NI budget: Bill to be rushed through House of Commons

Legislation allowing the government to pass a budget for Northern Ireland will be fast-tracked at Westminster later.

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 bill will be rushed through the House of Commons and a majority of MPs are expected to support it.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has tabled a number of amendments but it is up to the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle to decide if any of them are chosen for debate.

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

The five-day trip includes meetings in Washington DC, Boston and New York.

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.

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.

DUP MP Gregory Campbell said Northern Ireland needed “more investment and reform” for public services.

“Yet as Treasury has confirmed, the Trader Support Service, which helps companies deal with Northern Ireland Protocol-generated paperwork, has cost the taxpayer £318.7m in just over two years,” he said.

“What we spend on protocol paperwork in one day could employ 11 highly experienced nurses for a year.

“The protocol is not disconnected from our public services.”

The Trader Support Service is paid for by the UK government rather than coming from Stormont’s budget.

Therefore it is not certain that, in the absence of the Trader Support Service, an equivalent sum would be available for spending in Northern Ireland.

Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader Colum Eastwood described the budget being set by Westminster as “more of the same”.

“With cuts to schools that the Education Authority says will have a profound detrimental impact on children and young people, is this the future that anyone here wants?

“The truth is that without change while political parties, and the DUP in particular, refuse to work together in the interests of the people we represent, more Tory budgets will be forced on us against our will.”

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.”