It is a matter of deep regret that this Budget must be brought through this House and not the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive. As a devolutionist party, we in the DUP strongly believe that the budgetary process in Northern Ireland ought to be put forward by those elected to make decisions and provide local scrutiny and accountability, yet we are in what can only be described as a very serious situation, which is not helped by the ongoing denial of its gravity by Members of this House. In this debate, we have heard the naive and rather vacuous posturing of some Members across the House who have laid the responsibility for the institutions not being operational at the door of my party and called for the immediate restoration of Stormont.
Let me make one thing clear: we are in this unsatisfactory situation because of the decisions made by this Government. We are in this position because the party of government decided that its unity, as it imploded over Brexit, was more important than the economic and constitutional unity of the United Kingdom, and Ministers openly admit that.
The Government know that this situation is of their making. The leader of my party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), in trying his utmost to avoid this situation, gave the Government and the EU ample time and opportunity to find a new way forward that would command the consent of the Unionist community, and in doing so restore the foundations on which power sharing is built. Members know that until that consent is in place, there will be no restoration and no Stormont Budgets. It is time for people to get real about the magnitude of the situation and the urgency for new, comprehensive solutions to be found.
There is another reason that the Bill is before us today. We ought not forget that the Budget process in Northern Ireland started in October 2021, and in the time and space that my party provided for solutions to the protocol, there was ample time for the then Finance Minister, Conor Murphy, to prepare a Budget agreement, yet he failed to set a Budget and we are now reaping the consequences. His approach to setting a Budget was to promise millions when the coffers were empty. When Sinn Féin was peddling fallacies, the black hole in our Budget was getting darker.
Let me home in on the figures and how the Government are approaching allocations, starting with allocations to the Department of Health. The Secretary of State has aggressively pursued the provision of abortion services in Northern Ireland against the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland, as was evidenced by the consultation held by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), during his time as Secretary
of State; yet while local health trusts are being compelled to provide these services, no additional money has been provided for them to do so.
Instead, with A&E departments overwhelmed with pressures to the point of complete meltdown, with a lack of care packages available across Northern Ireland to help people return home safely and free up capacity in hospitals, and with children enduring appalling waiting lists for speech and language therapy, for instance, to unlock their participation in this world, we now have the additional pressure of providing abortion services within existing budgets. There is no local mandate, no local scrutiny and no local accountability for that decision. I ask the Minister to advise which service currently provided by our crumbling health service ought to be cut to provide that service. Perhaps in his winding-up remarks, he can outline which service he would cut.
Let me turn to concerns about our education system. For too long, our schoolchildren have been the poor relation in terms of spend per pupil in the UK, and this Budget outlines a continuation of that disparity. I see no justification for funding inequality. Surely the education of a child in Banbridge, Portadown or Lurgan is of equal value to that of a child in Banbury or Portsmouth. We hear a lot from this Government about levelling up; surely it is time for levelling up in our classrooms. Our education system simply cannot take ongoing underinvestment, as has been made abundantly clear to the Government by the Education Authority and various school bodies. That issue has been much discussed today.
Since Stormont has been in abeyance, the Government have legislated to spend what limited resources are available to provide unwanted abortion services and unnecessary cultural and language provision that will cost millions, at a time when our schools are running deeper deficits, our healthcare system is in need of emergency care, and our households are set to face huge hikes in household rates. Of course, an even greater cost is the unnecessary and seemingly bottomless pit of money that is being made available to support the functioning of the Northern Ireland protocol. The Treasury has confirmed that the trader support service, which helps companies deal with the paperwork generated by the protocol, has cost the taxpayer £318 million in just over two years. That is £436,000 per day, or £18,000 per hour.
That £436,000 per day could employ 10 highly experienced nurses for a year. The protocol paperwork costs the salary of 10 highly experienced nurses every day—it is really important that we stress that point. That is 7,300 nurses. How transformative that money could be for schools, hospitals and roads in Northern Ireland, rather than facilitating an unnecessary border that divides Northern Ireland off from the rest of the UK. It is time for this Government to find real solutions to the protocol, so that we once again see decisions such as these taken and scrutinised by locally elected politicians, held accountable by local people.
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