and have the overspends written off. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State how clear he is about whether or not that will yet happen again.

Reference has also been made to policing. Yes, policing is grossly short of funding and it is a scandal that, in my constituency and others, if you can muster together three or four community constables you are doing well for a town and multiple villages. It is a scandal, but it does bring one back to the absolute folly of ever having devolved policing and justice. The Government’s attitude today is, “Policing and justice is devolved, so you find the money.” The allocations are wholly inadequate. If policing and justice had never been devolved, the Secretary of State would have had no escape route in terms of finding the money to give policing to the citizens of Northern Ireland. It was a moment of folly, just over 10 years ago, to devolve policing and justice.

There is a real burden that I wanted to come to, and it is this. The Northern Ireland Office’s promotional website states that the Northern Ireland Office has three priorities, and within the second priority are the wonderful words, “protecting the UK internal market”.

That, of course, is the one thing that this Government have lamentably failed to do. Instead of protecting the UK internal market, this Government have wrecked it, because we now have an internal market that is partitioned by a full international customs border down the Irish sea, courtesy of the very lies I referred to earlier and the Windsor framework. Far from protecting the UK internal market, the Northern Ireland Office has gleefully presided over the sabotaging of the UK internal market.

In a recent survey, the Federation of Small Businesses found that 38% of GB businesses that used to supply Northern Ireland have stopped supplying it. Why? Because of the unbearable paperwork and burdens that are put on businesses in order for them to trade with Northern Ireland. Far from protecting the UK internal market, we have a UK internal market that has been riven by this Government’s actions.

When we look at the small print in these accounts, we see that the Government are going to give the mighty sum of £2.25 million over three years to a body called Intertrade UK, the purpose of which, as the name suggests, is to promote trade within the United Kingdom—and the Government are giving it £750,000 per annum to do so. Intertrade UK has no staff and no offices—nothing. Let me contrast that with InterTradeIreland: InterTradeIreland exists for the correlative purpose of promoting trade on an all Ireland basis. It gets £5 million a year of British taxpayers’ money. It also gets southern Government money. It has over 40 staff, plush offices and a real programme of work. Contrast that with Intertrade UK—the Secretary of State thinks it is adequate to give that organisation no staff, no offices and £750,000 a year.

Intertrade UK is seeking to promote trade within an economy of 70 million people, and it gets £750,000 to do it. InterTradeIreland is supposed to be promoting trade on an all Ireland basis for a population of 7 million, and it gets millions upon millions, 40 members of staff, and more. Where is the logic? Other than the logic of wanting to do down inter UK trade, where is the logic of being so abundantly miserly with Intertrade UK in comparison to the funds being given to InterTradeIreland? When I read that the Government’s second priority in this area is this idea of “protecting the UK internal market”, I see it as a joke—not just a joke, but a very sick joke—because the very opposite has been done to my part of the United Kingdom.

I use this debate to draw attention to those facts and to say to this Government—more in hope than expectation—that one day they will realise that they are the Government of the United Kingdom, and that means promoting the United Kingdom, not promoting the partitioning of it. It means promoting the growth not of an all Ireland economy, but of an all UK economy. Sadly, this Government, deliberately and consciously, are failing in that fundamental mission.

Order. I know this is an interesting debate and topic, but Members would be best to keep speeches 100% within scope.

I will do my best on that score, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing this important debate.

I want to draw on a consistent message that the Northern Ireland Committee has heard throughout a number of inquiries, whether into public services, the Northern Ireland economy, or police and security: the recurring question about whether the Northern Ireland Executive have been given sufficient funding to deliver the public services that people rightly expect. I know that am looking at that question from an interesting perspective—that of an MP whose constituency is not on the island of Ireland, and who is not directly affected by the day to day machinations and interdependence of relationships between the Northern Ireland Office, the Treasury, this place, the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly—but as a Scottish MP, I do understand the practical realities of devolution. Week in, week out, I see the impact of different political priorities being pursued by different Governments with the resources available to them. We always say we do not have enough money, but we will never have enough money; we always want more money. And that experience has shaped how I view this debate.

The Committee has considered in depth the evidence of the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council, recognising that Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances means that it requires more funding than a simple Barnett consequential. I keep coming back to the fact that the council again concludes that funding at around 124% of comparable spending in England is appropriate. It is considerably better than sticking a finger in the air and thinking of a number. The spending review reflects that assessment.

The Executive will receive an average of £19.3 billion a year over the spending review period, alongside targeted investment in public service transformation, policing, and city and growth deals. That is not to dismiss the very real pressures on Northern Ireland’s public finances. But funding alone is not enough if public services are unable to plan because the Executive have yet to make the decisions needed to allocate that funding.

