Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Dr Caoimhe Archibald on 20 February 2024.

MLA

Dr Caoimhe Archibald

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

20 February 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4381258

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I want to say a word of appreciation and thanks to Members who have expressed their views again in today's debate. I have listened with interest. While some have opinions that differ from mine, it is still useful to me as Finance Minister to hear all those views. I will address as many of the Members' remarks as I can to answer their points. First, I turn to some of the points that were made by the Chair of the Committee and leader of the Opposition. I made the commitment yesterday to him and to Dr Aiken to introduce a Bill to put the Fiscal Council on a statutory footing and to provide the legislative framework to underpin its work. A draft policy document that set out the legislative framework for the Bill was developed, and it was approved by the former Finance Minister in August 2022. Now that the Executive have been restored, I will need to give fresh consideration to that, with a view to bringing a policy document to the Executive for their agreement to progress that important work. Thankfully, significant preparatory work was undertaken. The former Finance Minister circulated the draft document to his then caretaker ministerial colleagues and the NIO to seek initial views. A number of comments were received, and those can be —

Yes, go ahead.

I will let you sort that out.

Comments were received from ministerial colleagues, and those can be referred to in any future Executive paper. In addition, officials engaged with the Office of the Legislative Counsel (OLC), which agreed to begin the work at risk to develop the legislation, given that it was an NDNA commitment. A draft of possible clauses and schedules has been compiled, and the OLC and officials continue to have discussions on those. Although much work on that has already been undertaken on an informal basis with the OLC, more time is required to be ready to introduce the Bill, given that the Fiscal Council's Bill team was, in the Executive's absence, reprioritised to the Department's response to the COVID inquiry. My Department is seeking to reallocate resources to the Bill team to progress that work as urgently and speedily as possible. The legislative programme has to be managed across the Executive as a whole, and the drafting of legislation needs to be at a significant state of readiness to be prioritised in the 2024 legislative programme. The leader of the Opposition also asked about seeing a multi-year Budget before the start of the financial year. I covered the timescale for Budget 2024-25 yesterday. He is, of course, correct that, in normal circumstances, it would be unacceptable not to have a Budget in place before the start of the financial year, but, as has been well covered, we are not in normal circumstances this year. The Executive returned only at the start of the month. It is important that new Ministers are provided time to scrutinise their Departmental budgets before articulating their funding requirements. It is also important that the Executive can consider those fully before reaching decisions. The slight delay is intended to facilitate that. A multi-year Budget is outside the Executive's control. Section 64 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which the Member quoted, also requires me to lay before the Assembly, at least 14 days before laying a draft Budget, a statement specifying the amount of funding for that year notified by the Secretary of State. As 2024-25 is the last year of the current spending review, the Secretary of State cannot tell me how much funding will be provided in the following two years. Without that confirmation, I cannot lay a Budget for the years beyond the end of 2024-25. As I have rehearsed on a number of occasions, however, I am determined to have the discussion with Treasury about the fiscal framework to address the underfunding and put our public finances on a sustainable footing. Multi-year Budgets will be part of that discussion. A number of Members referred to the process. I have set it out clearly that I agree that the process that we have had to put in place to pass the Budget Bill is not ideal. I welcome Members' support for what we are trying to achieve: keep Departments being able to deliver public services and pay to public-sector workers. I assure Mr Carroll that I want to get that money to public-sector workers as quickly as possible. I allocated as much money as we could to public-sector pay awards. I was able to obtain flexibility to allocate over £100 million to public-sector pay on top of what was provided in the financial package. It will, of course, be for trade unions and employers to negotiate pay awards, and I will respect that process.

I thank the Member for his intervention. I assure him that my intention will be to get things back on track. I will address Mr McCrossan's comments. I found myself, unusually, in agreement with nearly everything that he said, including that this is not the way to do business. I have been clear about that. I also welcome the announcement by the Irish Government today of the allocation of €800 million to a number of important projects. I am happy to give a commitment on working with Ministers across the Executive to deliver on the A5 and Casement Park. With that, Mr Speaker, I draw my remarks to a close, and I thank you for your patience. The Budget Bill is crucial legislation that provides Departments with the power to continue to deliver vital front-line services to all our citizens through the final weeks of the financial year and the beginning of 2024-25. I commend the Budget Bill to the Assembly, and I ask Members to agree its Final Stage.

968 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:42 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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