Stormont criticised for £300m pre-election spending announcement - something the Scottish civil service stopped

Matthew O’Toole from the SDLP said the finance minister’s claim that publishing a monitoring round was routine business was completely discredited by the fact that her own oral statement acknowledged that the funding allocations were made “at risk”, given the Treasury might not agree to the amounts allocated.

Stormont’s position is out of kilter with what has happened across the water in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

The civil service in Scotland wrote to its first minister when the general election was announced, advising against the planned publication of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) – the equivalent of the June monitoring round, from which the Stormont funds were released.

The permanent secretary to the Scottish government said: “Publication on a revised timeline will allow the Scottish government to respond to new fiscal positions from an incoming UK government. These could be material to the MTFS.”

In Wales, the publication of the Supplementary Budget has been delayed until after the General Election. Cardiff’s Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Cabinet Office, Rebecca Evans, wrote to the Senedd’s Finance Committee in June about the matter.

Mr O’Toole has written to the head of the NI Civil Service to find out what advice was offered around civil service impartiality. During the pre-election period there is strict guidance about what civil servants can do.

Matthew O’Toole said: “Today’s action by the finance minister, along with the first ministers, is a shocking and shameless abuse of civil service impartiality and a clear breach of the executive’s own rules on the pre-election period.

“To announce hundreds of millions in spending allocations three days from an election, while acknowledging that the funding is at risk of not being confirmed by the Treasury, is anything but routine business as the minister has cynically claimed.

“Indeed, the text of the minister’s own statement acknowledges the significant risks associated with the announcement being made – but she and her colleagues pressed on regardless in the desperate hunt for pre-election publicity.

“Of course many of these allocations are welcome in themselves, but there would have been no issues if they had been announced on Friday morning, avoiding any suggestion of politicising the civil service.

“This cynical, shabby act of party politics risks undermining any shred of credibility the restored Stormont has – and offers a damning indictment of suggestions that the civil service has reformed itself to be more than a vehicle for Sinn Fein-DUP carve-ups.”

However, Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neill defended this situation saying: “Why should this wait?”.

She said: “This is money that needs to be allocated to our departments, this is very much business as usual. And the Westminster election shouldn’t disrupt as much as we possibly can, our own business.”

DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly rejected the suggestion that the monitoring round should have been delayed.

“Just like our health system can’t wait, our non-teaching education staff have waited too long, I think it’s really important that this is an executive that delivers and that means that we have to take action,” she said.

The executive agreed over £250million Resource and £50million Capital as part of the June 2024/25 monitoring.

This includes allocations of:

l £122m for the Department of Health to provide additional funding for vital services;

l £43.7m to the Department of Education for the Education Authority pay and grading review and a further £44.5m – £29.5m of which will go towards pressures in the education system and £15m for capital works to improve the school estate;

l £35m to help address pressures across the justice system;

l £20m for the Department for Communities for new build social housing and £10m towards discretionary support and the Supporting People programme, as well as for homelessness interventions.

The health minister welcomed the extra spending – but said while it makes some contribution to reducing the deficit in health, a significant shortfall still remains.

Mike Nesbitt said: “The financial position therefore remains very challenging and work continues across the HSC system to deliver the maximum possible savings and efficiency.”