Ulster Unionist Health Spokesperson Jo-Anne Dobson has accused Edwin Poots of playing politics on the real cause for the current crisis in the health service. The Upper Bann MLA was speaking after a meeting of Stormont’s Health Committee in which the Minister refused to acknowledge that the four year budget for Health was fatally undermined from day one.

Jo-Anne Dobson MLA said;

“For Edwin Poots to try to blame the failure to implement welfare reform for the current crisis in the health service is indicative of a Minister attempting to shirk off all responsibility. Let’s be clear on this, welfare reform had no bearing on the outcome of the June Monitoring Round. The reason why most Departmental budgets were cut was to pay for existing Executive pressures. Minister Poots bid for an extra £160m funding even though he knew only a fraction of this would have been available. 

“The current crisis is not a response to welfare reform, it is a direct fallout from the 2011-2015 budget settlement. This is something we warned about at the time when we opposed it at the Executive and in the Assembly. Whilst the Minister freely acknowledged at the committee that demand is rising 5-6% a year, the four year deal only budgeted for an extra 1-2% of funding. Indeed the Minister even said during the meeting that ‘it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work it out.’ That comment revealed to me that even after all his politicking on the issue even he knows the true root cause of the problem is the original budget.

“Had the Minister been fully across his brief he would have known that there was a very serious budgetary crisis looming.  Every month each of the Health Trusts forward their financial position and an update on their annual plans to the Health Department. Is the Minister really trying to claim that he missed each of these briefings? In addition at the time of the discussions which led to the 2011-2015 budget senior health officials were very vocal in their concerns about the proposed settlement. Are we really to believe that these concerns disappeared overnight and were not raised with the Minister when he took office in May 2011?

“The bottom line is Edwin Poots needs to stop finding excuses and people to blame and look to resolving the current crisis. My Party has repeatedly stated that if the public safety is being compromised then we urgently need to find money and reprioritise resources so that this is avoided. We need the Minister to show some leadership now and act with integrity. Unfortunately at the moment he is more interested with engaging in inter-DUP wrangles and a wider phoney war on welfare reform with Sinn Fein.”