Extra spending in England means more money for Stormont under the Barnett formula. This week’s Westminster budget means a lot more: £640 million this year, almost enough to cover the executive’s £770m shortfall, then £1.5 billion more next year, equivalent to a 10 per cent increase in Stormont’s budget.
This is not entirely good news. The overspend is a legacy of the previous Tory government artificially squeezing Stormont two years ago to cajole it into political and financial discipline.
Before that, there was always plenty of money, yet public services were still mismanaged to the brink of collapse. Too much money may even have caused mismanagement by allowing Stormont to endlessly put off difficult decisions.
There were signs this lesson was slowly sinking in, but now the Treasury tap has been turned back on again, what little hope there was of a teachable moment has passed.
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After months of considering and consulting on rates reform, Sinn Féin finance minister Caoimhe Archibald has presented proposals to the executive. These are known to include a revenue-neutral revaluation of all domestic properties and removing the £400,000 cap on expensive houses, but little else.
Questioned by MLAs about other specifics, such as ending the exemption for student accommodation, Archibald replied she has no plans.
It must be hoped the minister has more ambition for Stormont’s only serious tax-raising power. Scrapping Northern Ireland’s unique 50 per cent discount for vacant commercial property should be a no-brainer, both to raise money and to tackle dereliction. There are also strong arguments to end the exemption for charity shops. Although that was not considered this time around, it has been in previous reviews.
Merely to contemplate the possibility reveals how terrified Stormont is of difficult tax decisions.
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Chief constable Jon Boutcher has won his staring contest with the bean-counters. The budget contains an extra £38 million for the PSNI, plus £8 million for the Executive’s programme against paramilitarism and organised crime, on top of all the extra general funding to Stormont.
This follows Boutcher’s blunt declarations since taking office last year that he will spend whatever he needs to spend. As he told the Policing Board last December: “If I have to step into a position where I am breaching my Accounting Officer responsibilities and the board and the Department of Justice decide they will have to sanction me, then we will get into that territory if we need to.”
The chief constable will have calculated, quite correctly, that London would never allow policing here to fail for want of a little cash, after all the investment put into its success.
It looks like a cute manoeuvre in isolation; the problem is that every minister in the executive knows they can ultimately do much the same.
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PSNI officers spent 4,550 hours in the first three months of this year accompanying patients with mental health problems to A&E.
That is the equivalent of employing nine full-time officers for this task alone, although it has far greater costs in terms of disrupting policing for everyone. Many officers feel they have become mental health workers by default due to waiting lists and waiting times in the health service.
At the assembly’s justice committee, where the figures were revealed, MLAs asked if the Department of Health could provide dedicated care, security or safe spaces for such patients so officers can return to duty.
Another option would be a police presence in A&Es, if only at certain times and places. The PSNI stationed two officers at City Hospital on weekend nights in 2007 in a pilot programme to prevent attacks on staff.
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The Michael McMonagle scandal could land Sinn Féin MLAs with a hefty bill.
The disgraced former press officer racked up £110,000 in wage costs during his assembly employment. This included three months in the office of Michelle O’Neill, then deputy first minister, followed by 25 months in the office of Jemma Dolan until his contract with Sinn Féin expired.
Such employment was irregular under assembly rules. Wages incurred must be repaid by the MLAs themselves within three months of a demand or the sum will be deducted from their own pay and expenses.
The assembly commission is “actively looking” at the issue. This has all emerged from a series of written questions by the DUP and the TUV, indicating they intend to press the matter.
The commission is run by all parties so Sinn Féin could try blocking cost recovery. It would be wiser to consider repayment a fair price to be seen to do the right thing.
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Police have decided no crime was committed after a loyalist flute band played tunes but did not sing the associated sectarian lyrics during a ‘cultural day’ at a Belfast City Council-owned leisure centre.
Mark H Durkan, the SDLP’s representative on the Policing Board, has complained of “inconsistencies” in how these incidents are dealt with, as police also decided no crime was committed when sectarian lyrics were sung in August in a Co Derry social club.
However, that was on private premises. Durkan says a stand-alone hate crime law is required for clarification but it would need to be ludicrously draconian to cover even the two incidents mentioned here, let alone the general range of hateful conduct.
Perhaps what is missing from tackling sectarianism is straightforward social disapproval – open disdain for trashy behaviour by trashy people.
Unfortunately, that has come to be seen as a hate crime itself.
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Owners of the huge Hilden Mill outside Lisburn have applied for permission to demolish most of the listed structure, which has been repeatedly targeted by vandals and arsonists. Another empty mill in Tandragee was set on fire this week, while a vast mill at nearby Gilford has stood empty through decades of failed regeneration plans.
There needs to be more realism about the fate of these enormous old industrial buildings, certainly in rural areas where repurposing them as flats or business units is rarely viable.
Most are clearly doomed to be a blight on small communities and a magnet for anti-social behaviour until they burn down or fall down anyway.