Jim Allister MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Business is like water: it follows the easiest course. When we were an integrated part of the UK economy, the easiest and cheapest course was to do the greater bulk of our trade with GB. That, historically, has been our basic supply market for our raw materials and everything else. However, when a fettering of trade is imposed, naturally, business will follow the easiest route. The easiest route now, sadly, is to cease trading from GB and accentuate trading with the EU, and most particularly the Republic of Ireland. The United Kingdom was built on two pillars, according to the Acts of Union. The first was a political union, with article 3 establishing this House as one sovereign Parliament for the whole United Kingdom; the second was an economic union, through article 6, which established unfettered trade between and within all parts of the United Kingdom. That was what article 6 said—that there should be unfettered trade. But along came the protocol, which fettered trade, leaving the Supreme Court with no choice but to accept that the protocol had therefore subjugated article 6. The very foundation of our economic union, article 6, which says that there shall be unfettered trade, is in suspension. It is no wonder that the consequence of that fettering of trade is a diversion of trade.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  The way not to deal with it is to say, “We, the United Kingdom, will hand over part of our territory to EU jurisdiction. We will put it under the EU’s customs code, which will decree the rest of the United Kingdom a foreign territory. We will subject that part of our territory to having 300 areas of its law not made in the United Kingdom; law in those areas cannot even be amended in the United Kingdom. It will be foreign law imposed.” This could have been dealt with by mutual enforcement. We could have said, “We want to trade with each other, and we want to be neighbourly, so we will guarantee, on pain of criminal conviction, that anything we send into your territory meets your standards and vice versa.” Why did things have to be made complicated, at the expense of jettisoning Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom economically and constitutionally?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  I think the Secretary of State should listen to himself. What he is saying to the House is that we should be grateful for some sort of dud mechanism to deal with the situation whereby the right to make laws in 300 areas has been gifted to a foreign power, and that people elected in Northern Ireland can have no say in those laws and cannot amend, move or bring them into effect. He says that we should be grateful that, in those 300 areas of law, we might be able to go to the EU and say, “Please, Sir, would you ever mind just making that a little better?” Really? Where is the sense of dignity from this United Kingdom, that we should so prostrate ourselves to a foreign unelected jurisdiction—elected by no one in the United Kingdom—allow them to make our laws, and then claim as a victory the fact that we have a right to go and ask them to make some changes? But the Secretary of State has failed to answer the question. There is trade diversion—what is he going to do about it?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  Not just the previous Administration; I think there has been gross, calculated and deliberate misleading about the protocol from day one. We were told that the green lane was gone. It has not. We still have to do customs declarations. We still have document checks, but all our raw materials must, by dint of the protocol, come through the red lane, so they must be subject to all the rigour of the EU’s international border. That is what will cripple our economy. We have seen it in small craft sectors. Niche sectors that depend on small suppliers are giving up. When that bites, as it will, we will see that right across our economy. The Government need to find some dignity and stand up for this United Kingdom, which is not just Great Britain but includes Northern Ireland. It is time to put some mettle into defending that position, and to row back from the disastrous destructive elements that the protocol has brought us.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  Perhaps in a moment. We also see that in the purchase of goods figures that NISRA reports. It has given us figures from 2020, contrasting them in a table with those for 2023. The year 2023 was only the beginning of things getting difficult, as the Irish sea border did not in effect come into place until October 2023 because of the grace periods. However, those NISRA figures show that Northern Ireland’s purchases of goods increased from 2020 to 2023—of course, it was a period of inflation—by 24% from GB, but by 50% from the Republic of Ireland, meaning twice the growth rate in the buying of goods into Northern Ireland that would previously have come from our integrated United Kingdom economy. The Office for National Statistics business insights and conditions survey states that 13.1% of currently trading manufacturers based in GB had sent goods to Northern Ireland in the past 12 months. That was at the end of 2024. But in January 2021, 20% of manufacturers in GB were sending goods to Northern Ireland. So, in just those four years there has been a dramatic fall in the number of manufacturers supplying goods to Northern Ireland. It has nearly halved in four years. The ONS data for 2024 tells us more: 11.7% of companies tell us they have stopped trading with Northern Ireland. Why? Because of the bureaucracy, because they have to make customs declarations, because they have to have them checked, and because they have to employ extra staff to do all that. Many companies, particularly in smaller sectors, have simply said that they are not going to do it.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  That is the point, because it is an EU border. EU trade laws govern the Irish sea border. EU officials, under the protocol, have the right to supervise checking. When we have the full panoply of facilities that are being built at Larne and at other ports, I fear that we will see the muscle of EU inspections. The protocol gives the EU, which boasted that the price of Brexit would be Northern Ireland, the upper hand in that regard. I return to the point that the protocol is imbued with a political motivation, and that motivation is not to get Northern Ireland the best of both worlds. My goodness, what a con that idea is. The protocol was supposed to make Northern Ireland a Mecca, a Singapore of the west, but we now know that there has been no uplift whatsoever in foreign direct investment. Why? Because a manufacturer coming to Northern Ireland is interested not just in selling goods out of Northern Ireland, but in where it is getting its raw materials. When a manufacturer is told that its basic supply line has to pass through an international customs border controlled by the EU, the shine soon goes off the prospect of investing in Northern Ireland. We are in a pretty dire situation, which is getting worse, and which has massive constitutional and economic implications, but I fear that the Government are deaf and blind to the issues, because they do not want to face the consequences. They are hand in glove with the EU, dismantling Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, and setting us on a course for the economics marrying with the politics, and Northern Ireland ceasing to be.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  In a moment, perhaps. I need to make sure I get through what I need to say. It is beyond doubt, I would respectfully say, that there has been trade diversion. Back in September, the Road Haulage Association gave evidence to a parliamentary Committee of this House. It told the Committee that 30% of haulage lorries that take goods to GB are returning empty. Why? Because GB companies have stopped supplying. Now, that is an incredible thing to contemplate. Trade works on the basis that you take goods out, and then you fill your lorry and bring goods back. That is how you make it viable and how the economy works. That 30% of lorries now returning to Northern Ireland are returning empty is an incredible indictment of the operation of the protocol. And things are getting worse. The EU regulation on general product safety now puts more burdens on companies selling into Northern Ireland, because they have to meet enhanced EU product safety regulations. I have mentioned the craft sector in this House before. Recently, 11 suppliers in that niche market stopped supplying Northern Ireland. It will get worse, because the partial border is coming and they will have to do more paperwork and make more declarations about sending simple parcels from GB to Northern Ireland. Tesco has slides that it shows to its own suppliers stating that they should now buy from the Republic of Ireland because it is easier to supply from there than from GB. The same is happening in veterinary medicines and in every sector. Why does that matter? It matters for a very pertinent political reason. The whole idea of trade diversion and the whole purpose of the protocol was and is to build an all-Ireland economy: to dismantle the economic links between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and enhance links with the Irish Republic, thereby creating stepping stones out of the United Kingdom into an all-Ireland for Northern Ireland. That was the determination that lay behind the protocol. We do not need a protocol to govern trade. It is demonstrable that if we can organise trade through Northern Ireland to GB without border checks in the Irish sea, and if, as the Government now say is possible, we can do it with checks away from the border, then equally we could do it in the other direction, through mutual enforcement. That would mean recognising that if we are going to export from one territory to another, our manufacturers must produce goods to the standards of the other, and we would enforce that by making it a criminal offence to do otherwise. That is the essence of mutual enforcement. It would work, but it is not allowed to work, because the political agenda of the protocol is to ensure this reorientation and realignment. We are told that we now have Intertrade UK, but it has no staff and no budget, in comparison with InterTradeIreland, which has more than 50 staff and a budget of £6.5 million a year and is active across the whole area. Intertrade UK has been set up as a shadow, but it is not able to compete in any sense. This Government have allowed the economy of Northern Ireland to drift out of the United Kingdom. I believe those who are protocol enthusiasts want that to happen. Now it is happening, the onus is back on the Government to do something about it.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Trade Diversion and Windsor Framework · Hansard source

