Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I welcome the Minister, along with Lian Patterson and Glyn Capper. I advise that Hansard staff are here and that, obviously, the transcript will appear in due course. When you are ready, Minister, do you want to give us the good news?

Mr Ford (The Minister of Justice): I will give you the news, Chair. Thank you for your welcome. I suppose I should welcome you, since this is the first time that you have been in the Chair for an appearance of mine at the meeting. Thanks for the opportunity to brief the Committee on the outcome of the 2015-16 final budget for the DOJ.

When I came to the Committee on 1 October to discuss the Department's finances, next year's position was still unclear, but I noted at that time that, unfortunately, very difficult funding and prioritisation decisions would be required that will have a major impact on the wider justice system and the services we provide. That remains the case. To assist the Committee in considering the budget outcome for the Department, I will focus on the overall funding position for the DOJ in 2015-16, how the Department has prioritised the funding available and the next steps in the process.

Looking first at the overall funding position, the briefing pack that you received sets out the 2015-16 budget settlement. The starting point for the Department's budget is a 15·1% cut against our 2014-15 opening baseline. That cut is equivalent to £165 million. The Executive then provided an allocation of £90 million, which is equivalent to 6·4%, £20 million of which was provided as part of the final Budget process. In total, the PSNI will receive £65 million of the £90 million. Separately, HM Treasury is providing £29·5 million of security funding for the PSNI. That is not baseline-related and is specific funding for a specific purpose. However, it is important to note that the starting point for all DOJ spending areas will be the 15·1% reduction. The balance of the Executive's £90 million that has not gone to the PSNI, that is, £25 million, has been allocated based on our priorities. In some areas, that will be used to offset the impact of baseline cuts, so some areas have cuts lower than 15·1%. In other areas, it has been used to offset specific demand-led pressures as far as possible. However, some areas have higher cuts so that their funding can be reallocated to front-line priorities. As the briefing points out, the Department's baseline for capital will also fall significantly, by 24%. I will say something more about that later. Finally, the Department received £772,000 from the Executive's 2015-16 change fund.

Let me explain how we have prioritised the funding available. The Department launched its budget consultation on 3 September, and by the closing date on 29 December it had received a total of 65 responses. You have received a full set of responses in a summarised version, which I hope has been useful for giving some sense of the responses received. Over 40% of the responses referred to the impact of budget cuts on the Probation Board, the other main themes being the impact on the voluntary and community sector and the legal aid pressure. I will set out how we responded to the consultation responses.

Each spending area was also asked to provide a savings delivery plan setting out, for example, savings measures, key risks, the impact on service delivery and an assessment of section 75 equality impacts. From that information, the Department prepared a draft consolidated savings delivery plan for 2015-16, which has been shared with you. I should stress, however, that this is a draft plan setting out how savings against draft budget allocations will be delivered. This draft plan will be amended to become the final departmental savings delivery plan, which will reflect changes between draft and final budget. As well as ongoing engagement with all justice bodies, the information provided in the consultation responses, the savings delivery plans and the Committee's views have all been an important part of the process to set final budget allocations. Your briefing pack provides a table setting out the Department's planned changes to the draft budget allocations that were consulted on and, therefore, final budget allocations.

As you can see, the additional £20 million for the PSNI reduces its savings targets to 5·7%. That will allow the Police Service to take forward important but probably limited recruitment plans in 2015-16 and will avoid some of the more severe impacts on policing and public safety. I should note that this is also due to the fact that the Chief Constable has led work across the PSNI to ensure that significant savings have been generated to reduce costs.

As I said, on the basis of the responses to our consultation and the information in savings delivery plans, the Department plans to make some amendments to other draft budget allocations. All those are in line with the priorities of protecting front-line areas, public safety and outcomes for the public. Therefore, the Probation Board will receive an additional £500,000, reducing its cut from 12% to 9·2%. The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) will receive an additional £300,000, reducing its cut from 8·7% to 8·4%. The Courts and Tribunals Service will receive an additional £500,000, reducing its cut from 12% to 10·8%. The Probation Board and Prison Service have also received funding from the change fund. Probation allocation of £472,000 will allow for an intensive resettlement and rehabilitation project to be taken forward. The Prison Service allocation of £300,000 will go towards a project for underachieving boys and to support young offenders to change their lives through education.

Your briefing pack notes that the Compensation Services budget will reduce by £950,000. That reflects the fact that forecasting Compensation Services' annual requirements with certainty is inherently difficult, and there is therefore potential for funding to be released from the Compensation Services budget in 2015-16. That will be closely monitored throughout the financial year to ensure that the impact is minimised.

The Committee also asked about funding for the Railway Street addiction service in Ballymena. As I said, the extremely challenging financial position that my Department faces requires difficult funding and prioritisation decisions to be made. While my aim has been to try to protect front-line justice services and to limit the public safety consequences, given the scale of cuts required, that has not always been achievable. Following my Department's original announcement to cease funding on 31 January this year, further funding was secured from savings elsewhere in the Department and from the assets recovery community scheme to allow the Northern Trust to keep the project operating until March 2015. My officials and I have held a number of meetings with senior trust staff. Most recently, the director for safer communities met trust officials on 23 January with an offer of £50,000 to £60,000 for the 2015-16 period to contribute to the justice partnership aspect of the service.

Trust officials are now considering that offer. I fully recognise the importance of the intervention and prevention work delivered by Railway Street. However, the financial position means that difficult choices will have to be made on the basis of affordability. It is important to state that the reduction in the DOJ portion of the funding does not mean the end of a community addiction service in Ballymena.

I am also aware of the Committee's concerns about search and rescue funding in 2015-16. I recently met some of the voluntary search and rescue organisations, and I am mindful of the important and valuable work that they undertake. No decision has yet been taken on that funding. The DOJ has taken over responsibility for that from DCAL, and organisations have been asked to make their bids for funding by 30 January. I wrote to the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure on the transfer of funding. My officials are still in negotiations with DCAL over the amount of funding that will transfer. The search and rescue budget for 2015-16 is therefore still being finalised, and I will keep the Committee updated.

The key risk to the Department living within its available funding next year is the legal aid budget. I have already introduced a number of reforms to reduce the level of spend. Those have focused mainly on fees and on more appropriate levels of representation at various court tiers. The reforms have already reduced costs by some £22 million, but the full impact has been obscured by an increase in Crown Court disposals. While the outcome at the Crown Court through the reductions in delay is welcome, the increase in disposals has maintained this pressure on the budget. I will implement further reforms to criminal fees shortly, and I will introduce new civil fees in phases from 1 April.

You will also be aware that I have commissioned the access to justice review part 2, which is intended to inform a radical restructuring of existing arrangements by considering the minimum level of support required to meet human rights obligations and to protect the most vulnerable in society. That will help to shape the agenda for the next mandate. However, even with a significant programme of reform and cuts, the demand for legal aid has consistently exceeded the available budget. For example, spend on civil legal aid has increased by 20% from 2010-11. That creates a pressure on my Department that, now that the ring fence has been lifted, creates a pressure on the Executive Budget. That will continue to be the case next year. The legal aid baseline of £75 million is subject to 15·1% cuts. That is a cut of approximately £11 million, which reduces baseline funding to £64 million. That will simply increase the legal aid pressure, which, based on current forecasts, is around £21 million in 2015-16. I am therefore developing a range of urgent measures with a view to closing the gap and living within the funding available as far as possible. I am seeking the Executive's support and in due course will be seeking the Committee's support to take those forward.

I propose a range of measures for managing the legal aid pressure. Some of those will reduce the scope of legal aid and deliver savings over a period of time. Following discussions, the Executive have asked me to bring forward a detailed paper for formal consideration. The areas of legal aid that the proposals will affect include money damages claims, with the exception of serious clinical negligence cases and those arising from the actions of state agencies; private family law; ancillary relief; and means testing. In addition, I have outlined a proposal for a short-term exceptional measure to help to manage the pressures on an in-year basis. That would involve a strictly controlled levy on bills to be paid based on the amount required to live within budget. The levy would be exceptional in nature and is intended to be deployed only while more permanent arrangements are made to reduce the demand for and the cost of legal aid. Those measures will be informed by the outcome of the access to justice review part 2.

The outworking of the Stormont House Agreement will be vital to the DOJ on legacy issues, and it will be important that agreement is reached as soon as possible on the bodies to be funded. Without that, unmanageable legacy-related costs will face the DOJ in 2015-16 and beyond.