Tomorrow is the last day of June—the end of the first quarter of the 2026-27 financial year—and the Northern Ireland Executive still have not agreed a single year budget, let alone a multi year one. That matters because budgets are not simply accounting exercises. They allow hospitals to plan, schools to recruit, police services to invest and public services to provide certainty for the people they serve. The consequences of delay are not abstract; they affect real people.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as one of the chairs of the Unison group of Labour MPs and someone who has been a member of Unison for 30 years. Before my time in this place, I lived this issue. When the Assembly collapsed in 2022, health workers in Northern Ireland received no pay increase because there was no functioning Executive able to implement the recommendations of the independent pay review body. The eventual award had to be backdated at the end of the financial year.

The consequences were significant: employers had to take action to ensure that staff were not inadvertently paid below the national minimum wage; payroll teams faced complex manual calculations to recover interim payments once backdated awards were made; and, for many low paid NHS staff members who were also in receipt of universal credit, it created unnecessary financial uncertainty and administrative complications, because a year’s backdated money in one pay packet is not an indicator of regular income. It was unfair on staff, inefficient for employers, and, ultimately, patients paid the price when public services could not plan with certainty.

This was not a one off. It has happened four times in the past five years, regardless of whether or not Stormont has been sitting. I know that the hon. Member for South Antrim (Robin Swann), in his life before this place, did his best to try to get it through, and that is recognised and known. But it is not acceptable. This year, the “Agenda for Change” trade unions have been told that there will be no uplift until a budget has been agreed. That means that, once again, there have been manual calculations to ensure that people are not being paid below the national minimum wage. We need to do more about that.

Northern Ireland does receive funding above its independently assessed level of need. There have been levels of growth deals—defence growth deals, and city and growth deals, with the need to invest in apprenticeships —so the opportunity is there. The question is not simply about whether there is enough money; it is about whether the decisions are being taken to use that money effectively.

The priority must be for the Executive to agree a budget —preferably a multi year one—to give public services the certainty they need. Long term planning ensures that significant investment delivers tangible improvements for the people of Northern Ireland. I therefore ask the Minister what further discussions he is having with the Executive to encourage agreement on a multi year budget so that this record settlement can be translated into the public services and better outcomes that the people of Northern Ireland deserve, because they deserve nothing less.

I want to start by thanking the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for the work of her Committee and for the diligence she has applied to the job she has taken on. It is deeply appreciated by Members from Northern Ireland that we have a Chairperson who is totally interested in the work that she is doing. I would not always agree with everything that comes out of the Committee, but she has nevertheless shown a desire to try to get things sorted out in Northern Ireland.

First, as has already been emphasised by a number of speakers, we are approaching this debate at a time when —a quarter of the way through the year—we do not actually have a budget in Northern Ireland, and not for the first time. I do not know, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) has said, whether this is a co ordinated political plan or an example of the incompetence of Sinn Féin Ministers. If it is a co ordinated political plan, it is a very stupid one, because not having a budget and not having money allocated to Departments does not just affect the Unionist population in Northern Ireland—it affects everybody. It affects both Sinn Féin voters and Unionist voters. While it may add to Sinn Féin’s argument that Northern Ireland is not a viable state, I nevertheless do not believe that they should be punishing they own constituents to prove that.

We have to look at the context of Northern Ireland. Getting a budget agreed anywhere is always going to be difficult, because there will always be competing priorities and there are always people wanting more. I suspect that the Chancellor has had similar problems and difficulties even in this Parliament, where she is dealing with only one party—there may be a lot of factions within that party, mind you, but it is only one party. It is much more difficult in a four party coalition where the parties have totally different outlooks and they have to decide how the money is going to be allocated. We have only to look at the current and previous Sinn Féin Ministers, because do not forget: every time a budget has not been agreed in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin have been in charge of the finances. I think that has happened on three occasions. The latest crisis has been caused because the Minister responsible did not consult with anybody before simply deciding on a budget—did not even consult with his fellow Ministers—and Ministers from his own party are now disagreeing with it.

I have some experience of this process, because I served in that post in the Northern Ireland Assembly for four years. The Conservative party gained power here in Westminster in May the year after I took over, and in June the reserves that we had, which were about 3% of the budget, were taken back by Treasury, and we were then given a 2% reduction, so there was a 5% reduction in the budget for that year. The budget had already been agreed, and it therefore had to be rewritten. It was not easy, but it was possible because there was a willingness to work. We consulted and consulted, compromised and everything else, and we managed to get a three year budget, even against that background. That is why I do not accept the argument that they cannot get an agreed budget just because there are financial difficulties. I do not accept the excuses.