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  The issue of diversion of trade is becoming an increasing problem of manifold proportions for Northern Ireland. Before the protocol, goods could be moved from Birmingham to Belfast as easily as they could be moved from Gloucester to Glasgow, but no more. The resulting Irish sea border, and all that comes with it, has caused a huge and increasing diversion of trade. We can get an insight into how things naturally should be and how business wishes them to be by looking at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency figures of recent years. If we look at the pre-protocol days, we see that in 2018, for example, the volume of goods purchased from the Irish Republic was £2.8 billion, but the amount purchased from GB was five times that—£13.4 billion. There we have a snapshot of the natural inclination of trade in Northern Ireland, particularly for our raw materials. Before Brexit, there was a similar situation. Indeed, we could say—and some may say—that that is a better reflection of whether there has been trade diversion. Before Brexit, we could as readily buy our goods from the Republic as we could from GB, because we were all in the EU single market. Even then, the predominant trading of choice was from GB. That is no surprise because for decades Northern Ireland has been a particularly integrated part of the UK economy. However, along came the protocol, which requires Northern Ireland to be subject to a foreign customs code—that of the EU—which of course treats GB as if it is a foreign country. Therefore, when goods come from outside the EU into the EU, and we in Northern Ireland are regarded as being in the EU for these purposes, those goods have to be checked, with customs declarations, documentary checks and physical checks on, for example, all our raw materials. So it is no surprise that that is inevitably bound to cause diversion of trade. We were told, as part of the spin of selling the protocol, “Oh, there are protections against the diversion of trade, and it wouldn’t be allowed to happen”. Article 16 of the protocol, we were told, was our safety net: “If the application of this Protocol leads to…diversion of trade…the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures.” It has led to the diversion of trade, but the United Kingdom Government have not taken unilateral action in that regard. The fact of the diversion of trade is a challenge to the protocol’s proponents. It is a challenge to those who put this upon us, and it is one that they have to meet, but which I fear they will not meet. Where is the proof, some may ask, of the diversion of trade? Again, it is in the NISRA statistics. Dr Esmond Birnie, a renowned economist in Northern Ireland, has done a succession of studies of the NISRA statistics. He wrote back on 11 December 2024 that the data “provides further evidence that the NI economy is becoming more trade integrated with the Republic”, and of “North-South trade growing at very rapid rates at the expense of what previously was an inflow of goods from GB.”

