Debate contribution: Budget 2024-25

Debate contribution by Mr Stewart Dickson on 28 May 2024.

MLA

Mr Stewart Dickson

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

28 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget 2024-25

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4492740

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Although I will speak in support of the Budget, I need to address some of the many difficult situations that we face. As others have said, years of Executive collapse and systemic underfunding by Tory Governments have resulted in vital programmes, many for the most vulnerable, marginalised and deprived in our communities, coming to an end, with other programmes, such as Engage, Happy Healthy Minds and holiday hunger payments, getting the chop, not to mention the consequences of leaving the European Union, which resulted in the loss of so much, including the European social fund (ESF), also doing damage to our voluntary and community sectors. The cost of division remains a significant problem for us in Northern Ireland — one for me, one for you — just as it has been for decades. Despite spending more per head on health, we have the worst hospital waiting lists in western Europe. We have reports, such as Bengoa, gathering dust on the shelves. We have a Minister resigning rather than facing the tough decisions.

No, I want to make progress. As someone said recently, there are more pilots in Northern Ireland Departments than there are in easyJet. I will now speak briefly as the justice spokesperson for the Alliance Party on how the Budget will affect the Department of Justice. While the Department has seen a slight uplift, it comes too little, too late after years of constrained budget settlements. Since devolution, Justice has been chronically underfunded relative to other Departments. That has been recognised by the Fiscal Council. While the Health budget has grown by 70% and the Education budget by 45% over the past 12 years, Justice has seen an increase of as little as 3%. We must recognise that the vast majority of the Department of Justice's budget is demand-led and is truly inescapable. I challenge other Ministers to tell us where their inescapable sums are. Staff costs and statutory commitments consume nearly all available resources, leaving less than 1% for discretionary spending. Over the years, a cost recovery model has operated successfully and has delivered significant reforms despite the noose around the Department of Justice's neck. It is clear, however, that we have reached a point at which the potential savings would automatically increase costs in other areas. For instance, the introduction of electronic monitoring would allow police to monitor accused persons in real time, including their location, therefore reducing remand numbers, but the Department does not have the budget to deliver it. Among the pressures facing the Department of Justice, the situation in our prisons is particularly concerning, with a 35% increase in prison numbers over the past three years. Since joining the Justice Committee, I have visited our prisons and have heard at first hand how the increases have made prison arrangements unsustainable. Older blocks, initially set for demolition, have been forced to reopen. Prisoners are now doubling up in small cells. Overcrowding has rendered adequate rehabilitation a mere pipe dream, with reoffending rates rising to in excess of 40%. There are safety concerns for overworked and understaffed prison officers, and, while we have known for some time that more prison officers are desperately needed, extra resources have also to be provided to fund that. Policing has been cut to the bone over the past number of years to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. We are now in a situation where the service may become unrecognisable to the public. Policing numbers sit at some 6,390, the lowest number of officers since the formation of the PSNI and well below the New Decade, New Approach target of 7,500. Yet, our police have increasingly become the first port of call in the absence of other services, with officers sometimes spending their entire shift in an accident and emergency department. With that, and many taking leave due to physical or mental health issues, the strain of those cuts is painfully evident in our Police Service. Even without pressures from demand-led services, major issues exist. Our criminal justice system is picking up the pieces where other Departments, such as Health and Education, have failed. An increasing number of individuals entering the criminal justice system are grappling with severe mental health issues, addiction or unresolved traumas. If we want to avoid the immense societal harm, we need to rethink our approach and invest in prevention. Only then will we be able to avoid the what ifs. What if they had been better educated? What if they had been given more support in life? What if they had received adequate mental health care? Others persist in tackling delays in the justice system and the backlog in our courts, which fail victims. Those delays compound the hurt, stress and anxiety for victims. To open more courts, more staff need to be recruited, and the throughput in our court system needs to be enhanced, including legal aid payments to those in need of financial support for access to justice. Without a larger cash flow, the system will only get slower. While I know that the Minister will act to do more with less and make the best of the available resources, it will be very difficult. It goes without saying that we are not where we want to be. If we had been able to do our job over the past two years, we might have been in a better place, but, given where we have landed, we need to ensure that we make more progress, where possible, in the three years that are available to us. Difficult decisions need to be made on the prioritisation of services, but the job of a Minister is to find a way. To those voting against the Budget motion today, I ask you this: where is the alternative proposition? Where are you going to raise the money from to fill the gap in the coffers that, you feel, needs to be filled? Where is your Budget for delivering? I have not seen it published, but maybe we will see it in some of your election manifestos. For that reason, today, I will be supporting the Budget. Finally, on a personal note, I have to express my deep disappointment at the resignation of the Health Minister, someone walking away from patients and healthcare workers.

He has failed not only to deliver many of the strategies that have been promised —

— but, for me, on a personal basis, he has failed cancer patients in Northern Ireland.

1,081 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification