Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Main Estimates 2024-25; and Supply Resolution for Excess Votes for 2016-17, 2018-19, 2020-21, 2021-22

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on 1 July 2024.

MLA

Mr Paul Frew

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

1 July 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Main Estimates 2024-25; and Supply Resolution for Excess Votes for 2016-17, 2018-19, 2020-21, 2021-22

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4499450

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the progress that has been made on a Budget. It has been a long time coming. We understand why it has taken so long, and we understand the procedures that have been followed to get here, not least the 65% Vote on Account earlier in the year that allowed that wee bit more flexibility. I am glad that we will have a Budget Bill before the Assembly tomorrow, before we go into recess. We would have been in a bad place if we, as an Assembly, had not had sight of that Budget (No. 2) Bill until September. I welcome the progress, and I thank the Finance Minister for that progress. We hear time after time, not only from the Finance Minister and her Department, that this is a challenging Budget and that we are in a challenging environment. I guess that we can all agree with that, and we can all agree that we have not been funded under an ideal model in recent years. We have had success, which I welcome and acknowledge, with regard to a needs-based funding framework, whereby we are funded under relative need of 124%, and that is essential going forward. However, with that figure, we will still hit a cliff edge soon, so I push the Minister to do all that she can in her endeavours to pursue the Exchequer and the new Government, whoever it may be, to ensure that we are funded by need. One the biggest issues that will face us, as well as how we will build on and improve our infrastructure, is, simply, how we will pay people what they are worth and what is fair. If we do not pay people fairly and appropriately, we will see our infrastructure and our services crumble. We know that pay awards are a massive issue, but there are no recurring moneys coming from Treasury for pay awards. Therefore, we have to fund that recurrently for ever and a day. That is a massive challenge. Given all of those challenges — having to pay people appropriately, not having enough money in the first place and a crumbling infrastructure — what do we need? It is obvious that we need more money, but we also need better scrutiny and, with that better scrutiny, transformation and reform of our Departments and of how our services are delivered. I have yet to see any real progress in those areas, either so far in this short term or previously. It alarms me that we do not see that.

Worse than that, when it comes to scrutiny, I see a reversal.

In the last mandate, we had the Functioning of Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (Northern Ireland) 2021. I am so interested in that Act because I amended it to introduce a section that adds to scrutiny. It places a duty on all Departments that they:

"must provide the relevant Assembly committee with a written or oral briefing on the department’s submission to each monitoring round no longer than 7 days following submission to the Department of Finance."

From what I can see and hear, many Departments have failed to do that in monitoring rounds. The Finance Committee has also discovered that most scrutiny Committees have not had adequate time or presence from officials to discuss their budgetary bids and positions. With the more challenging Budget, fiscal framework and environment in which we operate, it seems that scrutiny has gone down and not up. That does not bode well for the future. That is when mistakes happen. I worry that mistakes could happen in every Department that is not scrutinised properly or does not afford its scrutiny Committee the appropriate information in a timely fashion to enable it to support and advise the Department. Of course, with the challenging Budget environment that we are in, we hear the cry endlessly for further fiscal powers. If we have less scrutiny, how will we cope with more fiscal powers? Does it not mean that more things will go wrong, if we have more fiscal powers? I worry about the way forward with regard to further fiscal powers. What will we do with those levers? What will we do with those additional levers of power, if we are in a challenging environment? Those levers will go only up, never down. Whom will that hurt? It will hurt middle-income earners, the people who are just managing to stay above water. That worries me too. I also worry about the fact that a member of the Executive will not support the Budget. Two pillars of governance are the Programme for Government and a Budget to go with it. If a Minister will not support the Budget, while that is his prerogative, he should consider his position in the Executive, so that they can move on with one voice.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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