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I note with great appreciation the order for Thales in Belfast. With Europe collectively being a long way short of self-sufficiency in defence, and with Putin more than likely to seek to exploit that deficiency, do the security guarantees required from the US effectively equate to those that would arise under article 5 of NATO? Is that the order of what we are talking about?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Independent Reporting Commission: Seventh Annual Report · Hansard source

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  After decades of illegal paramilitary organisations taking successive Governments for a ride over transition and pocketing millions of pounds along the way, the Secretary of State now wants to appoint a special envoy—a nursemaid to paramilitaries. When will this pandering come to an end, and is the Secretary of State going to accept the IRC’s grotesque proposal of moving to de-proscription, under which organisations that murdered thousands of people would ultimately be made legal? Can he at least rule that out? On a happier note, will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming today’s announcement by the Irish Football Association and the Galgorm resort that there will be a new training facility par excellence for Northern Ireland football teams?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Defence and Security · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with the Prime Minister that this is an important moment for our nation, and I welcome the rebalancing of expenditure towards defence. However, does he agree that the success of our national security posture will be judged not by percentages but by the strength of the deterrent that we build, and is it his abiding commitment to be unwavering in building such a deterrent?

• 24 Feb 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  No Member of this House should be in any doubt as to who the aggressor is in this situation, who the dictator is, or who started this war. No one should give cover to the dictator who started this war. The Prime Minister has said that, if there is peace, he anticipates a post-peace situation where there will be British troops on the ground in Ukraine, with what he termed “a US backstop”. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that the prospect of a US backstop would be greatly enhanced if the European nations began more thoroughly to shoulder the financial burden that has been shirked in recent years?

