DUP's opponents say Tory deal is not blank cheque for hard Brexit

The DUP’s rivals in Northern Ireland were forced to grapple with a £1bn political problem on Monday, welcoming the injection of new funds into the region but cautioning that it should not be seen as a “blank cheque for Tory Brexit”.

With Stormont power-sharing talks on a knife edge ahead of Thursday’s deadline, the huge injection of funding secured by the DUP’s deal with the Conservative party is expected to act as an incentive to reach an agreement in Belfast.

If Sinn Féin and others do not reach a deal to restore devolution they face being left in a situation where London-based ministers would be in charge of handling the extra expenditure from the Tory-DUP deal.

Following a meeting with the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, at the Stormont talks, Sinn Féin’s president, Gerry Adams, tweeted that the deal was “a blank cheque for Tory Brexit which threatens the Good Friday Agreement”. But he added that at the same time “extra funds could ease pressure on public services … but devil is in the detail.”

Later, Adams said that it was always better to have a ministerial executive in place. “The only fair way to get whatever resources come to this place, the only forum or the only decision-making body that can do it in a fair way is the executive,” he said.

He added that any extra funding for Northern Ireland is a good thing: “We may be able to say well done Arlene, when we have the executive in place.”

Sinn Féin’s attitude is crucial in putting together an arrangement that would restore power-sharing after the last cross-community coalition in Belfast collapsed at the start of this year.

The nationalist SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, took a similar view, saying: “I would like an inclusive executive that represents all of the people of Northern Ireland, to be making sure that money is spent properly and for all of our benefit, not that it is being spent by a Tory party who seem to be under the thumb of the DUP. I think that would be a very dangerous place for all of us.”

Meanwhile the DUP was plotting a strategy to gain further advantages for the region from the government propped up by its 10 MPs, with the aim of securing further concessions on air passenger duty and special corporation tax status within two years of propping up a minority Conservative government.

After extracting a funding package worth an extra £1bn for Northern Ireland as the price for backing the Tories, the DUP is aiming to use its parliamentary muscle to win more deals for the country, party sources said on Monday.

The abolition or radical cut to the air passenger duty (APD) for Northern Ireland’s three airports, which is not included in the initial deal, would be a “post-Brexit ask”, DUP sources said.

The DUP and the Tories both agreed that they would review APD, the abolition of which the airline industry in Northern Ireland claims would create thousands of new jobs and enable the region to compete with airports in the Irish republic, where the tax has been ditched.

DUP sources said it would be opportune to demand APD’s abolition in the region once Brexit had happened and the UK was no longer bound by EU-imposed rules on airline taxation.

The other major concession the DUP would seek in its continuing support for a Tory government would be special corporation tax status for Northern Ireland.

All the main parties represented in the Northern Ireland assembly and Sinn Féin have been in favour of reducing corporation tax to 12.5%, the same rate in the Irish Republic, which has attracted some of the biggest global corporations over the past 40 years.

One DUP source said the strategy in dealing with the Tories through their confidence and supply arrangement and via a coordinating committee between the two parties was to “not show all our hand at one time and keep some cards for later”.

The Irish government welcomed the part of the DUP-Tory statement in Downing Street that reaffirmed commitment to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which effectively ended the Troubles.

The nationalist SDLP and the centrist Alliance party both gave the announcement of the extra cash for the region a cautious welcome.

The Alliance’s deputy leader, Dr Stephen Farry, said the Tory-DUP deal “does raise inevitable political implications, especially as the DUP are committed to delivering the narrow Tory version of Brexit. That will now make the obtainment of a special deal for Northern Ireland more difficult.”

It is hoped that the Stormont talks will make considerable progress on Tuesday. Coveney, who is leading the talks alongside the Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, said yesterday: “The hope would be that the heavy lifting would have been done by tomorrow evening.

“If we are going to get that done, both parties need to be willing to move towards each other’s position to try to accommodate each other.” He added: “There are political choices to be made.”