However, I would point out that Northern Ireland has for many years been underfunded, as has been confirmed by the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council review. I am pleased that our current party leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), was the first person to raise the requirement to have budgets in Northern Ireland determined on need, and not just on the Barnett formula. There has been some success in that, as we now get the 124%. I accept that the Government took that argument on board, although they had not done so until my right hon. Friend persisted in pushing for that at all kinds of levels. However, even with that increase, there is still an historic backlog.

I am not here to simply say, “Give us more money.” I understand that there are fiscal restraints right across the United Kingdom. However, where a fiscal deficit has been identified, I think it is incumbent on the Government to look at how that can be addressed. I am sure that some people back home will not be very happy with me for saying this, but I think it would be wrong simply to say, “The Fiscal Council has identified between £1 billion and £3.5 billion, depending on whether you compare it with Scotland or Wales, so there’s the money.” If additional money is to be given, it should of course be allocated on the basis that something is given back in return.

Many people will say that interferes with the devolution settlement, because it means telling people how to spend the money. But I think it should be conditional: if people are looking for additional money, let us see how they are going to use it—to reform public services, to cut expenditure in the longer run, to make services more efficient. The money is given on that condition, and those conditions are measured, and the money is released on that basis. That would be one way out of the current difficulties facing the Executive.

The money would be conditionally given, and it would be given for things that have been promised for some time, I think, but have never been done, either because it was too hard to do them or there was not the money to do them. Reform does require some expenditure up front, even if it is only getting rid of some of the surplus staff or reviewing some of the estate. Looking forward in the estimates, that is one way that the Government should be considering dealing with this particular issue.

Secondly, the Northern Ireland budget is divided between what goes to the Executive—the bulk of it—and the Northern Ireland Office. We have to look at need. Let me just give some examples. On money allocated for agriculture, four times more is spent per head spent in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom, but that is not always reflected in the allocations. That is not because we are giving more generously; it is simply that Northern Ireland has a bigger agricultural industry, and that is reflected in the money that is given. Very often what is happening is that we are simply treated as if we were the rest of the United Kingdom, so we get much less per head, even though the industry is much more important. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) indicated in his intervention that poverty levels will impact the amount of money spent on health. Hence, the needs based expenditure is more important than simply the block grant.

There are three things I want to raise about the Northern Ireland Office expenditure. First, there is a 25% uplift in the DEL spending—the departmental expenditure limit. According to the papers we have been given, that is attributed mostly to the additional money required for the Finucane inquiry. I have to say to the Secretary of State that there are people who feel really sore about the way that moneys can be allocated to the investigation of one particular death because Sinn Féin has made it such a big issue, while hundreds of families across Northern Ireland have never had a proper investigation into the death of their loved ones.

Yesterday evening I attended a memorial service for Ulster Defence Regiment victims in Northern Ireland: 192 UDR soldiers were killed during the troubles, and 62 were killed after they had retired or left the UDR, and many of their widows and families have never had any proper investigation into the death of their loved ones. Yet for the Finucane family we have had three Stevens inquiries—I remember those from when I was on the Policing Board. Then there was a review of those inquiries to see if they were adequate—the Cory review—and now we have another bout of the inquiry, with a nearly 25% increase in the budget of the Northern Ireland Office to facilitate that. That is not regarded as fair. When inquiries are driven by the political push of one particular party and the Government’s desire to keep them happy, to me that is first of all a waste of funds and, secondly, unfair.

Secondly, part of the budget has been increased to deal with the ICRIR reports and investigations. As has already been pointed out, while there has been an increase for the ICRIR, there has been no equivalent increase for the police service. The police service reckons that it is costing about £24 million per year to facilitate providing the information, yet no allowance has been made for that. That puts pressure on a budget that is already predicted to be in a deficit of £58 million this year. That means fewer police officers on the ground and so on.

Thirdly, as was pointed out by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim, one of the roles of the Northern Ireland Office is to promote the internal market. I do not blame the current Government totally from the mess that we are in; they inherited botched negotiations by the previous Government, but little or nothing has been done to remedy that. When the Assembly was going back, negotiations went on and we got a document called “Safeguarding the Union”, which was totally endorsed by the current Government, even though they were then in opposition.

Part of that was about finding ways to promote the internal market. One thing that was recognised was that if there was disruption to trade, we would need to improve the trade routes, and so a ports fund of £10 million was agreed. Yet in a recent letter from the Secretary of State, it was accepted that although extra money was found for the Finucane inquiry and for the ICRIR, no funding has been allocated to the ports fund, which was designed to improve sea routes across the Irish sea and make them more efficient, so that goods could flow in and out of Northern Ireland in a less costly way.

