DUP MP Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) warned the “Barnett squeeze is getting greater”, while DUP colleague Gavin Robinson described “systemic underfunding of the Northern Ireland budget”, as the Northern Ireland (Interim Arrangements) Bill cleared the Commons. Outlining the legislation, Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker told MPs the Bill would “ensure a continuation of the current governance arrangements in Northern Ireland… should there be no executive when they expire on June 5”. Mr Robinson added that “the politics of all of this has been about gaslighting the people in Northern Ireland… psychologically questioning our understanding of how finances work, telling us that we’re overfunded when we know we’re structurally underfunded. “Standing in this chamber and saying ‘oh but Northern Ireland gets 121% of what people in England get’, when you know that that’s less than what Northern Ireland needs. What we have instead is limited interventions from Westminster that keep public services functioning with limited scrutiny, the situation cannot continue forever.”

Source: The Herald May 10, 2023 17:24 UTC