Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): I warmly welcome the Minister, and Mike Brennan, Budget director. Minister, do you want to make a short statement, or do you feel you have said enough already? Can we go straight into questions?

Mr Hamilton (The Minister of Finance and Personnel): I think both things are accurate, Chair. Thank you for the invitation to come back. I did not expect to be back just so soon after my last appearance. In fact, after being here for two and half hours last time, I did not think that I would ever get another invite from the Committee.

I am joined by Mike Brennan, who is our Budget director in DFP and very familiar to the Committee. Whenever questions get too difficult and technical, which will probably be most of them, he will be the man who will field those for me, I am sure.

As you know, I want to speak just very briefly, if I may, Chair. I think that everybody understands how challenging the Budget position was for the 2015-16 year. We had a sense of how difficult it was going to be in 2014-15. I think we all knew and anticipated that next year was always going to be very tough, primarily and principally on the resource departmental expenditure limit (DEL) side of the House. We had a 1·6% real terms reduction in resource DEL for 2015-16. That follows a trend over the past number of years, where £1·5 billion of our spending power as an Executive has been denied to us because the block grant has not kept pace with inflation.

This is not a one-off event or here for a few years. We may have expected, some time ago, that the policy of austerity would be coming to an end this year or next year, but obviously the economy has not grown in the way that the Government anticipated. All the projections provided by the Office for Budget Responsibility in London would suggest that, at a UK-wide level, resource DEL expenditure will reduce by a further 13% in real terms by the 2018-19 financial year.

That is a considerable amount of money. Whilst we are not sure at this stage what that will mean for Northern Ireland, it will be dependent on a number of strategic decisions taken by the next Government in their comprehensive spending review. If it were to be a 13% reduction, that would be a further £1 billion taken out of our spending power by the end of this decade.

In trying to craft a Budget for 2015-16, it is always difficult for any Executive, no matter the financial circumstances, to craft a Budget. It is made a little more difficult by the system that we are operating in with five parties in the Executive but made even more complicated by the significant pressures the Executive are facing moving into 2015-16.

Those pressures are well known to the Committee. There are a range of Executive commitments. Things like the historical institutional abuse inquiry and various Executive funds were sitting as pressures. There was the need to repay the £100 million loan facility gained from Treasury with the agreement of the Chancellor for this financial year. There were employer pension costs, and sizeable pressure in that regard has started to develop. There were also well-publicised departmental pressures, particularly in the likes of Health.

Those pressures amounted to £872 million. To deal with them necessitated, with the exception of Health, an across-the-board cut of 15·1% to allow us to make a series of allocations of around, I think, £659 million, because the net reduction was £213 million. Some in the media have publicised £872 million as the figure for cuts, and I still see some people referring to that figure. The net reduction is actually £213 million, which is still sizeable but, thankfully, not as bad as £872 million.

In those allocations, we sought to prioritise, as you would expect us to do, key public services. So, the Health Department, with well-publicised pressures and universal and across-the-board support for the Health budget, got an increase of £150 million in its allocation for the next financial year. The impressive job-creation record that DETI and Invest Northern Ireland have been able to achieve is supported by an increase of 5·3% in their spend in the draft Budget for next year. A degree of protection, although not full protection, is offered to other key front-line services, such as the Department of Education and policing within the Department of Justice. A range of other smaller but no less important legal, contractual and inescapable pressures are also met in that allocation of around £650 million in the draft Budget.

It was an incredibly tough Budget; it is going to be an incredibly tough Budget. It was incredibly tough to agree. It will be difficult and challenging in its execution. In the meetings that I have been having with Ministers — I am through about a third of the bilaterals with fellow Ministers — I have been stressing that, just as the Executive as a whole have prioritised what they define as key public services, it is important for Ministers to prioritise what they consider to be the key services in their Department for their allocations, while at all times seeking to protect, insofar as they can, front-line delivery of those services.

The capital side of the Budget is up slightly. It would have been up further but for a series of essential decisions that were taken by the Executive: one around the use of capital receipts to repay the £100 million loan facility; and the other for the use of at least part of the £100 million — half of our reinvestment and reform initiative (RRI) borrowing capacity for next year — to pay for the early stages of a workforce restructuring plan and a voluntary exit scheme for public servants. Our capital budget, which is still up, would have been up further but for those decisions that were taken.

The brighter spot in the capital Budget, and perhaps one of the brighter spots in the whole Budget, is the creation of a Northern Ireland investment fund. We are working through feasibility studies at the minute to look at the areas in which that might be deployed. However, Mr Cree will be very pleased to hear that we anticipate that this will utilise a significant amount of financial transactions capital in the next number of years. It will not just utilise that; it will also be able to leverage in, in the first instance, we estimate, around £1 billion of additional investment from the European Investment Bank. By the end of that, we will have at least £1 billion of investment fund for the sort of infrastructure projects that we as a Government support but do not always take forward in the way that we do with, say, roads, schools or hospital projects. That is something that I am sure that the Committee and others will welcome.

Chair, I would never pretend that this was a perfect Budget. In the circumstances that we found ourselves in, it could not have been a perfect Budget. You cannot have a situation, where you are facing 1·6% real terms reductions, the effect of which would have been £213 million being taken out of public spending, and have everybody being a winner and nobody being a loser. However, it does present us with a balanced Budget with no overcommitment. It prioritises key public services, and it begins to prepare us for the very tough times that are ahead.

In examining this 2015-16 draft Budget, and while we will talk about the year that it has an impact on, and rightly so, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are at the beginning of something of a different era in public spending in Northern Ireland. While we might have been expecting to have been coming out of more difficult times in public spending, it is very clear that, irrespective of which party or parties form the next Administration in London, tighter, difficult times will be the new norm for public spending in the UK. That will, therefore, have consequences for Northern Ireland. It is a very challenging and difficult Budget. The Executive have had to grapple with a range of difficult issues in it, but I think that, while it is not perfect, it is a Budget that will put us on the right path, not just to prosperity but to sounder public finances. Thank you.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Thank you very much, Minister. I want to pick up on a few points that arose during the meeting earlier. You said that you are going to use capital receipts to pay back the £100 million loan from the reserve. Has the Treasury agreed to transferring those capital funds to revenue?