Will the Secretary of State tell us what exactly is the status now of that £10 million commitment? I met with the port authorities in Larne, who were hoping that they would benefit from that funding. It would have meant that they could widen and lengthen the ramps, take in bigger ships and bring down the cost of transport. It would also have opened new routes to GB. The port authorities put in £10 million, expecting—under the promise that was made—that match funding would be made available from the Government.

Other actions have been taken by the Government that have made the routes more difficult, including the imposition of the carbon tax on shipping. That will be implemented from 1 July, and it is estimated to increase the cost of bringing goods across the Irish sea from GB to Northern Ireland, or vice versa, by around 7%. That, again, makes the route and the bringing of goods in from GB less competitive, on top of all the other reasons why companies do not want to sell to Northern Ireland now anyway—namely, the additional paperwork.

In conclusion, I just say to the Secretary of State that, yes, we do have a budget crisis in Northern Ireland, but I believe that there could be some inventiveness from the Government. My colleague Gordon Lyons, who is the Communities Minister, has suggested to the Treasury that he will lean hard to get efficiencies and savings from fraud in the benefits budget. But he has asked in return that some of those benefits be shared with Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin, which does not seem to wish to attack fraud, has been holding that up, but will the Secretary of State push with the Treasury the case for those savings from fraud that might be identified in Northern Ireland to be shared with the Executive to help reduce its financial pressures? Will he commit to working with Ministers to ensure that any additional funding is used in a productive way so that Northern Ireland can become much more sustainable fiscally than it is at present?

None of us wants to be here. Certainly as a Unionist, I do not want to be here with a begging bowl year after year, but I believe that there is a responsibility on both sides: the Government must recognise that there is a deficit that needs to be dealt with, and that deficit must dealt with in a way that makes positive changes for the future.

Many Members across the House have spoken about the financial situation in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) spoke very well about the impact that it has on the lives of people in Northern Ireland.

I would like to touch briefly on the impact that it is having on a particular group of vulnerable individuals, and I declare an interest at this point as the chair of the all party parliamentary group on learning disability. That group of individuals is the people who had the misfortune to be housed at Muckamore Abbey hospital. An inquiry into two decades of systemic abuse concluded two weeks ago and published its report. Some of the findings were absolutely horrific.

The report found that mistreatment became a normality and that patients suffered black eyes, broken bones and severe neglect. These were patients who had learning disabilities and mental health issues. They were some of the most vulnerable people in our society—quite often non verbal and unable to raise concerns about their treatment themselves. They were subjected to neglect, poor care and a wider diminution of their rights. Many had their lives made miserable by systematic bullying by certain members of staff.

The report raised serious concerns about the attitude of the trust towards patients and the abuse being reported. There was evidence of patients not being washed, with faeces under their fingernails or on their clothes, becoming obese or losing weight dramatically, owing to a lack of care over diet, and other patients were over medicated and described as being “zombified”. Parents have described seeing their adult children basically disappearing before their eyes in a locked institution that they were unable to access.

The mistreatment of people with learning disabilities on locked mental health wards is unfortunately not contained to Northern Ireland, but this discussion about the estimates given to the Northern Ireland Executive presents an opportunity for Northern Ireland to lead the way. The report spoke of the need for a transformation in social care in Northern Ireland so that people with learning disabilities and mental health issues are treated in the community in a way that is compassionate and sees them as individuals. Given the £185 million set aside for public service transformation, does the Secretary of State share my hope that those who have suffered at Muckamore Abbey hospital, their families and their loved ones might see a transformation undertaken as a result of the report so that people in Northern Ireland, and indeed across the UK, do not have to suffer similarly?

We come to the Front Bench contributions. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

The 2026-27 main estimate for the Northern Ireland Office asks the House to approve spending plans for this politically sensitive region of the United Kingdom. In cash terms, the 2026-27 block grant has barely increased from 2025-26 levels. As the Stormont Executive are warning, that will leave a massive deficit and represents a 2.7% decrease in real spending power.

That settlement arrives against a backdrop in which the Executive overspent their budget by £400 million in the last financial year, covered only by a Treasury reserve advance now being repaid in instalments, with £80 million due this year in the first tranche. We have a Government clawing back money, not investing in Northern Ireland’s future.

On policing, the Government have provided an extra £113 million through the PSNI digital security fund. That figure sounds impressive, but it does not begin to address the operational drain that legacy demands place on day to day policing. The Chief Constable, Jon Boutcher, has warned that without the PSNI being funded to service the demands of what is planned to become the Legacy Commission, the entire project will fail, yet when he petitions the Secretary of State he is told that policing is a devolved matter, and when he turns to the Executive he is told that legacy costs arose under direct rule and are a matter for Westminster.

