Claire Hanna
MP for Belfast South and Mid Down · Social Democratic & Labour Party · United Kingdom
“Community cohesion is deeply threatened by the violence and menace that took place on the streets last month, which included deliberate orchestration and paramilitary flags and trappings that now fly as bold as brass from lampposts in my constituency and in many others.”
“I, too, wish to pay tribute to Jo Cox and her family, and to the commitment in her name that we tackle division and extremism. We saw extremism play out on the streets of Belfast last week—a pogrom where families were burned out based on the colour of their skin; health workers were stopped and asked for ID by masked thugs; and small busi…”
“The UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive spend millions each year on programmes intended to tackle paramilitarism, but, decades after the troubles, individuals linked to loyalist paramilitaries had a role in directing and fuelling the disorder last week, including menacing a senior journalist on tape.”
“It has been a shocking two days in Northern Ireland. The horrific knife attack in north Belfast has left a man fighting for his life, and an entire community distressed by what they have seen. Justice must of course take its course and deliver for that victim, whose family have asked for calm. Last night brought further outrage.”
“So many people are frighted to walk the streets and to be in their own homes tonight. And when all the online agitators who stoke this stuff move on to their next target, we will be the ones left to pick up the pieces.”
“We have seen this movie too many times before. In Belfast we know all about blaming an entire community for the actions of others, we know all about scapegoating and tit-for-tat violence, and we know all about street justice. Violence creates division.”
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“The press release attached to this statement, which refers to 7 October, seems to imply, deliberately or otherwise, that protests and other human responses to the horrors of the Hamas attacks on Israel and the bombardment of Gaza are extreme. In my diverse and shared Belfast South constituency, we are battling extremism at the moment, in the form of a rash of menacing and racist posters about foreigners and housing. It is my genuine belief that that rhetoric is being fanned by this Government—the Government of a party funded by a person who says that they hate all black women. It is worth mentioning that Northern Ireland Office Ministers met representatives of paramilitaries during their negotiations on the withdrawal agreement.”
“This morning’s High Court ruling confirms what every fair observer knows: that the Government’s legacy legislation is not compatible with human rights. It puts the needs of perpetrators ahead of the needs of victims, and it is not supported by any party in Northern Ireland or across the island of Ireland. The Secretary of State cannot truly believe that it serves the rule of law or our shared future in any constitutional arrangement. When will the Government repeal that completely unacceptable legislation?”
“Of course, an end to the threat of bombardment is the crucial step, but the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic. What specific assessment have UK officials made of the allegations against the UN Relief and Works Agency with a view to properly funding that organisation, whose infrastructure and capacity is crucial to meeting the basic everyday needs of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children?”
“We need to stop the bombs and the rockets, we need to release the hostages, we need to release the aid, and then we need to work every day to make it sustainable. Only politics can do that. There is no military solution here, and there never was. I do not care which amendment is passed tonight and I do not care about the form of words, so long as this House sends a clear message calling for international momentum towards an end to this slaughter and a pathway to a just and lasting settlement. Israel has failed to reach its objectives. If we do not support a ceasefire now, when will we?”
“I defend Israel’s right to exist. I stand in solidarity with Jewish people here and around the world, including those standing against the far-right Netanyahu Government and their excesses throughout the last summer. Netanyahu is a man who, in word and deed, has repudiated the two- state solution that many of us in this Chamber advocate, and that is the only possible outcome that does not condemn the region to years of this nightmare. Comparisons between the middle east and Northern Ireland are shallow, and I avoid making them. The one lesson that can be learned is that the first step is to stop the killing. Those who ask for a permanent ceasefire are setting an impossibly high bar. Even when the paramilitaries were dragged to that point in Northern Ireland, it took a decade for their ceasefires to be made permanent.”
“I look at my sweet, smiling, innocent six-year-old daughter, and I see a six-year-old trapped in a car for days, with nobody listening to her cries, surrounded by the bodies of all the people she loves. Those stories will never leave people. Worse, people who express basic human emotion and solidarity with people who face the unimaginable are being met with slurs and distortions. They are smeared as being pro-Hamas and slurred as being antisemitic, as we heard in this Chamber just a few moments ago. Like most of my constituents, I stand in full solidarity with the victims of the wicked Hamas attacks of 7 October. Those vile, indefensible attacks were carried out by a cynical organisation that has not allowed the people of Gaza to vote for a generation, but the attacks do not justify the horrors that have followed.”
