Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 18 February 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- Budget Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4806225
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Minister, it will come as no surprise after yesterday's debate that we will support the Budget Bill's passing Second Stage. The 15 clauses and three schedules cover the £31 billion as laid down in the schedule and the Estimates, including the revised total amount of £26·536 billion. The Chair of the Finance Committee raised the issue of the increase in National Insurance contributions. We are concerned that the Department of Finance has not been able to estimate the likely costs of that. I thank the Minister for his commitment to come to the Committee as quickly as possible when those details have been worked out. However, for many of us, there has to be a concern that the Department of Finance, with its specific HR role across the Northern Ireland Civil Service, has not identified those figures yet. The detail of a lot of the impacts still needs to be worked through. My learned friend the Chair of the Committee pointed out that many Committees need to get to the bottom of the Estimates. The commentary yesterday from my friend Mr Gaston about our billions-sized Budget that could be a trillions-sized Budget made me look quite closely at some of the figures in the Estimates memorandum and the other documentation that we have in front of us, including the Budget Bill's explanatory and financial memorandum. I notice that paragraph 10 of the explanatory and financial memorandum talks specifically about the Consolidated Fund for Northern Ireland for 2024-25 and states that the Bill will authorise a revised total amount of £26·5 billion. I have checked the £26·5 billion against the spring Supplementary Estimates, and, yes, that figure appears to be correct. The memorandum says that the Vote on Account amount is £12·148 billion. Minister, the Vote on Account is 45% of the Budget. Forty-five per cent of the figure of £26·536 billion does not equate to £12·148 billion; it equates to £11·941 billion. There is a difference there of £650 million. I might be reading this wrongly — I probably am; this is just from an initial look — but, bearing in mind that we have already picked up some inconsistencies in the spring Supplementary Estimates, the messages that have been coming across to us and the detail that has been there, there needs to be good scrutiny of what is coming before us. Not now, Minister, because I would not want to put you on the spot, but maybe you could task your officials to come back to the Finance Committee and explain that discrepancy. Either the Vote on Account is wrong, the figure that was used initially is wrong or we are £650 million out, which is not a position that we should be in. There is a lot more detail in this, and it is up to the Committees to go through the figures. In fact, I encourage every Member to properly scrutinise the documentation that is before them. It is our duty to make sure that the Departments are held to account. The responsibility to ensure that the documentation is correct does not reside with just the Department of Finance. It is important that we carry out that degree of scrutiny. I will bring my remarks to a close at that point. Minister, we appreciate the fact that you will get back to us on the issue of National Insurance contributions fairly quickly. Also, can we resolve the issue of what the Vote on Account amount actually is and whether the £650 million discrepancy is a result of my not being able to do maths correctly or whether it is not written down correctly? I suspect that it be somewhere in between and that it needs to be looked at.
623 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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