The responsibility bounces between the two, but the PSNI ends up footing the bill. The estimates do not contain any resolution to that deadlock. There is no acknowledgement that the legacy burden is a UK Government, not a Stormont, liability. Let us be clear that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has twice recommended a dedicated ringfenced funding stream to meet PSNI legacy costs, and it continues to do so in the face of Northern Ireland Office rejections.

On trade, it is worth reminding the House that 56% of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU. They have been proved correct, as Northern Ireland has borne the consequences of Brexit ever since, with disrupted supply chains and barriers to trade. Of course, the Windsor framework was meant to give Northern Ireland the best of both worlds, with unfettered access to both the UK internal market and the EU single market. The evidence suggests that it has delivered neither.

A Federation of Small Businesses survey found that more than half of businesses trading between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are experiencing real difficulties, with more than a third of UK wide respondents who moved goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland having stopped doing so entirely. Just one in seven Northern Ireland businesses say that they benefit from dual market access, which is much less than the 71% figure quoted by the Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee this afternoon, citing a pre Windsor framework survey. Some two thirds of Northern Ireland based businesses say that they have no understanding of the framework and have not taken advantage of it.

Implementation of the Windsor framework is a stated Northern Ireland Office priority, yet the only dedicated line of funding for it in the estimate is an £8.5 million reserve fund, and at the Select Committee today we heard that the Northern Ireland business support service—also known as the one stop shop—will not come on stream until the next financial year at the earliest.

Finally, may I point out that the estimate transfers £35 million from the Home Office for the immigration health surcharge, yet the Home Office has not published data on the number of asylum claims lodged in Northern Ireland? We are being asked to approve spending derived from a population of claimants the Government decline to count.

Northern Ireland has endured too much and waited too long for a Government who match the scale of their ambitions with the substance of their spending. On the evidence of these estimates, it is still waiting.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

I will also begin by congratulating the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), on making sure that we got this debate. It is clear that without her and the support of her Committee, we would not be discussing this incredibly important issue on the Floor of the House. I repeat the remarks made by the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson): the Select Committee in this Parliament has been exemplary and given us high quality analysis, which has benefited debate on both sides of the House.

We are here debating the estimate simply because the situation is becoming dire. As was said by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray)—I fear that my pronunciation may be slightly out—this is not an abstract matter; it is having a genuine impact on public services today and on the planning of public services for tomorrow. Uncertainty is building and—I am sorry to say this—there is no suggestion that it will be alleviated any time soon. In fact, as the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) mentioned, it appears that we are further from agreement now than we were at the start of the year, because there is disagreement within Sinn Féin on the proposals put forward.

That begs an important question for the Government: what will happen next? This is a debate about devolved issues, but I know that the Secretary of State and his officials from the Northern Ireland Office have been in talks with the Executive and their representatives. I very much hope that we will get an update on those talks. We must, however, ask what will happen if no agreement is forthcoming. As was said, we are now a quarter of the way through the financial year and there is no solution in sight. We cannot move to a position where overspend continues to be normalised, and it appears that the Executive are effectively saying, “We can’t solve this problem—we need more money.” That is not sustainable, and it cannot give anyone confidence in devolution as it is now. What is the Government’s plan if the current talks break down and we move into the summer without an agreed budget in Northern Ireland?

I have a number of points to ask the Secretary of State about while I have the opportunity—most significantly, they are about legacy. He may have detected from some of our previous debates that Opposition Members are not in favour of what the Government are doing. That said, we think strongly that if the Government are to press ahead with their plans, given that it is acknowledged that those plans will create an additional burden on public services in Northern Ireland, on the police and on the legacy institutions, the Government should be prepared to meet that financial cost.

It is not enough to say that £250 million is being made available. That £250 million was made available by a Conservative Government some time ago, and since it was granted inflation has probably degraded it to £200 million at most. It is clear that if the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is passed, it will increase the caseload of the ICRIR—the Legacy Commission, as it will become—but not increase the resources it has at its disposal, and it will increase the caseload that the PSNI is dealing with, but not increase the resources of the PSNI.

The danger is that we will see a bottleneck in the Legacy Commission and very slow processing of cases, and an additional drain on the resources of the PSNI that will take more people away from frontline policing. We know that frontline policing in Northern Ireland has about 1,000 fewer officers than were expected when New Decade, New Approach was signed. That is a clear and present danger that the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill presents to financing in Northern Ireland, and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could explain the Government’s position.

I would also be interested to hear whether the Secretary of State has had any discussions with the heir presumptive to the Labour party leadership on the future of the troubles Bill, because the legislative timetable has obviously been pushed to the right again and it seems unlikely that we will have the legislation before the summer break. That being so, it will be a consideration for the next Prime Minister. Can the Secretary of State tell us what conversations he has had with the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) about this legislation, and whether the next Prime Minister, if that is what he is, is in favour of it?