“Members across the Chamber have set out, in moving terms, the context and the consequences of the last few months in Gaza, so I will not try to capture it. I worked for relief and development agencies for 10 years before being elected to this place, and I never encountered a humanitarian context as hellish as the people of Gaza are experiencing. Our constituents are watching in desperation and distress, and they feel powerless to the point of complicity. That is not the main issue, but it has consequences for their faith in politics and international law, and I want to give voice to the feelings of dread that people feel when the images they have seen on their screens become permanently etched in their mind. I feel the same way.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her powerful speech, which is setting out the scale of this emergency. She is correct to say that, almost two years ago, a UK Minister said that UK export controls “help ensure that controlled items are not used…in…serious violations of international humanitarian law.” Does she agree that the consolidated list is meaningless if arms continue to be exported to Israel in this context?”
“T5. The horrifying death toll in Gaza includes more than 100 aid workers and some 70 journalists. The vast majority of media casualties have been Palestinian journalists who went on working in the face of airstrikes and the deteriorating humanitarian situation as a result of the lack of information caused by the denial of access to international media. The National Union of Journalists warns of systemic targeting of journalists in Palestine, a further breach of international law. How will the Minister impress on the Israeli Government these specific obligations?”
“Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that in 2016, on the BBC’s “Spotlight” programme, a constituent said to him that they were seeking to “get the ethnics out” and he appeared to say, “You’re dead right”? Is that why he is so supportive of the Bill?”
“The Illegal Migration Act failed to do that, as did the Nationality and Borders Act. This is just red meat for a common-sense group with no common sense, a research group that does no research and a star chamber that has no stars. This Bill is for them and for no one else.”
“The existence of those rights has enraged the far right in Northern Ireland—a few voices who angrily prowl the internet, seeking to suffocate anything positive or humanitarian that happens in our region. They seem so desperate to strip legal rights away from everybody else; they would like to legally review themselves everything they cannot run away. They protest that this miserable Bill might not apply in Northern Ireland due to the Windsor framework. I regret to say that, in practice, immigration law has already been applied in Northern Ireland without differentiation, as will be heard in an upcoming challenge to the Illegal Migration Act. We will oppose this Bill, and we will oppose other attempts to unite and balance the Conservative party on the backs of the most vulnerable.”
“Even the UK Government have called article 2 uncontroversial. Not for the first time, I say thank goodness for the Good Friday agreement, which has been a lifeboat for our region given some of the terrible, damaging politics of recent years. That is a large part of why so many people—including in this Chamber—desperately tried to undermine the agreement through Brexit. Thanks to the agreement, which the international community prevented this Government from trashing under their previous two Prime Ministers, we continue to enjoy—in theory—rights and protections that this Government are so determined to burn for people in England, Scotland and Wales.”
“Ireland, north or south, is not immune to these currents, as the street disorder in Dublin a few weeks ago showed, but we are a nation of people who have been the source of immigration for many centuries: you do not get to be Irish and racist. I am proud of the political leadership from across the spectrum against far-right agitation in Dublin in recent weeks. I want briefly to address the applicability of the Bill in Northern Ireland. Human rights exist precisely to protect people from the type of politics that are behind the Bill. Human rights frameworks exist to stop politicians degrading shared values for their narrow political interest. The protection of rights for everyone from all communities in Northern Ireland, under article 2 of the Windsor framework, has been welcomed across civil society.”
“We must be honest about how it is anti-family to tell UK citizens that they cannot fall in love with someone from another country and marry them unless they are among the top 25% of earners. Of course we can talk about immigration. I am happy to talk about it, and I am happy to tell the House that Northern Ireland has an immigration problem. Young people are leaving our region to make their lives elsewhere because they feel stifled and limited by the politics of our region, by intolerance, by prejudice and by refusal to accept difference. Britain risks losing its vibrancy and talent if it goes further down this path—a path that I am glad to say the mainstream of British politics has honourably resisted, mostly, until now.”
