‘Indisputable matter of fact’ that Stormont health funding increased in budget, committee told

The director of public spending at the Department of Finance, Joanne McBurney, said that while no Stormont minister had received what they wanted in the spending plan, the Department of Health’s baseline funding had risen by almost £2 billion since 2020.

Health Minister Robin Swann refused to back the draft 2024/25 budget agreed by his ministerial colleagues last week.

While the health service has been allocated more than half of the £14.5 billion resource budget available to the devolved government, the Ulster Unionist minister has said it falls well short of the money needed to maintain services at safe levels.

He has called on the assembly to make changes to the budget and has refused to rule out resigning if it passes in its current form.

The Department of Finance said the allocation given to health is a 6.3% rise based on the previous year’s budget, while Mr Swann insisted what he was receiving was a 2.3% cut in expenditure.

Part of the different interpretation is based on whether the comparison is made between the starting point allocation at the beginning of the financial year, or the expenditure at the end of the financial year, when additional payments from Westminster have been factored in.

Ms McBurney told the finance committee that it was always going to be an “incredibly challenging budget”.

She added: “With increased demands on services and rising the costs, the executive simply does not have the budget to do everything it would want to do.

“Providing additional funding for one area means less funding for another, that was the harsh reality facing the executive when they were agreeing the budget.”

Ms McBurney told MLAs that the approach to setting the budget had been agreed by the executive on February 15, and that this had included that the final financial position for 2023/24 could not be used as the starting point for budget 2024/25.

She said: “The Department for Health was allocated over half of the overall resource DEL (departmental expenditure limits) provided to departments, 51.2% of the overall resource DEL outcome.

“As a result of the ongoing prioritisation of health, the allocation of a further £472 million in this budget will see the Department of Health’s baseline funding increase by almost £2 billion since the last executive returned in 2020.”

Asked by DUP MLA Diane Forsythe what would be the consequences for other departments if health had received more spending, Ms McBurney said: “The only way at this stage to get more funding to health is to take that funding off somewhere else and there was no minister who implied they could live with anything less than what they got.

“In fact all of them were asking for significantly more than what they received.”

DUP MLA Phillip Brett said it was “important that there is honesty around the facts and figures”.

He added: “Rather than being a decrease to the opening position of last year, as some people have tried to indicate, this is actually a 6.5% increase from last year.”

Ms McBurney said: “We would say from the opening position it is.

“I think the Department of Health have looked towards the closing position for the year.

“Our argument against that would be, one – you don’t know what additional allocations you are going to get in-year, and two – your closing position had a number of transfers from Whitehall departments, in particular including quite large sums for the immigration health surcharge which they should also be getting this year.

“So, it is not right to compare the end of one year with the start of the next.”

Mr Brett said: “It is an indisputable matter of fact that the department’s resource DEL, their opening position, is higher than it was last year?”

Ms McBurney responded: “Yes.”

The DUP MLA asked if the health minister had submitted alternative spending proposals.

Ms McBurney said: “The health minister certainly set out clearly what his issues were with the budget but I am not aware of any other costed proposals coming in from where the money should be taken in order to give to the Department of Health.”