At last Stormont’s fiscal approach has expert oversight

Stormont’s handling of money has been poor, at times woeful, and there is no sign that will change.

There are several reasons why this is so. One reason is that the political system here is abnormal in two key respects.

It is abnormal in that it is composed of a mandatory coalition of political irreconcilables, all of whom have to share power together at all times. Some of the parties do not even want Northern Ireland to exist, and one of those nationalist parties is obsessed with that aim and seems inclined to do anything it can to bring it about.

This means that no party ever wants to be seen to be associated with financial ‘cuts’, however necessary and prudent such budget reductions might in fact be. And one party, Sinn Fein, is very happy to campaign against prudence by depicting it as cruelty, and to instead associate itself with the ‘generosity’ of relentless announcements of funding.

The system means that no party takes a position against such populism and ministers from rival parties clamour to be seen to be revealing their own decisions to approve grants.

A second respect in which Stormont is abnormal, leading to its apparent inability to get to grips with fair and efficient expenditure, is that it lacks significant borrowing or revenue raising powers. This means that there is never an obvious consequence to profligate spending or an incentive to curb it. Thus there is waste on so many levels, including on the sort of inefficient health structures that experts have been warning about for two decades. Or on the difficult-to-assess grants to multiple community groups and festivals. Or on the tens of millions spend annually on legal aid for inquests or inquiries or civil cases against the security forces who prevented terrorist murder and mayhem in the Troubles.

Northern Ireland at last has a Fiscal Council, made up of distinguished members led by a world expert in budgetary matters, Sir Robert Chote, looking at local finances. Will our MLAs pay attention to, or even understand, its assessments?