“The second is the overall irrational opposition to migration, including regular migration. People often say, “You can’t even talk about immigration.” We absolutely can, but we must be prepared to be honest about it and to trade in more than just Twitter memes. We must be prepared to talk about how the national health service and social care would collapse without it. We must be honest about the net positive impact on GDP, and about the poor political decisions about how we spend those gains that have left public services in the mess that they are. We must be honest about our higher education model and the higher fees that students from these areas and countries would face if we did not have overseas students.”
“No one is saying that the UK can or should take everyone who requires sanctuary for reasons of conflict, prejudice or climate. Everyone in the Chamber knows, no matter what they say in their tweets, that only a fraction of people try to get here. No one is saying that the UK should not take legal steps to deter erroneous claims. The Minister has spoken about fruitful engagement with Albania, and hon. Friends on the Opposition Benches have set out numerous constructive proposals, including swifter processing and justice and, crucially, modern and mature engagement with neighbouring countries. It is impossible to view the Bill outside two core dynamics. The first is the UK’s recent disregard of international law—a rules-based order that it proudly shaped.”
“Their moral objections are to the language used to frame and justify it and to the demonisation of those who seek international protection in the UK, who have little or no opportunity to secure that before they travel. Equally, they have practical objections to the Bill, because they know that it will not work. They know that there is no evidence that the deterrent works—a fact that was confirmed by the permanent secretary—and they know that it relies on a simplification by this Government that applies only if people have never met or spoken to an asylum seeker. The cost of this gimmick is running into the hundreds of millions of pounds—money that should have been used to end the chaos of processing in the Home Office or to go after the people traffickers instead of bettering their market by closing off safe routes.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has been a long day and a long debate. Perhaps the Government could legislate for a few extra hours for us all. That would not be out of place with this mind-bending Bill from a Government who continue to prioritise prejudice over objective reality. The right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) purported to speak for my constituency of South Belfast, which does indeed have a relatively large proportion—I think it is the largest population per head—of the UK’s asylum seekers. Our schools, churches and community groups are trying valiantly to support people whom the Home Office has left in hotels for many months at a time. Like me, those constituents have moral and practical objections to the Bill.”
“The Minister may be aware of the evolving environmental catastrophe in Lough Neagh, which is the largest lake in these islands and a key biodiversity asset for Northern Ireland. It is dying in front of our eyes because of blue-green algal bloom related to agricultural run-off and sewage discharge from Northern Ireland Water, which is entirely Government owned. In that context, does she agree with me that Northern Ireland desperately needs an independent environment agency, to try to reconcile the competing priorities of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs—DEFRA’s sister Department in Northern Ireland—which is responsible for both swelling agricultural assets and protecting the environment? Clearly, in this context the environment is being failed.”
“New research by Ulster University finds that over 60% of homes in Northern Ireland will need to be retrofitted if we are to have a chance of meeting our net zero targets, and that at the current rate of retrofitting we have no chance of meeting our 2030 goals. Does the Minister believe that the support available to providers, such as the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and housing associations across the region, is adequate to allow them to tackle the climate breakdown and fuel poverty? Further, knowing the impact of climate change on the poorest countries in the world, will the Government finally make real the loss and damage fund to help those most affected to adapt and mitigate, and will she ensure that that fund is new money and not just a raid on existing pressed aid budgets?”
“I warmly welcome the Home Secretary to his new role. The UK is absolutely entitled to create bespoke policy, and he referred to his constructive work with Albania, but does he understand—unlike his predecessor—that policy must be compatible with facts and the law, and that it should focus on the chaotic processing he has inherited and on funding the public services that he says are under pressure? Can I confirm that he acknowledges that the ECHR is a fundamental cornerstone of the Good Friday agreement, and that abandoning it would not be compatible with the Government’s commitment to Northern Ireland?”
“I thank the Minister for his thoughtful answers. In 1919, seeing children from the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire starving, Eglantyne Jebb established Save the Children. Many people said to her, “How can you help enemy children?” and one of her supporters, the great Irish humanitarian George Bernard Shaw, said: “I have no enemies under the age of seven.” Almost half of Palestinians are children, many thousands of whom have been killed, maimed and orphaned. So have many Israeli children, including one dual Irish citizen who is believed to be among the hostages in Gaza. Does the Minister agree with UNICEF’s regional director, Adele Khodr, who says that the situation in Gaza is “a growing stain on our collective conscience”?”