I mentioned that our capital budget will fall by 24%. The information you have received sets out how we plan to allocate the budget of £42 million together with the impacts. A significant element of our capital plans for the next few years is the redevelopment of the prison estate. Whilst NIPS capital allocation will allow for some work to be taken forward next year, we will not be able to progress plans, nor should we, without having secured longer-term funding. Therefore, I plan to seek the Executive's support for that programme of work. The Committee will no doubt be keen to understand the impact of the budget on the Community Safety College at Desertcreat. The information you have received sets out the current position. You will note that an allocation of up to £53 million has been provided in 2015-16 for the project and that that is dependent on agreeing the drawdown of unspent funds from the Treasury in 2015-16. Discussions on that continue between Treasury and DFP.

Budget cuts will impact on staff numbers, as the savings delivery plan shows. Significant reductions have already been delivered as, for example, vacant posts have not been filled. The Department captured updated information on the planned voluntary exit scheme this week that shows that a total of 195 staff from the core Department and agencies will be required to leave under the scheme in 2015-16 to live within budget allocations. The figure is 171 for our NDPBs. Obvious risks are attached to that if the forecast numbers do not leave. The Department will also need to consider the associated impact on staff numbers when considering the functions that we undertake in the future.

Finally, I want to say something about the next steps. I have outlined the planned changes to draft budgets. The Department now plans to write to each spending area providing details of their final budget. Spending areas will be asked to prepare a final savings delivery plan, taking into account revised funding and any other changes since their draft plan was prepared. The final budget allocations will reduce as far as possible impacts on the front line, service delivery and equality. Therefore, the spending areas that have highlighted those issues will now consider the impacts based on the lower budget cuts and will amend their savings delivery plan and update the section 75 equality impact assessment accordingly. The Department will then prepare a final consolidated departmental savings delivery plan. We will consider the implications of that, share it with the Committee as soon as possible and report against it during 2015-16 in line with DFP guidance.

I hope that that has provided the Committee with a useful overview of the final budget plans. As I said at the outset, very difficult funding and prioritisation decisions have been required that will have a major impact on the wider justice system and on the services that we provide. Living within the budget settlement will be very difficult. Without major reductions in legal aid expenditure, it will be impossible. It has not been possible to fund everything that the Department would otherwise want to, but we have sought to protect front-line services, public safety and outcomes for the public as far as possible within the reduced funding envelope.

Chair, we are now happy to take any questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Thank you very much, Minister. I am quite sure that members will wish to explore the legal aid issue, and I will come to that in a second. It has already received considerable attention in the media today, as I am sure you are aware. To kick off, policing obviously makes up the bulk of spend in DOJ, at seven times greater than the next spending area. Therefore, you would imagine that it is the area in which you could find the greatest efficiencies. Can you give us an indication of the level of sight that you are giving to how the police spend their budget, whether they are working alongside the Department to find efficiencies or whether there is greater use of shared services or ways in which you can save money in their budget?

Mr Ford: I think that, in a sense, you have highlighted the issue, Chair. Their operational independence means that the Department is not fully involved in that work. Obviously, at more than an informal level, we have been discussing the potential impacts with the Chief Constable and his senior team. I know, for example, that all spending areas in the PSNI have been subject to very close scrutiny by the senior team as they look at their prioritisation and seek to ensure that they manage the budget as best they can. They have shared something of that information with us, but, at the end of the day, operational decisions for the Chief Constable have to be decisions for the Chief Constable. That is why, for example, when I referred to the potential that they now have for some increased recruitment, I said that it was likely to be limited and that the final decision will not be mine but the Chief Constable's. We also have to recognise the Policing Board's role in oversight of the police.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Do you think there is any scope for more of that working together? I appreciate that the Chief Constable is the accounting officer for the police, but, when so much of the budget is clearly going towards policing, is there any willingness for the police to work with officials in the Department or even officials in DFP to see whether there are areas in which there can be common interests or shared services?

Mr Ford: Glyn is probably in a better place to answer the technicalities of that.

Mr Glyn Capper (Department of Justice): I think that the answer to that is yes. Using an example close to home, the police are in a process of considering a new finance system that would naturally fit with the DFP shared service model. They have engaged with us and, therefore, with DFP to explore the options. They are very open to it, but it is worth noting that there are some restrictions around security of information, for example. So, yes, police are open to exploring those options with a view to generating as much efficiency as possible, albeit with that caveat.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Minister, you also mentioned the Prison Service funding, that is, the extra £300,000 and the allocation through the change fund. From Assembly Question Time yesterday, you will be aware that concerns were raised, particularly where Maghaberry is concerned, about staffing levels, the use of overtime and the number of times that the prison has been locked down because of staff shortages. Is enough funding going to the Prison Service to ensure that it can maintain safety levels for prison officers and prisoners? Is there any flexibility in your budget to allocate additional funding to the Prison Service, should it be necessary?

Mr Ford: The reality is that, at present, a very limited amount of money is held back at the centre to look to emerging pressures next year. Clearly, safety for prison staff, prisoners and visitors is a key matter. There is no doubt that, after a period in which we saw significant progress in reducing the number of lockdowns, Maghaberry, as opposed to the other two institutions, has seen an increase in the last couple of months. That is the blunt reality of what happens with the budget that we have. There will be issues as we look at staffing arrangements to see, frankly, how you manage the expenditure between overtime and additional staffing, which need to be looked at. However, an easy guarantee cannot be given.

I also highlighted yesterday that much of the issue of prisoner-on-prisoner assaults seems to be related to overcrowding. By bringing one of the square houses back into use, we have reduced levels of overcrowding and have seen some progress on that front. That is the kind of issue that requires constant attention from Prison Service management centrally and at institutional level.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I have a brief question on the Stormont House Agreement. You mentioned that the voluntary exit scheme requires 195 staff from the Department and 171 from non-departmental public bodies. When do you anticipate knowing whether staff have volunteered to exit the Civil Service?

Mr Ford: We will not know for sure until DFP publishes the full details and individuals formally seek their opportunity to go. I know that, when we ran a very similar voluntary exit scheme for prison officers, it was literally not possible to know until the last day how many were likely. Certainly, the head of the Civil Service would say that, when the scheme is announced, a very large number of people will enquire what the terms are. That does not mean that a very large number will eventually make the formal application. So, it is difficult to know, and, like other Departments, we will have to wait and see how it goes.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Are there any anticipated costs to the Department flowing from the agreement?

Mr Ford: On staffing matters, no.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): I do not mean on staffing matters; I mean on the other issues.

Mr Ford: The key challenge will be to look at the various institutions dealing with the past, particularly the historical investigations unit (HIU) and to see how speedily the work being done in the Police Ombudsman's Office on the past through legacy inquests can be covered by the additional allocation from HM Treasury. There are challenges, because we are not quite sure of the terms on which that money is to be offered in the context of exactly what the five years are. That, again, is an issue that DFP is discussing. Certainly, however, there are very significant issues on the past that fall to DOJ. At the request of the Executive and the five parties, DOJ is doing work with the NIO on the necessary legislation. We need those institutions in place as soon as possible so that we can see an appropriate way of managing the past without impacting on the budget for the present.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Finally, you mentioned the exceptional measures that are required on legal aid, and the letter has been supplied to the Committee today. It mentions that it would:

Can you give us a little more information about what that levy means or what level it will be at?

Mr Ford: At present, there is a scheme — the statutory discount — that allows up to 10% to be deducted from certain fees, mostly, I understand, in the civil area. That is intended to reflect the concept that if the state is paying solicitors or barristers, they are more likely to get their money than if a private client were funding them. The legal provision on that is up to 10%. The current level is a deduction of 5%. In a very similar way, the intention is to apply a further levy at the point when bills are paid across the range of legal aided services. The rate at which the discount would be taken would depend on the difference between the forecast legal aid expenditure and the budget for any one year, would be time limited, would require Assembly approval every year and would be for a maximum 15% discount. If it was less than 5%, which is seen as the gap, it would not apply at all. So, on a variable basis, it could be between 5% and 15%, based on the forecast that is put forward at the beginning of the financial year, subject to Assembly approval every year.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Is there any legal difficulty with such a retrospective policy? If you extend it to 15%, is there any potential for a legal challenge on the basis that it is retrospective?

Mr Ford: My understanding is that there is not, subject to the primary legislation being drafted in the correct way. The policy intent has to go to the Executive, and we hope that that will happen fairly soon. After a consultation period on the process, appropriate legislation would have to be put forward.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): We heard today from a number of people in the legal profession with concerns about some of the proposals. Have you had any discussion with the Bar Council or the Law Society on those proposals yet?

Mr Ford: I had a brief and preliminary discussion with the president of the Law Society, the chair of the Bar Council and the senior officer of each of the two organisations. Four of them came in to see me on Monday afternoon. I explained to them the work that the Executive asked me to do last Thursday, when I presented a broad outline of the proposals. I asked them to maintain confidence until the Committee had been informed, but I felt that, given that they were the people who were involved, it was appropriate to inform them at that senior level.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Obviously, you are to work up the details of those proposals for the Executive, but, in your thinking, would the levy be applied on a universal basis, or would it be for particular cases or firms that are earning more than a certain threshold in any given time?

Mr Ford: No, it would have to be on a universal basis to be equally fair — or possibly equally unfair, as it might be represented.

Mr Frew: I thank the Minister for attending the Committee today to discuss this very important and serious issue, namely, the budget. I also appreciate the difficult environment that we are in and the austere times that we are living through. With that comes the responsibility and the added difficulty of trying to manage budgets. Whilst I know that you have a massive budget, I would like to delve into the minutiae of it. I am sure, Minister, that you know what I am going to talk about. There are a couple of issues that really impact on the lives of the most vulnerable, for example, the Railway Street drug service. You said in your opening statement that you had found £50,000 to £60,000 for the next financial year and that officials are assessing the service.

Your departmental briefing paper dated 27 January, which we received in our additional papers, says that you must have applied to DFP for the change fund for 2015-16. One of the proposals in that was for £380,000 of resource. Was that unsuccessful, if that is the right terminology, or is it still awaiting confirmation from DFP? How does that work with regard to the change fund?

Mr Ford: I outlined the two successful bids. My understanding is that they are the only successful bids that we received this year. The Railway Street bid was not met and will not be met.

Mr Frew: Thank you very much for that confirmation. When you look at the service, you see that it provides very intense support to our most vulnerable. It brings in people who have a dependency on drugs and alcohol and whose world is in chaos. With that, comes chaotic behaviour that affects their family, the wider environment and the society around them.

It took that service to help people to manage their chaos, and it has worked extremely well. We could contrast that service, which costs £380,000, with the millions that are being pumped into legal aid — I know that that is a different aspect of your budget — and the millions being pumped into the failed concept of the PCSPs, which provide services that could well be merged into a council setting. We cannot find £380,000 for the service in Railway Street, which will have a massive effect on people going to prison and on the level of crime in the localities, and it will place a resource burden on our police service. Is there no way that we can find more money for that service? Although you have found £50,000 or £60,000 for the next financial year, it is, in effect, an 87% cut to the service. There are economies of scale, whereby the service just will not be able to deal effectively with and support those vulnerable people. Although the health people will be looking at this, those who run the service will be totally distraught. I spoke to them last week, and I know that they will have to peg back most if not all of the services they provide. This will have a tremendous effect, not only on society but on the other service providers that seek funding from your Department.

If we were in austere times and were looking to invent a model that would save money, these sort of projects would do that. We have bath that is overflowing with austerity and you are paying for more buckets to take the water out of the bath, yet you have done absolutely nothing to turn off the tap. In fact, by reducing this service, you have turned it on.

Concepts like invest to save and all the statements that civil servants like to use are completely out the window. We are talking about a service that supports vulnerable people and society. Is there no way that we can find the funding to keep the service running and, I would argue, enhance it to save money?

Mr Ford: Before I come to the nub of your point, let me respond to your comment on PCSPs. The report we saw recently from CJINI showed that there are problems with some PCSPs but that there are others that are extremely successful. So, your suggestion of a "failed concept" is not something I recognise.

On your key point, I spent this morning with two of our NGO partners and saw the good work they are doing to rehabilitate people. In some cases, prisoners are going out on day release and, in others, they have moved out of custody. This is another area where, bluntly, with the money we have, we may not be able to continue to provide the same level of support. That is the practicality of the world we live in.

The Probation Service has laid off temporary staff; the Youth Justice Agency is looking at how it will continue to meet its responsibilities in the community; prisons are having to cut back on a range of rehabilitation work; and there will be significantly fewer police officers over the next financial year than the number that a detailed examination recommended was required a couple of years ago. That is the world we live in.

I would love to be able to support projects like Railway Street to the level that has been happening. That is why we literally scraped the barrel to see what could be done to maintain a level of funding. However, with all that we face, it is just not possible to continue to fund some extremely valuable and worthwhile projects. That is the reality of the Budget that we have to live with.

Mr Frew: Are you completely sure, when your advisers and the Civil Service around you told you that these services had to be cut, that it was not simply the case that it was cut because, quite frankly, it is a joint venture between you and Health and was an easy thing to cut? There will be less pain in cutting it than in trying to tackle some of the bigger monsters in your Department. Are you completely sure that it has not been a salami-slice cut and that everything has been explored, and that it is not simply that the business case suggests that it will save money and take the burden off some of the bigger budget monsters in your Department, namely the PSNI and legal aid? Are you sure that, on the far side of austerity, this will have shown to have saved money? Are you completely convinced that all of that has been thrashed out and that this is not simply the Civil Service taking the easy way out?

Mr Ford: Your reference to salami-slicing took me back to when we set the budget for the four-year CSR period that is just coming to an end. At that stage, it was made clear in the DOJ that the priority was the protection of front-line services. I remember reading a comment on social media when we published our spending plan. Somebody said that Ford was protecting his own, because the biggest cuts were in justice delivery rather than in where the real work was being done. That person was completely unaware that justice delivery is a euphemism for all our back-office services, which have taken the biggest hit every year for four years, and which will continue to take a colossal hit next year. That is the reality of what we are living with.

We have a very small core departmental budget. Our budget is overwhelmingly going to front-line services by spending areas of the Department or by various arm's-length bodies and NDPBs. That is what we have done; that is what we continue to do. The reality is that, with a difficult budget settlement for four years in a row, because of the way we were ring-fenced to spending in England and Wales, we have managed that to protect the front line, but we can protect the front line no longer next year. That is the blunt truth. I wish that we could continue to fund a range of positive front-line work; we simply cannot do so.

Mr Frew: Minister, I will take you to another aspect. I know that due to the specialised service provided at Railway Street you can do nothing other than fund it. However, there are community and voluntary groups, like the North West Mountain Rescue Team, the Foyle rescue unit and the Mournes and Fermanagh rescue teams. As you know, they do not simply climb mountains and save people; they look for vulnerable people and, on many occasions, are called out by the PSNI. Whilst they have people trained in this sort of specialism, they do not have the capacity to call them out, because they are, perhaps, already working on other front-line policing issues.

In your opening statement, you said that you had not got that resolved yet. I believe there is a funding pot of £40,000 to cover the seven voluntary rescue groups. However, there must be other ways to assist them, other than to part-fund. For instance, they all have vehicles. The North West Mountain Rescue Team has three, maybe four, vehicles. Those vehicles need to be fuelled, and they are fuelled out of the pockets of the volunteers. They also need to be serviced, and they are serviced out of the volunteers' pockets. Although we need to have funding for those groups, is there any way that they could be looked at in-house? Take the PSNI's mechanic workshop, for instance. Is there any way that vehicles for the seven groups could be put on to that conveyor belt of servicing? That would reduce costs and other burdens for the groups. You would not be funding them or reducing their funding; you would actually be supporting them in other ways — even through a fuel allowance from the PSNI. Could there be something other than hard cash from your budget line?

Mr Ford: Let us be blunt about it: if you are talking about putting fuel in vehicles, you are talking about hard cash. It is hard cash that is coming from somewhere. Search and rescue is complex, in part because the transfer of responsibility from DCAL to the DOJ has not been followed by the transfer of funding yet. Because we were assuming the responsibility of coordination around search and rescue, I have, over the past year or so, met a number of the groups separately on their own patches. I met nearly all of them, just 10 days ago, when I was down in Enniskillen to see the current operation to recover the body of Kieran McAree. That afternoon, at least one of them took the opportunity to bend my ear about finances.

I am fully aware of the work they do; I am fully aware of the need to support them. We have looked at other practical issues, such as having blue lights on vehicles. This is the sort of thing on which we can give them a degree of assistance. But, money has not yet been fully transferred from DCAL. Only some of the groups were funded by DCAL and there are issues about how we work towards it. The current position is that we will be seeking bids for the next financial year by the end of this month. One of the groups said that it did not get the correspondence so it has been given a week's extension. We will see what bids come in and see how they match together.

There may be something in your idea of assistance for servicing vehicles, or something like that, but that would depend on spare capacity, which would result in reduced costs if we were to look to somewhere like the PSNI. So, whether that is a runner at all, I have no idea; but, frankly, anything beyond that is hard cash. The only question is, "Who provides the hard cash?"

Mr McCartney: Thank you very much for the presentation. Obviously, the legal aid stuff is a broad outline. I assume that you will come back to the Committee with the broader aspect.

Mr Ford: When the detail is worked up, it will come to you.

Mr McCartney: You spoke about the work of the Probation Board and the Youth Justice Agency. In the paper presented, it is obvious that they are now going to lose staff. What sort of relationship is there between the agencies when budgets are being reallocated and when we are imposing these types of cuts? Do the Probation Board and Youth Justice Agency get any opportunity to present the strain that this will eventually put on the Police Service or the Prison Service if there are gaps in their service?

Mr Ford: They get the opportunity to make their case. Indeed, when we went through the first round of this, I met all our spending areas, whether internal or arm's length, as one group, to explain the position we were in, because I did not want people thinking that they were being told different stories from different parts of the Department. So, it was an attempt to do that.

We have already highlighted the issue of shared services involving the police. My discussion with some of our NGO partners has also been about joint planning and how we look at things in a fully participative way. I think we have some very positive ideas as to how we manage the difficult circumstance, but it does not make it that much less difficult. It just shows that we have a genuine partnership with those we are seeking to work with, whether they are at arm's length or are fully independent.

Mr McCartney: With what is being proposed for the Probation Board and Youth Justice Agency, is there an acceptance that more people will end up in the criminal justice system or go to prison than would have been the case under the current procedures? Would that be accepted?

Mr Ford: We certainly hope not, but there is an inevitability that supervision levels by the Probation Board on more minor offenders will be cut. A lot of what they have been doing has been around rationalisation, for example in premises. That can have a knock-on effect. The Probation Board used to have a reporting centre beside my constituency office, which is no longer there. People now have to go two miles down the Antrim Road to the full office. So, there are ways in which the effects could be mitigated, but, nonetheless, there will be effects. That is the blunt reality.

Mr McCartney: I accept the reality, but the sort of case I am trying to make, perhaps not very well, is that if the Police Service accepts that there will be a greater risk of crime if the Probation Board and Youth Justice Agency are not operating in a particular area, they might feel that there might be parts of their budget where they could say, "It would be better if we looked at giving some money to that to ensure that we do not put a strain on it, which will cost us more somewhere along the line".

Mr Ford: It is not for me to tell agencies how to cooperate, but there is general encouragement to do so. For example, the issue of the work that the Probation Board does in providing the prison welfare service is a key issue as to how that is managed between prisons and probation. So, your point is absolutely valid, but I am not sure if I am up on the technicalities of any of it.

Mr McCartney: I accept that, but I am just talking about it as a general principle. Someone could look at a budget and say, "If you make a cut here, there will be a pressure here, and that pressure will cost your organisation".

Mr Ford: There are justice spending areas that have made the point, "The effect of what you are doing will hurt us. Can we talk about it?"

Mr McCartney: That is what I am saying. Can no one, at that stage, say — and obviously, there is operational integrity in some of those bodies.

Mr Ford: In my opinion, it is for the bodies concerned to work out the best options between themselves. All of this is about managing difficult situations for everybody.

Mr McCartney: I think that you referred, in the House the other day, to overcrowding or lockdowns in prisons. In your opinion, is the reconfiguration of Maghaberry far enough down the road as envisaged by the prison review team? If that were in place, would it save staff shortages?

Mr Ford: I simply think that significant work has been done around the free flow of movement of the lower-category prisoners in Maghaberry, which has helped with some of those staffing matters. I highlighted the issue of capital, where the Prison Service is one area that would have been looking for significant capital investment to improve the accommodation, and part of that is then having better accommodation that could be managed with smaller numbers of officers while still maintaining safety.

Mr McCartney: So, the reconfiguration is contingent on that capital spend.

Mr Ford: The reconfiguration can proceed so far, but one issue is the need for one new cell block, which we wish to see built as soon as possible.

Mr McCartney: Declan Morgan made a number of public comments this morning. Do you have any comment to make on that or have you met the Lord Chief Justice in relation to that?

Mr Ford: I have had a broad, general discussion with the Lord Chief Justice about some of the issues relating to the Budget settlement. I have not discussed the consultation proposals that you are about to see on courthouses in any detail with him, and I was a little surprised by the tone of what I have heard of his comments.

The reality is that this is just like every other part of the DOJ in that difficult decisions are having to be made, and the proposals we are putting forward have the potential, between the Courts and Tribunals Service and the Prison Service, including transport, to save in the region of £1·5 million a year. That is a very significant sum of money that we need.

We are also looking at how we use the better court facilities that we have in a more efficient way rather than using some of the older, less suitable premises. I accept that, in the west, there is a bigger problem because we do not have the modern courthouses that we tend to have more of in the east. That is a long-term capital issue, but it is about how we manage the estate better to provide better facilities for those using courts as well not maintaining old buildings that are not particularly fit for purpose.

Mr McCartney: As we take this forward, do you intend to meet the Courts and Tribunals Service?

Mr Ford: Technically, the Courts and Tribunals Service is doing this on my behalf. I have regular meetings with the Lord Chief Justice, and I have no doubt that this issue will feature at our next regular meeting.

Mr McCartney: One of the notable things that he said this morning was that he felt that access to justice was being compromised by the proposals. How do we address that?

Mr Ford: I do not believe that that is the case. The Committee will have the role of discussing this with officials and me, if you wish, as we look at the consultation and how it goes forward.

Mr Douglas: Thank you, Minister, for your presentation so far. You wrote to the Committee about the levy on legal aid costs. Could you give us some information on that?

Mr Ford: I am not in a position to give the full detail at this stage, but the key point is to recognise that the budget for legal aid is likely to be well short of the anticipated expenditure for the incoming year and for years immediately after that.

Operating on the basis of the existing statutory discount, where up to 10%, and currently 5%, can be taken from legal aid payments, the anticipation is that we will have legislation that permits us to take up to 15%, subject to working out, at the start of the year, the anticipated expenditure against the budget and only applying the levy to the maximum required to bridge that gap. To be fair, it would have to apply across all areas equally and would certainly be intended as a temporary measure in which what would be appropriate would be decided annually, while we work on bringing legal aid expenditure closer to the budget we have for it, which has had to be reduced significantly because of the cuts this year.

Mr Douglas: You mentioned the Probation Board for Northern Ireland. You also mentioned the financial support from the change fund. One of the issues raised was that, with the Probation Board's increasing workload, including managing offenders in the community, there is a real fear, including from me, about what will result from some of those cuts. We were trying to get an assurance that sex offenders and violent offenders would be managed in the community. I know that we are talking about costs in all of this, but, in terms of community safety, can you give us an assurance that violent offenders and sex offenders will be managed in the community?

Mr Ford: The Probation Board told me that it will focus its work on the more serious sex offenders and violent offenders. Public protection arrangements will continue as they are.

The reality is that there will be a cutback in things like home visits to more minor offenders. There will be the removal of a number of the smaller reporting centres simply to save the associated office costs. It is really looking at how it focuses its efforts on the most significant cases that it manages in order to carry out its public protection role. As I said to Raymond, there will inevitably be a knock-on element, because it will not be able to do the total level of work that it was doing previously.

Mr Poots: Minister, I sympathise with you on the difficult budget circumstances that you find yourself in. I hear very clearly what you are saying about being able to make significant savings through legal aid and that this is one area that you are potentially going to focus on. What are you proposing to do? What thought processes exist in the Department of Justice around tackling legal aid and the view of many of the public that it has been excessive for a long period?

Mr Ford: I briefly outlined some of the key points earlier. There is a real issue about ensuring that we maintain access to justice for the most vulnerable people in society.

We are looking at money damages claims, for example. If money is in question, do we really need to have legal aid to pay the lawyers? If there is ancillary relief relating to a divorce settlement, do we need to provide legal aid if we are talking about splitting the assets of a couple? These are the kinds of key areas that we are seeking to look at. There are also relatively minor matters, particularly something like child access issues following a divorce or separation, that can somehow cost a lot. There are frequently repeat applications made by a legally-aided ex-partner against somebody who has a modest income that just removes them from legal aid. There is no intention to remove legal aid from the basics of a divorce case where it is appropriate. However, to be realistic, multiple complaints about access to the children being at 4.00 pm and not 3.00 pm and such like simply have to be taken out of legal aid.

Mr Poots: Has the legal profession been cooperating with you on making an impact on legal aid?

Mr Ford: Well, I listened with interest to the radio this morning as one solicitor said that the Law Society and the Bar Council had been engaging with the DOJ over four years and it seemed to have no impact. We could look over a period of time in which there have been significant modifications to proposals that we have made that have taken account of the concerns they have raised.

Mr Poots: Mr McGrory, the prosecutor, recently said he felt that — I need to be careful that I do not put words in his mouth — the defence had two lawyers available to it in 20% of cases while the prosecution had two lawyers available to it in only around 6% of cases. Established practice across many countries is that you have two lawyers in cases of murder, rape and in the really big issues. However, there seems to be a significant number of cases in Northern Ireland where there are two lawyers for the defence, which was not actually required. That is damaging justice in many ways, because the defence has a better chance of getting the defendant off as a result of having a second lawyer available who is being paid for by legal aid.

Mr Ford: Your principle is generally right. I think that the last figures that I saw was that around 22% of defence cases had two lawyers, while 6% of prosecution cases had two lawyers. Of course, there will be cases where there is a single prosecutor and two defendants, so the number of lawyers on the defence side can multiply. That issue needs to be looked at. Clearly, there are issues about equality of arms, and the PPS has issues with the budget. Of course, that is entirely independent from the DOJ work. I do think that that is part of the area we could look at. We have undertaken some reforms to the number of counsel funded in particular cases, but, clearly, there are issues that still need some further consideration to do with the overall costs and equality of arms between the two sides.

Mr Poots: How is civil legal aid drawn down by lawyers? How do they go about claiming their legal aid expenses?

Mr Ford: You are getting too technical for me, I am afraid. As I understand it, they submit a bill when the work is done. A number of civil cases are still subject to the taxing master in determining what is appropriate.

Mr Poots: So, it is an estimate.

Mr Ford: The taxing master makes the final decision.

Mr Poots: Yes, but what is submitted to the taxing master is an estimated cost, and the taxing master then makes a judgement on it.

Mr Ford: Yes.

Mr Poots: I find it astonishing in this day and age that public money is being paid out on an estimated bill being supplied by the person who is the provider. I think that if we were doing that at Stormont, the media would be over it all day every day. I just find it absolutely fascinating that lawyers who do a portion of work can say that they did £20,000 worth of work and that someone else comes in and makes an adjudication on the basis of an estimate put in front of them. There is no factual detail to support the claims that are being made.

Mr Ford: I do not think that it is entirely accurate to say that there is no factual detail. It is the job of the taxing master to assess the work done.

Mr Poots: That was how it was done previously with criminal legal aid, and that has changed.

Mr Ford: The removal of the very high cost cases regulations in favour of standard fees on the criminal defence side has made a very significant difference there.

Mr Poots: So, there would be an indication that, if there was a significant difference made when that was changed in criminal law, there would be an opportunity to do that with the civil law as well. There is every chance for lawyers to be putting in inflated claims, and the evidence from the criminal law changes on legal aid indicate that that is the case. Those claims are drawn down whilst the public are paying for them, which is a wholly unsustainable position.

Mr Ford: It is the job of the taxing master —

Mr Poots: Yes, as was the case with criminal law.

Mr Ford: — as a court official to make the appropriate assessments.

Mr Poots: When they have to draw it down in a proper way, that is reduced.

Mr Ford: I am not sure whether you have seen the preliminary paper that Jim Daniell wrote for the access to justice review part 2, but he has highlighted a number of areas that will be under consideration.

Mr Poots: Minister, did you have proposals to make changes to civil legal aid around a year and a half ago?

Mr Ford: There have been a variety of changes. Off the top of my head, I am not sure that I could give you full chapter and verse on everything that has been proposed over the timescale.

Mr Poots: What has delayed introducing those proposals?

Mr Ford: One of the issues that has caused a degree of delay has been, frankly, discussions with the representatives of the professions. We have sought to be open and listen, contrary to what may sometimes be alleged. I must say that there have also been occasions when papers have been before this Committee for a period of time and have not been resolved as fast as we might have hoped. I would not wish to suggest that the Department of Justice has been entirely perfect in everything that it has done, but we need to ensure that, for the future, we get a rather better joined-up system collectively.

Mr Poots: Of course, you do not need the Committee to lay a statutory rule before the Assembly; Ministers can do that.

Mr Ford: Up to now, the Department's policy has been to seek to work in cooperation with the Committee. I am not sure whether the Committee is suggesting that we should just go ahead and do what we think anyway.

Mr Poots: I am just pointing out that, if it comes to meeting your budget and this is an area of saving that can be made and the Committee is delaying, it is something that you can move ahead with yourself if you so desire and get the support of the Assembly or not. It is then the Assembly that is responsible.

Mr Ford: I shall enjoy some of our future discussions, Chair.

Mr Poots: OK. Thank you for that, Minister. I think that it is important — indeed, it is incumbent on you — to move apace on this issue. We cannot afford any further dilly-dallying.

Mr Ford: When you talked about having some sympathy with me, I got slightly worried about whether that meant you were going to show sympathy or criticise, but I appreciate your support.

Mr Poots: I was quite kind to you today.

Mr A Maginness: Minister, how can you run a court system by reducing the number of courthouses from 22 to 10, which is a reduction of 45% since 2013? How can you physically carry out that process of administering justice?

Mr Ford: I am not sure that the number of courthouses is an issue; the issue is the capacity and accessibility of courthouses. The number of courthouses is not particularly relevant. We used to have dozens of petty sessions that sat in a variety of odd halls, a day in the month or whatever. They did not provide particularly good facilities. In the days of improved transport, we now seek to ensure that we have the appropriate facilities. The document that has been prepared indicates how current court sittings could be run.

Mr A Maginness: You are assuming that there is capacity in 10 courthouses instead of 22, so what you are saying is that 10 can equal 22.

Mr Ford: I think that we are actually talking about 12, not 10, but anyway.

Mr A Maginness: Sorry?

Mr Ford: The document that has been prepared sets out the schedule as to how cases could be accommodated, all of which appears still to be predicated on the assumption that courts will largely ask people to come at 10.30 am rather than running into afternoons or whatever, as Magistrates' Courts do regularly.

Mr A Maginness: Well, it is the Lord Chief Justice who says that it would be extremely difficult to run the system on that basis, and I do not think that I am misinterpreting what he is saying. If you reach a point where there is not sufficient capacity, on a geographical spread throughout Northern Ireland, does that not compromise access to justice?

Mr Ford: If there were not, it would, but I do not believe that there is not sufficient capacity.

Mr A Maginness: So you think that the Lord Chief Justice's comments are misplaced.

Mr Ford: I have not read the Lord Chief Justice's comments in total. The Lord Chief Justice clearly sees the operation of the justice system from his perspective and that of the judiciary. I am seeking to implement an extremely difficult budget settlement across the entire range of services funded by the DOJ.

Mr A Maginness: I have heard what you said about that, and —

Mr Ford: Sorry, I will keep saying it for as long as I have to keep saying it, because it is the position.

Mr A Maginness: Yes, and I accept what you say. I have sympathy with you about it. It is a very bad budget, and you have got a bad deal. I am trying to tease out the consequences of reductions in certain sectors of the justice system, including the Courts and Tribunals Service. I am saying that the position seems to be that there will not be sufficient capacity to deal with justice on an efficient and effective basis.

Mr Ford: The paper that was put to me showed how the existing number of court sittings could be scheduled in a reduced number of buildings.

Mr A Maginness: There is also a reduction in the number of days that a tribunal can sit. This has nothing to do with legal aid, lawyers or anything else, because most people who attend tribunals are represented not by lawyers but by politicians, voluntary workers, advice workers and so forth. What is happening as a result of this is that people will not be able to access tribunals. That must lead to compromising their access to justice for something quite crucial to them: how are they going to live?

Mr Ford: I do not think that the issue is not being able to access tribunals; access to tribunals will be on the merits of a case. The question of timing may be a slightly different issue, but that is the kind of detail that needs to be worked through in the consultation process.

