FORMER BRITISH prime minister Gordon Brown’s pledge to spend £18 billion on infrastructure in Northern Ireland over the next decade was “a cheque that he could not cash”, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson warned yesterday.
“I don’t think Gordon Brown could honour those deals today. His own election manifesto showed that he couldn’t. It is up to us, as always, to pick up the mess left by Labour, who always run out of taxpayers’ money,” Mr Paterson said.
Mr Paterson held 90 minutes of robust debate about the spending cuts with Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, the Ulster Unionists’ Sir Reg Empey and the SDLP’s Alex Atwood at the Champ breakfast, held on the fringes of his party’s conference.
Saying that the cuts would not hit Northern Ireland “as badly as some fear”, Mr Paterson insisted that the health budget was ring-fenced; education would be less affected than other departments; and the UK government would stand by the North on security.
Rejecting charges that Northern Ireland was being unfairly treated, he said that the British taxpayer was subventing it to the tune of £9 billion every year: “We are not walking away, but it is a team game and Northern Ireland has got to play its part.”
The higher costs of delivering public services in Northern Ireland and the £1 billion bill left by segregated education are going to have to be tackled in the years ahead by the Executive, Mr Paterson said.
“There are very long-term consequences to segregation and I do not underestimate the difficulties. There is a school this morning in Belfast with no pupils and there is a school in Belfast with more staff than pupils.
“That is just a criminal waste of public money. We cannot go bearing the costs of that segregation and I don’t see why the British taxpayer should continue to subsidise segregation,” he said.
A review into the future of corporation taxes in Northern Ireland will be finished before the end of the year. Mr Paterson said he favoured cutting them to rates “equal, or even below those in the Republic of Ireland”. Under EU rules, Westminster would have to cede powers to Stormont to do this.
