Official Report: Tuesday 09 February 2016

Mr Speaker: I call the Minister to address his opposition to clause 4 and to speak to the other amendments in the group and his opposition to clause 8 stand part.

Dr Farry (The Minister for Employment and Learning): At the outset, I want to place on record my appreciation to the Chair, members and staff of the Committee for Employment and Learning for their extraordinarily efficient and speedy processing of the Bill's Committee Stage and the publication of their Committee report. It is particularly constructive in light of the pressing timetable as we approach the end of the mandate. That has of course been completed while giving full and thorough scrutiny to the Bill.

I turn first to my opposition to clause 4. Clause 4 deals with the proposed process of neutral assessment as it relates to industrial tribunal claims or potential industrial tribunal claims. I refer Members also to clause 8 because it has the same purpose except that it relates to claims or potential claims to the Fair Employment Tribunal. I am opposing the inclusion of those two clauses because, as drafted, they are more restrictive than key stakeholders have now suggested they ought to be. As the provisions stand, they allow an independent assessor, with parties' agreement, to provide a view on the likely outcome of a particular case that may be or has been referred to a tribunal. That would be in the context of the Labour Relations Agency (LRA) trying to promote a conciliated settlement between the parties.

The drafting of both clauses reflects the approach originally envisaged by my Department to the new neutral assessment service. It was always intended that the detail would be developed following a process of further engagement with stakeholders.

I now oppose the clauses because feedback received in response to the Employment and Learning Committee's call for evidence on the Bill has raised issues with the original approach, and it is right to take the opportunity to address them. There was concern that the implications for other services, particularly the arbitration scheme operated by the LRA and the early neutral evaluation process being piloted by the tribunals, had not been fully considered. On the basis of that feedback, I have re-engaged with the tribunal service and the Labour Relations Agency. Each organisation has a key role in helping to develop practical solutions on the delivery of neutral assessment, with the key being to provide parties with a clear sense of direction when dealing with a dispute.

Taking account of my discussions and the evidence to the Committee, I have concluded that the clause, as it stands, does not set the right enabling framework for the service. The proposed neutral assessment service will be the first of its kind in these islands. It is important to take on board points that have been raised about the framework under which it is to be developed and to improve the enabling legislation so that, when the service is established, it is fit for purpose.

In moving amendment No 6, I am proposing the inclusion in the Bill of new clause 9A, which is a rethinking of the enabling provisions originally in clauses 4 and 8, taking into account the issues that have been raised. Clause 9A is intended to replace those clauses and give the Department power to establish the service and to determine the means of delivery through regulations. Neutral assessment could, as originally envisaged, be delivered by the employment relations experts appointed by the LRA who have a strong practical experience of workplace practice. It could also be delivered by employment judges who have authoritative knowledge of case law and of what a person will need to do to succeed in presenting a case. It could also be that some other prescribed person identified in the regulations would be the most appropriate to deliver the service.

The regulations will be able to set out the means of delivery, the scope of the service and the steps involved. The regulations will be developed on the basis of evidence gathered from the forthcoming review of the LRA's statutory arbitration scheme; an evaluation of how the new early conciliation arrangements in the Bill are bedding down; and consideration of the effectiveness of the early neutral evaluation process that is already being offered on a pilot basis by employment tribunals. To be clear to the House, this is not a step back from the intention behind the policy, which is to provide people with an early assessment of the issues in their case so that they can make better informed decisions about how to deal with it. On the contrary, it is a recasting of the enabling provision to ensure that the legislative framework gives sufficient flexibility to develop a process that is fit for purpose and which works well for its users.

I will turn to the issue of tribunal deposits, which is dealt with in clauses 5 and 9. There are four proposed amendments that are relevant: amendment Nos 1, 2, 4 and 5. Clause 5 gives my Department broader flexibility than has been available to it before to make provision dealing with the placing of a requirement on parties to industrial tribunal proceedings to pay deposits in order to continue with those proceedings. It does so by amending the enabling power in article 11 of the Industrial Tribunals (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. Clause 9 makes a comparable amendment to the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998. The amendment fulfils the same purpose in respect of proceedings before the Fair Employment Tribunal.

During the Employment and Learning Committee's consideration of those clauses, members expressed concern about the potential for revised enabling powers to be used to introduce a requirement on parties to pay more than one deposit in a given tribunal case. My officials accepted that that was a potential use to which the revised enabling powers could be put. The question of whether there should be the option of requiring more than one deposit in a case was an issue on which, among many others, my Department consulted from July to September last year. My officials indicated to the Committee that no change along those lines would be made without fully considering the potential impacts on access to justice.

Members of the Committee remained concerned, however, that such a change could be brought about by regulations subject to the negative resolution procedure. I fully appreciate that changes to the tribunal deposits regime have the potential to be contentious. It is certainly clear from responses to the public consultation on developing more efficient, effective and modern tribunals that there is both opposition to and support for that type of measure. I think that we have a responsibility to consider options to encourage tribunal claimants and respondents to think very carefully before bringing forward for the tribunal's consideration matters in which they are unlikely to succeed. When weak claims or responses are presented, other parties can incur costs in contesting them.

I want a system that is focused on the areas that have substance and merit, and it is right that there are proportionate mechanisms to discourage people from bringing to our tribunals matters with little substance. At the same time, I fully accept that people have the right to access the employment tribunal system for a judgement, and, if they believe strongly that they have a case, they should be entitled to pursue it. That is why there are safeguards around a party's ability to pay when the imposition of a deposit is considered.

Having thought carefully about the issue and taken on board the points made in Committee, I seek the agreement of the House to amendment Nos 2 and 5, which, respectively, would make any regulations that utilise the deposits provision for industrial tribunals or the fair employment tribunal subject to the draft affirmative procedure before the Assembly. I believe that the amendments establish the safeguard that the Committee seeks, in that any relevant regulations will need to be positively endorsed by the Chamber.

I do not, however, support amendment Nos 1 and 4 tabled by Mr Flanagan, Mr McCann and Ms McGahan. There has been a public consultation focused on developing a better tribunal system, and policy decisions still need to be taken forward following full consideration of the evidence presented by stakeholders in response to that consultation. I do not believe that it is the right approach for us at this stage to rule out any possibility of regulations dealing with multiple deposits when the evidence is still under review. The proposed amendments would establish exactly that restriction, closing off options even if the evidence suggests that they should be explored. Given that amendment Nos 2 and 5 will give the House the ultimate say over whether regulations dealing with deposits are introduced, I hope that Members will agree with me that it is premature to close off options at this stage with regard to the enabling powers. We can now ensure that full safeguards are put in place to guarantee that the views of the Assembly are to the forefront. The amendments from the respective Members are not necessary at this stage.

Amendment No 3 relates to clause 7. As it stands, clause 7 amends the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 to provide for an extension of the time limit for making a claim to the fair employment tribunal to allow for early conciliation under the auspices of the Labour Relations Agency. In reviewing the clause, officials established the need for a small technical amendment. I seek the agreement of the House to amend clause 7 to remove from article 46(1) of the Fair Employment and Treatment Order a reference to statutory dispute resolution procedures that are no longer operative. The procedures were repealed by the Employment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. This is simply a tidying amendment to remove statutory references to procedures that no longer apply, and I hope that Members will support it.

Amendment Nos 18 and 19 are related. They apply to schedule 3, which sets out repeals. Amendment No 18 removes references from the Fair Employment and Treatment Order that relate to statutory dispute resolution procedures that were repealed by the Employment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. Amendment No 19 repeals provisions of the Employment (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 that relate to the same procedures. They are also tidying amendments, reflecting the fact that the statutory dispute resolution procedures in question have ceased to have effect.

I turn now to amendment Nos 7 and 8, tabled by the Chair of the Committee for Employment and Learning. Amendment No 7, which is new clause 9B, requires my Department to review the entirety of the Labour Relations Agency's conciliation service at the end of one year and again after three years following commencement of the early conciliation provisions of the Bill. It also requires the Department, having consulted relevant stakeholders, to lay a report before the Assembly setting out the findings of the review. Amendment No 8, which is new clause 9C, establishes the same requirements in relation to neutral assessment.

I am content with the objective of the proposed review clauses. While my Department, the Labour Relations Agency and the tribunal service consider the effectiveness of their work on an ongoing basis, I have no difficulty in general with the requirements. However, I have a concern about aspects of the proposed wording of subsection 3(c) in each clause. As the draft stands, the Department would be required, among other things, to report on the time taken for each case and the outcome of each case. Those requirements seem reasonable at first glance, but the phrasing is important. An analysis or report that touches on information about each individual case has implications for confidentiality. The LRA is under a legal duty to maintain confidentiality in delivering its services. Indeed, that duty is expanded on by clause 20. It is important that early conciliation is not compromised by a reporting requirement that touches on individual cases.

A similar issue arises in relation to neutral assessment. Although the regulations establishing that service have yet to be developed, there is a real possibility that confidentiality could be an important consideration. A reporting requirement that does not touch on individual cases but seeks aggregated information on cases would deal with this concern. I understand the Employment and Learning Committee’s rationale for tabling the amendments, and I know that the Committee has been made aware of the issue. I look forward to hearing the Chair’s remarks on the matter.

On a more technical point, if, as I hope, Members are positively disposed to new clause 9A on neutral assessment and the exclusion from the Bill of clauses 4 and 8, there will be a need to look again at proposed clause 9C to reflect that position. In conclusion, I look forward to hearing the views of Members on the amendments in the group.

Mr Swann (The Chairperson of the Committee for Employment and Learning): I am happy to speak on behalf of the Committee for Employment and Learning at Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill. First, I also pay tribute to and thank the staff and members of the Committee for their work over the time that we have put in in scrutinising the Bill. The Minister described it as an extraordinarily efficient use of legislative time through the Committee. I do not think that he has used such an adjective often in reference to the work of the Committee. We will take note of what he said, and I note from his opening comments that he has taken due cognisance of the recommendations and concerns that were brought forward by the Committee.

The Committee for Employment and Learning recognises the Minister’s aims in bringing forward the Employment Bill: to make provision for early resolution of workplace disputes and to create an assessment service; to introduce significant reform to the law around public interest disclosures; and to allow the Department to make provision for careers guidance, apprenticeships and traineeships through regulations. The Committee has always supported the Minister in that endeavour. On behalf of the Committee for Employment and Learning, I thank the Minister and his officials for his open engagement throughout the course of the Bill and in responding promptly to Committee concerns.

The Employment Bill was introduced on 7 December 2015 at the First Stage. The Committee wrote to key stakeholders and inserted public notices in the regional newspapers seeking written evidence by 21 December. The Bill reached Second Stage on 12 January 2016 before being referred to the Committee for scrutiny on 13 January 2016. At this stage, I pay tribute again to the Committee staff for having everything in process. It may be a legislative record that the Committee Stage started one day after the Second Stage was read in the House. A total of 10 organisations responded to the request for written evidence, of which four provided oral evidence to the Committee. Those four organisations were the Labour Relations Agency, the Law Centre Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Employment and Skills. The Committee greatly valued the input of all of the stakeholders in assisting the scrutiny of the Bill at Committee Stage.

I will first speak on amendment No 2, which amends clause 5. Clause 5 concerns the payment of deposits at industrial tribunals. The Committee raised concerns with the Department on 6 January 2016 about why negative resolution was being used for enabling powers relating to tribunal deposits as opposed to the draft affirmative procedure. On 20 January, the Department briefed the Committee on outstanding issues in the Bill and advised that it had taken the concerns on board and had drafted an amendment to clause 5 so that deposits would be subject to the draft affirmative procedure. The Minister confirmed that today in his opening comments. The Department advised that this would provide a full opportunity for Members to consider the merits of any proposals brought forward in this area. The Committee accepts the logic of that decision and is content with clause 9 as amended.

Amendment No 5 amends clause 9. Clause 9 is the same as clause 5, except for the fact it relates to deposits to the fair employment tribunal instead of industrial tribunals. The Committee accepts the Minister’s amendment to clause 9 to make deposits subject to draft affirmative procedure as opposed to negative resolution and is content with clause 9 as amended.

