Grown-up politics means standing on your own two feet
Budget problems are compounded by ministers taking the ‘silo’ approach, putting the interests of their own department above everything else, writes Alex Kane
On BBC Northern Ireland’s Stormont Live programme on Monday, UUP leader Steve Aiken, addressing the issue of budgetary and financial pressures in Northern Ireland, spoke about the need for “grown-up politics”. He was right.
The problem is that the grown-up politics was required as soon as Julian Smith and Simon Coveney produced the New Decade, New Approach agreement on January 9.
But with almost 100 hours left until the official deadline at 11.59pm on January 13 for a deal to be done, I had assumed that the parties would sit down with each other and the Secretary of State for an in-depth analysis of the scale of the financial challenges facing an incoming Executive and then tie down the specifics regarding immediate funding, as well as an agreed strategy for ongoing spending prioritising and, where necessary, cuts and postponements to various projects and initiatives.
But, no, none of those meetings took place and none of the parties seemed to have a clue about the actual scale of the problem which lay ahead; which probably explains the shocked looks on their faces when each minister announced how much money they were going to need just to keep their departments ticking over.
The problems continued when Finance Minister Conor Murphy brought his Budget Bill to the Assembly.
Speaker after speaker expressed concerns: “We can have all the oversight mechanisms we want, but unless the Assembly, the Executive and ministers are prepared to deal with difficult decisions, then we’re just sailing ahead, taking on water and going towards the rocks.” (Andrew Muir, Alliance finance spokesman); “You can get into a trap of simply doing now what you’ve done last year and then, by the time you set a Budget, half of your money is spent.” (Colin McGrath, right,
SDLP); “Is there enough money and is the money being used to deliver what it is expected to achieve? (Mike Nesbitt, right, UUP); “This will be very challenging and it’s difficult to see how pressures of this level can be absorbed without impacting on delivery.” (Paul Givan, DUP); “We are concerned at what will happen in following years”. (Philip McGuigan, Sinn Fein).
The heart of the problem
— as it has been since the beginning of devolution — is that there isn’t a collectively agreed Programme for Government (PfG), let alone a collectively agreed five or 10-year economic plan; a vision, if you like. Ministers have tended to take the silo approach to governance, putting the interests of their own department above and beyond all else.
And while the Executive likes to convey the impression of collegiality, collective responsibility and heading in the same direction with the same purpose, evidence leads to the conclusion that it was mostly a pretence.
I accept Conor Murphy’s point about the need to speed through a budget — that’s why his Bill has been afforded accelerated passage — before the end of the present financial year, yet the danger of rushing it through is that there is practically no time for detailed scrutiny and no opportunity to spot and deal with potential problems.
And when it comes to Budgets,
unspotted potential problems have a very nasty habit of costing unexpected millions which, in turn, lead to further overspends and cutbacks further down the line.
But the immediate consequences of the present rush (against a background of parties not having already discussed the problems during the recent talks process) is that most of the thinking is of the on-the-hoof variety, backed up by guesswork, rather than drilled-down, thought-through costing and with no evidence whatsoever that ministers have had a chance to discuss the savings which could be made by inter-departmental co-operation on spending projects.
All of which means that the spending/economic/budgetary problems which have dogged successive Executives since 2007 remain unresolved.
Writing in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, the economist Esmond Birnie noted: “The main problem is the demand for public spending here far outstrips existing funding. In the last few weeks, we have seen bid after bid as education, health, infrastructure and public housing have all put forward their needs.
This situation did not arise out of the blue in early 2020, it has been brewing for a decade or more — in particular, during the so-called “austerity” era post-2010.
As early as 2010, some commentators were warning that a failure to fundamentally reform public service delivery in Northern Ireland would
❝ Unspotted potential problems have a very nasty habit of costing unexpected millions
❝ The Executive can no longer count on an easy ride from the Treasury, those days have gone
eventually produce a crunch. We may now have reached that crunch.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that all of the parties involved in successive Executives since 2007 have operated on the principle that the Good Friday Agreement remained “too big, too important, to fail” and, consequently, successive governments would throw buckets of cash to end the latest crisis, or stand-off.
So, when it came to longterm thinking on spending, there was always an underlying assumption that another handout would keep the ship sailing; an assumption that bolsters Birnie’s comment: “The relationship between Northern Ireland’s devolved administration and the London Treasury has always been fraught.”
Now, while it seems clear that the Treasury is keen for the Executive to take greater responsibility for its own Budget and learn to live within its means (as well as being willing to consider raising more revenue of its own), there is no evidence that it will throw Conor Murphy to the wolves when he meets officials in the next few days for discussions, before he presents his own Budget in a few weeks.
Yet, one thing is certain: the Executive can no longer count on a reasonably easy ride from the Treasury. Those days have gone.
And, to be honest, that’s probably no bad thing. It’s about time that the Executive sat down and pondered some difficult questions.
What do we want Northern Ireland to look like in 10 years’ time? What about our public services and the public sector? How do we prioritise spending projects? How do we raise more revenue for investment purposes? How do we exploit opportunities unique to Northern Ireland? Where can we spend more sensibly (our education provision would be a good start)? Can we build in mechanisms of government which ensure the parties are pulling together in the Executive, rather than pulling apart? (Feel free to add your own questions.)
With so many difficult political and financial problems long-fingered over the past decade, there is a danger that the “crunch” Mr Birnie mentioned will come in the form of a landslide as those problems collapse on top of the Executive and make governance impossible.
There is an additional danger in the form of another collapse — this time of patience from both the public in Northern Ireland (and we came very close to that a few weeks ago) and from the Treasury.
The return of a five-party Executive on January 11 represents the last chance for the parties to finally prove they can get it right when it comes to running Northern Ireland.
It was their decision to return and reboot together. They know the challenges and they know the difficulty of some decisions to be made. Let’s see if they can succeed this time.