Mr A Maginness: Yes, and you put your finger on it exactly. Timing is of the essence in many tribunal cases. Timing is also of the essence in relation to the disposal of court cases in a fair, efficient and effective way right across the spectrum, whether it is criminal or civil. If people cannot have timely access to justice, that is justice delayed and justice denied.

Mr Ford: We have done significant work over the last four years in speeding up the justice system. I highlighted some of the costs of criminal legal aid. Because more cases have been put through the courts, we have continued with high expenditure, even though the amount per case has been reduced. If the same number of sittings can take place in a smaller number of courthouses, I cannot see how that will lead to delay.

Mr A Maginness: OK, I hear what you are saying, and I am sure that we will explore that at a further date.

I will move on to your proposals in relation to legal aid. There was a note attached to your letter of 28 January that outlined a number of proposals. One was money damages claims, another was private family law, another was ancillary relief and then there was means-testing. All of those had been under discussion in relation to legal aid for quite some time. It has been a matter of debate and so forth, but are you not exploiting a situation now by saying that you are going to basically exclude those areas — money damages claims, private family law, ancillary relief and so forth? Are you not really exploiting the situation and saying, "This is now my opportunity to dispose of these things once and for all"? You are presenting it as a sort of emergency situation, with the pressure of the budget and so forth. Are you not now saying — you have certainly given the impression — that you are trying to dispose of those issues, which have been in the public arena for some time?

Mr Ford: Let us be clear. On something like private family law, I made it clear that, under any proposals that I will put forward, there will continue to be legal aid for the key hearing. The issue was of multiple repeat applications around things like access.

Mr A Maginness: So it is just limited to repeat applications.

Mr Ford: We will work out the detail, but it is not the intention to remove private family law in total.

Mr A Maginness: Sorry, that is my misunderstanding then.

Mr Ford: I apologise if it is not clear in the paper that was supplied to the Committee. It was certainly made very clear in the paper I presented to the Executive.

Mr A Maginness: It is effectively a truncated version of whatever you are proposing.

Mr Ford: Detailed papers across the different options will be with the Committee as soon as possible. You might ask whether it is taking things out because there is a crisis. The reality is that there is a crisis and we have no option. If we are not going to seriously tackle legal aid, I do not believe that it is possible to provide a safe society in Northern Ireland on the basis of the other services that we fund.

Mr A Maginness: You have been tackling legal aid. You have tackled it in relation to criminal cases. You have had the 2011 regulations and the further regulations passed in relation to further cuts to legal aid in the Crown Court. That amounts to about a 27% — or maybe 25% — cut. Previous cuts were in the region of 57%. I cannot see how you can cut any further in relation to criminal legal aid. Do you accept that?

Mr Ford: At this stage, until I see the details of what needs to be worked through, I cannot accept anything not being possible to do. The reality is that we still have a legal aid system on both sides that is, if not the most expensive, well amongst the most expensive in the world. When we look at things like family law, I am keen to avoid the problems that have clearly emerged recently in England and Wales. As we look at other issues, I am concerned to ensure that we find appropriate ways of ensuring that people have access to justice, which does not necessarily mean publicly funded legal aid processes.

Mr A Maginness: What I am saying to you, Minister, is that there are ongoing discussions with the Bar Council and the Law Society in relation to family law, in particular, and other aspects of civil legal aid. You are now, as it were, fast-forwarding all these things, despite the fact that there are ongoing negotiations, as I understand it. Maybe I am wrong. Hopefully those negotiations will reach an amicable conclusion where there is agreement between your Department and the representative bodies of the professions. Have you given thought to the impact that introducing the proposals might have on the legal profession? It may say, "We have been negotiating for some time with the Minister and the Department, and now these things are introduced. We have come to the conclusion that they were not negotiating in good faith".

Mr Ford: Anybody would have difficulties suggesting that the DOJ has not been negotiating in good faith over a lengthy period around legal aid. The reality is that, at times, consultations are put out and the professions do not respond during the consultation period and then seek further extended discussions. That has happened on a number of occasions over the last four or five years. That simply is not sustainable any longer. There are issues that have to be addressed because we have a very difficult budget to deal with on 1 April, and, if we do not address legal aid, it will be an impossible budget from 1 April.

Mr A Maginness: I come to your proposal on what is termed here a short-term exceptional measure that would involve a strictly controlled levy on bills. First of all, what does "short-term" mean?

Mr Ford: Potentially, for the period until the end of the next Assembly mandate, but on the basis that it would be an annual renewal in any circumstances.

Mr A Maginness: So, that would be for at least five years, probably six years.

Mr Ford: Potentially closer to six years if we are talking about the end of the next Assembly mandate.

Mr A Maginness: You would hardly regard that as "short-term", would you Minister?

Mr Ford: In the great scheme of things, given how long legal aid has operated, it is fairly short-term to me.

Mr A Maginness: How would this work? You will deduct moneys from legal aid bills that are presented to the Legal Services Agency.

Mr Ford: At the point when the agency makes payments, there will be a deduction of whatever the appropriate percentage is to live within budget to a maximum of 15%.

Mr A Maginness: Yes. So that is at least 5% in excess of anything that you could legally do.

Mr Ford: If we take primary legislation, we could legally do it.

Mr A Maginness: Up to 15%.

Mr Ford: If we take primary legislation, yes.

Mr A Maginness: Right. So, you will introduce new legislation to do it.

Mr Ford: Yes. Are you suggesting that we were planning to do something illegal?

Mr A Maginness: No, I am not suggesting that at all; I am just trying to find out how you will do this. So, a solicitor or barrister may have done work, maybe two years ago, for x pounds, but you will now reduce that by 15%.

Mr Ford: In just the same way as the current discount arrangements apply to 5% and could apply to 10% under existing legislation.

Mr A Maginness: That is why I say that it is at least an additional 5% on top of anything that you could do.

Mr Ford: No. I made it clear that it would only be the maximum 15% if that was required to close the gap.

Mr A Maginness: But it is an extraordinary power, is it not?

Mr Ford: It is based on the precedent that exists.

Mr A Maginness: It seems to be exceptionally unfair to retrospectively deduct money from people who have provided a service and gone through the process of verifying their bills etc and then to say, "By the way, we will knock off 15% of your income".

Mr Ford: Then it has been exceptionally unfair since the statutory discount was introduced.

Mr A Maginness: But you are exceeding anything that is current. That is my point.

Mr Ford: Potentially exceeding the amount but not varying the principle.

Mr A Maginness: Does that take into account the fact that people have already paid tax on the amounts that have been claimed?

Mr Ford: How have people paid tax on the amounts claimed?

Mr A Maginness: If you mark a fee, you have to pay tax on that. In your tax return, you must put that down, and you then pay tax on that. Whether you actually get the money in or not, you pay income tax on that. It seems to me to be exceptionally unfair in the circumstances.

Mr Ford: I have no doubt that lawyers' accountants will be able to make appropriate —

Mr A Maginness: No, you cannot do that. As you mark your fee, you have to pay the tax on that within the current financial year. The point that I make is that that is money already earned and already taxed, and you are then saying, "By the way, we will apply a 15% deduction to that". I do not see that as being fair at all.

Mr Ford: How does it work in the context of the existing statutory discount?

Mr A Maginness: I will leave it to your people to advise on the detail, but, in current circumstances, you pay tax in that financial year. It is very unfair then to turn around and say, "By the way, you will pay an additional 15%". I will leave it there, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): To clarify on that point, Minister, if there were to be an agreement that you would have the ability to deduct up to 15%, you are saying that, annually, the Assembly would have to agree to that.

Mr Ford: It would have to agree to the —

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Would the Assembly strike the percentage discount for that?

Mr Ford: Yes. The DOJ, on the basis of expected expenditure versus budget, would have to estimate the shortfall and, therefore, the percentage. The Assembly would have to approve that annually. That is the way we are looking at it.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): So, for example, you could have 5% for two years and then perhaps push that towards a higher percentage in year 3 or year 4.

Mr Ford: It is perhaps more likely that we would be talking about a higher percentage at the beginning, with that reducing.