Mr Hamilton: No formal agreement has been received yet. I have corresponded with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury requesting two flexibilities: the flexibility that you are talking about for using capital receipts to repay the £100 million loan facility; and the ability to use £100 million of our RRI borrowing to start a voluntary exit scheme as part of our workforce restructuring plan. I requested that around the time that the draft Budget was agreed. We are still in discussions with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in respect of receiving those, but we are proceeding on the basis that, while we are requesting flexibilities, particularly in the RRI borrowing, it is not novel. We have used it before for non-capital expenditure around the Presbyterian Mutual Society (PMS) and indeed the equal pay claim a number of years ago as well. That is not novel or contentious in any way, or at least it should not be. The other one is not what the Treasury would be used to be doing. The point I made and will continue to make to the Chief Secretary is that, if you look at the Budget situation, it is a very difficult and challenging Budget already. Without that flexibility, we would need to repay that loan from our resource DEL, which is where the pressure is. Without that flexibility, you make a very challenging situation pretty much impossible; it would be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to agree a final Budget. We would be going to the final Budget stage in a month or so trying to find £100 million more of reductions. I would say this to anybody on this Committee and to the Chief Secretary: where do you find that £100 million in a Budget in which many Departments, including mine, are facing very serious reductions? I remain optimistic — I am always optimistic, as you know — that we will get those flexibilities granted to us.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): You are optimistic. Are you confident?

Mr Hamilton: Yes. It might be something that, ordinarily, the Chief Secretary would not do or permit, but if you reflect on the letter from the Chancellor when the £100 million loan was agreed, you will recall that he wanted a balanced Budget and a credible plan. We have a balanced Budget, and we have the beginnings of a credible plan in terms of workforce restructuring. We are asking for the flexibility to use capital receipts. We had already identified £108 million of clearly achievable capital receipts to repay the loan. Using that allows it to be an agreed, balanced Budget. The use of the flexibilities on the RRI borrowing allows us to start a credible plan. What we are asking for in terms of flexibilities from the Treasury allows us to have a balanced Budget and a credible plan, which is what it requested a number of months ago.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): You said that the £100 million from capital receipts reduces the capital side of things. Does the use of RRI borrowing, which is generally designed for capital investment, for voluntary redundancy not further lessen the capital side of things?

Mr Hamilton: Yes. Strictly speaking, it does. We have £100 million less being spent on the capital budget. However, this is the situation we find ourselves in. When you have a very difficult Budget and you have to seek agreement across the board, you have to take some very difficult decisions, and there are tough choices in front of you. As I said, to have repaid the loan out of our resource DEL would have meant that we were finding a further £100 million of cuts on top of the £213 million already happening. From conversations already with Ministers, I do not get a sense that there is much more that they can find. The Ministers I have spoken to so far are all Ministers who are facing reductions in their spending. If I were to say to them, "By the way, you've been panning for 5%, 8% or 10% reductions, but the figure is actually higher than that again", I do not think that I would get a terrible lot of sympathy from those Ministers. In fact, you move from a position where you have a very difficult but achievable Budget — I think that we can live within our means next year, even though it is very difficult — to one where you do not. If we had to find another £100 million, it would be undeliverable.

Notwithstanding that, I do not know whether we have permission from the Treasury. We had a choice to make. It was better in the round. Ideally, you would not be doing it, but, in the circumstances we found ourselves in, it was the right decision to take, and it was not unprecedented. We used it before, principally in the Presbyterian Mutual situation, when we were able to capitalise those costs. We did it with equal pay as well. It is not unprecedented, which is why I am optimistic and confident that we will get that flexibility from Treasury.

In order to make savings in next year and to get people ready for difficult years to come, we need to start finding money somewhere to restructure our workforce. If we did not propose to use RRI, we would have had to find that from resource DEL as well. That, again, would have made the pressures just insurmountable.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): You have made it clear that you intend to look at a reduction in the headcount of the public service workforce. How much work has been done on that, and has there been any consultation with the trade unions?

Mr Hamilton: A significant amount of work is going on behind the scenes. We are talking about, in a very short time, getting in place a voluntary exit scheme that can lower our headcount by considerable numbers, not just in the Civil Service but across the whole public sector.

A lot of work is going on in the background to get this ready. I will present it to the Executive shortly, I hope, in the form of a reform and restructuring plan that will look at reducing the headcount but also at a range of others areas in the whole personnel area. It will look at some other opportunities that I think exist for easy wins in saving money. I am talking about things like better and greater use of our shared services that we operate through our Department. Some arm's-length bodies still do not avail themselves of those shared services. This is now an opportunity for everybody to get on board with that, reduce their costs and help to reduce everybody's costs.

A lot of work is going on. My understanding is that there have been early discussions with trade unions on it. The fine detail is not there yet. A lot of careful consideration has to be given to large aspects. It is not simply a matter of asking how much money do you have, how many people can you remove and who are the first x number of 100 or 1,000 people who put their hands up. You have to be a lot more careful than that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Have you any indication of the range of grades that would be included in the scheme?

Mr Hamilton: There is no targeting of particular grades. Drawing on the discussions that I have had with four ministerial colleagues so far, and I can add myself to this, there is not a Minister who I have spoken to — and this goes across parties — who is not saying to me that they have surplus headcount that they want to remove in their Department. That is in the Civil Service and in their arm's-length bodies, such as the education and library boards. There is not a Minister who is saying to me that they do not want a workforce restructuring plan and voluntary exit scheme in place. There is not one of them who is saying that they do not want to access the funds that we will have available at the centre to do that. We will not be in a position for some time to provide the finer detail of who is going at which grades and the exact numbers in which areas.

As a Department, we are talking to other Departments about the number that they think they will need to take out. When you add all those up, you quickly find that it is more than we will be able to afford in the first year.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): What is the timescale?

Mr Hamilton: That will depend on two things. It will depend on hollowing out with Ministers how many personnel they wish to take out of their Departments and their arm's-length bodies. That is the first factor.

The second is how much money we have and whether we get the flexibility with our RRI borrowing and, indeed, get that for future years as well. We have suggested £100 million for next year. In reality, it will probably cost more than that. I think it will go into further years as well. If the number is big, you cannot take a big number out in one year due to the impact it would have on services. Graduating it over time is probably the more sensible way to do it, but, at this stage, I could not say whether it is going to be two or three years or even more.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): What is the extent of the discussions that you have had with the unions around this?

Mr Hamilton: Funnily enough, the day after the draft Budget was announced formally in the House, not announced informally in various newspapers, I had a meeting with ICTU, which had been arranged anyway. Obviously, there was a lot of focus on the draft Budget. It came up in discussions with them. It was not the only topic of conversation that we had, and I think that they understand that in the circumstances that we find ourselves in, whilst they have their interests and will fight for their members' interests and, I hope, the broader public service interest, there is a realism there. I think that we are all realistic. Nobody really wants to do this. You would not want to be waking up in the morning and saying that this is the sort of thing that you want to do, but, in the circumstances, it is a necessity. There have been discussions at official level with trade unions as well, so they are not being kept in the dark in any way about it. They are fully informed and, obviously, have a role to play in the whole process.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Thank you, Minister, for coming in. Whatever about your confidence, I am confident that you have managed to bring all of the parties at the Executive table behind the Budget, but we are also aware that there is a really serious consultation process going on at the minute with a large public response. I am confident as well that, between now and the Budget being agreed, we can make some changes that may ease the pain, particularly in relation to the arts and further education.

I am new to this, of course, so you will forgive me for not having read the speech that you made before I was elected to this august body. There has to be something right about any speech that has Mandela in there as well as JFK.

There are two issues that I want to discuss. One is the change fund. I think that we are all sympathetic to the idea that we should set money aside for projects that will reduce expenditure in the time ahead and help us to do things in a wiser manner. However, I wonder whether, given the short period that Departments have to bid for this money, and given the temptation that I am sure that there is among Departments to bid for moneys to replace moneys that they are losing, is it not possible to take some money from the change fund now to make it a smaller change fund and to give some relief, I suppose, to our friends in DCAL and DEL? Before you answer that, Minister, maybe you could rehearse the two figures that you gave at the start. One was for the extent of the cuts going forward in real terms. I think that that was £1·5 billion. The other was for the extent of the reduction in the Treasury block grant in the last four years. I think that that may have been £1 billion. Can you give me those two figures? I am very aware of the pressures that you are under.

Mr Hamilton: The real terms reduction in year for 2015-16 is 1·6%. Between 2011 and 2015, lost spending power from the block grant not keeping pace with inflation is around £1·5 billion, with the sequencing of that later and later in that period, so that is why this year has been more difficult in comparison with previous years in the 2011-15 Budget .

Moving forward, the projections are that, in real terms, there will be a reduction of 13% over the next three years. I think that the sequencing is roughly 5%, 5% and 3%. That is a significant amount over that period. That is at a UK-wide level. An incoming Administration of whatever political hue could take a different decision. You could see decisions taken to protect various areas of public spending in England, which would have positive Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland. However, I think that, no matter what Administration they are and what policy decisions they take on spending, you are looking at reductions in spending in the block grant as well. If it were the full 13%, it would be around another £1 billion roughly out of our spending by the end of the end of the day. That is a lot over a decade. It started off as a Budget of over £10 billion a year in resource expenditure, and it is now down below £10 billion with the real prospect of another total £1 billion coming off it. That is a lot of money for a little place like Northern Ireland to shed in a relatively short period.

As regards how the change fund might be used, I have feedback from some Ministers who have asked whether we could just spread the £30 million across Departments. They have said that it is a small amount of money with which they cannot do a terrible lot and that would be better if it were just carved up. If I were to carve it up amongst all of the Departments, Health would get nearly £15 million, for which I am sure that Jim would bite my arm off. Education would get around £3 million to £4 million, as would Justice, and the rest would get tuppence ha'penny nearly. So for some Departments, it would not make a huge difference to their bottom line and would not shift their percentage reduction a terrible lot.

I could make a case that, instead of it being £30 million, it should be higher because, as I made clear to Ministers during discussions on this; at a time when you are facing reduced expenditure, there is a temptation sometimes to make a 5% cut across the board. Ministers need to look more critically, both at re-prioritising within their budget and at stopping some things that they are doing, because there are things that Departments do that are not working any more, that have failed, that are achieving only some of their outcomes and on which there is, perhaps, a better way of doing it. Finding the better way to do something is not always as easy as turning one thing off and another one on. It requires an investment, and that is what the change fund is about. It is also about early intervention and prevention.

It is also about, as I have learned in particular over the last 18 months that I have been in post, the fact that there are a lot of areas where we are getting very poor outcomes. Often, but not always, we are getting very poor outcomes because no one single Department takes ownership of the problem. The problem might manifest itself initially in one Department, but resolving it there may have an outcome somewhere else. So, neither Department really wants to take the load in paying for that.

One of the criteria in the change fund is that it should also encourage collaboration between Departments, because, to use an example, I have found it difficult to get Justice and Education to work together on something or to get Health and Justice to work together on something when they are all facing pressures and all have less money. If you just give them more money, they will spend it on their own stuff rather on things that produce better outcomes across the board.

So, strict criteria will be applied to the change fund, which must be met by the quality of the bids. I accept that there is a weakness in the change fund in the sense that there is a very short period of time for Departments to come forward with bids. I still think it is a good idea, and I hope that everybody will agree that, in principle, it is a good idea. However, if we get the quality of bids coming forward in the next number of weeks, obviously, we will have to look at other options with it.

I share your optimism on many things, Máirtín, but I am not maybe as optimistic that we will have bags of cash appearing between the draft Budget and the final Budget that will allow us to spread that money out and ease a lot of the pressures. There may be some, and I hope that there will be. I am just saying that it will be incredibly difficult and that it is not obvious to see where that will be coming from.

You mentioned universities. Yesterday, I met the Minister for Employment and Learning, and we had a very good conversation. I said publicly that I have some sympathy for the position he finds himself in. I do not want to go into why he finds himself in that position, but I have to say that it is the settlement in the Budget that I am least satisfied with, for a range of reasons. There is a lot of work that universities can and should be doing themselves. They are not paupers by any means. We are trying to work actively with that sector.

I am aware of the issues around the arts. Again, this is a matter for the Minister herself if she values the arts budget. She is facing 10% reductions as well, and it will be incredibly difficult for her not to offer some pain to that sector. It is as much a matter for the spending priorities in her own Department as anything else. Are libraries the priority, is it the arts: what is it? This is a very good example of the difficult decisions that all Ministers will have to make on prioritising in their budgets, which are being constrained.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: That was a long answer, Minister, but just to finish: I suppose that one of the dangers of this austerity agenda is that it hits confidence and stops people investing and spending. That is a danger that we face when we have to cope with straitened budgets. That is one of the reasons why I think that those two areas amount to preventative spending. When you hit the arts, I think that you hit tourism, cultural uplift and confidence in the city. If we have to reduce the number of students, and the debate goes on, I think that it would be difficult for investors to say that they will still come in when universities cannot produce top-class business oriented or engineering students. It is in the area of preventative spending, but I take on board what you are saying. Thank you.

Mr McQuillan: Thank you for what you have said so far, Minister. I was going to ask about the change fund as well, but I was coming at it from the other side. I was going to ask whether £30 million would be too tight and whether we would need more money put into it to drive change forward. However, I have a question about rebalancing the economy, because there is a £9·6 billion deficit and £6 billion of a deficit there at the minute. How can we reduce that other than having powers to reduce corporation tax? That in itself is a long-term plan.

Mr Hamilton: I said in my Budget statement, which Máirtín, having only recently read, should be better versed in now than I am, that, even though we are in very difficult times and are facing into very challenging times with our public spending, I am perhaps more confident that we are able to do what we are proposing to do in, say, for example, reducing the size of the workforce in the public sector. If we were trying to do this five, seven or 10 years ago with the economy in the state that it would have been in then, it might have been more difficult. While the economy was doing pretty well, it was a false well because a property bubble was the main driver of economic growth at that time.

Today, today, we are in a stronger position economically. I am not saying that we are very strong; we are not, because there is still a huge annual subvention, but we are in a better position and with an economy that is growing. There was small growth last year but there should be bigger growth this year and next. Invest Northern Ireland has just had a record year in its lifetime through the number of jobs promoted. It has exceeded what it did last year already this year. I am optimistic and I am confident that we are in a better position to do what we are having to do.

It is still going to be incredibly tough. Máirtín is right; confidence will be sapped because of what happens in public spending, but I think that we are in a more robust position although we are not robust enough. On the one hand, while we are going to have to reform and restructure our public sector, we need to make sure as well that we do not lose sight of the need to make interventions and policy decisions that are all about rebalancing our economy. Our economy will somewhat rebalance with less public spending and perhaps significant numbers of public servants no longer being employed, but that is not the type of rebalancing that we want.

We want to see our economy growing. We remain firm on the position that we believe that corporation tax, whilst not a silver bullet, is the best lever, the one that will have the most transformational effect on our economy. The Committee is aware that, by this next time next week, or at least later that day, we should have a decision on corporation tax; hopefully a positive one. Obviously, a lot of work will have to go on beyond that, and the positive effects of a reduction in corporation tax will not be felt immediately. We will not wake up on Thursday and start to have all those benefits. A lot of work and effort will have to go into it.

Mr McQuillan: Do you think that it should help more or less straight away?

Mr Hamilton: Once the Executive do what they need to do by way of taking a decision on the lower rate, you will then see investments starting to flow in anticipation of that lower rate. You are right, though; we must not lose sight of the need to continue to work towards rebalancing our economy. It is our number one objective as an Executive. It is something that I think we have been successful at and we have to keep at it.

Mr McQuillan: Do you think that it is possible to rebalance the economy without hitting front-line services? Can we do both?

Mr Hamilton: I am trying to be as honest as possibly with the public by saying that we cannot take £213 million from our Budget, which is around 2% of our resource expenditure, without that changing the shape and nature of our public sector. It is bound to change. The draft Budget minimises it in the areas that the public have prioritised: health, creating jobs, continuing to try to rebalance the economy, education and policing. I think that most people agree that, whilst everything is important, some things are a little bit more important.

These are the areas that we have sought to prioritise. However, there will be an effect on the nature, size and shape of the public sector. It is going to be incredibly difficult for Ministers, but it is important that they try to insulate key front-line services, important preventative services or whatever it might be in their Department. I understand and appreciate that that is not always going to be possible. I said in response to Máirtín that I think that some services are going to have to be stopped, not just because they have no money but because they are not producing outcomes any more. That is a critical criterion that has to be applied.

Mr McCallister: Thanks, Minister. On the issue of reducing headcount, do you have any concerns that you could hollow out certain Departments? The one that I have a big concern about is if you move DARD HQ to Ballykelly. You could lose expertise that —

Mr McQuillan: Do you think people up that end of the country are stupid?

Mr I McCrea: It is silly for some people to have to travel to work.

Mr McCallister: I am thinking of people from Strangford and south Down who travel to DARD HQ. You could lose expertise. That could happen across government. Is that a concern for you?

Mr Hamilton: Obviously, a decision has been taken on the relocation of DARD HQ to Ballykelly. Like a lot of these things, it is not something that is happening overnight. There will be time to plan and prepare to make sure that we get it right. A lot of work has to be done. My Department, obviously, is not taking it forward, although we are involved, but a lot of work is required on-site before we would be anywhere near thinking of moving even bits of the departmental HQ to Ballykelly.

I am not against what is sometimes described as the decentralisation of posts. We have to do it carefully. It can be costly to do it. Sometimes, there are dubious benefits economically for the area that you are located in. Interestingly, the Irish halted their large-scale decentralisation plan because they ran out of money, but I think that recent studies showed that it had a marginal economic benefit for the areas into which the jobs were moved and overall for the whole of Ireland.

The point you make on workforce restructuring is sensible. There could be seen to be a haste. Departments are going to have to be careful. I have had some discussions already with Ministers, as I said, where they have all identified, roughly, the number of people they need to lose in order to live within their means. That will not be next year, because even if a scheme were in place as quickly as it possibly could be, it is unlikely to realise significant savings for Departments next year. So, I have been cautioning Ministers not to rely on savings materialising next year. This is about preparing for beyond. It is part of our credible reform and restructuring plan for dealing with the potential loss of a further £1 billion to our Budget.

There is a lot of work to be done. It will not happen in one go. We will not be able to afford it, including in terms of exactly the point you are making: if a Department wants to lose 200 staff, you cannot take out the first 200 people who put their hands up. There has to be an assessment of skills set and the areas they are working in. Take, for example, a unit of 10 people in a key area. If seven people put their hands up and say they want to go, and you hollow that out and there are only three people left, then you cannot provide the service to the same standard any more. You have to be careful about how it is done.

That work will go on. Once the Executive agree to proceed on this — and I think we will agree on this; certainly the feedback from Ministers so far is that they are anxious to get a scheme going very quickly — it will go dark while work is done to assess who can go, the impact on service delivery if certain numbers go and the cost. Every individual will have a cost associated with them through their pensions and so forth. A lot of work will go on behind the scenes over the next six months to make sure that the situation you are talking about does not happen.