I now turn to amendment No 6, which concerns a departmental amendment to insert new clause 9A. The Committee was advised by the Department on 19 January that it was proposing a revised approach to the neutral assessment service. The Department was doing so on the basis of the evidence presented to the Committee on 6 January, in particular the concerns raised by the Labour Relations Agency about the operation of the service. Clause 9A is drafted so as to replace clauses 4 and 8 and give the Department power to make regulations conferring on a specified person power to deliver a specified process of assessment.

The Committee is content with proposed new clause 9A and that the Minister has opposed clauses 4 and 8.

I will now speak to the Committee’s amendments, which the Minister referred to. Amendment No 7 inserts new clause 9B into the Bill. Clause 9B will place a duty on the Department to conduct a systematic review of the early conciliation service. At its meeting on 9 January, the Committee heard from stakeholders about their concerns regarding the operation of the early conciliation service. The Committee therefore agreed to table an amendment to insert a review clause into the Bill. Clause 9B will review the operation of the early conciliation service one year after it commences and, from then on, the service will be reviewed every three years. It has come to the attention of the Committee that subsection 3(c) of clause 9B may breach confidentiality requirements. On 3 February, the Department advised the Committee that it would be content to support the Committee’s amendment, provided that the Committee redrafted subsection 3(c) of clause 9B and tabled it with the Bill Office to be debated at Further Consideration Stage. That will be debated at the Committee tomorrow, with agreement from the Minister.

If the opposition to clauses 4 and 8 is supported by the House and, equally, if the House agrees the new clause as tabled by the Minister in amendment No 6, I expect that the Committee's amendment No 8 will not be called. It is the Committee's intention to accommodate the changes brought by the removal of clauses 4 and 8 and the insertion of amendment No 6 by re-tabling an updated version of our amendment, as we are very keen to see that policy intention placed in the Bill.

I will now make a few brief comments as the Ulster Unionist spokesperson for employment and learning. We will be opposing clauses 1 and 4, as we believe that the draft affirmative resolution procedure will provide as adequate an amount of scrutiny by the House as was achieved by the Committee. There will be a move from negative resolution to draft affirmative resolution as proposed in the original Bill. We will be supporting clauses 2 and 5. That concludes my opening remarks.

Mr Buchanan: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill. Like the Chair, I thank the Minister, the Department and even the Committee staff for all the work they have done in bringing the Bill to this stage.

Very briefly, I welcome amendment No 2 to clause 5 and amendment No 5 to clause 9. Those two amendments are similar, in that they deal specifically with deposits: clause 5 dealing with industrial tribunals; and clause 9 dealing with fair employment tribunals. Those amendments will ensure that deposits will now be subject to the draft affirmative resolution procedure of the Assembly and that any regulations that utilise the deposits provision for either of the two tribunals will require Assembly approval before being made. I think that that cuts out any concern that there is on those issues.

Amendment No 3 to clause 7 is simply a technical amendment, which has already been outlined by the Minister, and is necessary to include provisions on conciliation to help employers and employees.

Amendment No 6 to clause 9A, which replaces clauses 4 and 8, will be welcome news for many stakeholders, in particular the Tribunals Service and the Labour Relations Agency. The flexibility that that will provide will allow for the structuring of the neutral assessment service to better provide and deliver for the purpose that it was designed for.

Amendment Nos 7 and 8 from the Committee have been laid out in detail. The Committee Chair mentioned them, and I do not intend to reiterate those points.
Turning to amendment Nos 1 and 4 in the name of Mr Flanagan, Ms Bronwyn McGahan and Mr Fra McCann, let me say first of all that we will be opposing those amendments. I have heard and listened to the arguments for the purpose of those two amendments and the concerns about the implications of having more than one deposit of £500 on any single claim. However, it is fair to say that this is a potentially contentious area and that there is support for and opposition to any change of this kind. That is why the Committee pressed for this to be brought in under the affirmative resolution process, rather than being placed in the Bill.

I believe that, should the amendments be made, they will close off the option on which a policy decision remains to be made in light of the outcome of the public consultation on the future of tribunals. I do not believe that we should be in the business of closing down the option that we have to look at those issues following the consultation process. That is why we will oppose those two amendments today, but with the assurance that the individual taking a claim is protected from multiple deposits, as that would require Assembly approval first. With that, I will conclude on this group of amendments.

Mr Flanagan: Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. I welcome the Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill, and I commend the Minister for getting it this far. As I said at Second Stage, he has had some difficulties in progressing it, but he is flying through it now. I commend the Committee staff and my colleagues on the Committee for the speedy and diligent approach that they took to scrutinising the Bill and progressing it through Committee Stage.

Robin highlighted the two amendments that the Committee has brought forward. I largely agree with what others have said, so I do not intend to rehearse the discussion that has taken place around the Committee amendments. Instead, I intend to focus my contribution on amendment Nos 2 and 5, which deal with the need for future regulations on deposits in fair employment and industrial tribunals to be approved by draft affirmative resolution, and amendment Nos 1 and 4, which are tabled in my name and that of my colleagues, which would prohibit multiple deposits against somebody taking a claim to either of the two tribunals.

First, I welcome the Minister's tabling amendment Nos 2 and 5. I proposed in Committee that we should ask the Minister to bring that forward. Everybody accepts the need for it. When the Minister presented his response to the Committee, he indicated that, historically, deposits at tribunals have not been a contentious issue and, as such, negative resolution may have worked well in the past. However, if we look at what is happening in Britain and how denying people the right to access a tribunal is being used to erode workers' rights, it is very clear that tribunals are becoming a contentious issue. There have been a number of legal challenges in England with regard to the whole issue of tribunals, fees and multiple deposits. So, the whole issue of deposits and fees at tribunals is an area of contention, and I am glad to see that the Minister has accepted the Committee's proposal to make sure that any future changes to deposits must have the consent of the House before the change is made.

In the past, that was not required, and we could have had a situation where a change was made to a deposit or a tribunal, and Members in this House could then have dragged the Minister or his successor back into the Chamber to reverse that decision. So, this is for good governance reasons, and it will send out clarity and surety to people who are involved in tribunals, which are a very complex business. The testimony that we received as a Committee about tribunals indicates that it is very complex, and people do not really want to go there, but when they do, it should be made fairly easy for them to do it. So, it is good that there will now be surety for people in that they will know what the maximum deposit is, and subsequent change will need the approval of the House before it happens.

As I said, I am concerned about the direction in which tribunals are going in England. There was a massive push to introduce fees, and I am glad that the Minister very quickly stepped away from introducing fees for accessing tribunals. In England, where the introduction of fees has taken place, there has been a 79% decrease in the number of tribunal cases taken against employers. I do not think that we want to go down a similar route. I think that it would be better if we could see a reduction in the number of cases that make it to court, but that needs to happen through the Minister's proposals for early conciliation and trying to get as many of these things settled amicably as early as possible, instead of just denying people the right to get their day in court, to get their good name restored and to get any compensation or back pay that they might be entitled to.

The introduction of fees or overly high deposits is a barrier to justice. It largely impacts on the most vulnerable workers in the economy, those people who do not have the same protection as others, who are in non-unionised workplaces and part-time workers. Therefore, it would disproportionately impact on women who are trying to take a case to a tribunal to get a fair hearing. So, I am glad that the Minister did not pursue the issue of fees, but the issue of deposits being a prohibitive barrier for people trying to access justice remains. Currently, a deposit of up to £500 can be imposed by a fair employment or industrial tribunal in cases where the person who will now be referred to as an employment judge decides that there is little possibility of success. If claimants wish to continue and lose the case, they will forfeit the deposit.

Clauses 5 and 9 establish enabling powers that would allow the Department to introduce regulations that are subject to negative Assembly procedure. As we have all said, the change will move that to affirmative resolution. As it stands, without the two amendments that we have tabled, the Bill would allow for multiple deposits to be imposed within one case, and the current maximum of £500 would be set aside. You could see a scenario in which an aggrieved or former employee takes a case to a tribunal for four, five or six different reasons. The judge, or chairperson as they are still called, could say that each of those claims was subject to a £500 deposit. Somebody who has recently lost their job, is working part-time, is in a very low-paid job or who has been badly treated by an employer may be subject to a deposit of £1,500, £2,000 or £3,000 depending on the number of claims.

A deposit of £500 is sufficiently high. If somebody has recently lost their job and wants to take a case to a tribunal, asking them to put up a £500 deposit that they might not get back is a sufficient barrier to stop them taking what employers claim are cases that have no prospect of success and that are only there to waste their time. I think that £500 is sufficient. Going down the road where £500 can be applied to each claim instead of to each claimant would present a massive barrier to people who are trying to access justice.

I hear what the Minister has said about any future changes needing to come to the House for approval before they take effect, but the reality is that we are being pushed down a road where workers' rights will be eroded. In the second group of amendments, we will deal with other issues that affect the rights of working people but, in this group, we are dealing with the rights of people —

Mr F McCann: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: I will surely, Fra. Go ahead.

Mr F McCann: The point that you are making is important. I accept that the Minister has said that he is leaving room for changes down the line, but who is to say who will be back here in the near future and whether they will hold to the promises that are being made by the present Minister? When we discussed this, one of the things that we were concerned about was the fact that there are many people who, by the very fact that they will have to pay the deposits, will shy away from taking a case. Justice is being denied to people who wish to go down that road.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for his intervention and I agree with him. There are enough problems with people being unable to get to a tribunal. Imposing multiple deposits on claimants would be a regressive step and we should not allow it. I accept that the Minister has said that it is not in the Bill, but it is allowed for. By passing our amendment, the Assembly would write into the Bill that multiple deposits would be prohibited. That would be a good step for us to take. It would send out a message that we will not implement any changes to tribunals that would dissuade or discourage people from taking cases, beyond having to pay a £500 deposit. We have tabled an amendment to put a rule into the Bill that multiple deposits would not be allowed. That is a fairly pragmatic approach.

The Minister has carried out a consultation on multiple deposits and other changes to tribunals. I might be misquoting him — it is a good thing that he has the chance to respond at the end — but I think he said that there was no evidence to support the introduction of multiple deposits. I do not see why some are opposing that change when there is no evidence to support the introduction of multiple deposits. In essence, they are a bad thing. As I have said on several occasions, they deny people access to justice, and that is not the purpose of the Bill.

Anything over £500 would be a substantial sum of money for people to pay. When you go to an employment tribunal to have your employment rights enshrined, you are not entitled to legal aid and, as a result of European directives, case law and a range of appeal decisions, it has become so legalistic and complex that most people need a solicitor or barrister to represent them. Most employers feel that they need that representation and, when one side goes in with a solicitor or barrister, those who make claims often feel that they need to do it as well. So, on top of the issue of deposits, there is also the cost of going to employment tribunals.
I am very keen for us to send out a message through the Bill that we will not allow multiple deposits. It is all well and good for the Minister to say that it is not a proposal on the table, but it might come back at some stage. If we make the amendment, it will stop any future Minister trying to bring in a regulation that would not be subject to the same level of scrutiny as primary legislation.

I accept that this proposal has not been subject to much, if any, scrutiny. It did not go through a consultation process apart from the one carried out by the Minister, in which no evidence was found that introducing multiple deposits was a good thing. It does not protect anybody and does not give employers better rights; all it does is introduce yet another barrier for workers trying to get to a tribunal to access justice.

The Minister, in his opening remarks, claimed that it was premature to close off the options for multiple deposits. I think that I speak for a significant number in the Chamber when I say that I will never support the introduction of multiple deposits to employment tribunals. It would be good to hear the Minister say that. He says that he does not want to close off the option: can he say that, in the future, he will not support the introduction of multiple deposits? We could have a situation in which a majority of MLAs supported their introduction. We heard Mr Buchanan teeter on the edge of being in favour of it, and we know there are conflicting views on the subject. Maybe he is taking the line of the employers who really want to abolish fair employment and industrial tribunals of any nature so that workers do not have any right to recourse through the legal system. I know that that is what some employers want, but I hope that not too many MLAs would adopt such a position.

