Jim Allister

Taken as a whole, this Budget is really rather insipid, because it deliberately avoids many of the big-ticket areas, such as our runaway benefits budget, which it does nothing at all about, and the need to put together a properly funded programme to adequately build the defence of this nation—again, an issue that this Budget leaves untouched. But at least we have a Budget. I say that because in my part of the United Kingdom, we are entering the eighth month when, because of a catastrophic failure of devolution in Northern Ireland, we do not even have a budget for this year, never mind next year. I say to the Treasury and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland that this cannot go on. They need to bring that budget through this House so that there is the money to pay for the public service pay rises and everything else, which is now at risk because of the dysfunctional failure of the Stormont Executive. One of the other things this Budget is silent about—yet it is something that, if the Government have their way, will be very important—is the cost of the Government’s intended reset with the EU. I will take but one example, which is the proposition that the United Kingdom should participate in the EU’s electricity market. When we look at the European Council decision that created the mandate for the EU to negotiate with the United Kingdom about the UK entering the EU’s electricity market, we find that the mandate includes the words “an agreement on the financial contribution of the United Kingdom towards reducing economic, social and territorial disparities between the regions of the Union”. In other words, the United Kingdom, as a cost of joining the EU’s electricity market, will be required to make a contribution—no doubt a sizeable contribution—to the EU’s cohesion fund. It is the same with the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement and with all the other targets of the reset, yet this Budget fails to tell us what the cost of any of that will be. The Government need to front up and tell the public not the glossy impression they like to create of advantage from the reset, which is phoney, but the actual monetary cost. What is it, Minister?