Mr McGlone: I have raised this before, Minister. It is around the issue where someone has availed themselves of legal aid and they receive a considerable amount of compensation as a consequence. They will have availed themselves of that compensation, whatever that might be for, based on public funds being used to get it. I suggest that there is some room for discussion on whether it is for the courts to recommend that the moneys from public funds be returned in part or in whole. It is something that has taxed me, and I have had constituents come to me in circumstances where cases have been taken against them. In one case that I can think of over a land issue, the person taking the case availed themselves of legal aid. The person defending the case was having to fork out from their own pocket to defend the action against them. In that case, they would be in contention over land if the case was won by the person availing themselves of legal aid and that person potentially went on to sell, as it was in this case, a site. Whether it is a matter for the courts or for legislation, there has to be consideration given to that issue.

I will move onto other issues, please, Minister. The steering group for the Desertcreat project seems to have gone excessively quiet. At one stage, probably around October, it was to come back to us with some recommendations and findings on what might happen with the Desertcreat project. Likewise, Mr Capper was here in December, and we were to hear back. I note from your letter that ongoing discussions are taking place between DFP and HM Treasury on access to underspends and the likes of that. Is there any more detail around one or both of those?

Mr Ford: The issue of the overspend, as I understand it, is still in negotiation between DFP and Treasury. I do not think that we have any more on that. Lian, are you in a position to update on Desertcreat generally?

Ms Lian Patterson (Department of Justice): The steering group met last week, and we took an interim brief on how the work on the stage two review is progressing. We are due to meet again at the end of February, at which stage it is projected that the programme board will bring its findings and recommendations to the steering group — the timeline was that that would be done by the end of February. The plan is that, very soon after that, the steering group will be in a position to give advice to the Minister and presumably to communicate more widely at that stage.

Mr McGlone: I am conscious that, by the time that the steering group even gets around to reporting back, you will be into another spend period with the Westminster moneys. It would not look too healthy or good to Westminster if they ask what we are doing and we tell them that a steering group is thinking about it. I suggest to the Minister that it would be appropriate to have something a bit more tangible in place to make a more robust case to the Treasury that there was something to spend money on. You have said that you have set up a steering group to look at it and that is still meeting, but —

Mr Ford: I certainly have not had heard any suggestion from DFP that the Treasury has announced any problems with that. It is the standard rule that any negotiations with the Treasury are done by DFP on behalf of any other Department.

Mr McGlone: I appreciate that, but you can also appreciate the case that I am making. If you were in the Treasury and were saying —

Mr Ford: I appreciate your point, and we will follow up with DFP to make sure that there is nothing further that we should do.

Mr McGlone: Thank you.

Paul raised the Railway Street service. I do not know whether you or your officials have had sight of it, but, last week, I presented correspondence to the Committee from Ms Tasker, a pharmacist who has helped some of those people. In the same vein, you would be spending money, but you would be spending money to save money — I am sure that you have heard the arguments, but it is very real, and she outlined that in considerable detail in her letter. The money that is being spent is keeping people out of institutional care, whether they have medical, mental health or other issues that people with addiction problems have. Paul has made that case to you as well. I would appreciate it if you could look at that case and at the letter from her. It goes into quite a bit of detail on the issues as she sees them as a pharmacist and how she has seen the service at that location helping people.

Mr Ford: I have seen and have responded to letters from a number of people, including a Ballymena GP. A group of people came to the Department and gave an extremely articulate presentation about their concerns. Frankly, that is why we re-examined things to see whether it was possible to do anything further for Railway Street. That is why we are where we are at the moment.

Mr McGlone: Thank you. The other issue that I raised was about NIACRO, and Mr Capper said that he would take that away and look at it. You are well aware of the valuable work that it does in integrating people back into society, helping young people with problems and the likes of that.

There are two elements. The first is the money. I outlined some issues about that in the last meeting, and you have probably seen the Hansard report. Essentially, what NIACRO does keeps people out of prison. We heard that a person in prison costs the public purse about £63,000 per annum. I worked it out that the total amount invested in NIACRO by your Department — I think it was about £400,000 — is the same as, approximately, keeping six people in prison. I have no doubt that NIACRO keeps an awful lot more people out of prison and away from care and gets them back onto the straight and narrow. Secondly, the very fact that NIACRO gets core funding from your Department helps it to lever in an awful lot more money. Other agencies and funding bodies look at it and see that the Department is backing it and investing in it. You know the way that it works as well as any of the rest of us. If core funding is coming from the Department, it is seen as stable funding — that government recognises that it is a good body that does good work and has invested in it.

My concern is that, first, NIACRO should continue its valuable work and, secondly, should have the potential to use the funding from the Department as a signal to the wider world of funding agencies and as a catalyst to bring in money.

I am concerned lest that, too, be jeopardised. Then, the overall impact would be not just the £400,000 from your Department but up to, I think, £3·6 million drawn from other funding agencies and bodies. Those were the figures presented to me. Have you any further thoughts on how that can be looked at, Minister? The last thing that you want to do is be penny wise and pound foolish by cutting £400,000 but consequently ending up having to spend perhaps upwards of £1 million in the Prison Service.

Mr Ford: First, I have to disagree with your arithmetic, not just because you quote £63,000 when just over £60,000 is anticipated this year.

Mr McGlone: Well, give or take £1,000. David, you are the man who knows the figures. I —

Mr Ford: That is fundamentally not the relevant figure. The cost per prisoner place is the figure that we quote. That is the entire cost of running the Prison Service, including headquarters and all other functions, divided by the number of places for prisoners.

Mr McGlone: OK.

Mr Ford: To put one more person in prison does not cost that much. The cost for one more prisoner is marginal; it is very modest. Similarly, taking one person out of prison does not save £60,000 a year; rather, you save a very marginal cost. Therefore —

Mr McGlone: How much?

Mr Ford: I do not think that we have exact figures, but, frankly, you are not talking about any change in staffing, headquarters, fuel and power usage, and so on. The marginal cost is probably the cost of the additional prisoner's food. We are talking about very limited figures. Although that is the kind of thing that a number of people have quoted — "This project costs so much, so weigh it up against £60,000 per prisoner place" — it is simply not a valid figure for the additional cost.

Mr McGlone: It would be very useful for us to get the valid figures, but, anyway —

Mr Ford: Frankly, it does not matter whether it is £2,000, £3,000 or £4,000. I am saying that it is nothing like £60,000.

Mr McGlone: Right. It does not matter. I thought that we were talking about the departmental budget, but that is OK.

Mr Ford: In response to the argument that you are making, I say that there is something of a difference between £60,000 and £4,000, and that is not much different from the difference between £60,000 and £3,000. The key point in being realistic about what keeping somebody out of prison saves per year is that it is not £60,000. It would be great if it were, but it is not.

On the issues of core funding, leverage, and so on, I have recently been talking to NIACRO and Extern, which, together with Start360 and the Prince's Trust, are coordinating some of their rehabilitation work. That is all part of the partnership that we are seeking with them. I am well aware of the benefits that we get from them. They are genuine partners, and we meet them on that basis. However, like everything else at the moment, hard decisions are being taken because of the Budget settlement that we have, and we are seeking to manage what budget we have as best we can.

Mr McGlone: OK. I stand corrected on some of my arithmetic, but I work only with the figures that I am given or not given — a wee bit like yourself.

Mr Ford: I do not know that anybody has ever asked us before now what the marginal cost is.

Mr McGlone: There you are.

To get back to this issue, what are your views on what can be done? I am sure that everybody is coming to you, but I have a particular interest. I really do value NIACRO's work. I have heard about some of the people, particularly young people, whom they have kept away from a career of criminality and kept out of prison again and again. In the longer term, if someone is repeatedly going to prison, I am sure that the cost will soon accrue, and that is a cost that none of us wants to see your Department or anyone else meeting, whether for one, 10 or 20 years, or whatever.

Mr Ford: And it is a human cost just as much as a financial cost.

Mr McGlone: Absolutely.

Mr Ford: As I said, we are talking to bodies that provide those sorts of rehabilitative services. We certainly welcome the work that they are doing together. For example, there is an application for European social funding for some of the rehabilitation work, and we have supplied letters of support. We will see what might come from the European social fund (ESF) to support some of that and then see what we can do to support it.

Mr McGlone: I am sorry for labouring the point, David, but do you mean partnership funding between your Department and the ESF? Is that the type of thinking that is going on?

Mr Ford: Potentially, if the bodies are looking for match funding. In the most recent conversation that I had about that, I was talking about recognising that the DOJ cannot necessarily provide all the match funding that they are hoping for. They are seeking to engage with other parties as well. We are having constructive discussions on that basis.

Mr McGlone: That is good to hear.

