Good news for Northern Ireland as two financial experts get key advisory roles on fiscal matters

A week ago to the day this editorial column welcomed the announcement of a Fiscal Council for Northern Ireland (see link below).

But we expressed concern at the announcement of a Fiscal Commission for Stormont.

The former will assess how devolution here handles money. The latter will examine questions such as whether or not the assembly should get extra revenue raising powers.

Scrutiny of expenditure is as urgent as it has ever been.

There is little sign that MLAs are fully capable of spending money in a disciplined way.

Whenever there is a public clamour to spend more on something, politicians endorse it.

Whenever there is a need to cut something that might be popular, but inefficiently handled, politicians will oppose it.

This is cowardly and can lead to serious budgetary injustices. It means that aspects of public life that are failing to spend wisely might continue to be allowed to do so, leading to shrunken purse and cutbacks in less noticed services, which might have no-one powerful to speak up for them.

While this newspaper still thinks that Stormont’s failure to handle well the money it has means that extra tax raising powers should be off the agenda for now, we recognise that there are arguments for such powers.

Dr Esmond Birnie made some of those arguments on these pages last Tuesday (March 9, see link below), as does a letter writer opposite.

Those arguments can be summarised as follows: if MLAs demand more tax from people, those people will begin to ask how it is spent.

The counter argument is that such scrutiny might only begin after ideologues had inflicted great harm on the economy.

But setting aside such debates, there has been some very good news on the fiscal council and commission. Two leading UK financial oversight experts will head them: respectively Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Sir Robert Chote, ex head of Office of Budget Responsibilty.

This is a huge boost for Northern Ireland, and will help to give the two new bodies the authority that they need in their coming work.

• Morning View: Stormont needs a Fiscal Council but not a Fiscal Commission

• Dr Birnie: Stormont might be more careful with money if it had to raise it

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