Exclusive: DUP broke off talks with Tories for 36 hours this week as they demand £2billion for Northern Ireland

The Democratic Unionist Party broke off talks with Theresa May this week as it told her to spend £2billion in Northern Ireland if she wants the party to prop up her minority Conservative Government.

The DUP demanded the cash – which works out as £1,100 per person in the Province - as talks veered dangerously close to breaking down altogether.

The talks became so strained in the past few days that the DUP negotiators in Belfast refused to pick up the phone to the Prime Minister’s team for 36 hours, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Westminster sources said they now hoped a “confidence and supply” deal could be agreed next week, days before Thursday’s key vote on the Queen’s Speech.

The talks have been held together personally by Gavin Williamson, the chief whip, and Damian Green, Mrs May’s right hand man in the Government.

Speaking yesterday Mr Green admitted that a deal might not be done ,saying it was “possible we won't be able to agree" on a formal arrangement which would see the DUP's 10 MPs back the Conservatives in the Commons.

Mr Green added: “Clearly two political parties, we have some differences but we have a lot in common.”

The £2billion demand – with £1billion spent on the National Health Service and £1billion on infrastructure - was made by the DUP this week.

That came as the DUP team decided not to answer their telephones for 36 hours to the Conservative team .

A source said: “They stopped answering their phones. It went on for 36 hours. Number 10 is putting in calls and they are not answering their phones.”

The concern is that these hard demands for cash will make it harder for the Tories and DUP to work together over the next five years.

The demand could cost the UK taxpayer billions more if any of the cash is judged to trigger spending elsewhere in the UK through the Barnett formula.

Typically £1 spent in the Province would require an additional £35 to be found for Scotland, England and Wales.

The DUP is prepared to walk away from a formal deal with the Government and decide whether to back the Tories on a “case by case” basis.

Earlier this week A DUP source said: "The Conservatives need to give greater focus to discussions. DUP can't be taken for granted. 

“Negotiations haven't proceeded in the way that we would have expected."

The delay is a significant blow to the authority of Mrs May who said hours after the election that she would seek a deal with the DUP’s 10 Westminster MPs.

Number 10 then announced that a deal had been done 48 hours after the election, only to retract the statement the following day. A Number 10 spokesman said yesterday: "Talks are ongoing."

In the House of Commons a DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson angrily complained after his party were branded ‘dinosaurs’ in the Queen’s Speech debate.

Green MP Caroline Lucas questioned whether they had influenced the environment apparently being ignored in the Queen's Speech.

Ms Lucas asked whether she had been “influenced by the DUP dinosaurs who sit beside me and who don’t want to take that kind of leadership in the future”.

John Bercow, the Speaker, ruled that the term “dinosaurs” was not unparliamentary, and its use was a “matter of taste.”