I say to the Minister that affirmative resolution would be an improvement. I am glad that he has accepted the rationale that the Committee put forward, but it would be a mistake for the Assembly not to have a clause prohibiting the use of multiple deposits. That would be a very slippery road to go down, denying people the right to go to an employment or industrial tribunal in order to get back pay, to get an unfair dismissal overturned or for any other reason.

We all see how employment rights are being eroded all the time. It is important that we protect workers at every opportunity. This is not about making a change; it is about keeping what is currently enshrined in legislation. I am not saying that, at this stage, we should give workers additional rights; I am saying that we maintain what we have at present and do not allow a situation to develop in which former employees trying to take to a tribunal a case against an employer who, they feel, has treated them illegally are forced to pay a deposit of several thousand pounds just to get their day in court.

That is all I have to say on this group of amendments. I hope that the Minister has reflected on that and look forward to his response to the comments made.

Mr Diver: I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. As a new member of the Employment and Learning Committee, I come to this late. On behalf of SDLP Members, I express our appreciation to the Minister, the Department and the members of the Committee. Even from reading the genesis of the Bill and what has happened over the last few years, I know that considerable time, effort and energy has gone into it, and we would like to put that on record.

We made a number of points at Second Stage about the Labour Relations Agency, particularly on neutral assessment. Under the Bill, the LRA would be required to establish a neutral assessment service that, by agreement, could give disputing parties an idea of how their case might be decided should they not resolve it between them. It seems that, as stakeholders such as the Equality Commission expressed, an extra layer of relatively informal adjudication would serve only to protect employers from a burdensome process. We are glad, therefore, that clauses 4 and 8 may be removed and that the amendments seem to be more rational mechanisms to provide for neutral assessment and good practice. The question that still needs to be answered is whether that facilitation of early dispute resolution is as fair to those taking a case to tribunal as it is to employers.

We are happy that amendment Nos 7 and 8 and the new clauses providing for a review of early conciliation and neutral assessment are to be included. It is right and proper that we examine whether this addition is working in the interests of employers and claimants.

The LRA addition is not the only change to tribunal procedure. The Bill includes enabling powers that relate to tribunal rules, and it brings tribunal rules and regulations into line with current practice, permitting the chairmen of employment tribunals to be referred to as employment judges. Secondly, it includes enabling powers to allow the Department to specify in employment tribunal rules the additional circumstances in which a tribunal may order a party to pay a deposit in order to continue with proceedings. That measure is intended to attach a consequence to bringing claims or responses that have little prospect of success.

What again may be apparent in the second stage of the tribunal process is the potential for a greater burden on the claimant. As the Bill is only at its Second Stage, it is important that the House consider the implications of that extra requirement on the claimant and whether it may prevent access to a fair resolution. That is particularly true when an extra amount of money is required; for example, a deposit to proceed with the tribunal. I share the concerns that Mr Flanagan and Mr McCann outlined around deposits and how that could be detrimental to the interests of achieving justice for those taking a tribunal. I am sure that, as public representatives, we have all dealt with people who have had difficult experiences and been treated badly in work situations. We would not want to have anything in the Bill that will present a problem in taking it forward in the interests of natural justice.

We welcome the amendments, and I look forward to speaking on the second group.

Mr Anderson: As a member of the Employment and Learning Committee, I welcome the opportunity to speak to some of the amendments in group 1. The Committee has been favourably disposed to the Bill, and a lot of work went into the scrutiny of it. I record my thanks to the Committee staff and all who have helped to bring the Bill to this stage.

The Bill has been some time in the making, but we accept that there is a need to modernise employment law. If we are to be a growing economy, we want to see good industrial relations, which can only be in the best interests of employers and employees. We must also ensure that we reduce bureaucracy to a minimum so that businesses can develop and expand without the need to attend to endless regulations and red tape.

I will now offer a few comments on the amendments in group 1, which come under the composite heading of "Tribunals and assessments". Clauses 1 to 4 deal with industrial tribunals, in particular early conciliation and neutral assessment. I very much support early conciliation and neutral assessment, because we must do all that we can to reduce confrontation and encourage resolution. That overall aim is not affected by the amendments. The Minister has indicated that he will oppose clauses 4 and 8 and that they will be replaced by new clause 9A, which is tabled as amendment No 6. New clause 9A will provide the Department rather than the Labour Relations Agency with the power to make regulations for the neutral assessment service. The Department believes that it will therefore be better able to prepare for the setting-up of that service. The regulations under new clause 9A will be made under the negative resolution procedure and will cover issues such as what the neutral assessment service will consist of and how it might deliver.

Amendment No 7 would introduce new clause 9B, which deals with the review of the early conciliation service one year after its introduction and then on a three-yearly basis. The clause needs to be slightly amended to address confidentiality issues, but that can be taken forward at Further Consideration Stage. Amendment No 8, which would introduce new clause 9C, is not being moved today, and I suspect that we will take that back to the Committee.

Amendment No 2 was tabled by the Minister in response to Committee concerns. It amends clause 5, which is one of the clauses covering industrial tribunals. It deals with the power to require a party to proceedings to pay a deposit. The amendment would ensure that regulations dealing with deposits are subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, and we welcome that change.

Amendment No 1 would amend clause 5 by preventing multiple deposits. I oppose that amendment, because clause 5 provides an enabling power, and regulations will be made in due course. We should not tie the Department's hands at this stage in the Bill in the way in which amendment No 1 would do.

Amendment No 3, tabled by the Minister, is a technical amendment to clause 7, which deals with the extension of time limits to allow for conciliation. It makes a necessary change to clause 7(1), which amends the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 and will remove an obsolete reference to provisions that have now been repealed by the Employment Act (Northern Ireland) 2011.

Amendment No 5 relates to clause 9. It is also a departmental amendment and is similar to amendment No 2, which deals with industrial tribunals. Again, it has been tabled in response to Committee concerns about the need for affirmative resolution. It amends the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 to ensure that any regulations that are made around deposits are done on the basis of affirmative resolution.

I also oppose amendment No 4, which is an amendment to clause 9. It does for clause 9 what amendment No 1 does for clause 5, and I oppose it for the same reasons as I oppose amendment No 1.

Amendment Nos 18 and 19 amend schedule 3 and are technical changes that simply tidy up references to provisions that have been repealed. I leave my remarks on group 1 there.

Mr Easton: I will speak on group 1, and I thank the staff for all the help that they have given on the Bill so far. I support the Minister in opposition to clauses 4 and 8. I support amendment Nos 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 18 and 19, and I will speak on amendment Nos 1 and 4.

The Committee was briefed by officials, who explained that there was no need for amendment No 1 as draft affirmative procedure would be used for regulations on deposits. The amendment would allow multiple appeals, which have the potential to be bogus and would potentially allow multiple appeals to go ahead without the appellant having to pay for them after the initial appeal. It could be costly and time-consuming for the Department and could be open to abuse. The amendment is ill thought-out.

On amendment No 4, which is basically the same, the Committee was briefed by officials, who explained that there was no need for the amendment as draft affirmative procedure would be used for regulations. As with amendment No 1 — I have to repeat myself, unfortunately — this amendment would basically allow multiple appeals, which have the potential to be bogus, and would allow appeals to go ahead without the appellant having to pay for them after the initial appeal. It could be costly to the Department and very time-consuming. The amendment is ill thought-out.

Mr B McCrea: One of the things that are quite strange in the debate is the point on affirmative resolution made by Mr Easton and by the Minister in his opening remarks. I was really struck by how we were making such a play to move from a negative resolution as suggested in, I think, amendment Nos 2 and 5. The Minister made a great play to Mr Flanagan and the supporters of their amendments, saying, "You do not need to bring this in. It is not necessary, because we will do it by order or by regulation, or it will come to the Assembly and you will be able to have it by affirmative resolution". Here is the interesting dilemma. Members have spoken and have said, "We are not really happy with the way that you are going to move on this issue. We do not think it is necessary, and then we are going to move to affirmative resolution". What is the difference? I have just been talking to Wallace High School, explaining to them the difference and explaining petitions of concern. Affirmative resolution means that you will have to get a positive "yes" vote to make a change. Of course, any vote that is positive "yes" can be opposed by a valid petition of concern. The movement from a negative resolution to a positive resolution means that you will be able to stop any changes. We are getting more stasis in the Chamber, and we will not be able to make amendments that we want to make.

I apologised to Mr Flanagan, who realised that I was not able to be in the Chamber to hear his contribution, and I read the Hansard report of the previous debate on the matter.

Members are rightly concerned about multiple claims and whether there will be some impediment. That tells me that many things in the Bill have not yet been resolved. We have said, "Do you know what? We will deal with that later under affirmative resolution and look at it in the new mandate", but I do not think that we will be able to do that.

I give notice that I will oppose the changes to affirmative resolution. I do not think that that is the right way to go forward. We should have the debate here and now. If Mr Flanagan can marshal his arguments, he should be in a position to win his debate. This is the proper way to do it rather than pushing it to another date in another way when there could be unforeseen circumstances.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for giving way. It is good that he acknowledges that he was not here for earlier contributions, because some Members highlighted the fact that the Minister can introduce a change to the system, and, if the Assembly does not agree, it is up to the Assembly to call that in and to try to overturn it, which presents considerable difficulty. The best way to make changes of this nature, which can be controversial and contentious, is through affirmative resolution, whereby, if the Minister wants to make that change, it should be done with the prior approval of the House instead of the House overturning his decision, which, as I am sure you will be concerned, would present the place in a very poor light.

Mr B McCrea: I apologised for not being here. I thought that the debate might have run a little longer. In my discussions with Wallace High School, we listened to the debate in order to explain the implications of employment law for young people and our desire to get them jobs and employment in this part of the world.

The fundamental change from negative resolution to affirmative resolution brings petitions of concern into play. The Member raised the point, so he will be aware that our current set-up under the various agreements — the Good Friday Agreement, the St Andrews Agreement and the Fresh Start Agreement — is that the Executive have primacy. If you are a Minister, you are given executive control. I am sure that the Member and his party recognise that fact, and, for better or worse, it was a hard-fought-for political solution. It is not generally the case that this place can overturn ministerial decisions. In fact, what we have seen is the repeated use of petitions of concern.

To avoid doubt, I raise that issue here and now. This is a classic case of the dog that does not bark. If it has no meaning, why are we making such an issue out of moving from negative resolution to affirmative resolution? Here is what will happen: it will be impossible for the House to change any of these regulations in the face of a petition of concern. That is not the right way forward. I would much prefer to have an argument, discussion or resolution on the various points. Mr Flanagan should be entitled to win his argument, if he and his colleagues can do so without having to rely on some procedural motion.

I have made my points on the issues that I want to deal with. I cannot help but think that some things that we are trying to achieve have been lost in the haste to push the legislation through. Perhaps I will deal with those when I speak on the second group of amendments.

Dr Farry: In light of the constructive way that most Members approached the debate on this group of amendments, I will try to be relatively brief. I thank the Chair, members and staff of the Committee for the speedy and efficient way that they addressed the Committee Stage of the Bill. The Chair referred to several records that have been made. The Committee will no doubt be very much aware of those not only in the context of this Assembly but in the context of other legislatures around the world and how quickly it has dealt with the Bill. That was done without accelerated passage.

In reference to what Mr McCrea said, I would not suggest for one moment that we have rushed the Bill. The review of employment law started in 2012, and there has been a lot of discussion about issues in and outside the Bill in many fora. Today, we have issues on which it is possible to build a consensus across the House, and it is in that spirit that we should consider the amendments. In particular, the Committee has approached the Bill in a very pragmatic manner. There are issues for another day, and we will come back to them in due course.

I recognise the Chair and the Committee's understanding of the potential problem with confidentiality in proposed new clause 9C(3)(c). No doubt we will address that fully at Further Consideration Stage when we tidy everything up. I think that there is a mutual recognition that it is something that we need to address. I thank him for recognising the approach that we are taking to multiple deposits, which, it is probably fair to say, was the main issue of discussion in the House this morning in relation to this set of amendments.