In the negotiations that any Government have with the Executive in Northern Ireland, I believe there is a duty to make the case that the Northern Ireland Executive should be prepared to raise revenue on top of the budget settlements that the Treasury gives. After the last Budget, I was prepared to say that I thought the Northern Ireland Office had acquired a reasonably good settlement from the Treasury for Northern Ireland. The key now is that that money should be well spent. If the Northern Ireland Executive want to spend more, they should be prepared to raise revenue, but they should also be prepared to deliver their public services more efficiently and effectively. I hope that His Majesty’s Government will work with the institutions in Northern Ireland to help that to happen.

I join others in congratulating the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), on having secured this extremely important, timely and useful estimates debate and on the work she does to scrutinise what happens in Northern Ireland and the work of the Northern Ireland Office. The Committee is exceedingly energetic and will be getting full value for money from the small ministerial team, as it did today and will do over the next couple of weeks.

I shall begin by addressing the most important question that has been highlighted, to which the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) just referred: the lack of an agreed budget. He has just reminded us that he thought the spending review was a pretty good settlement. The Chancellor set out that Northern Ireland would receive £19.3 billion per year on average over the course of the spending review period—the largest settlement since devolution in 1998. In addition, the Chancellor confirmed that the Government would be providing almost £750 million in additional funding through the Barnett formula over the spending review period as a result of decisions made at the autumn Budget and the spring statement. That includes an extra £373 million in the current financial year, 2026-27, and that money is available to the Executive.

To pick up on one point, I am aware of the arguments about the funding in comparison to Scotland and Wales. I simply want to make the point that funding settlements for all the nations of the United Kingdom are underpinned by the Barnett formula, and it is important to remember that, for example, compared with Wales, Northern Ireland has benefited from generous funding from the Barnett formula in previous years. The UK Government—the last Government and this one—have also committed around £16 billion in funding packages and agreed financial flexibilities from 2014-15 right up to 2029-30 for the Executive to support public services and long term investment. The Treasury has given a commitment to discuss a fiscal framework for Northern Ireland, where, of course, funding under the Barnett formula can be discussed.

On the level of need, the fact is that this was independently assessed by the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council. The figure that it came up with was 124%, and that is indeed the level of funding that the Northern Ireland Executive are getting. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) recognises that fact. She rightly points out that, however much money is allocated, someone will always say, “Give us more.” How the money is spent has also been an important part of this debate, and I shall come to the remarks of the former Finance Minister, the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), in a moment.

Let us look at what is achieved in Northern Ireland for the expenditure, with 124% of the funding in England. In England, about 4% of people are waiting more than a year to see a hospital consultant. In Northern Ireland, it is nearly 50%, with more funding.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

Of course I will give way to the former Health Minister.

The right hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that, as there has not been a repetitive budget since 2016, any transformation or investment in health is always more challenging, and that is where the waiting lists are. Does he also acknowledge that that transformation funding is now there, and that the work being done by my party colleague, the present Minister of Health, Mike Nesbitt, is bringing those waiting lists down?

I absolutely acknowledge the work that Mike Nesbitt has been doing in health, and it shows what can be achieved if minds are put to it. It is a difficult balance between, on the one hand, running the services today and keeping them going and, on the other hand, investing in transformation. In the end, however, investing in the transformation is the way in which we will be able to deliver better public services for the people of Northern Ireland.

I share the concern that has been expressed right across the House at the absence of an agreed multi year budget, which is creating, above all, significant uncertainty for the funding of public services. I have been talking regularly with the Minister for Finance, who clearly faces a huge challenge in trying to get an agreement, and those conversations will continue this week, because we need to get to a multi year budget as quickly as possible. I said about a month ago that the Executive needed to come towards the Government and meet us halfway, and there are two essential requirements.

The first relates to the fact that the amount of money currently being forecast as the overspend for this year is going up, beyond the level that we saw in the last financial year. The word “pressures” is heard frequently in Northern Ireland. People say that they have budget pressures. Well, everyone has budget pressures. Quite reasonably, the Government have asked what the nature of those pressures is. Are they absolutely unavoidable legal commitments, are they things we would like to do or are they things in between? Trying to interrogate and understand the nature of those pressures and to see what the Executive tell the Government about that is the first requirement.

The second requirement is a plan for how we will move from this year to year crisis—which was very clearly articulated by the right hon. Member for East Antrim in his contribution—because we need to see something that will address this in the longer term. I am much struck by what the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council said in its report on the sustainability of the finances, published on 16 June. It said that “these immediate issues facing NI’s public finances reflect an unsustainable trajectory resulting from the underlying structural problems in the Budget. These structural issues are visible in the relatively high public sector pay bill, limited revenue raising”— a point just referred to— “and persistent overspends.”

