I understand that the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland are currently not being scrutinised in the way that we would expect here. If the Public Accounts Committee was to undertake that role, it would be a very serious change to constitutional arrangements. The actuality discussed by the Chair of Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and others is that there needs to be some sort of process. I am not sure whether this is the right process, but I agree that there needs to be some sort of process for the reports already coming out of Northern Ireland that are highlighting some serious problems.
I make no judgment about the work of the Northern Ireland Office, the civil servants in Northern Ireland and the many public servants trying to continue to deliver services, but the lack of scrutiny and analysis of that money, and our incapacity to challenge, means that that huge area of spend, involving UK taxpayers’ money, is receiving less attention than school budgets get when we audit them. We know—this has been reinforced—that there are huge problems under the headings of this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) said, the Opposition want the Department to make progress on the Hart inquiry, victims’ and survivors’ pensions, and the medical school at Ulster University. I recently visited the team behind the project to progress the medical school in Derry/Londonderry. The scale of the work to date, and their ambition for their city and region, is to be commended, and the Secretary of State must find a way to support them. We have the ridiculous situation in which civil servants can support the business case but not agree the funding, because that is beyond their powers and would be considered a reallocation.
Why is a medical school important? The Government are proud of their announcement of new medical schools in England. The areas chosen need those schools because we need the recruits. As the chief executive of Health Education England said when the announcement was made—MPs in those areas know this—
“studies show that doctors tend to stay in the areas where they train so it means more doctors for the region to deliver high-quality care.”
In Northern Ireland, the locum bill is more than £80 million per annum and rising—an increase, according to the Bengoa report, of more than 78% in five years. It is clear that Northern Ireland needs to be training more of its own doctors and other clinical staff. It also needs to pay them properly, but the rates of pay of those staff are falling behind those in the rest of the UK.