Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Ms Joanne Bunting on 19 February 2024.

MLA

Ms Joanne Bunting

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

19 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4223569

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Member for his intervention. Yes, I am certainly content and happy to be associated with those remarks. The Department's allocation of capital DEL for 2023-24 was £129 million. Of that, £37 million was returned in-year owing to slippage in projects, most notably the police college. The Department received £11 million in-year for legal aid pressures, and the allocation of £75·3 million non-ring-fenced resource DEL and £4·9 million resource DEL in the Finance Minister's announcement of 15 February is to be welcomed. While pay awards still have to be finalised, that may mean that the Department does not finish the year with an overspend. I understand that it is important that the Department live within its budget, but the impact of the measures that it has taken to get here must not be underestimated. Examples such as those that I have just outlined should be a cause of concern for us all. I will now talk about the next financial year. The Committee was advised that a flat-cash scenario would leave the Department facing estimated pressures of almost £430 million, which equates to 37% of the Department's baseline. That is a planning assumption, and a flat-cash scenario is by no means certain. It could indeed be worse than that. The Department's work is demand-led, and those costs are inescapable. The Committee heard that one of the outworkings of such a Budget settlement would be that the PSNI would not be able to work towards increasing the number of police officers, which, as I mentioned, is at its lowest-ever level. Work is ongoing to determine the optimum number of police officers, but it is expected that the outcome of that work will show that it should be significantly higher than it currently is. Most, if not all, of us will agree that preventative and rehabilitative work is much more fruitful than reactive work and, indeed, may actually reduce costs in the longer term. Where the justice system is concerned, that often involves collaborative working with other Departments. As an example, Committee members heard about a prison population oversight group that is looking at ways both to reduce the number of people going into prison and to ease the pathways of those leaving prison. The group currently includes representatives from the health sector and, in the future, will likely include representatives from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. That is to be welcomed. The Committee is keen to hear more about that and other innovative practices that will impact positively across the justice sector. During discussions with the permanent secretary, I raised concerns about the extent to which people are engaged in the justice system when they should not be. When the previous Justice Committee undertook scrutiny of the budget, it noted that parts of the system play important roles in the delivery of health and social care outcomes. In the main, those are non-statutory functions that aim to meet the needs of individuals that are otherwise not being met, and they were often done with or on behalf of another Department. At that time, the Committee questioned why some or all of the funding responsibility rested with the Department of Justice, when some of the services were clearly linked to another Department's remit. It emphasised that a more collaborative and joined-up approach to funding those services was required. I expect that that will be a key area of focus for the new Justice Committee. While the discussion with the permanent secretary at our meeting on Thursday was a general overview of the work of the Department, it kept returning to the impact that the financial position is having or will have on service provision. Over the coming weeks, the Committee will take evidence from various directorates in the Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies. That will include the PSNI, the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service and the probation service, among others, and we will, no doubt, hear directly about the effect that it is having on their important work. The Committee obviously has not had enough time or information to enable it to make a collective decision, but it is fair to say that members indicated that they had concerns about various matters during our discussions with the permanent secretary. We will have the opportunity to consider those in much greater depth in the coming weeks. I will now speak in my capacity as an individual MLA. Since being appointed DUP spokesperson for justice this time last year, I have made it my business to familiarise myself as far as possible with the sector. It is a fascinating and multifaceted area of work, but there are some stark realities for the House and for society as a whole. The cold hard facts are that the Department of Justice will face £430 million of unmet pressures, which equates to almost 40% of its budget. There are no further savings to be made. Decisions now may involve moving money from one budget line to another, but there are no savings to be found, and there are consequences to such decisions. None of that is in the Department's control. As I stated, 95% of its budget is demand-led. In the past 12 years, as other Members have stated, the budget for the Department of Health has increased by 70%; the Education budget by 45%; and the Justice budget by 3%. When Education and Health fail, the justice system should be the last resort. Increasingly, however, the justice system is not the last resort but the daily reality. It is clear that the justice system is picking up the stresses from the rest of the system. It is important to note that the majority of people going through the criminal justice system have complex needs and are likely to be dealing with addiction and trauma. There are people in police cells because there is nowhere else that is safe for them to go. People are in prison for the same reason. Custody is not the place, and that takes us back to the issue of "right people, right care", about which we have heard so much of late. We are reaching a point at which, without question, public safety will be impacted. Prevention is always the aim, but, in order to do that, there must be investment. In my remarks as Chair, I mentioned four key areas, and I wish to elaborate on them to give Members the picture. I will start with the PSNI, which accounts for 60% to 65% of the DOJ's budget. Debate about the number of officers is valid and worthy, but it merely scratches the surface. The NDNA agreement made it clear that there would be 7,500 police officers, but we find ourselves with the lowest number of officers since the service began. It is of further note that, over the past number of years, the police's budget has been cut to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. It has been cut to the bone, one might say, and we are now in circumstances where the service may become unrecognisable to the public. The conversation has moved from planning and modernisation and turned to cutting services and what may realistically be provided. The service is now looking at a new operational model and at further cutting services that had already been cut. The previous Chief Constable sounded the alarm, as has his successor. Both men were and are faced with conflicting choices between their statutory duties as accounting officers and their legal responsibility to keep people safe. That is in circumstances where, unlike any other force in the UK, they are not permitted to hold reserves, not allowed to borrow and find it impossible to plan strategically on the basis of an annual budget. I also want to point out that, in the last mandate, the House passed a raft of new laws. However, the finance did not follow the function, and, in many cases, the police just absorbed the financial cost of implementation and received no additional allocation of money. The police are increasingly becoming the first port of call in the absence of all others, but remember: they often have to face the Police Ombudsman for their trouble. For example, if they attend a call on behalf of the Ambulance Service or if they come upon a person who is unwell on the street, should that person die, the incident will be reported to the ombudsman and investigated. Officers often spend entire shifts in A&E. As society is increasingly suffering from complex needs, the PSNI is becoming embroiled in work that is not for the police and for which they are not appropriately qualified. That is the reality facing the police, and there is a consequential impact on morale and sickness levels. The strain is showing, and a considerable number of officers are seeking to leave, often scarred physically or, indeed, mentally as a result of what they have seen. They are the people who run towards danger as all others run away. They are the people whom we rely on to keep us and our communities safe, and the public will take a dim view if the service is grossly underfunded to the point where it will take decades to recover. That is what we face. I will turn to the Prison Service, where the picture is similar. The prison population is approaching its highest number ever and is expected, within the year, to reach 2,000 prisoners. It is built for circa 1,500 people. The population has grown to such an extent that not only are some prisoners doubling up but old blocks have had to be reopened to house them. That is exacerbated by huge numbers on remand or in receipt of short sentences, and the reoffending rate has risen to 40%. While prison officers are being recruited, the stretch is such that the rehabilitation of prisoners is significantly impacted, all of which impacts on wider society in the long term.

