THE Tories have been condemned for failing to make restoration of the power-sharing assembly at Stormont a condition of the £1 billion deal they did with the DUP.
Deidre Brock, the SNP’s spokeswoman on Northern Ireland, said Theresa May should have sought an absolute guarantee the talks process would be resolved before agreeing to hand over any money to Northern Ireland.
She hit out after a further deadline to re-establish devolution in Belfast was missed yesterday with the DUP and Sinn Fein failing to resolve differences on a way forward.
Northern Ireland has been without a functioning devolved government since January, when the coalition led by the DUP and Sinn Fein collapsed over a green energy scandal.
“The deadlock in the talks shows that restoring power-sharing should have been an absolute condition before any of the cash was handed over,” Brock told The National.
“The DUP should have been told that there was no money until proper government was restored to Stormont.
“It’s clear that the Tories were so desperate to get a deal to save their own skins that they never gave a minute’s thought to what it would do to Stormont or to the negotiations that were ongoing at the time and now seem to have stalled completely.
“That is a reprehensible lack of caution from the UK Government that represents more than just a minor error. We always knew that staying in power was more important to Westminster parties than doing the right thing but the Tories have taken it to a whole new level in endangering the progress made in Northern Ireland.”
She added: “Getting a fully functioning Stormont would be in the best interests of the people and getting MLAs into harness and working for the people would clearly be the right thing to do.
“Instead of getting that, we’ve got two sides banging heads in a set of negotiations that don’t seem to have advanced a single inch since they started.”
Meanwhile, Scotland’s Economy Secretary Keith Brown said in a radio interview that the DUP deal represented “a stain on the politics of the UK”.
The confidence and supply agreement signed by the Tories and the DUP last week means Arlene Foster’s 10 MPs will support the Conservative minority government in key votes including the Queen’s Speech, the Budget and Brexit legislation, in return for Northern Ireland being given an additional £1 billion over two years.
The cash will be spent on infrastructure, hospitals, schools and mental health services.
But the Scottish Government has reacted furiously to the deal. The First Minister said by circumventing the Barnett formula, under which funding is distributed according to established rules across the devolved nations, Scotland lost out on an additional £2.9bn.
Speaking on television yesterday, Brown underlined the Scottish Government’s concerns, saying: “The Barnett formula and the statement of funding principles say the different parts of the UK should be treated equally.
“So to suddenly go beyond that and produce £1bn of money which is spent on largely devolved issues — health and education and so on — means it’s being treated differently to other parts of the UK and that’s wrong.
“The cost to Scotland in this particular case ... is about £3bn and may be even greater if we see a reduction in our budgets.”
A Conservative Party spokesman last night defended the deal.
“Both the Conservative Party and the DUP are committed to getting the executive re-established because we both believe that decisions about funding for different public services in Northern Ireland should be taken by politicians in Northern Ireland,” he said.
“We want the additional funding identified in this agreement to go to a new executive. However, if despite our collective efforts it proves impossible to re-establish the executive, the Conservative Party, in signing this agreement, has recognised the case for the higher funding Northern Ireland needs.
“Further, we welcome the excellent economic news announced recently that Scotland will benefit from a £3.7bn contract to BAE systems to build three Type-26 frigates on the Clyde, safeguarding hundreds of jobs for many years to come.”
The deal has been criticised in Northern Ireland, where both Sinn Fein and the SDLP say it undermines the Good Friday Agreement which states the UK Government must be impartial.
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