Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2024-25

Debate contribution by Mr Timothy Gaston on 17 February 2025.

MLA

Mr Timothy Gaston

Party at the time

Traditional Unionist Voice

Date

17 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2024-25

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4803081

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. Members, I begin by drawing the House's attention to table 1 on the page marked with Roman numeral vii in the book that I have here. You will notice that the heading on the table tells us that the money that we are debating today is not in thousands but in the millions. Therefore, that leads one to the conclusion that, today, we are, remarkably, voting on spending £31 trillion of resource and capital and £26 trillion in cash. That is going by the book, which must have been rushed out the door. If only it were so, Principal Deputy Speaker. Mind you, given the Bill that was debated earlier in the House — the one on MLA pay — one would be forgiven for thinking that some in this Building do not regard that as a typo. My goodness, if His Majesty's Treasury is to be that generous to Northern Ireland, perhaps we, even at a stretch, could manage to pay for that once-coveted bridge over to Scotland. I will move on to a more serious issue. I note tables 5 and 6 in section 1. Table 5 is headroom that the Executive have decided to build in. The resource headroom across Departments is almost £69·5 million, while the capital is almost £114 million. In fact, every Department, with the exception of Agriculture, has headroom built in. I take the point that the Treasury allocates moneys late, as noted below table 5, but nowhere can I find the amount of that allocation, nor which of the headroom figures allocated to Departments in table 5 results from that funding. I also make the point that, while Departments are very keen on getting headroom, as it obviously reduces their likelihood of an overspend at the end of the year, it does not encourage prudence when it comes to public finances. Allowing for such significant sums positively encourages bad financial management. Perhaps the truth is that the Executive do not care about good financial management. Table 6 is on the pages marked with Roman numerals xx and xxi. That table is interesting because, as the heading states, it relates to:

"Expenditure resting on the sole authority of the Budget Act".

That means that everything listed in the table has been set up by the Executive and is being delivered without any specific legislation or authority from the Assembly. Today, for example, could be the only occasion on which we vote on the Homes for Ukraine scheme and the strategic migration partnership with Ukraine, which have been allocated over £2 million. It is the same story with the full dispersal asylum seekers scheme, the refugee integration proposal, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme and the Afghan relocation and assistance policy, but, more significantly, we are today approving Estimates of £12 million in welfare reform mitigations. The Estimates promise that legislation will be in place by 1 April 2025. As we sit here today, there is no sign of a Bill. I draw Members' attention to a document — this one, as Mr Aiken referred to — on the Department of Finance's website, which is titled 'Managing Public Money Northern Ireland'. Paragraph 2.5 of that document deals with "Securing adequate legal authority" and states:

"The Assembly usually authorises spending on a specific policy or service by approving bespoke legislation setting out in some detail how it should work. Departments should ensure that both they and their"

arm's-length bodies

"have adequate legal cover for any specific actions they undertake."

However, here we are today voting on giving over £24 million to Departments without any bespoke legislation in place. The document produced by the Department of Finance says that the authority of the Budget Act should be relied upon only in "certain limited circumstances" and normally for:

"expenditure of no more than £1·5m".

We are here today voting on throwing that guidance out the window and approving expenditure, through the Budget Act, of, in one instance, eight times that amount.

I will make a few comments on specific Departments. On page 29, I find the spend for the Department for Communities. There is £2·416 million in resource and £375,000 in capital for support for other languages in addition to the spend on the North/South Language Body. I would like the Minister to explain to the House what all that is going towards. On page 54, we have details of the allocations to the Department for the Economy. I discover that the resource spend allocated to InterTradeIreland is £6·429 million. I challenge any Member to find a penny that is earmarked for a body that, the DUP told us, would help address the issues associated with the protocol, namely Intertrade UK. There is nothing going to it from the House. You will not find it anywhere in the Estimates. On page 200, we find that the Estimates provide for over £1 million in capital spend on the Maze. I cannot imagine that victims will be too happy about that. Just across the page from that figure, I see that £816,000 in resource and £700,000 in capital will go to the North/South Ministerial Council. I recently wrote to the North/South Ministerial Council. My questions revolved around a mysterious group called the "EU senior officials group". I requested information relating to the formation of the group, details of any changes to its remit since its formation, the current and past membership of the group and copies of the agendas and minutes of its meetings. I cited the Freedom of Information Act 2000. What was its response to an MLA? I got a nice one-page letter answering none of those questions and telling me that the North/South Ministerial Council is not subject to FOI legislation. The House has no business allocating —

— well over £1 million to a body —

— that is not answerable to us through the straightforward questions that I have outlined.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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