The Deputy Chair of the Committee, Mr Buchanan, set the context very well when he spoke about the balance to be struck between the different perspectives on the benefits or otherwise of multiple deposits. It is worth stressing at this point that the Bill is supported by employers and employee organisations, that is, trades unions. They approach the issue from different perspectives, but there is a common understanding that the Bill works on everyone's behalf. This is not zero-sum politics, where a win for one side is a loss for the other. Of course, there are other issues that the interest groups want to be considered, and over which there are major differences of opinion, that are not in the Bill. Members are very much aware of them, and perhaps we will touch on some of them when debating the second group of amendments later.

I appreciate Mr Flanagan's comments on how the Bill has been taken forward. He acknowledged that the Department and I did not at any stage consider the introduction of fees for access to tribunals. I take issue, however, with his premise that, in some way, there is an agenda to compromise the rights of workers or that we are walking along a very fine edge. That is not my agenda. What we are trying to do is to find a system of employment relations for Northern Ireland that works in the interests of employers and employees more efficiently and effectively. Going to a tribunal, as is people's right and will always be their right, is the end point of the spectrum of interventions. It is in everyone's interest to address disputes further back along the spectrum, starting with prevention, which is about good practice in the workplace. Where disputes arise, you want to address them as much as possible through the different alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, and that is what we are trying to put forward in the Bill. That is the ethos behind the Bill.

There has been a lot of discussion, therefore, of the issue of multiple deposits and the shift. It has been the practice to handle multiple deposits through regulation. There is always a tension between what goes into a Bill and what is addressed through regulations. It is important for Members to bear in mind the distinction between a Bill, which is there for quite a long period — opportunities to amend primary legislation are fairly infrequent — and regulations, which can be changed more frequently. That is a factor in determining the level of detail that should go into a Bill. Issues to do with deposits have traditionally been viewed as suitable for regulations.

Obviously, and this touches on the comments made by Mr McCrea, if you move from handling something through negative to affirmative resolution, that changes the balance and how it moves through the House.
If you move to something having to be done by affirmative resolution, there is a risk because, when you are looking for active approval of the Assembly, a petition of concern could block a proposal from a Minister. However, that is a reflection of where we are in the Assembly. People want to change that in some ways, but that is the reality of the need to build a consensus around issues where people feel that there are potential breaches of people's particular interests.

That said, moving now to put in the Bill the outcome around multiple deposits is prejudicing the policy process that we are still undertaking. That process has not really been given full Committee scrutiny. In some ways, Mr Flanagan was implying that this was the sounder way of going about it. What is proposed today is actually curtailing people's rights and opportunities to have scrutiny of this issue. With a switch from negative to affirmative resolution, and indeed Mr Flanagan was to the forefront of this, the Committee has been very keen to ensure that the safeguard is in place that any decision will have to have the full approval of the Assembly, rather than adoption of the negative procedure as was the original draft of how we approach these things.

With that, there are full safeguards for the Assembly. Nothing is lost from the rights of the Assembly if it waits until the policy is fully evolved and full scrutiny has occurred. Frankly, to move ahead today with the amendments from Mr Flanagan and his colleagues would cut off any discussion of that process. That process, in all probability, will suggest that we do not have multiple deposits, but it is important that we listen to the stakeholders in our wider society and ensure that we find the right overall balance in how we address these issues. I stress that they are all about having a proper equilibrium between how we address the interests of employers and the interests of employees within a system.

We are doing all that we can, and we have avoided many of the changes in Great Britain. One of the pluses of having devolution in Northern Ireland is that we avoid many of the things that have impacted on the rights of individual workers that we have seen elsewhere. At the same time, we have to recognise that the process of tribunals can be very lengthy and very stressful. For companies, it can be a diversion of staff and other resources. For those taking cases, it can be a very difficult process as well. It can be a financially risky process, particularly if people feel obliged to spend some of their own resource on getting legal assistance. Therefore, it is in people's interests that we try to find that balance and try to invest as much as we can in alternative dispute resolution. I again urge the House to reject the amendments from Mr Flanagan and his colleagues, not because we necessarily disagree with where they are going but because they are not necessary at this stage and because, after the full process is done, the Assembly will still have exactly the same ability to influence an outcome.

Comments were also made on neutral assessment, first by the Chair and also by Mr Diver. I stress again that we are not moving away from neutral assessment. It has to be very much part of the spectrum of the different interventions that are available. We are simply moving from neutral assessment being telegraphed as something that the LRA would offer to a situation, with the amendments tabled today, whereby neutral assessment is there but we have a process to determine in which of the different types of bodies that are involved in employment relations it best sits. That could be the LRA. Equally, it could be the Tribunals Service, which is already piloting such an intervention, or a set of third parties.

I think that that covers most of the comments that were made at this stage. We look forward to moving to the second group in due course.

Mr Speaker: Before I put the Question, I remind Members that we have debated the Minister's opposition to clause 4.

Mr Speaker: I will not call amendment No 8 as it is mutually exclusive with opposition to clauses 4 and 8, neither of which stand part of the Bill.

Mr Speaker: We now come to the second group of amendments for debate. With amendment No 9, it will be convenient to debate amendment Nos 10 to 17, which deal with information, employment rights and traineeships. I call the Minister for Employment and Learning to move amendment No 9 and to address the other amendments in the group.

Dr Farry: I beg to move amendment No 9:

Dr Farry: I will deal first with amendment No 9, which is to clause 14. Clause 14 as introduced establishes regulation-making powers that require a prescribed person for the purposes of article 67F of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 to produce an annual report on disclosures. During consultation on that issue, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which is a prescribed person for the purpose of matters that engage human rights, was supportive of the policy proposal but was concerned that a requirement for it to report to the Assembly could be outside the legislative competence of the Assembly. Having reviewed the legal advice and engaged with the Secretary of State on the issue, I am satisfied that it is appropriate to bring forward this amendment so that, where a report relates to the functions of a body in the reserved field, it will be sent to the Secretary of State for laying before Parliament, rather than to the Department for laying before the Assembly. I ask Members to support that amendment to take account of the fact that certain arrangements remain outside the remit of the House. Without it, my Department will be unable to develop regulations that apply to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission or any other body that is in a similar situation with regard to accountability to the devolved institutions.

Turning to amendment No 11, which relates to clause 17, I acknowledge at the outset the context of the Committee’s inquiry into careers policy and practice and its desire for a statutory duty in relation to the provision of advice. As introduced, clause 17 enables my Department to make regulations concerning the impartial provision, by suitably qualified persons, of careers guidance that is identified as being in the best interests of those receiving it. I have been asked by the Employment and Learning Committee to strengthen the clause by bringing forward an amendment that converts the enabling power to make regulations concerning careers guidance into a duty on the Department to do so. Having given the issue some thought, I am proposing a revision that meets the Committee’s understandable desire to see action taken in that important area. The amended clause will require the Department to make arrangements to provide careers guidance for such persons as it considers appropriate. Such guidance must be provided in an impartial manner and be in the best interests of the person receiving it.

The new obligations on the Department do not require regulations to be introduced. The Department must simply comply with the requirements. However, the revised clause will still contain a regulation-making power. That is to enable the Department to deal in more detail with the provision of careers guidance, including the means of delivery and the qualifications of the persons developing or delivering it The clause commits the Department to taking action and extends flexibility to flesh out requirements in regulations, where appropriate. The Committee’s proposal will help to strengthen clause 17, and I hope that Members will support the amendment.

I also propose to amend clause 18, which deals with apprenticeships, to include provision in relation to traineeships. That is the purpose of amendment Nos 12 and 13. Traineeships will be the new professional and technical training offer for 16- to 24-year-olds, as articulated in the recently published youth training strategy, ‘Generating our Success’. A completed traineeship will provide an individual with a qualification equivalent to five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths. The purpose of including a reference to apprenticeships and traineeships in the clause is to recognise that, while complementary parts of the new professional and technical training system, they are different offerings. Traineeships will be available in professional and technical occupations at skills level two. Apprenticeships will be available in professional and technical occupations from skills level three to skills level eight.

If amendment No 13 is agreed in addition to amendment No 12, the clause will also specify that regulations may make provision about the components of apprenticeships or traineeships. Components are the various elements that need to be in place for a particular training programme to be recognised as an apprenticeship or traineeship. The components will ensure that there are clearly defined requirements with respect to apprenticeships and traineeships and will ensure a high-quality offer and consistency across different occupational areas.

I now want to draw Members' attention to amendment No 16, which affects clause 19. Clause 19, as introduced, amends article 33 of the Employment Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1999. As this is a somewhat technical issue, some context will be helpful. Article 33 of the 1999 Order requires my Department to make an order updating the maximum amounts of certain awards of industrial tribunals and other amounts payable under employment legislation for each year in which there have been changes to the retail prices index (RPI) between one September and the next. The amounts that must be updated include the maximum compensatory award for a finding of unfair dismissal and the weekly rate used for calculating statutory redundancy payments. Clause 19, as drafted, amends article 33(2) of the 1999 Order so that future changes to the relevant limits are to be made on 6 April each year, rather than, as is the current arrangement, "as soon as practicable". That provides greater certainty about when changes will be applied. Clause 19 also modifies the rounding calculation set out in article 33(3) of the 1999 Order so that changes in amounts are rounded up or down to the nearest pound. That ensures that they more accurately track the rate of inflation as measured by the RPI. Finally, clause 19 introduces a new paragraph into article 33 — article 33(7) — specifying that my Department may at any time make an order increasing or decreasing sums dealt with under article 33 without reference to the RPI. That will give the Department flexibility to review rates in a more fundamental way but with the safeguard that any order of that kind has to be laid in draft before, and approved by, the Assembly before becoming operational.

Since the Bill was introduced, there has been a realisation that, if amounts are revised by an order of this kind, there may be no need to make a further order that is linked to the RPI for that year. Amendment No 16 resolves that issue by providing that there is no need to make an RPI-linked order under article 33(2) where an order is made under the new article 33(7).

Amendment No 17 affects clause 20. Again, allow me to provide some background. Clause 20 introduces a new article 90B into the Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1992, prohibiting the disclosure of information relating to a worker, employer or trade union that the Labour Relations Agency holds in connection with performing its duties. Article 90B(2) specifies the circumstances in which the prohibition does not apply. For example, it does not apply if the disclosure is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation, or in a way that means that no one to whom the information relates can be identified. Article 90B(4) of the order makes a breach of the prohibition a criminal offence, punishable by a fine. Article 90B(5) provides that the prosecution of such an offence requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Following discussions with the Public Prosecution Service (PPS), the Department has determined that a minor amendment to the wording is necessary to provide the PPS with increased flexibility in taking cases of this kind forward. The change will allow the director or a member of staff, on the director's behalf, to institute proceedings. That is consistent with the approach taken by the PPS to a range of issues.

I will now say a few words about a number of proposed amendments that have been tabled by Members, and which deal with matters that are not currently provided for in the Bill. Amendment No 10 has been tabled by Mr Flanagan, Mr McCann and Ms McGahan. The amendment introduces clause 16A, which requires my Department to make regulations obliging employers to publish information dealing with gender pay imbalances. Where such imbalances exist, the clause requires employers to publish an action plan to eliminate them. The clause also requires my Department to publish an action plan on eliminating gender pay differentials. That is the essence of the clause.

That is an important policy area. The amendment essentially replicates section 78 of the Equality Act 2010, which applies in Great Britain only, albeit the relevant regulations have not yet been enacted. The Department with lead policy responsibility for gender pay is the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister. From May, the responsibility will pass to the new Department for Communities. At no point does the proposed clause 16A define "Department" which, in accordance with clause 25, must, therefore, be read as a reference to the Department for Employment and Learning and in future, therefore, the Department for the Economy. It also creates specific timelines for the introduction of regulations, which may prove to be unrealistic, especially with elections coming up, the creation of a new Department and the need for the Department to do the necessary policy work and consultation from a standing start.

In Northern Ireland, gender discrimination on the basis of pay is prohibited by EU law and by two separate but related domestic statutes: the Equal Pay Act (Northern Ireland) 1970 and the Sex Discrimination (Northern Ireland) Order 1976. The former applies to contractual pay, and the latter covers non-contractual issues, such as recruitment, training, promotion, dismissal and the allocation of benefits. There is no legal requirement in either piece of legislation for employers to publish information about the pay of their employees. Engagement with OFMDFM officials suggests that they are not aware of any recent discussion on the issue, nor are there any recent proposals to introduce such a requirement.

