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 Mr Jim Allister KC on 9 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Jim Allister KC

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

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 4482198

Read the official Assembly record

Text

This is, essentially, a farcical debate, because the first Supply resolution that we are discussing is for a financial year that is over. The whole purpose of the processes of the House is to sanction expenditure before it happens. Today, however, we have spent three or four hours debating expenditure that is already closed: a Supply resolution that refers to the 2023-24 Budget year. When we had the debate on the Budget Bill a few weeks ago, the Minister came up with the lamest of excuses: she did not have time to prepare the Supplementary Estimates. That just does not bear scrutiny. These Estimates are not compiled by the Minister; they are compiled by her civil servants, who were not away for two years. They were working and had all the data on their system to produce this at speed. Yet, the Department chose not to produce it for the Budget debate and to have us debate the Budget blind to the figures. Then, belatedly and retrospectively, they produce a document that they could have had before us at the proper time, because it is the document that supports the Budget Bill. We know, however, not least from today's Question Time, just how cavalier the Minister's attitude is to the law. When she was asked why she had broken the law at section 64(1) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which says that the Minister must lay a draft Budget Bill before the close of the financial year, she had no answer other than to pathetically say, "We must consider the circumstances that we are in". I am sorry, but, when I read section 64(1), I do not read, "The Minister of Finance shall, before the beginning of each financial year, lay before the Assembly a draft budget, unless the circumstances prevent it": it is a mandatory requirement. When I asked her what the legal consequences were for her and for the Assembly and the Executive of failing to live up to that statutory obligation, there was no answer. Perhaps there will be an answer to that question — perhaps I expect too much — in the round-up to the debate. I suspect not.

Here we are, debating something for which the money has been spent. It has all passed. Of course, some of the money was spent in a way that totally disregards the processes of the House, because almost £24 million was spent on black box, meaning that there was no statutory authority other than the Budget Bill, which has long since gone. The Department for Communities spent £11 million and the Executive Office spent almost £11 million on no statutory authority other than the Budget Bill. The advice is that you cannot spend above £1·5 million, if I recall correctly, other than on statutory authority. Yet the House spends £24 million without statutory authority, but, then, we seem to live in an environment where spending money is not a concern. Look today at the 'Belfast Telegraph' article on the squandering on excessive salaries in the upper echelons of local government. We discover that every chief executive in local government in Northern Ireland is paid more than the First Minister or the deputy First Minister. Indeed, one of them, who did not do one day's work in the year in question because she was on suspension, was paid £188,000. The former chief executive of Mid and East Antrim Borough Council, Anne Donaghy, was paid £188,000, and, in the same council, we have the scandal of a director, employed through an agency, getting paid over £1,000 a day. The council, in its foolishness, has just extended the contract for another 18 months. For two and a half years, instead of employing somebody through regular procurement processes, somebody has been employed at over £1,000 a day as a director in Mid and East Antrim Borough Council. Then we wonder why we are short of money. If you look at all those chief executives, you will discover that some of them are paid almost as much as the Prime Minister. Some of them have not covered themselves in glory, like the chief executive of Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, Mr David Jackson, who has been the object of a number of adverse findings and whose council has been subject to a special audit adverse findings. I declare an interest as one of the complainants against him. He was found responsible for a number of issues, not least the infamous £1 land deal of that particular council. Yet he is paid £146,000 a year. Where is the accountability? We need not look to Stormont for accountability, but Stormont and a former Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs told us that the reform of local government would save £400 million. Where is it? It seems that the big savings that were promised turned into big salaries and big rate rises for our ratepayers. Mid and East Antrim Borough Council, which I have been referring to, had a council rate rise of 10% this year. That is maybe no wonder, given that it is paying a non-attending chief executive more than the Prime Minister is paid and paying a director over £1,000 a day. Where is the financial accountability in all those things? Then we come to the Vote on Account. Of course, that is at the huge level of 65%. No doubt, that is because the Executive have no confidence that they will be able to produce a Budget before the end of July, which is when the normal Vote on Account would run out. Therefore, they have given themselves the greatest possible headroom.

We will get a Budget that will have no alignment with the missing Programme for Government —

— such is the farce and the shambles of this place.

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

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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