Debate contribution: Northern Ireland Assembly Commission: Budget 2025-26

Debate contribution by Mr Trevor Clarke on 9 December 2024.

MLA

Mr Trevor Clarke

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

9 December 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Northern Ireland Assembly Commission: Budget 2025-26

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4698039

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Principal Deputy Speaker. I note the Members who have contributed to the debate. The Assembly Commission recognises the context of wider financial pressures in the public sector and has given careful consideration to those when presenting its budget requirements. However, the Commission must balance that with its responsibilities of ensuring that the required resources are available to the Commission in order for it to provide the necessary services to the Assembly and all its Members. The Assembly Commission considers that the budget for the year is a reasonable estimate of the financial requirements needed to fully support the Assembly and deliver the required services to Members. The budget proposals presented today embody the Commission's continuing commitment to ensuring that the Assembly is effectively and efficiently supported by and provided with robust, innovative and modern secure systems in a modern working environment. The budget not only meets the costs that will arise in relation to the provision of staff, running and maintaining Parliament Buildings and delivering effective constituency services for our community but seeks to invest in systems, infrastructure and support for the Assembly's scrutiny functions in order to equip the Assembly for the future. I will respond to a few comments made by Members.

First, Diane Forsythe spoke on behalf of the Audit Committee, and I welcome her comments. The Committee plays a helpful role in scrutinising the work of the Commission, and she added further detail to the proposer of the motion's statement for the Members who were present. The Member for North Antrim talked about proper staffing, the FAPP and the uplift for some political parties. I remind Members, through the Speaker, that the idea behind the FAPP rearrangement was to bring fairness and equity. The Member singled out the increase given to my party and Sinn Féin. I remind the House that a single-Member party — his and one other single-Member party— still receives £26,000 to support one Member and the larger parties receive £10,000 per Member. It is fair and equitable, and we were trying to bring fairness to the system.

I will indeed.

I thank the Member for her intervention, which differs from that when she last intervened on the subject. All that I can say to the Member is that the current system allows support only for political parties. As the Member recognised on the previous occasion, if she were to designate as a party, she would be entitled to the financial assistance. I suggest that the Member redesignate as a political party, not an independent. That is the only option open to her at the moment. I am not questioning your authority, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. However, a degree of latitude that was not afforded to other Members was afforded to Mr Carroll when he made heinous comments about contracts provided by the Assembly. I am sure that the staff do due diligence, and I commend them for their work on the contracts that have been awarded. Members should not get into the minutiae of which contractors are preferable to others. Mr Carroll talked about MLAs' pay and the £500 increase. Of course, today is not the day to debate that either. That was part of the original IFRP decision in 2016. It is outwith the decision of the Assembly to set the budget. It was linked to inflation, and some Members will agree that, while the £500 every year since 2016 is welcome, it is not much compared with the salaries of some of our counterparts in other places. He went on to single out the senior staff of the Assembly, and I want to distance myself from those comments. The senior staff in the Building do a tremendous job of keeping us right, as do the staff who got the 3% increase. There was a clear rationale for the senior staff's pay increase at the time: they could go somewhere else and receive much more remuneration than they do in this Building. I distance myself from those remarks. Members of the Assembly Commission have considered its requirements for 2025-26, recognising that a significant element of the budget is non-discretionary and relates to payments to Members. Constituency office and staffing costs are set out in the determination. The Commission is grateful to the Audit Committee for its scrutiny of the Commission's budget for 2025-26. I will end the debate as my colleague began it, with a "Thank you" to all the staff who support every aspect of our work. Significant work has been done this year to ensure the smooth return of Assembly business, and, as we look ahead to another busy year, it is appropriate, on behalf of the Assembly Commission, to wish all our staff a merry Christmas and a happy new year. The Commission seeks the Assembly's agreement to the budget amounts for resource DEL and capital DEL as set out in the motion. I commend the motion to the House.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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