“The Secretary of State has suggested that many people have not bought into the concept of net zero. Instead of seeing that as an opportunity for leadership, the Government play into misinformation about made-up taxes and the seven deadly bins. She will be aware that Northern Ireland is already a laggard on climate issues because the Assembly was collapsed just after it had finally passed binding targets, and before it had taken any meaningful action on issues such as retrofitting, planning for renewables and transforming agrifood. Is she also aware that Northern Ireland relies largely on the all-island single energy market for our energy needs, and is she confident that her Government are keeping up with their responsibility to ensure that we match the standards of that market?”
“Yes, having children may be meaningful in our lives—I think back to being asked by an indignant morning radio presenter whether this was not just chronic self-interest on my part because I had big childcare bills—but fixing childcare starts with an acceptance that, as well as being a meaningful experience, parenting is necessary for the replenishment of the human race and the workforce of the future, so providing for childcare is a matter for us all. It starts from the knowledge that more equal societies do better. That means affording everyone an equal opportunity to thrive in the workplace, and understanding that giving children a better and more equal start in life is good for the public purse and for society throughout their lifetime.”
“We also had a longer-term strategy that would borrow from successful—and usually social democratic—economies around the world. We noted at that time the inverted pyramid of funding that means that 10 times more is spent on post-primary education than on early years education, despite all that we know about the impact of a child’s first 1,000 days. Nobody is pretending that this is a simple issue, but the necessary fixes for childcare start from the principle that it is a common good.”
“There has been quite a bit of progress in people’s understanding of the issue, and I credit Northern Ireland groups such as Employers For Childcare and Melted Parents NI, as well as the Federation of Small Businesses, with correctly framing the issue as one of gender equality in the workplace, of outcomes for children and, fundamentally, of economics. The issue is crucial in tackling Northern Ireland’s chronically low productivity and high levels of economic inactivity. In January, my Social Democratic and Labour Party colleagues in the Assembly set out a plan for a two-stage rescue plan to address the acute cost of living pressures that families face, including gargantuan—and growing—childcare bills, which, as Members have said, dwarf housing and other costs; and to address the recruitment and retention crisis that the sector faces.”
“As we have heard, the UK has the highest childcare costs in the OECD. Northern Ireland is falling even further behind because, as my colleague the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) said, successive Executives have failed to take sufficient interest in the issue. The crisis is not new. As I said, I addressed it as an MLA back in 2016, and I subsequently established an all-party group, which has driven quite substantial policy change and ideas. However, when government is down more than it is up, implementing those things is difficult.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing the debate, and the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) on an excellent maiden speech. It reminded me that my maiden speech as a Member of the Legislative Assembly some years ago was on childcare. I hope that he is slightly more successful than me in achieving his political aims. Members across the Chamber have made excellent points about the chronic failure to think big on the issue of childcare, and about the series of minor interventions to tinker with a sector that is struggling under the weight of complex funding streams. Such interventions have increased demand on the sector, as various promises of free hours are made without any meaningful work on the supply side and so do not add up to any sort of solution.”
“Gentleman agree that understanding the issue and, perhaps, minor planning changes will constitute a big part of protecting nature?”
“A large number of Northern Ireland Members are present tonight; I ask Members please not to let anyone make a joke about us being unenlightened! For many years there was a stunning murmuration of starlings in south Belfast. It was quite something to be seen from Albert Bridge, which I used to cross every evening as I walked home to Woodstock Road. They used to come from across the city and beyond, but after some planning changes we noticed that they had all but disappeared, apparently because of a change in lighting. Along with others, I have worked with the authorities, and we were able to make a few relatively minor changes involving blinkers on some lights and filters on street lights. Since then, we have seen the return of some of the starlings. Does the hon.”
“On health harms, does the Minister acknowledge that the amendment is just tinkering with an Act that does not address the health harms of drugs? Does he agree that a wider review of the Act, which is half a century old, is needed to take drug dealers off the streets, tackle sinister organised crime, and treat those with addiction issues with compassion?”
