Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 5 July 2017.
Well, Llywydd, my objection to the deal with the DUP is not that the DUP won a series of investments for the people of Northern Ireland; I’m sure those investments will be very welcome. My objection to it was the way that it has run roughshod over the arrangements for funding public services across the United Kingdom. Now, where there were investments in Northern Ireland that were solely for Northern Irish purposes and were not responsibilities of this Assembly or the Parliament in Scotland or, indeed, of English Ministers discharging responsibilities for English services, that I entirely understand. But where you have a deal that puts money into mainstream public services, into education, into health, into infrastructure, there’s no ambiguity at all, and UK Ministers can try as much as they like to hide behind some small print in the way that things are managed—there’s no ambiguity at all that the principle is that, if you invest in those mainstream services in one part of the United Kingdom, you provide all parts of the United Kingdom with a commensurate investment. Because patients in Wales and children in Wales deserve the same investment in their future as people in Northern Ireland deserve the investment that they will now be getting.