Debate contribution: Health Service Transformation: Funding

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 17 September 2024.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

17 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Health Service Transformation: Funding

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4537036

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I cannot but begin by noting the irony of the motion. This motion has been proposed by one of the lead parties in the Executive, which tried just last week to sell us a Programme for Government as a great plan for the future of Northern Ireland. What do we find on waiting lists when we look at the glossy document? I will say one thing for it: the document is great at identifying the problem. On page 27, a wonderful graph shows us that, year-on-year, the waiting times for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment have increased under successive Health Ministers. Does that sound like delivery? I look at North Antrim, where we have the failure to reopen the Dalriada out-of-hours centre in Ballymena after COVID, meaning that urgent cases have to go to Antrim Area Hospital. Does that sound like delivery? Does launching a further consultation aimed at stripping away general surgery from Causeway Hospital sound like delivery? Why should we believe that the Executive, made up of the same parties, will do any better than the previous Executive or the ones before them? We have endless millions for North/South bodies and an Irish language Act. Just yesterday, many in the House demanded another £400 million from Westminster, not to fix waiting lists but to build a GAA stadium. What solution does the motion propose? A demand for yet more money from London. If you are going to constantly argue that we are a special case and that we need additional money, please build a rational long-term case for doing so. Otherwise, you make Northern Ireland look like the Oliver Twist of the UK, always just asking for more. There is, however, a rational case for arguing that, in the long term, Northern Ireland has been underfunded. As I told the House last week, in 2007, the Welsh Government appointed Professor Gerry Holtham to review the impact of the Barnett squeeze and to develop a metric for measuring what Wales needed in order to justify intervention to make sure that the squeeze did not take Wales below the level of service expected in the rest of the UK. Professor Holtham found that, because of higher need, Wales needed to spend £115 per head for every £100 spent in England. The equivalent figure for Scotland was £105 per head. In Northern Ireland, it was £121 per head. Why did the Executive parties not push for that before returning as protocol implementers? That was the time to agree the:

"new, long-term financial settlement with the Treasury"

that the motion calls for. Professor Holtham even provided them with an off-the-shelf model, but the truth was that the rush to get back here was more important than the waiting lists. I will raise an area that needs urgent attention. In July, I was contacted by a parent in my constituency whose young child with severe additional needs had been sectioned earlier that day, due to safety concerns for the child and for those providing care. No spaces were available at the Iveagh Centre. The initial response from the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust was that that was likely to be the case for several weeks. Social workers were deployed to the family home, where they had to provide round-the-clock care for eight days until a space became available. The trust staff were helpful, but their hands were tied due to a lack of facilities and psychiatrists at the Iveagh Centre and generally in Northern Ireland when it comes children with that child's needs. No family should have to go through the trauma of their child being sectioned in their home for eight days. Members throughout the House can, I am sure, cite examples from their constituencies. Simply throwing money at the problem without a plan to fix it will not cut it. There is no point in grandstanding to demand additional money without having first made a long-term financial case to Westminster along the lines of that which Professor Holtham made about Wales.

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

Assessment

Not qualifying

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:10 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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