“Would the Minister acknowledge that it did have cross-party support—the Ulster Unionists deferred on one small matter—and that it was recommitted to by his Government and the Irish Government as recently as January 2020?”
“The Secretary of State was unhappy with the Bill he inherited, which is the context of the amendments and changes that have been made to this Bill. Has he consulted with the chief commissioner-designate on the Lords amendments he is rejecting today? If the chief commissioner-designate was consulted, did he agree to reject the amendments?”
“The last few weeks have been hugely damaging to hard-won progress in our still fragile society. Ordinary officers are feeling vulnerable and demoralised, and we are thinking of them and also of the families of the victims of the Sean Graham murders, who have been thrust into a political row that they did not seek due to a heavy-handed response. In the interests of officer morale and impartial policing, it is important that we know, following that Ormeau Road incident, who in the Northern Ireland Office spoke to the Chief Constable and, when the issue came up of Sinn Féin withdrawing from the Policing Board, what the NIO said to the Chief Constable.”
“We have a shortfall of about £800 million and the most vulnerable have a bleak year ahead. People in Northern Ireland feel that a global game is being played with them and around them. I say to those people who manipulate the public and leave the public hanging, and then try to get them to go along with their proposals and have faith in them about the constitutional future: it is not going to work.”
“We will seek investment not only against the backdrop of the governance black hole but with over 100 areas of Northern Ireland that cannot be developed at the moment because of a serious lack of wastewater infrastructure. However, this Budget means that the Government—the 100% shareholder—will not invest in that infrastructure or follow the proposals made by the utilities regulator. That is literally, in a very direct way, impacting not just the environment but our economic future. The think-tank Pivotal has produced a sobering report, which I hope every Member here will read and absorb, called “Governing Northern Ireland without an Executive”. It details the impact of the neglect and the long tail of the damage that these periods of desertion have on everybody in Northern Ireland.”
“The rest of us get to have views and opinions, and good governance as well. This is not a proposal for joint authority, but Democratic Unionist party Members should be aware that the longer they insist that Northern Ireland cannot work, the wider, deeper and louder the conversation about our changed constitutional future will be. There are big choices ahead about our future, but also about the here and now; it is the here and now that this Budget impacts so substantially. As we outlined before, it has a catastrophic impact on health, education, climate resilience and economic opportunity. At the weekend, the Secretary of State said that there would be no sticking plasters, but the allocations do not even allow for any healing. For example, next week Northern Ireland will host an investment conference.”
“In the interests of protecting those services, on Second Reading we put forward our detailed triple lock proposals, which were a way to protect services from the short-term sharp cuts and to create a pathway to longer-term reform that the public services need. As Members will know, at this stage of this budget we have also tabled a proposal to design an informal consultative role for the Irish Government on these budgetary decisions. Plan A is a reformed Stormont, where everybody makes decisions together. Plan B is changing the rules to allow those who want to work to do so, but we are registering the principle that hanging around for month after month, doing nothing about the challenges facing Northern Ireland, drifting into the cosiness, for some, of direct rule is just not good enough.”
“Every budget that everybody has to make faces choices, some of which are difficult and will not be popular with everybody. However, the choice to withhold government is one rejected by the overwhelming number of people in Northern Ireland, of various different backgrounds, most of whom, whatever our differences, want to choose devolved government, hard work, partnership and compromise, as my party is doing. Yes, that includes compromise on constitutional issues, which many of us do every day of our lives when our identity does not match up exactly in every way with the Government we have. However, we work at it and we work on the common ground, in the interests of all the people.”
“I start by thanking the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) for his service as Opposition spokesman. He was an enthusiastic and frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, and that was always appreciated. I warmly welcome the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). His is a widely welcomed appointment; he is a very substantial person and I just hope he is not regretting his life choice having watched this evening’s debate. I will not rehearse all that we and others said on Second Reading, except to say that this is, unfortunately, another milestone of failure, delivering this budget in this place. It is another blow to public services and to public faith in politics in Northern Ireland. As we said before the summer, this is about choices.”
