Tories’ ‘honourable friends’ from DUP cash in again

IN a mark of the closer relationship between the Conservatives and the DUP following their deal this week, ministers have started calling MPs from the Northern Ireland party their “honourable friends”.

But it also emerged that the DUP will cash in by also keeping the Tories at arm’s-length — it will get almost a quarter-of-amillion pounds in Westminster funding for not forming an official coalition with the Tories.

Theresa May may think it’s money well spent, though — her government survived last night by defeating a Labour amendment to the Queen’s Speech with the DUP’s help.

Parliamentary protocol dictates that MPs from opposing parties usually refer to one another as “honourable members”, reserving the term “friend” for colleagues in their own party. During the coalition of 2010-15, Tory and Liberal Democrat ministers regularly addressed each other as “friend”, but they were in a formal coalition and part of the same government.

By contrast, the DUP’s 10 MPs remain on the Opposition benches and continue to receive “short money” — the public funding provided to support Opposition parties. Short money is currently worth £17,209.01 per seat in the Commons and £34.37 for every 200 votes obtained by a party in the last general election. Under these calculations, the DUP is due to receive £222,325 a year.

To qualify for short money, a party must have at least two MPs, or one MP and more than 150,000 votes.

Mrs May addressed the DUP’s Nigel Dodds as “my right honourable friend” at Prime Minister’s Questions, and a Conservative source said that other ministers had done the same over the past few days.

The source said: “That is the terminology in which both parties will be addressing each other. Several ministers over several days, certainly on our side, have referred to the DUP as our honourable friends.”

Mrs May was challenged in the Commons over the £1bn investment of taxpayers’ money in Northern Ireland as part of Monday’s deal. Labour MP Kevin Brennan said that the continued provision of short money, along with the extra funding, amounted to “double bubble for her friends in the DUP”.

Mrs May responded: “As a result of this election there was no party that had a majority in this house — the party that had the largest number of seats and the only party that can form an effective government is the Conservative Party — that’s the right thing to do and that’s what we’ve done.”