An Equality Commission code of practice published in 2013 provides practical guidance for employers on how to promote equality of opportunity and avoid sex discrimination in pay structures. The code does not itself impose legal obligations, but it gives general guidance to employers regarding their legal obligations under the Equal Pay Act (Northern Ireland) 1970. The code is, however, admissible in evidence in any proceedings under the Act.

An OFMDFM statistics and research branch publication entitled 'Gender Equality Statistics 2015 Update' contains statistics on pay and earnings that show that in 2014 the average median full-time gross weekly earnings for a male were £460·50 compared with £444·40 for a female. Given the clear differential between male and female weekly earnings, I consider that the purpose behind the amendment is a positive one. However, it has not been raised with my Department throughout the preparations for the Bill, it was not raised at Committee Stage and no preparatory policy considerations have been undertaken, consultations carried out or impact assessments conducted. It is also not something on which the Executive have agreed a position or that we should approach in a rushed or ad hoc manner.

I think that Members will be in agreement that we want to see the elimination of gender pay differentials. I do not believe that is in dispute. As a Department, that is not our current responsibility, so as Minister for Employment and Learning, I cannot take a formal view on the matter in that regard. It is something that is very much in the hands of the Assembly. However, I am personally sympathetic to the intent of the amendment. Perhaps, given some of the potential pitfalls that I have raised so far, I suggest that the proposers may wish to opt not to move the amendment today and to table a revised version at Further Consideration Stage.

I turn now to amendment number 14. The new clause 18A that Mr McCrea is proposing through the amendment would increase from one to two years the period for which an individual must be employed before having the right to make a claim to an industrial tribunal of unfair dismissal. As I indicated at Second Stage, my Department has consulted extensively on the matter, and I am satisfied that there is insufficient evidence at this stage to support what would be a very significant change to our system of employment protections. I appreciate that there are strong views in favour of changing the unfair dismissal qualifying period. However, there are also strong views opposing change. Without wanting to oversimplify the matter, employer organisations have tended to support a change, while employee representatives have opposed it.

It is clear that there is no political consensus on the issue. Unfair dismissal is a very serious matter. It can affect an individual's livelihood, future job prospects, physical and mental health and sense of self-worth. In the absence of clear evidence and support for a move away from the present position at this time, I cannot support the new clause.

Mr Ross: Will the Minister give way?

Dr Farry: Yes.

Mr Ross: I know that, last week or the week before, the Minister was overseas helping to try to attract investors to Northern Ireland to create jobs. From his experience of working alongside the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment or, indeed, Invest Northern Ireland, does he understand their view on whether employers, when they are looking to invest in Northern Ireland, look at more flexibility to encourage them to create jobs and, indeed, whether smaller, family-run companies will be more likely to create new jobs if the risk of doing so is diminished by giving them more flexibility when it comes to unfair dismissal?

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for his comments. Maybe that is slightly jumping ahead of some of the things I was going to say. First of all, with regard to my inward investment efforts, I have not really received much representation about employment law issues. It is, however, something that is cited by employer organisations as part of their concern at this time. It is fair to say, however, that the evidence base is not yet established. I will move on, but I will just say that the issue does not die today, so we are not in the situation where we have to take a decision on it either way at this moment in time. Looking at our competitive position internationally, I would say that the qualifying period for collective redundancies where more than 100 redundancies are being made is probably a bigger issue in how we stand out compared with international practice. That includes both our neighbours, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

Picking up on what Mr Ross said and more generally, I want to stress that, as I said at Second Stage, rejecting change now does not rule it out for the foreseeable future. If there is clear evidence and a degree of consensus to support it — there is not at present — a change to the qualifying period can be made through secondary legislation. I will retain an open mind on that issue and encourage other Members to do so.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Minister give way?

Dr Farry: Yes.

Mr B McCrea: Can you clarify whether that secondary legislation would be agreed via affirmative or negative resolution?

Dr Farry: We are about to come to that. It is by confirmatory procedure, moving to affirmative procedure. Clause 21 modifies the procedure for making such secondary legislation in that it ensures that no change can be made without the prior approval of the Assembly.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Minister give way?

Dr Farry: Yes.

Mr B McCrea: I want to clarify something about the move to affirmative resolution. What the Minister said raises the possibility of a petition of concern stopping the issue. His assertion that the matter is not finished could be open to a different interpretation — I shall put it that way — in that I think that this will be the end of the matter. If we vote no to my amendment and accept affirmative resolution for change, that is the end of it for ever and a day; we will not get it through. We should maybe address the issue today.

Dr Farry: The point that the Member makes applies as much to what is happening today in that the Assembly could very easily table a petition of concern against Mr McCrea's amendment. That situation has not arisen today, for whatever reason. Members will know that I set a very high bar for when petitions of concern should be used, but that could well have happened in relation to Mr McCrea's amendment. We will have a democratic vote on that and perhaps a democratic vote in the context of a future Minister making a recommendation through draft resolutions to change the qualifying period. I do not think that we are any better or worse off through not having the amendment agreed today than we would be if we left it to the affirmative resolution procedure.

I want to make it clear that we propose to move from the current situation where it is done through a confirmatory procedure to the use of the affirmative procedure. That provides safeguards because, as the situation presently exists, any Minister could take a decision that might ultimately not be agreed to by the Assembly but would nevertheless remain in place for a short time until the Assembly voted on the issue. That would, at the very best, create confusion and, at the very worst, create chaos in employment law. That is why we are tightening it up and making it the affirmative procedure. Under both the confirmatory and affirmative procedures, there has to be a positive vote in the Assembly. In that context, the situation does not change in any respect.

I stress that, given the degree of sensitivity around the issue, we should approach it with the ambition of at least trying to get consensus in the Assembly. It may well be that, as we look to employment relations and employment law issues as a package, we will sometimes see that it makes sense to liberalise something in one direction at the same time as we look to put in place other protections elsewhere. That is perhaps a scenario down the line, and we could see some of these issues moving ahead in that way. I stress that the evidence is not yet established on this. However, I certainly retain an open mind, and I hope others will do so as well. The Assembly may well wish to return to the issue in the future; indeed, a future Minister for the Economy may wish to move in that respect and table regulations to the Committee and the Assembly and see what happens in that regard.

I come to amendment No 15. By way of the amendment, Mr Flanagan, Mr McCann and Ms McGahan propose the adoption of new clause 18A, which would prohibit the use of zero-hours contracts, as defined in that clause. I explained at Second Stage that I support reform of zero-hours contracts. However, I cannot support this clause.

It is a complex issue, to which a nuanced approach is necessary. We are seeing increased casualisation in the labour market in Northern Ireland and other jurisdictions. Zero-hours contracts are one example of that increased casualisation. They may work for some businesses in which flexibility is important. For some workers, they also may be beneficial, and that has been demonstrated through various surveys. For others, they are regarded as being exploitative, where there is uncertainty over pay and hours and potential impacts on family life and benefits, such as accessing mortgages.

There is a strong case that our employment law should keep up with employment practice. Therefore, there should be proportionate regulation. In the proposals that I originally had in mind, I wanted to see an approach developed that would support the responsible use and regulation of contracts of that kind and that could tackle the abuse of such arrangements without eliminating reasonable flexibility and choice. My Department consulted on proposals around zero-hours contracts in 2014 and put to the Executive in February 2015 a paper proposing a range of progressive measures to regulate the use of contracts of that kind.

The proposed reforms were more radical than the recent measures in Great Britain. They went well beyond simply banning exclusivity clauses, which affect only a small minority of those on zero-hours contracts, with the potential also for the creation of a statutory code and rights to request a regular employment contract after a prescribed period. I regret that no agreement was reached at the Executive on the issue. It is for others to explain why that was the case.

What is proposed today in amendment No 15 is an outright ban on zero-hours contracts. There has been no public consultation on an outright ban. The Committee for Employment and Learning has not yet had the opportunity to have detailed consideration and scrutiny of the issues. There has been no assessment of the potential impacts on business or on opportunities for employment. Even without a detailed assessment, however, it is clear that an outright ban would significantly impact on our economy, affecting many businesses and those whom they employ. At the same time as addressing abuse, it would eliminate what currently works for employer and employee. The amendment lacks the kind of proportionate approach that I originally wanted to pursue.

Any realistic opportunity for considering that important issue during the present mandate has now gone. There needs to be time for the proper scrutiny of any measures around zero-hours contracts to ensure that they will do what they are designed to do; namely, to prevent unforeseen consequences, build consensus and secure buy-in from stakeholders. That is something that regrettably we do not yet have, or have the time to accomplish.

Indeed, some immediate risks could arise from an outright ban. Once any measure became law, employers would be faced with changing the nature of employment contracts, and that may not be feasible in every situation, particularly where flexibility is at a premium. There is therefore a prospect that an outright ban could lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. My understanding is that the thousands of bank nurses contracted to the health trusts in Northern Ireland could be construed as being on zero-hours contracts. There are 10,000 names on the Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register (NISTR) who can also be regarded as being on zero-hours contracts, together with those on a number of such contracts in the further and higher education system. Therefore, the import of an outright ban on zero-hours contracts, if that were to be adopted, would be to create chaos in the health and education systems.

I also draw the attention of the House to a possible flaw in the definition of "zero hours contracts" in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 — from which the definition in the amendment is drawn — whereby a contract will come within the definition, and therefore the protections of legislation, only if a worker is obliged to accept work when it is made available.

I appreciate that those are important matters, and I look forward to hearing the views of Members on the amendments in the group.

Mr Speaker: Before you sit down, Minister, can you confirm for the record that you formally moved amendment No 9?

Dr Farry: Yes.

Mr Speaker: Thank you.

Mr Flanagan: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Speaker: Too late. You are on the speaking list.

Mr Flanagan: No challenges here.

Mr Speaker: I call, then, the Chairperson of the Committee for Employment and Learning, Mr Robin Swann.

Mr Swann (The Chairperson of the Committee for Employment and Learning): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As Chairperson of the Committee, I welcome amendment No 11, which amends clause 17. Clause 17 concerns the provision of careers guidance. The Committee welcomed the Department's intention to introduce regulations providing impartial careers guidance on the back of the recommendations from the Committee's inquiry into careers education, advice, information and guidance. However, the Committee felt that the duty on the Department was not strong enough and asked the Department to strengthen clause 17. It agreed to do so, amending the wording from "The Department may make arrangements" to "The Department must make arrangements". The Committee is therefore content with the proposed amendment to clause 17.

Amendment Nos 12 and 13 amend clause 18, which concerns the provision of apprenticeships. The Committee welcomed the introduction of a statutory duty regarding the provision of apprenticeships but took on board the concerns of stakeholders who called for this power to be broader. The Department took on board these concerns and seeks to amend clause 18 to make provision for traineeships as well as apprenticeships. At that, the Committee is content with clause 18 as amended. The Committee supports the Bill and will watch closely how it is implemented.

During Committee Stage, the Committee did not have sight of amendment Nos 10, 14 or 15, so I will be speaking as the Ulster Unionist spokesperson for employment and learning. Amendment No 10 came as a surprise as it was not raised at any stage in Committee. On behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party, I am happy with the intent of this amendment, but I ask its proposers to take forward the offer that the Minister has made to bring forward the appropriate amendments to this current amendment, which would see it being more flexible and more user-friendly so that we would be able to support it and deliver the intent of this amendment. We are content to support the intention and the overall thrust of the amendment if it can be properly delivered at Further Consideration Stage.

The issue that amendment No 14 seeks to deal with was discussed in Committee, but, again, has been mentioned and contained in regulations. Mr McCrea said that issues do not have to die today, but I feel that, with this piece of legislation, neither the Committee nor the House has received the evidence or had the foresight to receive what was going to happen in regard to this amendment. I am also led to believe that, because of the concerns that have been raised, there may be moves to table a petition of concern on this amendment. I think that Mr McCrea has raised the issue of moving from draft affirmative to regulations being possibly brought about in the House today. Rather than the cut and thrust of the debate and the democratic process being brought forward, Mr McCrea, you have been the author of your own destiny in this case.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Member give way?

Mr Swann: Yes.

