Editorial: Stormont's refusal to reform the NHS is to blame for the way health will consume ever more of Northern Ireland's budget

​The Stormont Executive finally agreed budget allocations on Thursday, but one party and minister refused to support the plan.

The Ulster Unionist health minister, Robin Swann, said that his department’s funding was effectively being cut by 2.3% from last year. The UUP leader, Doug Beattie, claimed he would not ‘sit idly by’ while our local NHS was dismantled. His party, to be fair, took on health when other parties avoided it.

The pressures on our hospitals and GPs have certainly been too evident over recent years. The demands on the NHS are constantly growing and every executive party claims they support it wholeheartedly.

The health department, though, already receives more than half of day-to-day public spending in Northern Ireland. For comparison, as recently as 2011, it accounted for around 40% of expenditure.

The NHS is vitally important, but it cannot be allowed to consume all Northern Ireland’s resources. A regional government is more than just a giant health service.

The historic root of this problem is the failure of successive executives and health ministers to implement reforms. The template for a more efficient, effective NHS was set out repeatedly in a series of expert reviews - Transforming Your Care, Donaldson and Bengoa.

If there was, even now, a firm plan to follow these through, then the argument for massive investment in the short term would be easier to make. Unfortunately, that would require working toward fewer acute hospitals and there still seems no political appetite to make those potentially unpopular decisions.

If the plan is instead to fiddle round the edges of our NHS, fighting fires when they arise, then no health minister will ever be satisfied and their department will continue to consume ever more of Northern Ireland’s budget.