I thank the Member for his contribution, and I concur. Over 50% of prisoners have addiction issues. Among the female prison population, a significant number have highly traumatic backgrounds. Among young men, there are high levels of anxiety, depression and an inability to control their emotions.

While some people may argue that they are criminals, and that can certainly be said of some, the facts are that many of them are unwell and in the wrong place. They need healthcare. Moreover, we need people to emerge from prison rehabilitated and able to rejoin society in a responsible manner, not to cause risk to the rest of us and not to reoffend.

Recently, I visited Magilligan prison and Hydebank Wood Secure College, and Maghaberry will follow. Magilligan is an old World War II air force base that was always supposed to be used as a temporary measure. We are long past the point where Magilligan is a temporary measure. It is apparent that the need for capital works is substantial, but people there know that it is not coming, so, instead, they are opting to do what they can in a piecemeal fashion, which is just doing their best to make it work — likewise, at Hydebank. I should caveat all that by saying that I am not soft on crime, but, when people who are mentally ill and seriously disturbed are put in prison because there is nowhere else suitable for them to go and when there are female prisoners in their eighties who essentially require nursing care, we have to start to rethink. There are no female-only hostels that are approved by the Probation Service. Unsurprisingly, the three biggest issues that the service faces are mental health, addiction and trauma. In the first three months of last year, the service used up its annual addiction services budget. In three months, it was gone. Significant modernisation and capital works are required across some parts of the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service estate, some of which is listed, which invariably adds to the costs, but the longer the work is delayed, the more it will cost in the long run. I have met the Bar Council and the Law Society. I know that the Chamber has not always been sympathetic to them at times, but in few other sectors would people be permitted to wait 12 to 16 weeks for payment, some for work that was completed a year or more previously. Those delays could be the difference between a practice surviving and having to close. Many in the legal profession are on their knees, and, no doubt, firms will close. We should not forget that those practices are small businesses. They contribute to the economy. They are on our high streets and employ our constituents. Yet, legal aid payment is not their only struggle. Beyond the big five, they are finding it impossible to find graduates to take up roles in any area of law beyond corporate law, because people want a career, prospects, a good salary and not to have to go to a police station at 3.00 am to conduct an interview. There are weighty issues facing the legal profession, and, as a result, our society, because, at the worst of times, everybody is entitled to a defence and due process. I want to move to a subject outside of Justice: the proposed closure of Castlereagh college as a result of a lack of funds for capital work. That is a shortsighted, discriminatory and regressive proposal. In over 20 years, at least seven or eight reports have been written about the under-attainment of Protestant working-class boys, and the proposal is to close a college in their heartland that has a long and illustrious history of bringing back to education those who were disenfranchised by it through their experience in school. The college has given many young people opportunities because of a different way of learning. Moreover, if our economy is to grow, the teaching of skills is essential to that growth. To remove the most accessible college that Belfast Met has, when there is insufficient space to accommodate those classes in other campuses, is appalling, regressive and detrimental to Northern Ireland plc at a time when contracts are being awarded to firms such as Harland and Wolff. In conclusion, I reiterate the need to move to three-year Budgets as quickly as possible. Those in the community sector who do invaluable work in our constituencies are having to spend a great deal of their time seeking funding for their posts when they would rather focus on their projects. Moreover, nobody wants to go into the sector because of the instability and difficulty in accessing credit and mortgages. It is time that we moved to help them, stabilised their employment prospects and allowed for strategic direction and planning in order to ensure best value.

2,485 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:37 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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