Mr B McCrea: Before we move off that issue, the elephant in the room is that the qualifying period for unfair dismissal is a big issue. It is something that people have very strong views on. I have to say that I am surprised that the Ulster Unionist Party, which I previously thought was a party that supported the conservative position, is now taking a different view from the one that it had taken before. I am sure that, as Mr Ross mentioned, there are many small owner-run businesses that have supplied evidence to him and his Committee and his party to say that this is a very serious issue. I am far from being a prophet of my own doom; I actually think that this is where we should be having the debate. This is what we want to do. If a petition of concern comes forward, that is the process, but we should have the debate front and central. This is important. This is not a knee-jerk reaction. This is something that we need a considered opinion on.

Mr Swann: I fully agree with the Member's comments. He talks about the Ulster Unionist position, and I remember attending an Ulster Unionist group meeting where he and I had exactly the same conversation on whether we should move to two years rather than one year. At that stage, the party retained the one-year position, if I am correct. I think that he was Chair of the Employment and Learning Committee at that stage. When the first section of the Bill came forward, that was one of the issues that was raised. I think that the Member knows well my position and where we, as the Ulster Unionist Party, agreed our position at that time. The concerns of small employers and all of the rest of it were taken into consideration, and I think that that is where the Minister has given the opportunity here not to close the door on this. It will be unfortunate if a petition of concern does come down to bring that finality into this debate, because the abuse of petitions of concern in the House, which the Member has raised, has killed debate and continues to do so on this very issue and other issues.

We will be opposing amendment No 15. That is not because we do not want to see the abuse of zero-hours contracts ended. It is because we do not think that this amendment will bring about the intention that the Member sees in it. In regard to the concerns that have been mentioned, this amendment would introduce an outright ban on zero-hours contracts.

As Chair and Ulster Unionist spokesman on employment and learning, I know that concerns have been raised with regard to health bank nurses and supply teachers. Employers also raised concerns about what the amendment would deliver. One union, in particular, raised concerns about how the amendment would affect some of its employees and feels that the totality of zero-hours contracts and the problems that they bring about have not been fully addressed. That goes back to why the Bill was delayed for so long: this was one of the contentious issues on which the Executive parties could not agree. The opportunity to manage and bring about regulations on zero hours is not a problem for the House, but it was a problem that could not make its way out of the Executive.

The amendment is also somewhat lacking is in its definition of zero hours. Looking at it from a layman's point of view, I could see employers who wanted to abuse the system moving very quickly to annualised hours contracts and one-hour-a-year contracts. There are options that move away from the very tight definition that the Members have brought to the House. That is why we will oppose amendment No 15. That concludes my comments.

Mr Buchanan: In this group, I welcome amendment Nos 11, 12 and 13. Amendment No 11 deals with impartial careers guidance, and amendment Nos 12 and 13 not only deal with apprenticeships but take into account traineeships, which were not originally in the Bill.

As the Committee Chair said, amendment No 10 has come as something of a surprise, in that it never appeared before the Committee, and there was no discussion about it at any time in the Committee. The Committee is where it should have come to be scrutinised and debated. However, we as a party are of a mind to support the amendment, if it is moved. I have to add that, as the Minister said, changes need to be made to it, and we would like its supporters to take the opportunity to make those changes in order to make it more amenable.

Amendment No 14 changes the qualifying period from one year to two years. Members will know that opinion on the matter is much divided. A lot of people feel that it is a missed opportunity, and that was stated at Second Reading. The Confederation of British Industry, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Engineering Employers' Federation were among those to express disappointment, saying that they felt that the Bill was a missed opportunity to extend the qualifying period for unfair dismissal. They argued that it would ensure Northern Ireland's competitiveness and encourage inward investment and indigenous growth, and we cannot turn a blind eye to that. Opinion has been divided, but we see from the Engineering Employers' Federation and from all the folk involved in business that they are not really that divided on it. All say that it would be good to move from a one-year to a two-year period. We are, therefore, minded to support the amendment that the Member has brought to the House today.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for giving way. Perhaps he disagrees with what his party colleague, the Member for East Antrim, said on the matter. I am talking about Mr Hilditch, not Mr Ross. At Second Stage, Mr Hilditch said:

What has happened to the DUP policy since that stage?

Mr Buchanan: There was no consensus at Second Reading, and the Minister said that he would put forward a provision to deal with it. When we look at the issue before us, we see the strong concern coming from industry, and we cannot turn a blind eye to that. If we do, it will be at our peril, and we will be the losers in the long term. That is one of the reasons why we are of a mind to support the amendment.

Amendment No 15 relates to zero-hours contracts. We will not support that; we will oppose it. There has been no consultation on an outright ban on zero-hours contracts or assessment of the potential economic and equality impacts of such a ban. Even in the absence of an impact assessment, it is clear that an outright ban on such contracts would undoubtedly have significant impacts on many businesses and those whom they employ. An outright ban, as suggested by some, would have a disproportionate impact on flexibility in the economy and potentially remove some employment opportunities. Furthermore, employers could use diverse new means to obtain a measure of flexibility that circumvent any legislative response to the current situation.

Zero-hours contracts work well in some cases, although we are not turning a blind eye to the fact that there are some cases where they do not work as well as they should. That is why, as the Chair of the Committee said, we are not saying that the matter should not be amended, looked at or talked about and changed in some form or other, but banning it outright would close the door on that and have a detrimental impact on many small and medium-sized businesses across Northern Ireland. Therefore, we will oppose the amendment.

Mr Speaker: The Business Committee has arranged to meet at 1.00 pm today. I propose, therefore, by leave of the Assembly, to suspend the sitting until 2.00 pm. The first item of business when we return will be Question Time. The first Member to speak when we resume the debate will be Phil Flanagan.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): We will start with listed questions. I have to tell Members that questions 5 and 13 have been withdrawn.

Dr Farry (The Minister for Employment and Learning): The new Northern Ireland apprenticeship strategy, Securing our Success, was published in June 2014, and the new youth training strategy, Generating our Success, was published in June 2015. Together, those strategies set out an ambitious programme of reform that has the potential to radically transform how professional and technical training is delivered.

My aim is to establish a world-class skills system that supports and meets the ambitions of our young people and provides Northern Ireland with a skills base capable of driving economic growth. Consistent with the best systems internationally, employers will be firmly in the lead of the reformed system. Through sector partnerships, they will work with curriculum experts to develop and agree the curriculum and content that will form the core of apprenticeships in each occupational area.

The new strategies are focused on raising quality, supporting a breadth of learning, underpinning progression and ensuring portability to deliver skills that will be recognised nationally and internationally as an exemplar. My Department is progressing with a number of projects that will allow the new system to be fully operational from September 2017.

Programme-led apprenticeships, which were introduced in 2009, were originally intended as a short-term contingency arrangement for apprentices who had been made unemployed as a result of the developing economic downturn. The aim was to provide participants with the knowledge, understanding and competence to work at a high level in their chosen occupation. Unfortunately, the downturn lasted much longer than was originally thought. The programme-led apprenticeship programme was successful in ensuring that young people continued to train at a time when there were no job opportunities. Fortunately, we are in a different place economically, and the new programme has been developed to support our economy and employers.

Mr Newton: I thank the Minister for that very detailed answer. I acknowledge that he has recognised the potential of the employer-led scheme, which, I understand, results in 80%-plus of apprentices ending up in employment with their host company. Why are we not seeking to further expand the employer-led scheme? Employers recognise that they are meeting the needs of the industry, they have an input, and jobs are being offered to those who take part.

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for his comments. I assure him that our ambitions in that respect have no limits whatsoever. We want to see as much training happening through the apprenticeship system as possible. In essence, any professional or technical area can be addressed through the apprenticeship approach.

As the Member will appreciate, an apprenticeship is a job: someone will be in employment and will be trained on and off the job. Employers are in the driving seat. They determine where apprentice opportunities will be created, because, in essence, they are creating jobs. In the past, apprenticeships were awarded as part of contracts to suppliers who then tried to create jobs in particular areas. That is not the most efficient way of engaging with the market, particularly in evolving high-growth areas.

I suggest to the Member that we have the precise mechanisms in place. Our challenge is to make sure that we implement the strategy and get as much buy-in from employers as possible.

Mr F McCann: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. I thank the Minister for his answer to date. Employer-led apprenticeships were discussed at the Committee over a lengthy period. I raised some concerns. Whilst it is a good scheme, quite a number of people who would fit in the NEETs strategy would find it difficult to take part in it. How do you ensure that it does not move on and that those people are not left behind? I think that those are the types of people that Robin might have been talking about also.

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for his comments. It is important that we see our new apprenticeship system as part of a full spectrum of interventions. In addition to the new apprenticeship strategy, which covers level 3 through to level 8, we have the new youth training strategy at level 2. That is designed to address the needs of those young people who leave school, who perhaps do not yet have the qualifications to engage in the world of work, but who very clearly have that potential. Beyond that, we have to look at how we can assist those who are not eligible for the youth training scheme. That is why what we do with the NEETs strategy is so important, and that is supported by the European social fund at present.

In all those things, we have to recognise that we have to encourage people to progress and fulfil their potential, whatever that may be. We certainly have a challenge to ensure that we move as many people up the skills ladder as we possibly can. We know that, in the years to come, the profile of job opportunities will move more in the direction of intermediate and high-level skills and that opportunities for those with lower-level skills are set to diminish quite radically.

Mr Cochrane-Watson: I thank the Minister for his answer to the initial question. Does he believe that, as changes to apprenticeships alter the image of apprenticeship opportunities, that will then engage parents in the belief that apprenticeships are a positive means of getting their sons and daughters into the job market?

Dr Farry: I very much concur with what the Member is suggesting. It is important that we establish apprenticeships as a pathway with the same parity of esteem as the more traditional routes into college or university. Indeed, an apprenticeship will often be combined with college or university support, depending on the type of apprenticeship and the level at which it is offered. We should not see a hierarchy, whereby, for example, in the case of A levels, people who do not get into university then consider an apprenticeship. Apprenticeships have to be seen as being on a par. That is why we are developing a central service. We are trying to develop a portal that will market apprenticeship opportunities to young people. We are reforming the careers and guidance policy in Northern Ireland so as to ensure that we have a much more modern system, and one informed by where the opportunities lie in our economy.

We need to get the message out that people can often reach even greater heights, in society and where they are in the economy, through going down the apprenticeship route rather than the more traditional and familiar route. As the Member suggests, it is important that we convince parents of that change in approach. It is a much more lucrative approach, for the individual and for the economy as a whole.

Ms Lo: The Minister mentioned the new strategy for apprenticeships. What different outcomes can we expect from it?

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for her question. It is very much about how we can support the economy of Northern Ireland. Apprenticeships are not simply there as an end in themselves. It is about providing a much more efficient and effective way of delivering outcomes. We know that employers have often expressed frustration at not getting the particular skills that they require. This is the most effective way of remedying that situation. We also know, from the perspective of young people, that it will be the most reliable means by which they can find and sustain employment.

From looking around the European Union, we see that the societies that invest the most in apprenticeships and vocational training are those that are the most prosperous and have the lowest levels of youth unemployment. There are some very clear lessons for us to learn about what we can aspire to.

Dr Farry: The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced his intention to introduce an apprentice levy for all UK private- and public-sector employers from April 2017. The levy will be set at half of 1% of an employer's total wage bill. All eligible local business and public-sector organisations will pay the levy, and all employers with an annual pay bill of over £3 million per annum are expected to be net contributors. Levy proceeds are to be used specifically to fund apprenticeship training in England. Apprenticeship policy is a devolved matter, so Northern Ireland and the other devolved Administrations will receive a proportionate share of the proceeds.

Although I fully support the development of a wider range of apprenticeships in both the private and public sector, in many ways, the UK Government's proposed apprenticeship levy could be viewed as an additional tax to business not only in Northern Ireland but across the UK. Furthermore, it has the potential to undermine the different apprenticeship strategies in each of the devolved regions and cut across the policymaking prerogatives of each of the Administrations on what is a devolved matter.

Northern Ireland employers will be expected to pay the apprenticeship levy, and I wish to ensure a fair and equitable reimbursement of the moneys raised to Northern Ireland and the other devolved Administrations.