Mr McCallister: During presentations to the Committee on corporation tax, we heard that you would almost need the borrowing powers to go along with that. Obviously if tax receipts go down in some years, we might have to borrow or we will be left with a hole to fill in the Budget. Over half of the RRI budget has been used in workforce restructuring. Are you content that we are making the best use of the RRI or are we using it too much to borrow in order to plug holes in other areas rather than invest in capital schemes?

Mr Hamilton: We have already used roughly £1·8 billion of our RRI. The vast bulk has gone on capital projects, which would not have been built otherwise. We could provide a list identifying which ones have been funded from it but, in some ways, what has been funded and what has not been funded is immaterial. It is about the total package in terms of our capital. It has been particularly helpful over the last couple of years. Reflect back to 2011. The area of the Budget that was under pressure then was capital. Between the draft and final Budget in 2010-11, the Executive were scrambling around looking for more sources of capital and were switching money from revenue to capital and all those sorts of things.

Over the last years, having the ability to put in another £200 million — it is higher than that now with the economic pact allowing us to borrow for shared education and shared housing projects — has been a very welcome boost to what was a pretty weak capital budget over the early part of the Budget period. You are right. To take the Chair's point, we are proposing to use half of it next year. We are getting very close to the ceiling of our RRI. You could continue to borrow forever, but there is a cost through the interest repayments. I have advised the Executive that we have to be careful of the repayment cost in all this. That will be a factor in how much we borrow to pay for our workforce restructuring plan. We are paying about £60 million annually —

Mr Mike Brennan (Department of Finance and Personnel): We are paying £63 million.

Mr Hamilton: We pay that in interest every year, and it comes out of a resource budget that is under pressure. I am confident that we have got good value out of it. It has been a helpful and useful device over the last couple of years, particularly because our capital budget is weak. If we are able to use it for workplace restructuring, and I anticipate that we will be able to do so, it means that there will be less for capital, but, where the pressure is at the minute, resource DEL is not hit any more than it should be.

Mr McCallister: On corporation tax, how will you handle things if receipts fall? I assume that, if you are still the Minister, you will be fairly cautious about getting the power and managing it by the time we have the ability to use it in 2017-18

Mr Hamilton: I hope we will get a positive decision next week on the Executive being offered the power. However, that will not be the definitive moment in deciding the price. There will be a fairly intensive period of continuing discussions and negotiations to hammer out some things. I do not expect the offer to include the cost and all the accoutrements along with it. Work will have to be done. Serious work will have to be done very quickly on making sure that we do what we have to do to take the power and ensure that the legislation gets through Westminster. It could still fall at that hurdle. We could run out of time. I think we have sufficient time, more than enough time. I have looked at the timetable and there is lots of time in it, even though Parliament will be prorogued at the end of March. I think we can do all that.

The price is not going to be settled next Wednesday. Work will be ongoing on all that. I think you might be sceptical rather than an outright opponent of it. I said to you before, maybe at the Committee as well, that ultimately we have to do it. If we take it and say that we are going to reduce corporation tax, we have to do it, and it then starts to have an impact. But we have some time leading into all that to hollow out the exact cost and plan, as an Executive, how we are going to pay for it. You are right: there is a risk of fluctuations moving forward but, in taking it, the Executive will know that that is a risk that they are taking on.

There has been a lot of concentration over the past number of years on the benefits of taking lots of cuts, the number of jobs it is going to take and what the cost might be. You would expect me in my position to be particularly interested in where we find money to pay for overtime. Again, that is where restructuring our workforce and making significant savings not only helps us to live within our means within our Budget but gives us headroom to deal with issues like corporation tax.

Mr McCallister: Chair, my —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Sorry, John, you have had three questions and everyone else has had only two so far.

Mr Weir: There are only half a dozen left in the chair.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): If you don't mind, John, we will move on to Ian.

Mr I McCrea: The attempts and discussions to get the wider draft Budget agreed were referred to as just a DUP/Sinn Féin agreement and those who voted against or abstained did so for their own reasons, whether political or just opposition. In conversations you had with those parties or Ministers, were alternatives brought forward as to how this could be sorted or divided up in a better way or is it just a case of politicking for politics' sake?

Mr Hamilton: I think the Minister who —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): The others wanted more.

Mr Hamilton: The Minister who voted against was always going to vote against. I do not think it would have mattered what the settlement for his Department was or how the overall Budget looked. I do not think he was ever going to vote for it.

I have not met one of the Ministers who abstained, so he has not offered anything formally or face to face. Obviously, he could not do that because we have not met yet.

When we have bilateral meetings, they tend to be more about that particular Minister's Department and less about the whole picture. The two Ministers who abstained did, in discussions before we agreed the draft Budget, suggest areas where they thought refinement could be made.

It is one thing asking for and getting an alternative back; it has to be a viable alternative. By viable, I mean there are different criteria. Is it politically acceptable to other parties, therefore getting votes for it? Some suggestions that came forward were absolutely fine and worthy of discussion and further investigation, and I said that to them at the time. However, they were not necessarily capable of doing anything for 2015-16, the year we were talking about.

You will have noted that I have been talking here and in recent days about getting a reform and restructuring plan in place. We are not talking about just one year. We cannot just say, "Look, we have to do this in one year," and then forget about it. We have to start using now and next year to plan for the future.

In that context, whilst I do not think that some of the suggested alternatives help us out of our 2015-16 problem, they could be of merit for the years beyond that. In the spirit of trying to find a final Budget that has the broadest possible support we can get, I am happy to work with those Ministers who come forward. To date, only a couple have suggested anything else. Some of those suggestions, I do not think are viable or credible, but some of them have some merit. I am happy to work with Ministers as part of a plan, not just for 2015-16, but beyond.

Mr I McCrea: I do not think that anyone who works in this place or with Departments believes that there is no wastage in individual Departments, whether it is through paying for consultants or whatever. You are the Minister with responsibility for divvying out that money. Is work being done, or being considered, to see whether we can reduce wastage in the system so that we can get down to delivering services without it? Reference was made to what you said in the Assembly, and I came across another quote: "The waste of money cures itself, for soon there is no more to waste".

Mr Hamilton: That is not Mandela, is it?

Mr I McCrea: No; nor JFK, for that matter. Nonetheless, I do not think that even you would deny that there is wastage in Departments and that things can be done better. Are you looking at any ways of dealing with that?

Mr Hamilton: I have said before that, in DFP's role as an enabler of reform and change and efficiency, there are some things that I mentioned that we can do to help such as shared services, but there is also the digital delivery of services where we can support other Departments to make changes that are relatively painless but that present them with savings and a better outcome and service.

