The UK government has issued a veiled warning that it will consider direct rule from London for Northern Ireland unless the region’s biggest unionist party ends its boycott of the power-sharing executive soon.
Steve Baker, Northern Ireland minister, on Thursday urged the Democratic Unionist party to “bank the wins” it had secured over new post-Brexit trading rules for the region and return to the Stormont assembly, where civil servants are battling to plug huge budget holes.
“Clearly, we cannot allow things to go on very much longer . . . because it’s not a sustainable basis to be asking officials to take difficult decisions without ministers in place,” Baker told BBC Radio Ulster.
“But equally, we are very well aware that direct rule would be an extremely serious step,” he said, adding that the DUP should “seize this moment” of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of conflict and established power-sharing on April 10 1998.
London has made clear it wants to see a restoration of the devolved institutions, but the DUP has blocked the formation of an executive for almost a year. It argues that the newly agreed Windsor framework, which London and Brussels say removes many of the problems with the original post-Brexit trading rules, does not go far enough.
Although the deal introduces a customs check-free “green lane” for goods from Britain destined to stay in Northern Ireland, some EU rules will still apply, harming the region’s place within the UK, according to the DUP.
Its Stormont boycott comes as Northern Ireland’s finances spiral into crisis. The region has clawed back part of a £660mn overspend it racked up last year but must repay a £300mn loan from London.
In the absence of an executive, Chris Heaton-Harris, UK Northern Ireland secretary, has said he will set a budget soon but warned it will be “tough”.
Officials are bracing for spending in some departments to be slashed by 10 per cent, which will heap pressure on services in a region that already has the longest health service waiting lists in the UK and some of the lowest incomes.
Former finance minister Conor Murphy, from the nationalist Sinn Féin party that is the largest in the region, said it would be a “punishment” budget.
Baker said the crisis was “the product of many years of financial mismanagement” compounded by political instability, with Stormont on hold for four of the past six years.
Northern Ireland received about 20 per cent more funding per head than the rest of the UK, he added, and had “the expectation of bailouts [and] . . . the product of many years of putting off hard decisions like health reform”.
The Irish government insists there can be no return to direct rule, which was in place from the 1970s until the Good Friday Agreement, and says it would have to have a greater say in the region’s affairs.