I have held discussions with the Minister of Finance and Personnel, with my counterparts in Scotland and Wales, and with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Skills Minister to press Northern Ireland's position and to ensure that any moneys due to Northern Ireland as a result of the levy's introduction are available to the new Department for the Economy to underpin the reforms that we are making to Northern Ireland's apprenticeship system and to support the wider skills needs of the economy.

Mr Lunn: I thank the Minister for his answers so far. Does he feel that the levy has the potential to undermine our local apprenticeship strategy and, if so, in what way?

Dr Farry: The strategy was designed by the Treasury as a means of raising additional revenue as part of its efforts to pay down the overall UK deficit. It is also based around the nature of the apprenticeships strategy in England, with very little consideration of the impact on the strategies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, they are fixated on reaching the target of three million apprentices, and there is a danger that they end up badging any form of in-work training as an apprenticeship. You could have a bizarre situation where people are given certificates as an apprentice without ever knowing that they have been on an apprenticeship-type course. They are in a race around volume, with very little consideration of quality.

In the three devolved regions, we are very focused on building up quality brands around apprenticeships and ensuring that we address the particular needs of our economy. There will be a distortion in that, in Northern Ireland, some of our large companies will pay an amount of money in excess of their capacity to spend the equivalent on training. They will feel that, in essence, they have been taxed, and that will be viewed as anticompetitive. Frankly, it chips away at the positive intervention that we are making on lower-level corporation tax. We will see the potential for distortion for our local businesses and how they will spend their money and distortions in how the Northern Ireland Executive allocate their money. That will undermine our policy intent in what we are trying to do as a devolved Administration.

Mr McCrossan: Which industries or sectors have proved most supportive of the levy?

Dr Farry: I am not aware of any sectors being supportive of the levy. It is, essentially, a tax on business, and it is not necessary. Our system for funding apprenticeships is not so fundamentally broken that we have to move to a levy. The genesis of this lies with the UK Treasury wanting to rebalance the UK's public finances and seeing this as one route by which they can do it. This will have major impacts on different types of business, and those impacts will be greater on some businesses than on others. If you are in a very high added-value business and you are paying, for example, quite high wage bills and have low training needs, the levy will hit you disproportionately. It may affect others to a lesser extent; for example, if you are in a business in a declining sector such as the steel industry in parts of the UK where there is no real ambition to hire new staff, there is not the same onus on training as there would be in other fast-growing sectors. Irrespective of the nature of a business, however, or the nature of that aspect of the economy, businesses will, nonetheless, be taxed on the basis of the overall size of their wage bill. There is deep concern across the board felt by the business organisations and the trade unions, and they are united in their opposition to it.

Mr Newton: I thank the Minister for his confirmation that there will be a levy in 2017 on the various sectors of industry. Is this not really the first step in going back to the establishment of the sector skills councils or the industrial training boards?

Dr Farry: I have sympathy with what the Member is saying. At first glance, the notion of a levy seems a much more benign concept than a tax. If we had a levy that was hypothecated towards skills interventions on a stand-alone basis, that would be a good intervention. The difficulty here is that this will be a levy on business that will be paid by businesses in Northern Ireland. At the same time, we will suffer a negative Barnett consequential because there will be a massive cut to the budget for BIS in London, which will filter down to the each of the devolved Administrations. What we are seeing is simply a shift in how training will be funded but in a way that distorts our policy preferences. It will add a significant degree of administration at the same time, which is a leakage of money out of the system that could be better spent at the front line on training.

Dr Farry: The consultation on the employment strategy for people with disabilities closed on 27 November 2015. A total of 58 responses were received: 32 from individuals and 26 on behalf of organisations. In addition, information was gathered at four public consultation events and two smaller events with specific disability groups. The consultation period has enabled all interested parties to submit official responses and provide feedback on each of the key themes and subsequent proposals. This has been broadly very positive, and a number of constructive suggestions have been made that will inform the final strategy document. The Committee for Employment and Learning has been briefed by my officials and provided with a detailed summary and findings. The same will apply to the disability strategic working group, which helped to develop the strategy.

The Big Conversation was launched on 15 September as an innovative approach to engaging with people about the sustainability of our higher education system. It concluded on 23 October. During the Budget process for 2016-17, I wrote to my Executive colleagues to report on the findings of the Big Conversation, to outline the extent of our funding challenges and to present a range of potential long-term solutions. That paper has led to some encouraging budget outcomes for that financial year, which I hope can prevent further cuts to higher education, despite an overall reduction in my Department's equivalent budget. However, looking ahead, it will not be enough simply to protect what we have in terms of skills provision, and further consideration of the longer-term options available to us will be required in the context of the next comprehensive spending review.

My Department expects to publish a response to both of these exercises in the coming weeks.

Mrs D Kelly: I thank the Minister for his answer. Perhaps the Minister could share with the House his thoughts on moving forward, in terms of the scope, the nature and the criteria and how he could undertake to collaborate, particularly with the Minister of Health, given that many people who have attended day-care facilities will be finding a reduction in their services and seeking to have more positive lives and meaningful support in the community through further and higher education.

Dr Farry: It is important that Members understand what the disability employment strategy seeks to do. It is about supporting people with employment and will be very focused on those employment outcomes. It will, however, be part of a wider landscape of interventions that will work in collaboration with other Departments, as we look to ensure a much more rounded outcome. In that respect, I draw attention, first of all, to the Executive subcommittee's work on learning disability transitions and the fact that an action plan is in place to facilitate that. Secondly, we have an economic inactivity strategy that focuses to a considerable extent on disability issues. Within that, projects have already been identified that involve collaboration between other Departments and the Department of Health on the type of outcome that the Member suggests. While that strategy has been agreed by the Executive, there has been no significant funding allocated to it as yet. That is a situation that I find troubling, and I encourage those who are in office after May to consider remedying that as a priority.

Ms McGahan: Go raibh maith agat. I thank the Minister for his response so far. In the context of the Big Conversation, does the Minister acknowledge the absolute importance of part-time higher education and the significant impact that it has on the lives of individuals, in particular women, in providing opportunities?

Dr Farry: I certainly acknowledge the importance of the part-time route for higher education and postgraduate study. The Member will be aware that, last year, we engaged in a consultation on different funding models for that, and I have informed the House about how, in principle, I wish those to go forward. I hope to confirm that position in the coming weeks, and discussions are ongoing with the Treasury and the Student Loans Company on how we can implement the preferred way forward on the back of that consultation.

We absolutely want to see an increase in part-time study. That ties in, for example, with the apprenticeships strategy as a means by which we will ensure that people are increasingly trained to the high level required by businesses and other organisations.

Mrs Dobson: These are more consultations, Minister, on an issue, especially in relation to people with disabilities, where action is long overdue. The Minister is aware of my support for organisations such as One Eighty Restaurant in my constituency of Upper Bann, which helps to provide employment opportunities for young people with disabilities. What reassurance will be provided to them and others that, rather than a consultation followed by another consultation, they will get the help and support that they desperately need?

Dr Farry: I dare say that the Member makes some rather spurious comments. On the one hand, she asks me to reassure an organisation that its interests will be taken on board, and then she damns the process of consultation, which is designed for that very purpose. Organisations come forward with their points of view; the first draft of a strategy is published; and then we hear the feedback and make whatever adjustments are required. We have not had multiple consultations about any of these things. We have a disability employment strategy that has gone out to public consultation. There is a requirement on us to do that; if we do not, we will be judicially reviewed. That is how government does business. I am committed to delivering the strategy before I leave office, and it will be delivered before then. We have had action, not talk — we have had real action on the issue.

Dr Farry: With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to group questions 4 and 8.

My Department received the latest version of the outline business case on 22 January 2016. My officials are reviewing it and looking at the extent to which previous comments provided on 1 July 2015 regarding the version submitted in June 2015 have been addressed, as well as considering any additional information provided. A formal response will issue on the latest case as soon as possible.

Mr Diver: Minister, thank you for your answer. Given the previous false dawns in relation to the expansion of the Magee campus, oversight and stewardship of the business case will be critical in the uncertain context of moving from one Department to a new one. Will the Minister assure the House that the same team will work on the business case and that it will be followed up assiduously?

Dr Farry: The same unit of officials will work on this when it transfers to the new Department. There may well be some change in personnel, as is the case in every aspect of government, but there will be no more or less continuity in this than in anything else.

I take issue with the Member's point on "false dawns". I certainly have not been involved in any false dawns in all of this. I have made it clear all along that I support the expansion of Ulster University at Magee and would like it to happen. It is clear that we need to produce more graduates, particularly those linked to the needs of our economy. However, I have also been very clear all along that we cannot expand the University of Ulster at Magee unless, collectively, the Assembly is prepared to ensure that more resource is allocated to higher education. We have to fix the current structural deficit in higher education. We have to fix the foundations before building more investment. Members should be very clear on what that involves: we have to reverse the £16 million of cuts from the 2015-16 financial year, and we have to address the £40 million structural deficit. Then we can look to the recurring cost of around £30 million to proceed with the expansion of student numbers at Magee.

I say to the Member, his party and others that it is not good enough simply to talk about this and make rhetorical commitments to the expansion. We have to show a coherent approach to public finances in Northern Ireland that will allow us to do such projects, which are very much in our interest. We have not had that collective approach across the parties for some time.

Mr McCartney: Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire as an fhreagra sin. I thank the Minister for his frank answer and welcome his continuing support for the expansion of Magee. As we take the business case forward, can he indicate what the timeline will be? Can a centre of excellence, perhaps based at the Magee campus, assist in the process of ensuring its expansion?

Dr Farry: At this stage, I cannot give a reliable answer on the timeline. That is subject to the ongoing scrutiny of the business case by my officials. If the economists in the Department are content with it, they will pass it to DFP for its consideration. In a context where my officials are not happy with the business case, they will have to refer it to the strategy board for further comment and amendment.

You will appreciate from my original answer that we have gone down that road before. Issues were raised about what was produced in the summer of last year, and it was quite some time before the revised business case came back to the Department. Whether this is the final stage of the process or whether we will have to go through another iteration depends on the point made about scrutiny.

I reiterate to the Member that this is not about the capacity of the city council, the consultants or the university to produce a business case. Whether Magee expands depends on how it is resourced by the Executive. The resources have to be found in a sustainable way. I spelt out the costs involved in addressing our wider higher education system in Northern Ireland. You cannot expand Magee unless you fix the wider problems first, and you then have the platform on which provision can be expanded. The case for more graduates is clear, but we have to make sure that we do that in an appropriate and orderly manner. We need a commitment from all parties to resource higher education properly to the level that is required to support our economy.

Mrs Overend: I thank the Minister for his response. Does he agree that the expansion at Magee, which we all support, should not come at the expense or threaten the viability of other university campuses in Northern Ireland?

Dr Farry: Absolutely. I very much concur with the Member's comments. Indeed, when I met a delegation from Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council yesterday, it made exactly that point; I am not sure whether a woman from the delegation was in communication with anyone. Let me be very clear: we have been able to expand Magee over the past five years and have found some resource to do that. To an extent, that has been undermined by recent cuts, but, overall, the Magee campus is bigger than when I took office in 2011, notwithstanding my zero budget at that time for its expansion. It has been the policy of the university all along to consider any additional places awarded to it for allocation to the Magee campus. To be very clear: the expansion of Magee cannot come at the expense of or by undermining existing provision; it cannot come at the cost of displacing students into Derry out of existing campuses, whether Ulster University or Queen's. We need to ensure that any expansion at Magee is additional. There is a clear case for more graduates in Northern Ireland, and it is in that spirit that we should approach the expansion, subject, of course, to the Executive making money available.

Dr Farry: At present, higher education students from Northern Ireland receive their maintenance support payments in three instalments, roughly at the beginning of each term of the academic year. This tri-annual payment system supports students with any upfront costs that they might face at the beginning of term, while also allowing them to budget ahead accordingly.

Concerns have been raised in recent times that large and infrequent payments can heighten the risk of financial mismanagement and, by extension, financial hardship amongst students. It was in response to those concerns that I launched a consultation in August last year to consider options to change the frequency of maintenance payments. The consultation closed on 27 September, and a summary of responses is available on my Department’s website.