I do not want to force those on Departments, but, if you look at shared services, the digital delivery of services, asset management or collaborative procurement, they are areas that some Departments may have seen as being something that sounds like a nice idea and something that they will have, but then thought that maybe it was not for them or that they are different or that they will do that eventually. We are running out of time. If Ministers are not prepared to seize, to use that awful phrase, the "low-hanging fruit" of efficiency through shared services, digital delivery, better asset management or collaborative procurement, then I will have little sympathy for them in some of the bigger issues that they will have to contend with, and in trying to give them support for that.

There are opportunities for Ministers to make fairly easy savings. Those will not fill the hole that they have, but I would have more sympathy to help them in other things if they were helping themselves a bit.

Over the last number of years, Departments have faced annual percentage efficiency savings. We have managed to live within our means, by and large, over that time. This has shown that, year on year, savings of 3% are quite achievable for Departments. Once you get to 5% and beyond, that puts more pressure on. While I am more than willing to help, whether it is around the sorts of things I was talking about or through alternative models of service delivery or whatever, I am happy to use the change fund to stimulate some of that change.

I am looking to Ministers to be innovative in their own Department. They know their Departments better than I do, or they should, and they will know what is possible. Stuff that has perhaps been sitting on a long list of things that are desirable, but not immediately desirable, needs to be brought forward now. It may not be classed as being desirable any more; it may be a necessity. Again, I think that the feedback from discussions that officials have had with other officials, as well as the engagement that I have already had with Ministers, shows that there is a preparedness to look at things that might be seen as a little more creative and imaginative than would otherwise have been in place.

We could argue about why they were not doing that in the first place, but necessity is the mother of invention. They are certainly now in a position where they have to be inventive because of the circumstances they face.

Mr Girvan: Minister, £10·2 billion of resource DEL is proposed for 2015-16, £550 million of which is ring-fenced for what is deemed to be depreciation and whatever else. Is there any possibility of you giving a breakdown of what is deemed to be depreciation and impairments? Each Department will probably have its own way of covering depreciation and impairments in its budget, but £550 million — half a billion — is being set aside next year for that. Could we have a wee bit of detail on that?

Workforce planning is something that we should have been doing. It should be an ongoing process, not something that we do when we come up against trouble. Unfortunately, we ran into difficulties with workforce planning in the PSNI when it went through that process. Major problems were identified, because we got rid of a lot of people who had skills —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Is there a question in there somewhere, Paul?

Mr Girvan: One question has already been asked, Chair. I do not know why you picked that up. What workforce planning has been done in the past, and what is proposed for the future?

I appreciate that comments were made about JFK and Mandela. That might well be the Trojan Horse in the statement that went out, but that is beside the point.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): We will not continue with that point too much more, if you do not mind.

Mr Hamilton: I will take the first point. To be fair, that might have been the only question.

Mr Girvan: Workforce planning —

Mr Hamilton: You are right to say that we probably should have been doing that earlier. I do not think that there was perhaps a stimulus to do it on the scale that we are talking about. There is a macro context in which to fit the decision not to aggressively look at our workforce over the last number of years. The economy was not doing great, and there was a bit of a spike in unemployment. Thankfully, that was not as high as others endured. If we had also been going at the public-sector numbers at that time, the economy would have been in an overall worse position. It has provided us with something of a cushion in the last number of years. That is not a nice way to describe our public servants or our public sector, but, economically, it has not been bad to have a large public sector at a time when the private sector was stagnating. Obviously, that has changed, and the private sector is doing a lot better. The economic growth of 1·2% year on year is being driven by two sectors: the production sector; and our services sector. The public sector is already starting to head in a negative direction in economic growth. Perhaps we should have thought about it and maybe had a little bit more work in place, because that is being truncated into a very short period of time. Very few people have been made redundant, but some, such as prison officers and planners, have gone in very specific cases.

A table in our draft Budget consultation document breaks up the ring-fenced resource DEL position by Department. Each of the figures for previous years is in each departmental set of accounts. I am sure that we can gather that together for the Committee if it cannot do that itself. Mike can correct me if I am wrong about this, but there are policies in places that count what is depreciation and what is not. There are accounting standards that Departments have to adhere to. In fact, those standards are, I think, set by Treasury. It defines that and decides what is ring-fenced and what is non-ring-fenced.

Mr Brennan: If there is unused ring-fenced DEL, it is not a question of its being used anywhere else. It cannot. It can be used specifically only for those purposes. It is not as though it can be diverted into a mainstream —

Mr Hamilton: The decision to ring-fence is not one that we as an Executive take. It is taken by Treasury.

Mr Brennan: There are just accounting adjustments.

Mr Girvan: I will finish on the workforce planning point. That approach has been mentioned in the potential savings that could be made. When the Deputy Chair mentioned engagement with trade unions, you said that you had confidence. What do you base that on, considering some of the comments that I have heard in the media, which have been anything but positive in their approach? At the very least, they show a total lack of understanding of what we are up against.

Mr Hamilton: I think that that is a fair assessment. I was going to say that we have heard from some union representatives, but I think that we all know that more than one union representative has made some crazy comments in the media that I do not think are reflective of the trade union movement as a whole. The trade unions have a job to do, and they have interests to look after. I understand that they will fight for the best interests of their members, which they should. That is what their members are paying their money for. Calling for strikes on almost a weekly basis and trying to take us into a "winter of discontent", which is the good old phrase that was thrown out, was not, I think, particularly helpful. It does not, I think, reflect an understanding of the difficult position that we are in or the fact that we have tried to do our best to protect the public sector over the last number of years.

Unfortunately, we are now in a position where that cannot be done in the way that it was, although we have tried to be inventive in the draft Budget to ensure that, instead of it being several hundred million pounds more, we are facing£200 million of reductions. That includes using those flexibilities that we discussed at the start. I think that there will be many members of staff who, when a voluntary exit scheme is put forward, will want to avail themselves of it and leave. That will include many union members, and I am sure that the union would not want to get in the way of the interests of members who will want to avail themselves of a voluntary exit scheme when it becomes available. I hope that the unions will seek to work with us as we develop that scheme, which, obviously, will benefit some of their members.

Mr Girvan: Is it possible to get a breakdown of how much is paid into these unions from the public purse?

Mr Hamilton: We can provide the Committee with that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): As long as you do not want it right now.

Mr Hamilton: No, I do not have it on instant recall.