“As the Minister can see from the debate, this is an issue that has a very broad consensus—he will know that that is no mean feat—due to the very serious impact on tourism businesses. He will be aware of that impact and the fact that many decisions to come north are ad hoc ones to visit, for example, the Ulster Museum, the Lyric Theatre or the Let’s Go Hydro water park, or for destination shopping on the Lisburn Road. Has his Department conducted any economic analysis of the loss to Northern Irish businesses of those ad hoc decisions to come north for just one day in a trip to the island?”
“Does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Bengoa report outlined how we could tackle that reform and get ourselves to a more sustainable delivery, but that the Assembly has been collapsed for, I think, four of the six years since that that report was delivered, and that only way we can deliver those reforms, necessary as many of them may be, is in a restored Executive?”
“The first is the austerity politics that have been practised by successive Conservative Governments and are being foisted on the people of Northern Ireland with no visible care for public services, let alone for how we create a better and more sustainable economic future or tackle the chronic challenges that are contributing to the financial drain. The second factor is boycott politics, which are being practised by the DUP right now and have been practised by others in the recent past with, clearly, no real regard for how that affects devolved government and public services, how it gradually wears people down, or how it gradually undermines the belief of the people of Northern Ireland that elections matter, devolution works and politics is the way to do things.”
“For the past five years, any budget that we have had has been delivered—sometimes fairly chaotically—here, not in Stormont. For the past decade, we have limped along with one-year allocations and without a new programme for government. Public services are at a genuinely precarious point, as colleagues have indicated; I might touch on that point. It has to be pointed out, as we look at the context of this budget, that those factors are the consequences of two specific pernicious features of our politics over the past decade.”
“It is also a consequence of the disastrous Budget pushed by the previous Prime Minister. Brexit and the kamikaze Budget were the Government’s choices, and it is now their choice to inflict this budget on the people of Northern Ireland. When the DUP says it cannot take responsibility for its share of governing Northern Ireland, it is because of the DUP’s choice for a bone-hard, bone-headed Brexit. Despite all the protestations we now hear about the lack of consensus and the DUP’s deeply held concerns not being listened to, for many years of the Brexit process the DUP refused to take on board the advice and pleading of many of us about the consequences of what we were being walked into.”
“I am happy to correct the right hon. Gentleman’s history lesson. That was not a power-sharing Government, and I remind him that subsequently, in 1998, the overwhelming majority of the people of Northern Ireland made a different choice. They said, “We want to work together, in our substantial common interest, in devolved institutions that put power in the hands of our people from all backgrounds and traditions.” That is the choice before us, but unfortunately the Government are choosing austerity politics and the DUP is choosing boycott politics. The thing that links those two toxic trends is Brexit. When the Government say there is not enough money to spend on public services, it is in large part because, as every forecaster suggested, Brexit has been economically disastrous.”
“Finally, the UK has been a signatory to the UN convention on the rights of the child for at least three decades, so will he clarify what regard they have given to the UN committee’s recommendation that this budget be withdrawn and replaced with something that protects the rights and needs of children? The budget is unworkable and it is a false economy. It is storing up so many problems, both in terms of democratic grip in Northern Ireland and in public services. Devolution has never been more needed. People in Northern Ireland feel that they are part of a political game that they are not playing and that is being played on them. I urge all of those with the ability to make these choices to stop practising austerity politics and to stop practising boycott politics, and to do so as soon as possible.”
“If their section 75 duties are always followed, as they say they are, will they clarify whether those section 75 assessments are content with the scale and depth of these cuts? What steps have they taken to identify and mitigate the impact? Have they received any advice about an overarching equality assessment? Will the Secretary of State also clarify whether the Government have taken into account the long-standing guidance as well as the Equality Commission’s investigation into failings in the preparation of the 2019-20 budget? What lessons were learned from that?”
“The Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee rightly highlighted cuts to the Northern Ireland Audit Office and NIPSO—the Northern Ireland public services ombudsman. Those are problematic in practice and in principle, because at many times in the past few years those bodies, particularly the NIAO, have provided some of the only scrutiny we have had. They have acted as an effective opposition in some cases to aspects of Government waste and failure to reform. In practical terms, discretionary spending is all but gone. Even permanent secretaries, who, as we know, do not like to dabble too much in the politics, are asking the Secretary of State to resolve that tension for them and asking how they reconcile their statutory duties with the budget they have. I hope that one of the Ministers can clarify the position.”