• 24 Feb 2025 · Crown Estate Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that one of the problems in this territory is that we do not yet have the definition of what is meant to be sustainable? On reading the Bill, it appears that the whole focus of what sustainable will be is on the green energy side, rather than what will sustain the fishing industry.

• 24 Feb 2025 · Crown Estate Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I wish to primarily address new clause 7, tabled by the hon. Members for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) and for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi), and to express opposition to it. It very much reflects what is in new clause 1, in terms of seeking devolution of the Crown Estate, but in this case to the Northern Ireland Executive in respect of the assets there. I oppose that for a number of reasons. It presently is a reserved matter, and I strongly believe that is how it should stay. I say that not because that is right ideologically, but because practically it is beyond belief that the current Stormont Executive could ever handle the controversies that come with the Crown Estate. This is an Executive in Stormont that have been in existence for almost 13 months and still cannot agree a programme for Government. If we were to hand them something as controversial as control of the Crown Estate, we all know what the outcome would be. Why is it controversial? For one specific and historical reason. Lough Foyle is controlled and owned by the Crown Estate. It is a piece of water that separates County Londonderry, which is in Northern Ireland, from County Donegal, which is in the Republic of Ireland, but the entirety of Lough Foyle since last we had a King Charles rests under British control. In 1662, Charles II gifted Lough Foyle, the surrounding waters, the seabed and the waters within it to the Irish Society. The Irish Society was a conglomerate of various companies from the City of London, which did a great deal to develop and build the city of Londonderry; and as part of that, I presume, it was gifted control over Lough Foyle. In 1952, the Irish Society conveyed Lough Foyle to the Crown Estate. A divided Executive in Northern Ireland would be hopelessly incapable of resolving the issues that flow from the somewhat controversial aspect of the entirety of Lough Foyle, right up to the coastline of County Donegal, being properly, legally and in perpetuity in the control of the Crown Estate. Therefore, devolving the Crown Estate to the Northern Ireland Executive would be disastrous for the good management of the lough and for the uncontroversial continuance of its ability to be developed. That might be a particular situation, but it is in addition to my opposition from an ideological point of view and my belief that the Crown Estate is a national asset that should continue to be of a reserved category. I think the proposition in new clause 7 would be the utmost folly; I trust that the Government will resist it and that the House will reject it.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Scrutiny of European Statutory Instruments · Hansard source

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  Yes, and there is much talk about tariffs. Think of the conundrum that would be created if President Trump imposed tariffs on the EU. Northern Ireland, treated as EU territory, would, I presume, be subject to those tariffs, yet we are told that we are part of the United Kingdom. That is all because of the application to Northern Ireland of the customs code. If there were corresponding responses from the EU in that scenario, those would, under adjustments to matters arising under its customs code, apply to Northern Ireland it seems, and all without scrutiny. While the establishment of this Committee, belated as it is, is welcome, it is important that we are able to understand that it will seriously address the scrutiny issues, as the previous Committee under Sir Bill Cash did. I pay tribute to him for the work that he did, but there has been this great gap in the meantime with effectively no scrutiny whatever. Now that scrutiny will be done by a Committee without, as I have said, a Northern Ireland representative even on it.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Scrutiny of European Statutory Instruments · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. There is a sheer volume of EU law that still applies in Northern Ireland. In annex 2 to the protocol, there are 287 such areas of law, and many have been added to it since. That breeds further regulation of a huge quantity, yet there is a lack of scrutiny. The speed with which regulation is applied and the lack of opportunity for scrutiny is important. One of the complaints I hear from the Democratic Scrutiny Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly is that it is not given the time or notice to deal with issues, even if there were the inclination among some to do so.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Scrutiny of European Statutory Instruments · Hansard source

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  Scrutiny of the laws that we make and that bind us is very important, and it is exceedingly important when the origins of the laws are not within our own parliamentary framework. Of course, in the part of the United Kingdom from which I come, Northern Ireland, in over 300 areas the laws are made not by this House or the Stormont Assembly, but by a foreign Parliament that we do not elect—the European Parliament. That underscores the huge importance of effective scrutiny. In so far as this motion slightly improves the situation, it is welcome, but I need to make three or four points. Is the inference of this motion that there has been no scrutiny of these matters since the demise of the European Scrutiny Committee in or about April of last year? If so, a vast swathe of laws have obviously gone unscrutinised. The former Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee told this House in March 2023 that, in the two years from 2021 to 2023, 640 EU laws had been imposed on Northern Ireland. How many have been imposed since, and how many of them have been scrutinised? Since Northern Ireland is the region most affected by many of these laws, I have to register my disappointment that not a single Member from Northern Ireland was proposed for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. That is a huge failure to give those I represent some confidence that scrutiny is taking place and is effective.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Scrutiny of European Statutory Instruments · Hansard source

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  Yes. The Cabinet Office undertakes to notify on a weekly basis, but I think that is honoured more in default than anything else. From a scrutiny point of view, we are in a perilous position. I do hope that the Committee will grasp the issue and take it seriously. My only regret is there is not a Member from Northern Ireland on the Committee to hold feet to the fire. That goes to the heart of what should affect and concern us all as representatives. I ask Members of the House who come from other parts of the United Kingdom how they would feel if there were 300 areas of law that they could not make or change and regulations—with votes on them—were not even being properly scrutinised. I think we know how others would feel. Frankly, we ask for nothing that others do not have for themselves.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Scrutiny of European Statutory Instruments · Hansard source

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  I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and I do not gainsay it. If that is so, it is a very poor reflection on the interest in scrutiny. Not only do we have this lacuna in scrutiny of a year or more; we have the very unsatisfactory position of there being no transparency—there is no public list of all the imposed EU laws. It does not exist, from what I am told. How can it be right for citizens in any part of this United Kingdom to be governed by laws when there is not even a list of all those laws? I look to the Government for a commitment that there will at least be the transparency of publishing a list of all relevant regulations that are imposed—and “imposed” is the correct word—on Northern Ireland from a foreign Parliament. Some may say, “Oh, but doesn’t the Stormont Assembly have a Democratic Scrutiny Committee?”, and, of sorts, it does, but on 2 February the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland wrote to the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly informing him of the types of laws that will be reported to the Assembly, and it does not include all laws. We have the so-called Stormont brake, which applies only to any law amending an existing EU law. We have applicability motions, which can apply to any new law, but we do not have any right of scrutiny within the Northern Ireland Assembly of what we would call statutory instruments. There simply is no capacity to scrutinise them. We recently had a troubling example of such a statutory instrument. Commission implementing regulation 2025/89 creates a situation where, for the first time in any part of this United Kingdom, and with no consultation with our consumers or our elected representatives, we now have an authorised EU law whereby mealworms and insects can be included in food products. That EU law has been imposed upon Northern Ireland without any scrutiny in Stormont or in this place. Would that type of EU implementing regulation be on the agenda of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, or would it just pass under the radar, as has been happening for so long? Vast swathes of important law are not classified as devolved under the protocol arrangements, so they are never scrutinised in the Northern Ireland Assembly, nor can they ever be scrutinised. Nothing that arises under the EU’s customs code, under its VAT regime or under state aid is devolved. Those matters are reserved to this place. Regulations are made from time to time on the customs code, which is the most offensive of all the protocol arrangements, because it is the one that says, “Northern Ireland is to be treated as EU territory. GB is to be treated as a third or foreign country, and thus the goods coming from GB to Northern Ireland—coming from a third country—have to be subject to the rigours of an international customs border.” All that arises under the EU’s customs code, and none of that can be scrutinised in Northern Ireland. None of it has been scrutinised in this House, either.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  There is tangible anger in Northern Ireland over this preposterous verdict, and the Secretary of State’s limp response today will not assuage that anger. This is a Secretary of State who wants to see IRA godfather Gerry Adams paid compensation because the wrong Minister signed his detention order 50 years ago. This is a Secretary of State who has today defended the retention of a coronary system that, time without number, puts the security forces in the dock, but never the terrorists. Little wonder that confidence in the Secretary of State is haemorrhaging in Northern Ireland, and this response only underscores why.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  I have heard no one in this debate defend the land-banking corporations, but I have heard many Members objecting to genuine farmers’ being treated in the same way as if they were the land-banking corporations. That is fundamentally wrong, and therein lies the basic flaw in this proposal. It is useful to cast our minds back to why, 40 years ago, this concession was introduced. We were told at the time that it was for two reasons—two reasons that still apply today: to enable retention by the next generation, and to allow long-term planning without fear of a crippling death tax. Those two reasons were good then and they are equally good today. Yet now we have arrived at a situation where the Government tell us—or some of its Members do—that they are bringing this policy in to chase the land-banking corporations, even though the policy, if implemented, will enhance the land banking of those corporations. It is the small, genuine family farms that will not be able to meet the tax and will sell—and who will the buyers be? The buyers will be the land-banking corporations. It is a self-defeating policy if that is its purpose, and it is a policy that will cripple many family farms. The Government tell us, “Oh, it will affect only 500 farms a year.” The Northern Ireland Rural Valuers Association, a body of professional valuers, has done a massive piece of work on this and has concluded that, in Northern Ireland alone, 200 farms will be affected per annum. If the total is meant to be 500 in the UK and Northern Ireland, which represents only a 40th of this nation, can produce 200 in a year, it is quite clear that the Government are wholly wrong in their statistics and in their evaluation. Frankly, my local farmers are not particularly interested in Labour chiding the Tories and the Tories chiding Labour about who did what when. They are interested in getting a solution. I say to this Government that strong government is not about driving a policy through because you have a big majority; strong Government is about doing what is right. It is patently right here to have the courage to acknowledge that this is a flawed policy and therefore the Government need to find reverse gear. I trust that they do.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Armed Forces Recruitment · Hansard source

