Speeches by Benn.

“In my recent meetings with party leaders, including you, reform was one thing that we talked about. The point I am making is that, first, periods with no Executive mean that these questions are absolutely not going to be addressed; they will be left untouched. In my view there is absolutely no reason why, even with the…”

“I hope my maths was right—I did the calculation the other day, where I took the £37.8 million and divided it by the population of Northern Ireland, and I took the £1.2 billion and divided it by the population of England and Wales, and the funding per head came out as basically the same.”

“I think it is covered by the ASF.”

“Is that the £1.2 billion?”

“The 40% of time when the Executive has not been functioning guarantees that there will be no progress on what we have been discussing for the last 10 minutes. That is very clear indeed. Notwithstanding the challenges of operating a mandatory power-sharing system, in the end this is about political choices that the Exec…”

“Do you mean a way of calculating it?”

“It is a very fair question. It was £32 million for a whole load of years, so I do not know what criteria that revealed. All I know is that, when I came into this job, it had been stuck there for a long time, and we have given the PSNI an increase. That is the criterion—I thought it should have more money and we managed…”

“There is a balance to be struck here, and the Government are working very hard to strike the appropriate balance. The situation that we found ourselves in most recently was that the Executive came to us and said, “We are heading for a very significant overspend.” All Governments have an obligation to balance the budget…”

“The criteria for what?”

“I don’t think one is relying on the additional security funding to keep the PSNI going. It spends that money on a number of things, including operational capability, in some cases closed protection, site security, specialist capabilities and terrorist investigations—the kind of things you would expect it to be using th…”

“What the exercise consists of is Treasury officials working with colleagues in the Northern Ireland civil service and going through the budgets of all the Departments. They are understandably requesting information. The aim is to try to finish the process by the end of this month, although that may be a bit ambitious. …”

“I have not seen the detail. What did he say was disjointed?”

“It is in recognition of the security situation in Northern Ireland. It has been provided over a number of years. It was higher in the past. It was then at £32 million from 2015-16 through to 2024-25. When this Government were elected, we took the decision to increase the amount, which is why it is at £37.8 million now.…”

“There has been a great deal of speculation, going back a very long time, about the identity of the alleged agent known as “Stakeknife”, but that is for others to do. The Government have a very particular responsibility in relation to “neither confirm nor deny”, because it is not just about historical matters; it is abo…”

“I am not going to give a date today, because, as I hope you will know, I will never make a promise that I am not certain of keeping. Just bear with us.”

“Of course, gladly.”

“I will have to write to you about that, because I am not represented on it. I cannot recall having seen something about it, but can I provide you with some further information? The perm sec is otherwise engaged today given current events, but otherwise she would be able to answer your question. I am sorry.”

“I have given a commitment to the House. We said that we needed to wait for the outcome of the Thompson case, which we had, I think, in December. The Government are currently considering the implications of that for the formal request that has been made to me by Operation Kenova and echoed in the report that you publish…”

“Sometimes, the wheels of government take time to churn. Especially when it comes to funding, there are particular fiscal events—to use the jargon—when you have an opportunity. We were successful in putting in a bid, which resulted in the £16.5 million.”

“It has raised the profile of the opportunities for trade right across the UK as a whole. It was the implementation of a commitment arising from “Safeguarding the Union”. We have now provided some funding to Intertrade UK so it can take its work forward. It is planning to run a series of events. Some people look at trad…”