Mr Elliott: Thank you, Minister and officials. I have just a couple of points to make. Is any of the PSNI budget ring-fenced? I recall that, after the devolution of policing and justice powers, some money for security was ring-fenced, which, I assume, was in the PSNI budget. Is that still there?

Mr Ford: Yes. Glyn will keep me right. There is £29·5 million from the Treasury for security funding. It is for that specific purpose only. That is a continuation of what has happened over preceding years.

Mr Elliott: Is that the £29·5 million that you got in this year's budget and that is referenced in the document?

Mr Ford: Yes. It is the same figure as for this year. It averages between £50 million and £60 million. In total, it was £249·5 million, I think, over four years. That is an average of just over £60 million.

Mr Capper: Yes. We got about £200 million over the current four-year Budget period from the Treasury, and about £45 million from the Executive for the police.

Mr Elliott: For clarity, you are saying that the £29·5 million referenced in the Budget for 2015-16 is not additional to the original £29·5 million. It is the same £29·5 million that we were always getting?

Mr Ford: It is partly complicated by the pattern between what we were given by the Treasury and what we were given by DFP. In the year that is currently ending, we got a larger sum from DFP and a smaller one from Treasury towards that overall total of £50-something million. As I understand it, the £29·5 million from the Treasury is the same figure for next year as for this year.

Mr Capper: To add to that, there is a table in a paper in your packs that shows the budgets for each spending area. We note on that that it excludes the police security funding. On top of the funding listed there, you will see elsewhere in the paper that we note that the police will have a total of £58 million of security funding next year, of which, as the Minister said, £29·5 million is the Treasury resource amount.

Mr Elliott: And the other money is coming from —

Mr Capper: From the Executive.

Mr Elliott: How much is that? Is it another £20-something million?

Mr Capper: It is another £30 million or so from the Department's Executive allocation.

Mr Elliott: OK, and that is additional. Or were you getting it in last year's budget as well?

Mr Capper: We had £30 million from the Executive in 2014-15; that is, in this year's budget. That will roll forward —

Mr Elliott: The security money is pretty similar.

Mr Capper: By and large, yes.

Mr Elliott: All right. Regarding the Prison Service, are we still under the staff complement? My understanding was that, because of the exit scheme, we were running under complement. Is that the situation?

Mr Ford: We are running slightly low. I am not sure about the complete balance in the three institutions at the moment. Certainly, Maghaberry prison is the one that is somewhat below the standard complement.

Mr Elliott: Is it much below?

Mr Ford: I do not have the figures for that with me today. We will get them for you.

Mr Elliott: Given the reducing Prison Service budget, do you see that shortfall being made up?

Mr Ford: There is the issue of the balance to be struck between expenditure on overtime, to ensure that landings are appropriately staffed, and employing more staff. That is an issue that the Prison Service is now having to look at, given the budget that it now has to find.

Mr Elliott: OK. Has it given any indication of its preference? Is it finding more staff or paying more overtime?

Mr Ford: I think that there is always a preference not to depend too much on overtime, except in the short term.

Mr Elliott: I am sorry for labouring the point, but I assume that, irrespective of whether it gets additional staff or utilises more overtime, the Prison Service is still going to have some difficulty in meeting all its staffing needs.

Mr Ford: It has a fairly difficult budget settlement, the same as others do, yes.

Mr Elliott: What is the longer-term impact of that for the Prison Service and for prisoners?

Mr Ford: Frankly, that needs to be worked out by the Prison Service, now that it can see its final budget. It may be worth sending a briefing paper on the detail of that when it is worked through a bit further.

Mr Elliott: has the Prison Service given you any indication? Did it make a response to the Budget proposals?

Mr Ford: It did not make a response in that sense. It took part in the internal discussions. Given that I have my regular stocktake with the director general tomorrow, I do not think that this is the right day to be discussing the detail of it, unfortunately.

Ms Patterson: Another point to make is that prisons are some of the bodies that received a bit of an adjustment between the draft Budget and final Budget. On the back of that, they will be rebuilding their savings delivery plans and seeing what the impact is now on the basis of their final budget. That should be done very soon, and we will then be in a position to share that information with you.

Mr Elliott: OK. It would be useful if we could get that as soon as is reasonably possible.

My final point concerns the closure of courthouses. I know that that is not in your budget, but it is in the consultation on trying to reduce your budget. There has been an issue for quite a long time. I appreciate the point that you make that some cases are getting to, and through, the courts quicker than they had been. However, to most people, that is still not quick enough. There is a lot of work to be done on delays. Following on from Mr Maginness's point, how do you intend to manage that, given that there does not seem to be enough court space or enough availability of courts to manage the process as it is? Surely that is going to create more time delays.

Mr Ford: That paper that was put to me — the Committee now has the basis for the consultation paper — showed the scheme by which the current number of court sittings could be put into the buildings that it is being proposed are to be retained. More intensive use is required, but, at the moment, although there is a general perception of courthouses being busy, there are a number of cases in which not every courtroom in a courthouse is being used, even in the peak period from mid-morning until lunchtime. Therefore, there are options for us to ensure that there is maximum use of the rooms that are available.

Mr Elliott: If they are not being used at present, it is very difficult to see how their use can be maximised if you close a number of courthouses. Why are they not being used to the maximum at the moment to clear some of the backlog at least? I have to say that it seems to be very poor management if they are not being utilised to their full potential at the moment.

Mr Ford: It is the issue of the number of courtrooms available compared with the number of judges to sit in them and the number of staff to support the judges.

Mr Elliott: Sorry, Minister, but you said that not all the courtrooms are being used. Now you are saying that judges and their officials are not available. It is either one or the other.

Mr Ford: No. Sorry, you asked why the courtrooms are not being fully used.

Mr Elliott: Yes.

Mr Ford: It is because there are not that many judges and not that many sittings scheduled. The important issue is that, if we centralise in a smaller number of courthouses, it will become easier to manage court listings more flexibly if there are two or three judges sitting in the same courthouse at the same time and there are longer lists and shorter lists. If there is a judge sitting in courthouse x, using one of the two courtrooms, and there is another judge sitting 12 miles away in a courthouse that also has a spare courtroom, putting the two together provides greater flexibility to get the list operating more efficiently. It also ensures that you maintain only one building and use both rooms every day.

Mr Elliott: I still do not see how closing courthouses will speed up the process. Is the paper available to us?

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): It is on the agenda for later. We will have a discussion around it then.

Mr McGlone: Minister, I wish to follow on from the discussion earlier about whether increasing numbers of people were going to prison. You mentioned that there are a reduced number of prison officers. Is there a mandatory or acceptable prison officer: prisoner ratio below which you should not drop?

Mr Ford: The issue is the number of staff available in any house or on any landing at a particular time. That will vary at different times of the day. It will vary depending on the architecture of the building. For example, the square houses at Maghaberry require more staff to be managed safely than some of the newer facilities with wider, open landings. We saw lockdowns in November and December because staff were not available.

Mr McGlone: I do not know, so I am trying to find out whether there is a benchmark below which the ratio should not drop. In other words, when is it code red or whatever it might be?

Mr Ford: As I understand it, there is no global figure. The figure is for managing the individual units at any one time. Clearly, fewer staff are required if individuals are locked in their cell than if there is free association on landings and so on. There are differences through the day and differences depending on the configuration of the building.

Mr McGlone: There is no agreement or whatever with the Prison Officers' Association (POA) on acceptable levels of staffing.

Mr Ford: As I understand it, the POA is consulted on staffing levels. The issue is not the global number of prisoner officers employed but how management applies staffing in any house at any time.

Mr McGlone: I realise that there could be high security and all that sort of stuff, and I appreciate that. I ask because I do not know whether there is some sort of understanding, guideline, benchmark or criterion for that.

Mr Ford: As part of the work that flowed from the prison review team, a reprofiling exercise was done of the staffing requirements of the Prison Service. That fed into the voluntary exit scheme for prisoner officers. As I said, those matters change over time, depending on the precise circumstances of a particular house. They also change during the working week, as well as being different at night-time.

The Chairperson (Mr Ross): Thank you very much. That has been useful. Minister, you are staying on for the next session. Glyn and Lian, thank you very much for being here.

Minister, officials will brief us on the legal aid issue once you have firm proposals for the Executive, is that right?

Mr Ford: When we have firm proposals, we will be at the Committee as soon as possible taking Mr Poots's injunction in order. Thank you. Edwin.