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  Following on from the previous question, does the Minister accept that recruitment is bound to be disincentivised by a finding, 30 years on, that people who did their duty and encountered armed IRA terrorists on murderous active service, and protected the public as a consequence, find themselves vilified 30 years later by the coroner’s service? How can that be right, and what steps will the Government take to protect our armed forces not just now but going into the future, including what happened in the past?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Chagos Islands · Hansard source

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  I have a simple question: do the Government disagree with anything that the Prime Minister of Mauritius said about this deal yesterday, and if so, what is it?

• 4 Feb 2025 · UK-US Bilateral Relationship · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I want to use this debate to try to get an answer to a question that I asked in PMQs a few weeks ago, and to which I did not get an answer. How does the United Kingdom Government hope to obtain a trade deal for the United Kingdom so long as the customs laws, the trade laws and many of the economic laws of a part of this United Kingdom are made not in the United Kingdom by Parliament but by the EU? How, without the unity of a common customs base, a common trade base and common standards affecting the goods that can be imported and exported from our country, do we obtain a trade deal with a third country such as the United States? If President Trump proceeds with his threatened tariffs on the EU, does that mean they will apply to Northern Ireland because we are subject to the EU’s wretched trade laws and tariffs and everything else that goes with it? When and how will the United Kingdom put ourselves in a position where we can obtain a trade deal applicable to all the United Kingdom so long as it persists with the partitioning protocol agreement that divides the United Kingdom and leaves part of it under the control of a foreign power? Or are this Government interested only in a trade deal that would benefit Great Britain? Have they abandoned any interest in a trade deal for the whole United Kingdom? I would like an answer to that question, and I would like the Minister to explain how it is even possible, legally, to obtain a trade deal for the whole United Kingdom so long as this Government do not control the trade laws of the whole United Kingdom.

