Introduction
I recall watching the Prime Minister of the UK, Harold
Wilson, appearing on television in May 1974 to denounce the Loyalist Workers
strike and his use of the word “spongers.”
The strike crippled daily life and brought
down the fledgling power-sharing Government established under the Sunningdale
Agreement.
The collapse took place the
year after the UK joined the European Economic Community.
Move forward to January 2020. Will Northern Ireland experience a year of
perfect vision and will there be another new beginning?
The initial relief felt by the hard-pressed
public when Northern Ireland politicians returned to Stormont after a 3-year paid
absence was soon interrupted. It only
took a few days before MLAs, Members of the newly reconvened Legislative
Assembly, began complaining about insufficient money from Westminster to
govern.
At times one wonders what the citizens of Great Britain
must think of us across the Irish Sea.
December 2019
Step back to the previous month.
People throughout the UK were thinking not
about divisive topics like politics or politicians but about joyful activities
such as Christmas and family togetherness.
The prospect of a General Election slap bang in the middle of the festive month,
however, couldn’t easily be ignored even if it ranked as an unseasonal
inconvenience.
Devolution was looking unviable,
a hopeless case of incompatible differences, where paralysis had produced
hardship and deterioration in public services.
When I wrote to my Westminster MP[i] five days before the 12
December General Election, I asked about her party’s campaign boast to have
delivered £1.5b of extra funding for Northern Ireland.
Was it, for instance, additional funding over
and above the Barnett formula used for allocation across the UK.
Where had it been spent, if indeed it had ever
transpired?
Had Economic Appraisals been
carried out on projects funded as required by HM Treasury etc?
At the time of writing to her,15,000 nurses had
begun a strike for the first time ever, there being no prospect of their pay
being aligned to Great Britain’s nurses. What about her party’s trumpeted
imperative for regulatory alignment with the UK?
I also asked about the party’s campaign pledge “to protect
Northern Ireland’s place in the union.”
How would Brexit protect the union since it has been shown by reputable
bodies (the NIESR, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England,
the Treasury, the ESRI and others) that it will diminish UK GDP; and what sort
of advertisement for “strong unionism” was her support for the illegal prorogation
of Parliament that inflicts reputational damage on the Monarch of a divided
kingdom?
Three days before polling day, I was delighted to receive
a considered reply.
To my surprise it had been sent just before half six in the
morning, even using first names.
It
provided detail of some allocations of the £1.5b to health projects.
The list shows a total of £116 million allocated
to five health areas (none of which were nurses’ pay). On my calculations,
helpful as this detail is, the figures account for 7.73% of the £1.5 billion.
Questions arising include: what about the other £1.384
billion; and given the parlous state of the health service in Northern Ireland,
what difference, if any, has the £116m made?
Regardless of that and in retrospect, I am glad I put the
case at the time, not least because the electorate voted to
return a different party and candidate to represent Belfast South.
M.P’s reply
Michael,
There was a UK wide people’s vote, the people of
the UK voted to leave the EU. Implementing the decision of the people is
about honouring democracy. However, the DUP have made clear that we
wanted a sensible Brexit deal that respects East, West and North, South
relationships.
The extra money is verified by FactCheckNI, it is
worth checking this out. It was allocated to the Northern Ireland
departments as additional to the block grant and the Barnett Formula did not
apply to the funds so a proportionate amount did not go to other UK regions.
This was an additional amount just for NI.
The money went with the high level condition (so
much for heath, so much for broadband etc) however, within some of those high
level areas, the Northern Ireland civil service and departments could spend
against priorities and pressures. All departmental expenditure is (should
be) spent in accordance with HMT guidelines and procedures. I assume
these have all been followed.
The adjustment to the tariffs on RHI will now mean
there will be no overspend, in fact, Northern Ireland is projected to only draw
down part of the NI allocation directly from HMT. There will therefore be
no ongoing cost to the NI block grant.
The DUP Team at Westminster has been strong as we
have delivered extra funding, succeeded in lifting the 1% pay cap for the
entire UK, protected the pensions triple lock for the entire UK, protected the
Winter Fuel Allowance for the entire UK, secured the City Deals for NI and
more.
