Debate contribution: Budget (No. 2) Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Dr Caoimhe Archibald on 23 September 2024.

MLA

Dr Caoimhe Archibald

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

23 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget (No. 2) Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4543784

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I thank all those Members who expressed their views in the debate, and I thank those who contributed to earlier debates on the Bill and the associated Supply resolutions. I have listened to those contributions, and, while I may not agree with all the arguments that were presented, it is always useful to hear Members' views. I will respond to some of the issues that were raised in the debate before winding up fully. Mr McGrath raised a couple of points about the Budget Bill's not being aligned with the Programme for Government. I am sure that he will concede that the Budget Bill was introduced before the PFG was published, and I laid out in the Chamber previously that the Executive had a number of priorities that they tried to align funding towards, with Health being one, childcare being another and Lough Neagh another. Those are also now reflected in the Programme for Government, but, obviously, we would like to be in a place where we are setting a Budget that aligns with and funds the priorities that are in a Programme for Government. Mr McGrath and Miss McAllister discussed multi-year Budgets, and, again, that is the place where we want to be. You will be aware that we are able to allocate funding only on the cycle of years that we have in front of us. We are in the final year of a spending review, so we were able to do only a one-year Budget this year. We understand, and she has been very clear about this, that the Chancellor intends to set a one-year Budget in October and then, come early spring, will set a Budget for the following two years. It is my intention to align with that, and, in planning for it, we have asked Departments for their projections for three years. Liz Kimmins, Nuala McAllister and Steve Aiken mentioned Health, and, clearly, Health is a priority, with over half our Budget going to that Department. We have sought to prioritise it in the allocations that have been made. Mr Aiken made his point again about the outturn versus the opening of the Budget. I am sure that, come the end of the year, the picture will be very different, but we will wait and see. Mr Aiken made other comments about the allocations that we are expecting. Obviously, you have a degree of scepticism about some of the actions that we have seen over recent days and weeks. You are right to be cautious. The figures that we are talking about, which are in the region of £500 million, have been arrived at on the basis of discussions that my officials had with Treasury officials. Similarly, we had discussions with officials in advance of June monitoring, and it transpired that that is where we ended up on the numbers that we were expecting. However, it is also fair to say that there are Departments in England that are facing considerable pressures as well and that, therefore, money will likely have to be allocated to them. Also, they have committed to funding the pay review body recommendations, so I think —.

Yes, go ahead.

I thank the Member for his remarks. I will be and have been engaging with my Scottish and Welsh counterparts, and I will meet them, along with the British Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in early October as part of our regular Finance: Interministerial Standing Committee (FISC) engagements.

I accept the point that there is a level of caution to be had. Obviously, there will be a degree of risk attached to those allocations, but it is on the basis of the intelligence that we have as to what we can expect. From my perspective, it is a degree of risk that I am comfortable with to make the allocations on the basis that we want to give Departments as much certainty as we can to help them to be able to plan to live within the budget envelopes that they have. That brings me on to Mr Tennyson's comments. He spoke about the enormous challenges that budgets are facing. I agree with him that we need to see Ministers taking actions to live within those budgets, because the consequences of not living within them are, from my perspective, pretty dire for next year. I will bring a paper to the Executive in the near future, with proposals around allocating the £500 million. I also agree with him about the need for Departments to get on with transformation. That is something that we all agree on. Some funding goes towards transformation specifically, but it is quite a small pot of funding, and it will not do everything that we need it to do, so we need to see more wide-ranging actions on that. There is also an important point to be made, and Diane made it in her contribution, about the financial package not having secured as much as is necessary to deliver public services. That is very clear. We still have more negotiation to do in relation to post 2026-27. In the interim fiscal framework, which is a document that I will perhaps share with Mr Gaston, we had a commitment that we could plan on the assumption that we will be funded at or above the level of 124% in future years. We need to secure that and ensure that that is part of our budget baseline going forward, so that we have our fair share of funding going towards public services. Nicola Brogan spoke about the need to secure further fiscal powers. That will also be part of those future negotiations on our final fiscal framework. I think that I have covered most of the remarks that I wanted to highlight. I will bring my remarks to a close. I have tried to respond to as many of the issues that Members have raised in today's debate and in previous debates as I could. The Budget (No. 2) Bill, as I have laid out, is a crucial piece of legislation that provides Departments with the power to continue to deliver vital front-line services to all our citizens during the 2024-25 financial year. I commend the Budget (No. 2) Bill to the Assembly, and I ask that Members agree its Final Stage. It is vital that the legislation completes it passage through the Assembly as it enables us to keep delivering public services and prevent Departments running out of money during the 2024-25 financial year.

1,094 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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