Tories' £1bn deal with DUP will 'need Parliament approval'
The deal pledges money for hospitals, schools and infrastructure in return for support from the DUP's 10 MPs in key votes.
Monday 11 September 2017 18:36, UK
The £1bn investment Theresa May promised Northern Ireland in return for support from the DUP will need to be approved by Parliament, the Treasury has confirmed.
The acknowledgement that MPs will need to authorise the payment, which enabled the Prime Minister to cobble together a fragile parliamentary majority, has emerged as a result of a legal challenge to the Tory-DUP deal.
The so-called confidence-and-supply arrangement, signed in June, pledged £1bn more funding for hospitals, schools and infrastructure in return for support from the DUP's 10 MPs on key votes such as the second reading of the EU Withdrawal Bill later today.
But after a letter threatening legal action was sent to Government lawyers by anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), a Treasury solicitor confirmed the pledged investment "will have appropriate Parliamentary authorisation".
According to the Press Association, the letter went on to state that no timetable had yet been decided for making the payments.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "All UK government spending needs parliamentary authorisation, generally via the Estimates and Supplementary Estimated process.
"Our focus in Northern Ireland is in restoring power-sharing."
The letter sent by Ms Miller and the IWGB challenged the Government on two fronts.
The first was questioning the legal basis of using either prerogative powers or secondary legislation to make the payment.
The second was to suggest any payment would contravene the Equalities Act, if it was not first subject to a public sector assessment to establish whether it unfairly discriminated against other regions of the UK.
In separate proceedings, the deal is also being challenged by Green Party activist Ciaran McClean, who announced in July he intended to crowd-fund an attempt to argue the deal contravened both the Bribery Act and the Good Friday Agreement.
Ms Miller, who previously mounted a successful challenge to force the Government to give Parliament the final say on formally beginning the Brexit process by triggering Article 50, has said the latest response "beggars belief".
"Neither at the time the Government sealed its dubious deal with the DUP in exchange for their votes in the Commons, nor at any point since, has the Government made it clear that the £1bn of taxpayers' money for Northern Ireland could only be handed over following Parliamentary approval.
"We all need to know when the Government intended to come clean to Parliament, its parliamentary party, and the public. When was parliamentary time going to be found to authorise this payment? And did the DUP know the cheque the Government promised to pay might bounce?
"On the day the Government is asking MPs to grant it sweeping new powers, and in the week it is trying to pack parliamentary scrutiny committees to blatantly change the rules in their favour, MPs are entitled to wonder what else the Government may have 'forgotten' to tell them."
IWGB general secretary Jason Moyer-Lee said: "There's undoubtedly a need for increased social spending throughout the UK but this should be on a basis of fairness, not self-serving party politics."
Peter Dowd MP, Labour's shadow chief secretary to the treasury, said the acknowledgement that parliamentary approval would be required for the payment to be lawful was a "a clear indication that the Conservatives' chaotic attempts to circumvent Parliament must come to an end".
He added: "(Philip) Hammond must come clean about whether he intends to increase taxes, slash spending, or increase borrowing to fund the black hole created by the £1bn DUP bribe and the £2bn u-turn on his attempt to increase national insurance contributions for self-employed workers."