Mr Cree: Minister, many of us have been fighting against the cuts to front-line services in the health service. One of the things that I have been told many times is that, if we had more time than just four months, we may well have done things differently. Was the panic button pressed at June monitoring this year? Is that the situation, bearing in mind that the Executive and the Treasury were aware of the figures in the summer of 2013?

Mr Hamilton: Sorry, I am just trying to unpack a little of that. Are you talking about the difficulties that we are facing in year, not about next year?

Mr Cree: Obviously, that runs into next year, but it starts in year.

Mr Hamilton: Are you asking when we become aware of that?

Mr Cree: That is right. Was it 2013 or 2014?

Mr Hamilton: I was not in post for the whole of 2013, but I can recall discussions not long after taking up post with the then Health Minister about the difficulties that he was facing that year. Obviously, we took decisions as an Executive to help that Department last year, and significant allocations were made to the Health Department to assist it. That was not enough in the end to ensure that it lived within its budget control totals.

Obviously, we were aware of issues, and we were aware of those that were going to crystallise in this year as well. That is why, from before the early stages of this financial year, I was pushing for an agreement to allocate more to that Department.

Thankfully, we have, as an Executive, finally agreed, and that is maybe the point that you are getting at. We have agreed that an allocation of £80 million should be made to that Department, which is not everything that it needed. Obviously, I have spoken publicly on how finances in trusts are managed, and one of the conditions that was put upon the initial £20 million allocation in the June monitoring round was that a piece of work had to be done in concert with my officials to hollow out exactly why, in the last financial year, the Department overspent and why it was not able to ensure that it did not overspend its budget. That has unveiled some changes to be made to control of expenditure in that Department, and I understand that those have been acted on. I hope that that will mean — I am confident that it will — that the Department does not overspend this year, even though it has less money than it needed to deal with all its pressures. Obviously, that is necessitating some very difficult decisions on the part of the Minister or the trusts to ensure that they try to live within their means.

I do not envy Jim his task. Sometimes, I think that I have a difficult job in trying to get a Budget agreed, but when you look at the difficult job that the Health Minister has to do with roughly £4·5 billion of expenditure across his Department, not all of which is for health, you see that that is a huge responsibility. Given that it is so demand-led, the pressures that it is facing and the restrictions that are on its expenditure, it is difficult for any Minister in that post to ensure that they live within their means. I am confident that various things from allocations to changes in the management of finances in the Department and the determination of the current Minister to live within his budget mean that what happened last year will not happen this year.

Mr Cree: In that situation, he was depending on in-year monitoring. So, where are the real figures that were agreed between Treasury and the Executive in the summer of 2013?

Mr Hamilton: I do not know what you mean by the term "real figures that were agreed".

Mr Cree: I know that, in response to a question for written answer, the Treasury confirmed that the figures were known and presumably agreed in 2013.

Mr Hamilton: What figures? Sorry.

Mr Cree: The Budget figures. Was the allocation under the CSR already known?

Mr Hamilton: Absolutely it was.

Mr Cree: So, did all that activity take place during the year, or did it just happen in June this year? That is my point.

Mr Hamilton: I can give the same answer again.

Mr Cree: No, you do not need to.

Mr Hamilton: Máirtín might fall off his chair if the answer is longer than the one I gave to him. I think that I outlined that the overall spending envelope for the Executive for this current financial year or the previous financial year was known. Obviously, there are changes, adjustments and Barnett consequentials and so forth, but, by and large, it is known. The Executive made the allocation back in 2011 for what Health would get for 2013-14 and 2014-15. I hope that I made it clear that, because of the well-publicised pressures that that Department was facing and that it continues to face, engagement was ongoing with it. That was pretty constant, actually. It took place at ministerial level and at official level in the last year and a half. That engagement allowed me to make recommendations last year and this to the Executive that more money should be given. It did not get all the money that it needed or wanted, but I made recommendations that more money be given, within our restricted circumstances, to the Health Department to help it out.

Mrs Cochrane: As one of the last to ask questions, most of my comments have already been touched on. Do you have further comment on how your discussions with the other Ministers are going? Do you see that there is likely to be much of an adjustment in what was put forward as a draft Budget to resolve some of the issues that have been brought up? You said that one Minister has not engaged with you yet. Do you see that Minister engaging with you going forward?

Do you want me to give you all the questions in one go?

Mr Hamilton: Yes, go ahead. The Deputy Chair is talking, so get as many in as you can.

Mrs Cochrane: You said that you are convinced that improvements will be made in Health so that you are not faced with a similar overspend. How much influence can you, as Finance Minister, actually have on enforcing changes on Departments if they do not seem to be coming forward with them?

Finally, you talked about the system that you put in place for staff-generated ideas. Is that happening across all Departments? If not, can it? It appears that people at higher levels are trying to make the bids and are a bit out of touch with operational reality. Often they go for the high level and just cut a complete service instead of seeing that more savings can be made in different business areas. I think that is ingrained in public service, whereby you think that there is no incentive to make the savings, because if you do not spend all your money this year, you will not get it next year.

Can something more be done to force more of a business approach in business areas so that public-sector managers are forced to manage and take account of what they are actually delivering when the staff costs are going up each year? Are they actually delivering more for the money?

Mr Hamilton: I will try to take those questions in order. It is not that one Minister has refused to engage; an approach has been taken to sequencing meetings over the next number of weeks. Four meetings have taken place, so I have another seven. I do not have to meet myself, so that is one fewer meeting, although I would probably disagree with myself. Of course, nobody has any sympathy for the reduction that the Department of Finance and Personnel has to make.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): None whatsoever.

Mr Hamilton: That is often forgotten about in discussions about other Departments.

So, I will meet that Minister. The point that I was trying to make, which, I suppose, was a slightly political point, is that, while some others have engaged positively and have at least come up with alternatives — whether they are credible, viable and achievable is a matter for discussion — I have not had anything of that nature from the other Minister and his party. So far, most of the engagements have been useful, although some have been less so. The utility of it very much depends on the attitude that the Minister brings and whether they are prepared to work with the very difficult circumstances that they find themselves in and try to be innovative and creative. Many of them are. It would be unfair to say who is and who is not, but some Ministers have really pleased me with how creative they have wanted to be in the ideas that they have brought forward. We have not had to force things on them; they have been coming forward with ideas.