• 3 Feb 2025 · Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill · Hansard source

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  None of us, I hope, has any empathy with fraudsters. I trust that it is the united view of this House that fraud, wherever it occurs, should be pursued with rigour. However, that does not mean that a Bill that proclaims itself to have that purpose should be simply nodded through. The fine print of this Bill deserves as rigorous an examination as any other. There are a number of areas in this Bill that I find concerning. I find the equivalence in investigative powers and the initiation of those powers between investigating fraud and investigating overpayment troubling. There is a huge difference between a person who enriches themselves through fraudulent activity and someone who is innocent, but is the recipient of an overpayment—not because of a mistake they have made, but because of a mistake the Department has made. That is a huge distinction morally, and in every other way. Yet it seems to me that the Bill makes an equivalence between the powers of investigation in that regard, which is something I find discomforting and unfair. I also find some of the detail we find in the Bill surprising. As our law presently stands, a person can be regarded as and held to be a fraudster, in the eyes of the law, only if they have been convicted of fraud beyond all reasonable doubt. That is the hallowed and long-standing criminal standard that has to be reached before someone is convicted as a fraudster. But no longer is that the standard. Indeed, no longer is it for the courts to decide whether someone is a fraudster. Now, under clause 50, the Minister can decide whether someone is a fraudster, and not on the criminal standard but on the balance of probabilities. Clause 50 states: “The Minister may impose a penalty on a person if satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the person has carried out, or conspired to carry out, fraud”. The Minister—not our courts, but the Minister—will decide, on the balance of probabilities, whether someone is a fraudster. How could that be right? How could that be fair? It gets worse, because when we read clause 50 with clause 52, we discover that the penalty is measured not by what the fraud was in every case, but by what the fraud might have been. So a person can be penalised on the balance of probabilities; not by a court, but by a Minister; and not for having obtained anything fraudulently, but for what they might have obtained had the fraud been perfected. I say to the House that is taking us far too far. That needs to be re-examined. Then we come to clause 91. Under this astounding, disconnected provision, a person can be disqualified from driving if they have failed to pay back £1,000, whether they got it by fraud or, as I read it, they were overpaid it. They can lose their driving licence not because they have been convicted of fraud, but because clause 91(2) states that the schedule that will now be amended will make “provision for a liable person to be disqualified”. What is a “liable person”? We have to go to clause 11 to discover that a “liable person” is somebody on whom the Minister has served a recovery notice. If the Minister serves a recovery notice on you, that makes you a liable person under clause 91, and under clause 91, if you still have not paid back £1,000, you can lose your driving licence. Really? I do think that with this measure we have hugely run away with ourselves in terms of what is proportionate and appropriate. There is much in this Bill in the way of overreach, which the Government need to re-examine. Yes, let us go after fraudsters. Yes, let us recover the money that they should never have had. But let us do it in a way that respects the traditions of our legal system and of the decency in our society, instead of the overreach of some aspects—not all—of the Bill. The Bill does not apply to the area I come from, Northern Ireland, but inevitably, because parity controls the welfare payments that are made in Northern Ireland, there will eventually be some parallel, reflective legislation. That will be needed, but I want to say a word—I want the Minister to take it on board—about the Northern Ireland Executive. Welfare payments in Northern Ireland are demand-led. They are administered by the Department for Communities in the Northern Ireland Executive, but they are demand-led. Therefore, in that sense, they are not coming out of the Northern Ireland block grant. It seems to me that there is a tendency within the Northern Ireland Executive to be less rigorous than they ought to be on fraud, because they are not recovering money that has been misused from the block grant; they are recovering money that has been misused from the Treasury. That, for some of them, shamefully, does seem to create a disincentive to pursuing fraud recovery with the vigour that they should. I say that on the basis of figures released in a number of Northern Ireland Assembly answers. They show that in the last five years there have been only between 200 to 300 fraud pursuit cases in Northern Ireland, touching on only £4.5 million. There is a lot more fraud in the benefits system in Northern Ireland than £4.5 million. Yes, let us pursue fraud with vigour, but let the Secretary of State put some pressure on the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that they are living up to their obligations to also save the Treasury the money that has been lost in fraud.