I attach some information about the expenditure of
the additional DUP C and S funds in Health.[ii]
Kind Regards,
Emma
The
New Year
Since
the General Election and a big victory for the Conservative Party, Westminster
has passed the Withdrawal Bill (dubbed the "Betrayal Act" by the DUP) with Royal
Assent granted on 23 January.
Northern Ireland’s
restored Assembly got down to work prioritising the case of the valiant nurses
with a popular decision to award them a pay rise.
Polemic
ensued, however, over Westminster’s funding support for devolution. Whereas MLAs are keen neither to fall out with
each other (yet) nor to bite too hard on the hand that feeds them, especially
after three years off, there is debate and disagreement about the regional
Government raising funds locally to pay for essentials.
British voices
Is the British public again tiring of the price of
bolstering its loyal Northern Irish territory?
If so, perhaps it may be explicable in the face of major needs in the
NHS (remembering the Brexit red bus pledge of Boris Johnson) and from the
Government’s new support base in the north of England, the former “red wall,”
where delivery is sacrosanct.
Coming just as the UK exits from the EU with its potential
ramifications for the continued existence of a Kingdom United, the spats at
Stormont critical of Westminster’s lack of funding largesse have provoked
reactions from important voices in Britain.
One, for example, comes from the former PM Gordon Brown, another comes from
the experienced Times columnist and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris.
Gordon Brown argues that the UK needs a “Constitutional
revolution” to rescue the union.[iii] “The risk,” he contends, is that “getting Brexit done is leaving Britain
undone and, by destabilising the careful balance between the Irish and British
identities in Northern Ireland, threatening the very existence of the United
Kingdom.”
Jonathan Powell, the UK Government’s chief negotiator on
the Good Friday Agreement has made a similar point. He also argues[iv] that there is a good
chance of a border poll and a united Ireland within ten years.
This is emphatic stuff.
Brown’s case carries an implicit reminder that it is going to take a
year of transition (possibly more) to agree a new trade deal with the EU and to
achieve the objective of completing Brexit in an orderly and satisfactory
manner.
On hearing that Conservative Party Election mantra
“Getting Brexit done,” I was reminded of the rather more subtle line by the metaphysical
English poet and Anglican cleric John Donne.
Punning his own surname, he wrote:-
“When
thou hast done, Thou hast not done, For I have more.”
Thinking about transition and the negotiation of complex
trade deals, might Donne’s lines be an epitaph for the UK post-Brexit?
Matthew Parris writes that “faster than many realise, the
time is coming to think dispassionately about the unification of Ireland.”[v]
Parris’s evidential base includes Lord Ashcroft’s poll in
October 2019. As he says it was “taken before we knew a border was to be
established in the Irish Sea” showing a slender majority for unification.
For good measure he quotes Dominic Rabb, now the
Foreign Secretary, who says that non-divergence from the EU is good news for Northern
Ireland.
Parris adds that goods will travel freely across the land
border; that polls show a change of mood in Ireland in favour of unification;
and that Northern Ireland “has failed spectacularly with regional subsidy” and
has been “a bottomless pit.”
He concludes
that at £12b net annually, “Northern Ireland costs the taxpayer slightly more
than our net payments to the EU.” Britain,
he writes, pays more to keep NI in the Union than it will get back by leaving
the EU.
Wasn’t it a similar line of thinking that persuaded 52%
of British voters to divorce the EU?
What adds authority to comments like these is that they
are articulated, not by politicians or commentators in Ireland north or south,
but by Britons with close connections to and experience of the UK’s economy and
governance.
©Michael McSorley 2019
References
[i] https://michaelmcsorleyeconomy.blogspot.com/2019/12/election-communication.html
[ii]
Emma Little Pengelly 9 December 2019, Examples of DUP allocations to Health
from Confidence and Supply fund (See table below)
[iii]
Observer 19 January 2020 p 10 Michael Savage “Constitutional revolution needed
to rescue the union, warns Brown”
[iv]
BBC Newsnight 13 December 2019 J Powell interviewed by Emily Maitless
