NI budget: Stormont budget next year will be 'very difficult'

Stormont's budget for next year will be "very difficult" according to Northern Ireland Office minister Steve Baker.

Legislation allowing the government to pass a budget for NI is being fast-tracked at Westminster.

The budget sets out spending allocated to Stormont's nine departments for this financial year.

They have been operating without proper budgets since the start of the financial year in April due to the collapse of the executive.

The second reading of the bill was pushed through the House of Commons on Monday evening. A majority of MPs supported it.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris did not take part. He is on a visit to the US to discuss trade and investment opportunities.

It is expected that he will hold his first in-person talks with the recently appointed US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Joe Kennedy III during the visit.

Northern Ireland Office Minister Mr Baker introduced the bill on Monday and said setting the budget was "not an easy task".

"Pressures on Northern Ireland's finances did not happen overnight. Successive executives have also failed to put finances on a sustainable footing and as a result the government inherited a budget, halfway through the year, of an overspend of some £660m," Mr Baker told the House of Commons.

"That is unacceptable and the unsustainability of Northern Ireland's finances cannot continue."

He said the government had prioritised spending in health and education "with an overarching objective of protecting the most vulnerable".

"We would like to see the executive return to set the budget next year, but if the executive does not return we will of course have to do the job and it will be tricky, there's no getting away from it," he added.

He said setting Stormont's budget for next year would be "very, very difficult".

"Without Northern Ireland executive ministers in place it hasn't been possible to take the difficult political decisions which are necessary to balance the budget at this very late stage in the year and that of course compounds the problem next year and it's with great sobriety that I stand here and acknowledge it's going to be very, very difficult.

"I for one would be up for the challenge of doing it but it's not the government's position for us to do it as UK government ministers.

"We would like to see the Northern Ireland parties step up to that duty."

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said that his party kept hearing that having the assembly and executive back would address certain issues, but there "are many examples of where that is not the case".

"Specifically on the issue of police numbers in Northern Ireland, the UK government committed in New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) at the beginning of 2020 to address this issue and to help the Northern Ireland Executive with the funding that was necessary," he said.

"The assembly and the executive were restored on that basis and from early 2020 until October 2022 the UK government had failed to deliver on its commitment and the Treasury would not provide the additional funding to enable the recruitment of those extra officers, despite it being an NDNA commitment."

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood told MPs a Conservative government was having to set the budget in Northern Ireland because the DUP would not go into government and take the finance department ministry.

"The argument today seems to be from the DUP, sure we can't fix everything - even if we do go back into government, there's no magic wand," he added.

"As a harsh critic of the DUP/Sinn Féin government over many years, I can tell you you couldn't fix everything, Stormont couldn't fix everything, but that's the job of a public representative - to roll up your sleeves, get in there and try."

Shadow NI Secretary Peter Kyle said the Labour Party would not oppose the bill but that the best way to move forward was to have devolution restored, "doing the scrutiny that is required".

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The Stormont executive had not agreed a budget when the DUP withdrew from the first minister's role last February.

That formed part of an ongoing protest by the party against the Northern Ireland Protocol.

It is a trading arrangement that allows goods to be transported across the Irish land border without the need for checks.

In November Mr Heaton-Harris published draft allocations he would make in the budget but said the Department of Education would need to make significant cuts to its "current spending trajectory".

On Thursday Sir David Sterling, a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, said he believed Stormont departments could be facing up to £1bn in financial pressures and cuts in the next financial year.

The government has also warned that if an executive does not return to set the 2023-24 budget, then additional revenue raising is a possibility - that would mean things such as water charges.

Alliance Party deputy leader Stephen Farry said Northern Ireland was in a "cycle of ongoing budget delay and uncertainty".

He added: "Westminster stepping in so late in the financial year and the budget cycle illustrates the lack of financial planning at a time of the greatest financial pressures facing Northern Ireland for decades.

"Northern Ireland's public finances are unsustainable."

After Monday's vote in the Commons, Sinn Féin's former Stormont finance minister Conor Murphy said the DUP's "boycott of the executive has left people and public services exposed to the full wrath of savage Tory cuts".

"Sinn Féin is ready to form an executive today, to deliver a three-year budget, and work together with others to invest in the health service and tackle the rising cost of living," he said.

"Chris Heaton-Harris needs to clarify exactly what he is doing to get the executive up and running now."