Select committee: Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Recommendation 3
First Report - Investment in Northern Ireland
Published 8 Nov 2022
Paragraph 22
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)
We acknowledge the interest that the Government will have in the allocation of funding and the delivery of Shared Prosperity Fund projects in all parts of the UK, including Northern Ireland. We are pleased, however, to see that Whitehall has begun to engage with Northern Ireland through the UKSPF Northern Ireland Partnership Group. The Government should publish a timetable for, and readout of, each meeting of this group. It must also explain how it will collaborate and engage with the Executive on the SPF, to ensure that funding is not duplicated, that funding gaps do not emerge, and that investment is in line with the Department for the Economy’s 10X Strategy. In the expectation that an Executive will be up and running again soon, we urge the Government to re-consider Stormont’s role in the delivery of the UKSPF, which is currently very limited. 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 22, 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".