Do I see a change in our monetary circumstances between now and the final Budget? I would not say that I do not think that there will be the ability to perhaps make some more allocations, but when you look at the draft Budget, you will see that it is as tight as a drum. There is no overcommitment. I do not think that we should, in a situation where Departments are facing big cuts, overcommit our expenditure, because you then rely on reduced requirements. If Departments are facing 5%, 8% or 10% reductions, the likelihood of reduced requirements is diminished, but there may be some. One possible source is the autumn statement and Barnett consequentials, although all indicators are that the Chancellor wants to make tax cuts and he has less tax revenue, so there may not be any. I do not anticipate getting it. There may be some things that do not materialise that free up a little bit of money, but we are not talking about lots and lots of cash.

You were asking about Health, but you were talking more about what I can do in year to step in. I cannot run a Minister's Department for them. There are many Departments that I would not mind running or at least taking some decisions on behalf of the Ministers, but there is nothing that I can do. I can monitor the information that we share with the Committee. Supply officers in DFP have regular conversations about what is going on and can see what is happening. If a Minister, or, more importantly, their accounting officer, believes that they are incurring a pattern of expenditure that is likely to lead to an overspend, duties and responsibilities are placed on that accounting officer — Mike can keep me right if I say the wrong thing — to seek a direction from the Minister that then has to come to me and to the Executive.

If a Minister believes that they will overspend on their budget, there is a role for me at that point. That has not happened this year, and I hope that it does not. It did not happen last year either. I think that everybody understands how difficult it is this year. We are still £25 million overcommitted as we sit here. We will try to sort some of that out in the January monitoring round with reduced requirements, but we are not getting a lot of reduced requirements, so it is going to be very tough.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Where the Chancellor's statement is concerned, have you had any indications from Treasury about possible Barnett consequentials on the positive side?

Mr Hamilton: No, we have not, and we would not expect any. I am conscious that there is a question still to be answered in response to Mrs Cochrane. However, on your point, no, there is not. We have not got any. We might read about some in 'The Sunday Telegraph' or something like that, but we will wait. I usually speak to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury confidentially a little in advance of the statement, so I will have some indication next week of whether we will. The message to the Committee and everyone is that we should not hold our breath expecting a terrible lot, given the circumstances.

On the point about ideas generation, which I did not address, I can say that we have taken that concept forward into dealing with our own budget challenges in our Department and are trying to generate ideas from staff. The ideas engine, as it is grandly called, has not been rolled out across the full Civil Service yet. However, it is one of those things; it is not the answer to all our problems, but we have been crafting and building a reform infrastructure and architecture over the last year or so. It has been used in my Department, and some of it has been used in concert with other Departments already. Again, it is one of those things. It is not at quite the same level as shared services, digital delivery, asset management or collaborative procurement, but it is something that is there to help. It was designed to help other Departments to generate money-saving ideas. You are right that we have to live within our means, and we cannot spend more than we have. However, as we make changes, we should try to do so in a way that improves outcomes for citizens, as opposed to diminishing them in any way. That is hard to do in the circumstances that we face, but it should be a principle and an objective that we have.

Ms Boyle: Thank you, Minister. I am last but not least. In your briefing and your discussion with the Deputy Chair, you touched on reducing the footprint of the office estate. Do you have a figure for the savings that will be raised from asset disposal? I know that a number of buildings have already been identified, as have the savings from that. Going forward, what has been done to estimate that, and how much will be raised?

Mr Hamilton: There is an asset management unit in OFMDFM, and we work very closely with it. Capital receipts are distinctly different from asset sales. When we were crafting the draft Budget, we found that £108 million of capital receipts had been built in, and we hope to use £100 million of that to pay off the loan facility. That is not all assets sales. It is not all land or buildings; some of it is the receipt of FTC interest coming back from various loans that have been paid out and the interest getting repaid on that to us. It is not all the pure physical selling of property and getting the money for that.

Given that the market is a little more buoyant, we thought that there was scope to increase that, so we increased it by a further £50 million. We are confident that we can achieve that, if not even exceed it. There are asset sales and receipts that we can realise, given where the market is. There is also a separate and distinct mechanism in our asset management strategy, which is about condensing the size of the Civil Service/public-sector footprint, and we are proving very successful at that.

The roll-out of the open-plan sharing of facilities in offices, which is part of the Workplace NI standard, is happening where and when possible. We have injected capital into that this year, and we are trying to do some deals. It is proving difficult to get all those deals across the line in time. They are things like buying out PFI contracts and buying property and moving into it because it is more suitable, reduces the footprint and saves money. That asset management strategy has realised £15 million of savings a year, I think. That might not sound a lot in the grand scheme of the Budget, but every £15 million greatly helps.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Minister, I believe that you will not be available from 8 December until 19 December. We had a discussion about this earlier. That date seems to be rather late, because it is virtually up against the end of the consultation period. Is there any possibility of an earlier date for that debate?

Mr Hamilton: I do not have my diary in front of me, but I know that I am absolutely not available on some of those dates. The Committee wants to bring forward a take-note debate. We are still in the consultation period. Departments are still bringing forward their own ideas. It is very difficult for Departments to deal with the quantum of reductions, because they are facing some very large percentages. If I am available, I will be content to take part in a take-note debate. Dates on which I am free and will be available have been offered. The Executive are unlikely to agree a final Budget for a number of weeks into the start of January. We cannot go much beyond that, because we are up against a legislative timetable. It strikes me that there is scope to let the consultation complete, have all Departments feed their information to Committees, have this Committee play its central coordinating role and still have a very worthwhile take-note debate in the first week that we come back to the Assembly after Christmas.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): We would need an assurance that the debate will take place before the Executive agree the Budget.

Mr Hamilton: I am not the Executive. I cannot say when the Executive will sit on this. I am not long in the Executive, but my experience so far tells me that it can take a little bit longer to agree, particularly difficult things like this. If you set a day for it, it is unlikely to be that day that the Executive will agree it.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): I know there have been some delays in the past.

Mr Hamilton: I cannot remember the dates, but I think the plan is to have it on the eighth of the month —

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): That is the designated date.

Mr Hamilton: It is likely to be later than that. We are getting into areas of setting diaries and times, but I do not anticipate the Executive agreeing it before that date.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): You do not anticipate the Executive agreeing it before that date.

Mr Hamilton: We are getting into a situation where I am trying to recall a diary that is not in front of me. We have a January monitoring paper to go early in January too. That complicates things somewhat. I think that a period of intense discussions will take place between the parties in the Executive. That could elongate things a little, but I emphasise that we cannot let it roll and roll.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mr D Bradley): Minister, thank you very much for your time this morning. The Committee will be in contact with your officials about a date for the debate that is mutually convenient to the Committee and you. Mike, I thank you too.