Whatever the size of the budget that anyone has, we have, in the end, a responsibility to find a way of living within that and to raise more revenue if that is open to us. That is what all Governments must do. The current Government have done it in relation to the public finances, and the same is true for the Northern Ireland Executive. In addition to the funding I have already described, there is the £617 million from the UK Government that is going into the city and growth deals, as well as the defence growth deal, which the Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), has spoken about in the House; the enhanced investment zone; and the local growth fund.

A point was raised about the local growth fund. I recognise and accept that the change in the profile from revenue to capital has created a difficulty for the voluntary sector. That is why I met representatives of the voluntary sector and said to them, “There is unspent money in the PEACEPLUS programme; you can make a bid to that.” I think about £12 million is available in revenue. The Exec came to the Government and said, “We would like to keep £3 million of that for Go Succeed; we think it is a great programme, and we’d like you to carry on backing it.” We said, “Fine.” That left £9 million available in revenue for the economic inactivity programmes that the voluntary sector has been running. I said to the Executive, “How about putting the extra Barnett consequentials that you now have, including £373 million in the current year that you were not expecting, together with the £9 million? We could then enable those projects to continue.” That is an example of what can be done if we put our minds to it.

The extra capital allocation in the local growth fund may in part be the answer to the question asked about the ports fund. A number of commitments were made in the “Safeguarding the Union” document. I remember a large commitment that Casement Park would be fully funded so that the Euros could be hosted. Well, no money was allocated for it at all. The previous Government were very free with the promises, but they did not do the work to find the money. No funding has been identified for the ports fund, but there is money in the local growth fund. I also point out that Belfast harbour has a masterplan, which I understand it is looking to self fund, and that the Government have made available an increase in capital funding to the Northern Ireland Executive. If the Executive wish to put money into port infrastructure, they are entirely able to do so.

Let me turn to PSNI funding. I once again pay tribute to the officers of the PSNI who, every time there is disorder in Northern Ireland, show extraordinary courage in protecting the public from those who are setting fire to buses, throwing bricks and burning people out of their houses. I had the chance to thank some of those officers when I returned to Northern Ireland the week before last, following the disorder. They are very brave. From memory, I think some 42 officers were injured in the recent disorder.

I appreciate the financial pressures faced, but this is a devolved matter. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim said that he thought it was a profound mistake to have devolved responsibility for policing and justice. I respectfully disagree with him. The trouble with the call for ringfencing, which we have heard from other sources this evening, is this: we either believe in devolved Government—the elected representatives of the people of Northern Ireland taking decisions about how the money is spent—or begin to move back towards a ringfence; once we have a ringfence for the PSNI, it will not be long before someone says, “Can I have a ringfence over here?” In the end, we have a choice to make. I believe in devolved Government in Northern Ireland, and the Government believe in devolved Government in Northern Ireland. There is a matter of principle here: the funding is available to the Executive; it is for them to decide how much they allocate to policing as opposed to other priorities.

I accept the argument that the Secretary of State is making. I served on the Northern Ireland Policing Board during the change from the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the PSNI, and was on the finance committee of the board. We had continual battles with the then Secretary of State, who was no more generous or flexible than a devolved Minister would have been. Devolution or no devolution, the fiscal and the financial situation is the same. I suppose the difference is that, when it comes to putting on pressure, the Secretary of State here is perhaps a bit more remote than the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland.

I will reflect on that point. I do not know in what sense the right hon. Gentleman uses “remote”; if it is geographical, I agree with him entirely. I acknowledge that, as he said from experience, agreeing a budget is difficult in a power sharing system. It is difficult. He told the House an interesting story about being faced with reductions in budget and it being possible to come together and agree one. All Governments have to deal with the financial and fiscal circumstances they find, but when we take office, we have a responsibility to fulfil the tasks that are in front of us, which include balancing the budget. He also made interesting points about conditionality. How do we ensure, in return for whatever support a Government give—we have seen a long history of lumps and bumps of money, restoration after collapse, and so on—a consistent, measurable path to balanced budgets year after year, and an end to boom and bust in times of crisis?

We have increased the additional security funding, which, from memory, I think was flat for about 10 years under the previous Government. This Government came in and decided to increase the additional security funding. The point has been raised in the Select Committee about the comparison with the counter terrorism policing grant that is available in England and Wales. However, if we divide the grant by the population, we get £19.42 per head of funding; if we divide the additional security funding for Northern Ireland by the population of Northern Ireland, we get £19.61 per head. When people ask why Northern Ireland is not eligible for the counter terrorism grant, the answer is that it is getting the same funding per head from the additional security funding. It is for the Chief Constable to decide how best to use that money.

