Select committee: Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Recommendation 1
First Report - Investment in Northern Ireland
Published 8 Nov 2022
Paragraph 14
Addressed to Northern Ireland Executive; Northern Ireland Office
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Investment in Northern Ireland All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
NI received proportionally less than Scotland, Wales and England in the first round of levelling up. There has been no satisfactory explanation from Government for this under allocation. This should be rectified urgently. The Levelling Up Fund White Paper acknowledged long-standing under-investment and economic challenges in Northern Ireland. We are pleased to see the Government’s resolve to address some of these issues through this funding scheme. However, we urge the Government to pursue further means of collaboration and engagement with the Executive, when formed, on the delivery of these funds. This would ensure the money is in line with the Executive’s economic priorities, and that investments are economically efficient for both the taxpayer and Northern Ireland’s economy. Consideration should also be given to transferring more control over these funds to the NI Executive.
From: Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, First Report - Investment in Northern Ireland (HC 85), paragraph 14, 8 November 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 2 February 2023 (deadline 8 January 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response to the Committee's report on investment in Northern Ireland sets out funding already allocated and published, says several areas are for the Executive or local partners, and declines some specific requests.
- On Levelling Up, it says the first round gave 2.9% to Northern Ireland and Rounds 1 and 2 together £119.8m, which is "3.16% of the Fund".
- On New Deal funding, it "can confirm" that funding provided to Northern Ireland Executive Departments "will be ringfenced", and says the Secretary of State will make further decisions "in due course" on the remainder.
- On trade agreements, it says it "consider[s] it unnecessary" to provide separate explanatory memoranda on how agreements interact with the Protocol, and that impact assessments do not currently consider specific Protocol measures.
- On the university cap and City and Growth Deal day-to-day resourcing, it says these are matters for Executive Departments and local Deal partners respectively; on engagement with local stakeholders it "will explore how this can be best achieved".