NI budget: Warning of serious harm to children and young people

The 2023-24 Northern Ireland budget will "cause serious harm to children and young people", Chris Heaton-Harris has been told.

The comments were made to the Northern Ireland secretary in a letter from more than 100 organisations and individuals.

Mr Heaton-Harris set a 2023-24 budget for Northern Ireland in the absence of an executive at Stormont.

He said power-sharing had to be restored to "protect the ongoing delivery of vital frontline services".

There is currently no devolved executive at Stormont due to an ongoing boycott by the Democratic Unionist Party in protest against post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland.

Stormont officials believe they will need to find £800m in cuts and revenue raising measures as a result of the budget.

Th estimate was contained in an assessment of the budget by the independent Northern Ireland Fiscal Council (NIFC) published on Tuesday.

The Department of Education, in particular, has already cut a number of schemes and programmes to save money.

These include the school holiday food grant for children entitled to free school meals.

The letter to Mr Heaton-Harris was sent by the Children's Law Centre on behalf of 78 organisations and 23 individuals.

The Hillsborough stadium disaster campaigner Prof Phil Scraton is among the individual signatories.

Children's and youth organisations, some unions and a range of community organisations have also endorsed the letter.

They said they were writing "out of a profound sense of concern" about the impact of the budget.

"It is particularly concerning to us that you, on behalf of the UK government, appear to be making decisions that will without question actively cause serious harm to children and young people in Northern Ireland," the letter said.

"Interventions such as the school holiday food grant, Healthy Happy Minds and the extended schools programme have been crucial in mitigating the growing and increasingly complex level of need that exists and in addressing growing inequality."

Healthy Happy Minds was a scheme to provide counselling and therapies for primary school children, but funding for it was withdrawn by the education department.

The extended schools programme gave some additional money to schools to fund extra support for disadvantaged pupils.

"The seemingly endless announcements of cuts to such early intervention programmes and support initiatives risks depriving these children and young people of the support they desperately need pending transformation of failing services," the letter continued.

The letter said that the result of the budget would be the "active and wilful harming of our most vulnerable children."

It concluded by calling on Mr Heaton-Harris to reconsider the decisions made in the budget.

Mr Heaton-Harris said he would continue to work with the civil service on "budget sustainability for the benefit of people across Northern Ireland".

But he said it was his priority to work with the Stormont parties to restore devolution.

"Locally-accountable leadership is required to ensure that Northern Ireland can get its finances in order and protect the ongoing delivery of vital front-line services such as healthcare and education," he added.