Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2023-24 and Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Estimates: Vote On Account 2024-25

Debate contribution by Ms Diane Forsythe on 9 April 2024.

MLA

Ms Diane Forsythe

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

9 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2023-24 and Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Estimates: Vote On Account 2024-25

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4481908

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Members are aware that today's debate is a largely technical exercise to keep our Departments running. The spring Supplementary Estimates and the Vote on Account both relate to the 2023-24 Budget. The Estimates are retrospective, and the Vote on Account allows Departments to continue to deliver services as they did in 2023-24 into the early months of the 2024-25 financial year. That does not constitute the setting of a 2024-25 Budget. This is not the way in which we want to debate Supply resolutions: we want clarity, fair funding and appropriate time for scrutiny. In this instance, the lack of certainty about how much funding was available to Northern Ireland played a key part in the delays. There has been a long-term injustice in the funding of public services in Northern Ireland. We have inevitably fallen behind. Our funding model has not been sufficient. I thank our DUP interim leader, Gavin Robinson MP, for leading on that at Westminster and our DUP peers, particularly Lord Morrow, for securing debates in the House of Lords last year on funding injustice in Northern Ireland and for the real pressure that they have applied on that subject. That continued pressure contributed to the UK Government's recognition that Northern Ireland's funding model needed attention. The package offered in February, however, has failed to address the situation appropriately. It includes allowance to write off prior year overspends of over £500 million yet acknowledges that we were underfunded by more than that amount in previous years, and it then changes how that will be assessed from 2024-25 going forward. Under that logic, Northern Ireland was not overspent in 2023-24; it was underfunded, and the £500 million deemed to be funding to cover that write-off should have been an additional £500 million for that year. That would have gone a long way towards addressing the pay awards that have not yet been covered by the Supply resolutions, such as those — mentioned by a number of Members — for non-teaching staff in schools. They deserve fair pay. Northern Ireland deserves the fair funding to cover that, and I urge the Finance Minister to continue to make that argument in her ongoing discussions with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. We missed out on funding in 2023-24, and it should be made available to us from 2024-25 onwards to settle all public-sector pay awards. I also urge the Finance Minister to continue to fight for an adequate fair funding model for Northern Ireland for 2024-25 and beyond to enable the Executive and the Assembly to be in a position to debate a meaningful Budget and multi-year Budgets, going forward. Northern Ireland's funding should never have been allowed to fall below need, and, once again, I raise in the Chamber that the UK Government cannot adopt a UK needs formula and agree to intervene to protect one part of the UK to ensure that its funding does not fall below need while not doing so for another part of the UK, allowing it not only to fall to need but plunge well below it. Yet that is what happened in Northern Ireland. In order for Northern Ireland to be treated fairly, the UK Government need to increase, fully baselined, Northern Ireland's funding per head by proportionately the same amount above need as was the case in Wales from 2018-19, in which the uplift was applied, and, from that point, the uplift should be applied to Northern Ireland with the provision of a fiscal floor at the level of need rather than the fiscal ceiling. That is the only fair way forward. We support the motions out of the necessity of the circumstances. The 2023-24 resolution is retrospective on money already spent. However, I call on the Finance Minister to commit to continuing to fight for a better financial outcome for the 2024-25 Budget Bill in the months ahead, for Northern Ireland public finances to be placed on a sustainable footing and for the Executive to secure the resources that they need to deliver effective public services. We need that to deliver for Northern Ireland and to deliver on our key objectives, such as supporting and boosting our National Health Service; growing our economy; creating jobs; tackling the cost-of-living crisis; securing a better education system; and improving childcare to ensure that no mother or father in Northern Ireland has to choose between caring for their children or going to work. We need fair funding and clarity on Northern Ireland finances moving forward as a matter of urgent priority, and we need a 2024-25 Budget as soon as possible.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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