Let me turn to legacy funding. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, speaking for the Opposition, is right that the sum was identified some time ago. It is actually £232 million, because £18 million of the £250 million has been set aside for part 4 of the legacy Act. In addition, the framework agreement, to be given effect by the troubles Bill, will enable the Irish Government to commit a further €25 million for legacy mechanisms. We are talking regularly to the ICRIR and the Treasury on a business case, but I say to the hon. Gentleman that the caseload faced by the legacy commission is entirely the product of the piece of legislation that the previous Government passed.

That’s why we funded it.

Well, it is entirely the result of that. The funding that was made available was the fixed sum to which I referred a moment ago. That is the first point.

Secondly, the Department of Justice had put aside a sum of around, from memory, £50 million when the inquests five year plan was put in place. It thought it would have 50 cases. A number of those, of course, are now not going ahead, and the troubles Bill proposes to restore nine and to sift the rest. Thirdly, prior to the legacy Act’s coming into law, the PSNI had about 1,000 cases to investigate; had the legacy Act not been passed, it would have continued to have to investigate those and receive requests for disclosure.

The final point I would make on this issue—and I did make this point to the Select Committee when I was asked about it—is that we are looking in particular at schedule 4 to the Bill because Jon Boutcher makes the point that if there is a requirement to sift all the material to identify that which is of high security before handing over the files, that puts an obligation in place. We are looking at what we can do to ease some of the cost burdens, as hon. Members have said, as more people come to the Legacy Commission—and I hope more people will come forward.

I will turn now to a couple of other points.

I am pleased that the Government are looking at some sort of additional support for PSNI. I sense that the Secretary of State is about to move off legacy. I did ask him whether he had discussed the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill with the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) because, obviously, his view of the Bill will be critical for its future.

The hon. Gentleman invites me to speculate on discussions I may or may not have had, and I will kindly resist the request that he has just made for reasons that I am sure will have been obvious to him when he wrote that question into his speech.

The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) and I have discussed the internal market many times before. He talks about the firms that have stopped shipping stuff to Northern Ireland. He will find many, many firms that have stopped shipping stuff to Europe for exactly the same reason: the decision to leave the European Union. It is from that that all the consequences have flowed.

indicated dissent.

The hon. and learned Member shakes his head. With respect, I am afraid that it is a self evident fact.

Would the right hon. Member accept that international trade is much different than trade within the country that we belong to? If the impediments are stopping trade within our own country, of course that is much more serious than companies deciding that they are not going to sell to countries abroad.

I would indeed accept that point, if it was not for the fact that a decision had been made to leave the European Union when there is an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was the fundamental problem that had to be solved, and none of the alternative suggestions would enable us to do this.

I want to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) about the Muckamore hospital report. I think that every single Member of the House was deeply shocked by what we read in that report, and our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by the mistreatment that has been revealed. I think the answer to the very reasonable question that she put is that we all hope to see all the many recommendations in that report implemented.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I think the hon. Gentleman was responsible for establishing the inquiry, and I pay credit to him for doing so. The real way to honour those who have suffered is to ensure that the recommendations of the report are fully implemented.

I thank the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for raising the matter. I was the Minister who commissioned the inquiry, and listening to the families and the individuals who were in Muckamore at that time was a harrowing experience. I want to put on the record my thanks to Tom Kark KC, who chaired the inquiry, for handling the inquiry and bringing forward the recommendations in an engaging and compassionate way. The health service, the trusts and the entire health family in Northern Ireland need to pay careful tribute to a number of those recommendations, and the hon. Lady made a good point that they contain learnings for health bodies, trusts and Departments across the United Kingdom.

I congratulate the hon. Member on having established the inquiry, because when things go catastrophically wrong, it is what we do about it that counts, and that requires an independent look and for the truth to be told.

In conclusion, it is of course for the Executive to agree a budget—above all, for the citizens they serve. That is the fundamental principle of devolved government in Northern Ireland. I repeat what I said earlier: both myself and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury are ready and willing to try to assist the Executive in doing that, but we need to see the things that I described earlier to be able to do so.

I thank the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Matthew Patrick), for their positive engagement with the Committee. We understand the challenges the Secretary of State faces, but we hope to provide the correct amount of scrutiny to get Northern Ireland into a better place financially. Many thanks to the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and also to the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) for his kind words. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for talking about the very difficult reading that is the Muckamore Abbey hospital review. I want everybody to be able to see that across this House, we care for everybody wherever they live, but especially in Northern Ireland.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).