The Ulster Unionist Party has warned that unless the Executive’s Draft Budget for 2015/16 is reworked it will only lead to an inevitable repeat of the financial crisis in public spending experienced in the current financial year. In its submission to official consultation on the Budget the Party has suggested a series of revenue saving proposals which would allow additional funding to be redirected to key public services.  

Ulster Unionist Party Finance Spokesperson Leslie Cree said;

“Our proposals include scrapping the Social Investment Fund freeing up over £55m, shaking up the approach to asset management in order to generate ambitious yet realistic levels of additional funding, postponing the proposed relocation of the DARD HQ to Ballykelly until after an independent investigation, utilising Barnett consequentials to protect college and university places, restoring funding to road safety and farm awareness campaigns, cutting the Northern Ireland Assembly’s Budget by 5-7.5% and protecting the Aggregated Schools Budget.

“Quite simply the current proposed spending plan has no realistic prospect of even lasting until the end of 2015/16. Many Executive Departments have drawn up amateurish attempts at allocating spending in which the number one priority was shamefully only to give an impression of a balanced budget.

“The way in which the overall Budget allocation was drawn together last autumn was a quick-fix in order to ensure Northern Ireland met the conditions of the embarrassing £100m bailout from the Treasury. Unfortunately by leaving the crucial discussions and decision on the budget to so late, the DUP and Sinn Fein had only weeks to decide how to allocate over £10bn.
 
“Given the rushed nature of the decision, the proposed spending plans for 2015/16 contain major anomalies and contradictions. It does little but cover over the major pressures in our health service and bizarrely still claims to recognise the economy as the number one priority whilst at the same time slashing the training and skills required for embedding further growth in the private sector.

“In addition, it relies excessively on borrowing to balance shortfalls in spending plans. As every year passes by and our level of debt builds up, our finances are becoming increasingly trodden down by an unsustainable level of debt. For instance, for next year alone the Draft Budget has had to allocate £63.4m just to service RRI borrowing interest payments alone. Soon enough interest payments will exceed the entire annual Budget of a number of our Executive Departments.

“It is no wonder that one of Northern Ireland’s top economists has described our finances as ‘mickey mouse politics.’

“The Ulster Unionist Party will not shy away from taking difficult decisions about future revenue generation. As the Budget Bill edges closer to coming to the Assembly however our top priority is to do what we can to protect key public services in 2015/16. Our hospitals for instance will simply not be able to cope with another year of one funding crisis after another.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

Ø  Read the full Ulster Unionist Party consultation response here.

Ø  See below for further detail on the above examples of our suggested changes. Pending final spending proposals we are likely to table amendments to the Budget Bill to achieve these.

Social Investment Fund

-          Despite a budget of £80m to be spent over four years, to address the pressing needs of dereliction and deprivation, the Social Investment Fund has paid out only approximately £35m to date, a further £20m allocated with the remaining £25m remaining available. No objective observer can retain confidence in the scheme. We believe existing commitments should be honoured, but all other money should be withdrawn and directed to other immediate pressures in key public services. We also note that inexplicably a further £14m resource and £15m capital has been allocation to the programme in 2015/16 – we firmly believe that should not be awarded.

Asset Management

-          The Asset Management Unit is hoped to deliver £50m of capital receipts in 2015/16. This is a derisory target, especially considering the piecemeal approach to asset disposals from 2011. As the property market shows continued signs of growth that there remains significant potential in generating additional revenue, as well as making short to long-term savings. The recently developed central asset register should be systematically reviewed to determine any surplus to requirement properties. In addition we believe each Department should be ordered to conduct a trawl to identify surplus land. Bodies such as the Housing Executive and Invest NI, which still both have significant dormant land banks, should now be asked to dispose of assets which they hold no realistic prospect of utilising in the short to medium term future.

Road Safety and Farm Safety Awareness Campaigns

-          The Departments of Environment and Enterprise have shamefully suggested no longer funding road safety and farm safety awareness campaigns respectively. We believe the continued funding of these programmes, especially in light of further tragedies on our farms and roads, in non-negotiable. We will seek to restore this funding in full.

Aggregated Schools Budget

-          We believe reducing the funding which is delegated to schools- the Aggregated Schools Budget - by over £68m in a single year will be unachievable without having a major and detrimental impact on the provision of education. Only 59% of the Education Budget is allocated to schools. We believe greater savings should be made from the remaining 41%. Our Education Spokesperson Danny Kinahan has consulted every local school Principal in Northern Ireland and the feedback is that teachers will have to be made redundant, class sizes will rise, staff expertise will be lost, standards will fall, staff absences will increase and there is the distinct possibility that some school leaders and governors may not be able to ‘manage’ such financial constraints. We believe the priority of the Department should be to protect funding for the ASB.

Suspending the proposed DARD HQ relocation to Ballykelly

-          Whilst we continue to support the relocation of the headquarters of the Forestry Service to Enniskillen, Fisheries Division to Downpatrick and the Rivers Agency to Cookstown, we are withdrawing our support for the proposed relocation of the DARD HQ to Ballykelly at this time. Value for money has never been demonstrated and repeated concerns of officials across several Departments, including DARD itself, have been ignored by the Minister. Given the significant, yet conservative, costs of £40m associated with the move, not least since the Minister’s hopes to save £26m by using existing buildings at Ballykelly was later dismissed as fanciful, we believe the project should now be postponed and no further money spent on it until an independent investigation into the decision and the feasibility of it has been conducted. In the absence of demonstrating value for money, we believe the move at present is being advanced exclusively for party political advantage by Sinn Fein. That is a reprehensible misuse of public funds.

Reducing the Assembly’s Budget

-          The Assembly Commission has had its budget inexplicably protected for next year and been allocated a budget of £40.7m. It is all the more unacceptable considering the reductions made to its Budget in June 2014, were later returned in full in October – whilst all Departments apart from Health and Education had theirs cut twice. We will be seeking a reduction of a minimum of 5-7.5% which would save an additional £2-3m next year.