Keir Starmer: Not ruling out funding for Casement Park

The prime minister also defended the decision to cut winter fuel payments to around 250,000 pensioners in Northern Ireland.

He said his priority was to “stabilise the economy” which he predicted would see an increase in the state pension next year which in turn, he claimed, would “outweigh the loss” of the winter fuel payment.

Starmer added “what hit pensioners harder than anything in recent years was inflation getting out of control and I am not prepared to put them through that again.”

“The promise I made to them was that I would take the necessary measures to stabilise the economy as everybody would be better off and public services would run the way they should.”

“I want to ensure the people of Northern Ireland get the change they voted for delivered,” he added.

On legacy Sir Keir Starmer denied the government had created a hierarchy of victims by setting up a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane while rejecting an inquiry into the killing for GAA official Sean Brown.

He said “The Finucane inquiry was something which commitments were made a long time ago and is therefore important we made the announcements when we did.”

He also criticised the way the previous government dealt with legacy cases and said as someone who worked in Northern Ireland for five years he “knows how victims feels about this”.