There was no clear consensus amongst respondents about which option was preferable, and many expressed concerns over the potential cost of implementing more frequent payments, particularly if that were to detract from other areas of higher education funding. Any decision to invest in a more frequent payment system will, therefore, have to be considered within the context of the overall higher education budget and competing priorities, including, for example, our ambitions to expand student places.

As to the timing of a decision, it has emerged in recent months that the Student Loans Company has become overburdened by the demands of other Administrations — that is, England — and the earliest year in which changes could possibly be implemented will be 2017-18. In principle, I am open to change, but the timelines are such that it will fall to a future Minister to take a final decision on the matter, and he or she will have to do so within the context of the overall higher education budget.

Mr Milne: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. Mo bhuíochas leis an Aire as na freagraí a thug sé go dtí seo. I thank the Minister for his very comprehensive and detailed response. In his final deliberations, will he ensure that students' best interests will be at the heart of his decisions?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Try to be brief, Minister, please.

Dr Farry: Very briefly. The Member needs to define what he means by students' best interests. Some will say that it is more frequent payments, and others will say that it is more places being available locally, because we are displacing too many students outside of Northern Ireland, where they pay more in fees. We have to take it in the round. Is that quick enough?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): That ends the period for listed questions. We will now move on to topical questions.

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for his question. We are still working through the figures from the Budget at this stage on exactly what is going to happen with the teaching and research grant for the universities in the forthcoming financial and academic years. At this stage, not least because we have had the additional £20 million that is due to be forthcoming and allocated officially for skills to the new Department for the Economy in the June monitoring round, we should be in the position where we can avoid any further cuts to the teaching and research grant on the road ahead. However, I caution the Assembly and, indeed, stress to the Member that the cuts from the 2015-16 financial year of £16 million to higher education are still in the system. We have seen only the first third of those implemented on September 2015 entry. As things stand, those are still in the system for September 2016 and September 2017 entry. There may be some scope to mitigate them to a small extent, but, as things stand, the vast bulk are set to go ahead. So, by no means are we out of the woods yet. Even if we were at a standstill, we would have to be investing further in our higher education because we have to ensure that we are meeting the needs of a high-skilled economy.

Mr McKinney: While, of course, the focus is on that strategic level and the headline finance, my further focus is on the students themselves — the customers, if you like. Can the Minister give an assurance that grants, especially for those from a vulnerable and poor background, will not be cut?

Dr Farry: Yes, I am happy to give that assurance. The House will well know that, right across the piece, we have been ensuring that the student support system has remained in place, despite all the tribulations that we have had with budgets in recent years. Some, of course, are demand-led interventions, and sometimes we may not spend our full budget allocation, but the levels of entitlement and the amount of money available as part of those entitlements have not been affected.

Dr Farry: First, I think it is important to acknowledge that, in one respect, the fact that we are having this interest in student accommodation is a very positive sign. It is a sign that our universities are still flourishing, despite all they have been through with cuts. They are attracting students, and international students, in particular, are very much on their agenda. That is important for openness and diversity in plugging into the rest of the world. I stress that that does not come at the expense of opportunities for local students at the same time.

In terms of accommodation, we are seeing different approaches, depending upon which of the universities we are talking about. Queen's has moved ahead with its own projects and its own managed accommodation. Ulster University is adopting an approach where the private sector is responding. I would not say it is fair to say that there is no control over that, because obviously what happens is controlled by planning for land use and the regulation of individual applications. In that respect, Belfast City Council is the lead authority with responsibility. You are seeing the council go through its own processes. In some cases, it is granting approval and, in other cases, it is not. The overall level of applications that comes forward for housing is probably going to be in excess of the need itself, but that process is working its way through the system.

Various working groups and interventions have also been organised, primarily through Belfast City Council but also under the auspices of the Department for Social Development, about how we best manage a whole host of issues on university expansion. Housing is one of those, but transport and parking are equally important.

Mr A Maginness: I thank the Minister for his answer, but, in a sense, he is avoiding the real issue: in the overall structure, this is an unplanned series of developments, which could have negative impacts, as well as positive ones, on local communities. Is it not necessary for both universities to get together, along with Belfast City Council and any other planning authority, to work with your Department and satisfy the needs of students?

Dr Farry: I assure the Member that that process is already happening and those structures exist. Indeed, they are being revamped and are giving much stronger input. We are having discussions between Departments at ministerial and permanent secretary levels. Those discussions are focused on housing, transport and parking issues. Let me be clear: I am the Minister with responsibility for universities. Universities do not exist in a bubble; they have to take account of the context in which they exist. However, other Departments also have responsibilities in relation to this piece. Obviously, the Department for Social Development has a very clear role with respect to housing and urban regeneration powers. The Department of the Environment, of which the Member's colleague is the Minister, has responsibility for some planning powers, as does the council. The Department for Regional Development is responsible for transport, including public transport. It has to be a multi-Department and multi-agency approach. The structures exist. We need to see people bringing to the table solutions to some of the problems that still have to be addressed.

Dr Farry: I thank the Member for the question. It is another example of where policy has been set by the UK Department to meet, on the surface, the needs of England but where there are various spillover effects on what happens in the other jurisdictions. In higher education, we are seeing a major divergence of policy between England, on the one hand, and the three devolved Administrations, on the other. In England, they are going for a very much deregulated system. They have fee levels of £9,000, with the potential to go beyond that. They are opening up their market to all sorts of providers, including some very small ones. They are trying to put in place a new teaching excellence framework that will allow judgements to be made over what can be funded or not, which perhaps does not really address the needs of what happens in Northern Ireland. There is some potential threat towards the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). On the surface, that is a funding council for England, but it performs some research functions for the entire UK and its existence is under threat.

There are also some positive things happening around the widening participation agenda, where England has some very positive lessons to learn from Northern Ireland.

Mr Lunn: I thank the Minister for his answer. What action is he taking to represent the interests of Northern Ireland and the local universities in that process?

Dr Farry: First of all, in Northern Ireland, my Department has coordinated a response from all our higher education institutions (HEIs), to which we made our views known as part of the formal consultation exercise. The three devolved Ministers have also had discussions on how we can formulate a common approach to trying to address some of the issues, particularly those with the greatest impact through spillover issues. I have spoken already to Jo Johnson, the Minister for Universities in BIS. In the very near future, I expect that the three devolved Ministers will sit down with him to have a quadrilateral discussion on those issues.

Dr Farry: That sounds almost like a planted question. It would be quite catastrophic. As the Member will know, we are talking about a fund that amounts to close to €80 billion over the next seven years. That is a Europe-wide intervention and provides added value to what can be done through the quality-related research (QR) funding that we give domestically to our universities.

We have other pots of international funding that we can also access, but Horizon 2020 provides new openings and the opportunity for partnerships to be built across national boundaries. That is very important in the modern world of research, where things do not exist in a bubble. Particularly on some very sophisticated research projects, you need to have that scalability and be able to bring a lot of partners in from different institutions. That would not happen to the same extent if the UK was going alone. Some people may argue that additional funding would be made available to research, but you would lose the added value that comes from the potential for international collaboration between academics from different jurisdictions.

Ms Hanna: I thank the Minister for his answer. I assure Members that that was not a planted question, and neither is this one. Has the Minister's Department done a wider audit of the funding and opportunities that would be lost in the unfortunate event of a Brexit, and of how that funding shortfall or deficit would be met by departmental resources?

Dr Farry: There really is no plan B. If we lose the European money, we lose the European money, and we will suffer as a consequence. That will be very much to our detriment. In addition to Horizon 2020, my Department probably avails itself of more pots of European funding than any other Department. Obviously, we would lose ERASMUS+, which, again, would not just be an issue of funding; it is also about opening up opportunities for our young people to experience learning in different parts of the European Union and elsewhere, which is incredibly important. That programme has been extended to apprentices, so we can have exchanges outside the context of university students.

Obviously, we have the European social fund, which makes an enormous difference and allows us to do things that we simply could not do within our mainstream budgets. We cannot simply recoup that money, and anyone who thinks that we are going to get a big pay cheque from the UK Treasury to make up the shortfall for the European money that we would lose is in la-la land.

Dr Farry: The Member will know that there was a meeting yesterday of the task force, which the council is coordinating with a view to addressing a range of different points on manufacturing and skills. Obviously, my Department plays a role within that, as do DETI and some other Departments.

Beyond the broader issues, there are particular points around JTI Gallaher and Michelin. Obviously, as the Member will appreciate, the two processes are at different points. The JTI Gallaher announcement is well advanced, and we have been investing, with my Department funding some very particular interventions around courses that are not otherwise available. Also, there have been some particular interventions around essential skills for some of the staff. The process is at a different stage with Michelin, because the 90-day consultation period on the collective redundancies has not formally come to an end. That will happen at the beginning of March. At that stage, the nature of the engagement will change gear quite significantly.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Before I call Mr McIlveen to ask a supplementary, I ask him and the Minister to be reasonably brief.

Mr D McIlveen: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will try my very best. As we come to the dawning of the age of the Department for Employment and Learning, there is obviously an opportunity for reflection. Whilst the Minister has been very good at delivering initiatives, some may say that he has not been so successful at delivering reform. Will the Minister update the House on the reform that he is most proud of in his five years as Employment and Learning Minister?

Dr Farry: This is slightly separate from the original topical question but, in one word, the apprenticeship strategy.

Some Members: Hear, hear.

Dr Farry: Two words. [Laughter.]

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Order. Time is up.

Mr Bell (The Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment): With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will answer questions 1, 3 and 11 together. Our renewables record has been very successful to date. That has been due to a combination of being able to harness our natural resources whilst ensuring that the support costs are spread much more widely than our Northern Ireland consumer base. However, this means that we are also unavoidably influenced by national policy decisions, as borne out by the proposed early closure of the renewable obligations across the United Kingdom to onshore wind. I am mindful of the uncertainty that has been created around early closure to wind. My priority, at present, is to ensure that we have a timely and managed closure of the existing scheme in Northern Ireland. I want to provide the certainty that delivers the most renewable deployment for the least cost to Northern Ireland consumers.

Mr McCarthy: I thank the Minister for his reply. Will he tell the Assembly what he plans to do during the next six months, under the moratorium on the new grid connections?

Mr Bell: There have been significant difficulties with the grid connections and grid connection offers. The Member is correct; NIE had to set aside its normal 90-day period for making grid connection offers due to the surge in applications that followed the regulator's determination that NIE could not require planning permission before making a grid connection. The grid simply could not accommodate the level of increase. It requires specialist analysis and, potentially, significant investment, which would have to be paid for by consumers. NIE is already committed to connecting projects which will almost double our installed renewable capacity. That is a huge challenge. I do not have powers to intervene. I cannot direct NIE or the Systems Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) to prioritise one technology over another.

Mr Givan: In discussions with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), has it outlined what the proposed backstop power, which is now included in the Energy Bill, will mean and what the consequences of that could be for the Northern Ireland renewables obligation certificate (ROC)?

Mr Bell: DECC has included a backstop power in its proposed Energy Bill, as the Member said, to protect GB consumers should Northern Ireland take a different approach to the Northern Ireland renewables obligation (NIRO) closure than that taken in GB. The backstop power will give DECC powers to prevent GB suppliers redeeming Northern Ireland ROCs from projects that accredit from 1 April 2016 and do not meet the closure eligibility criteria that were equivalent to those in GB. This provides little comfort for those projects and has the potential to have wider implications for the whole renewables industry here.

Mr Kennedy: I am interested in the ministerial responses thus far. How does the Minister intend to deal with the ongoing uncertainty created by his decision on the NIRO issue last summer? Does he accept that the delay since his closure consultation last October has created all sorts of problems for the renewables sector here? Does he have any plans to support the development of the industry after the NIRO ends? Will he bring, and how will he bring, certainty for investors, including many in my constituency?

Mr Bell: I want to bring certainty as soon as possible. I am considering a range of options. I think that the Member will agree that DECC changed the policy. Yes, we can do what we choose to do where we have devolved powers, but DECC changed the policy, not once but a number of times. I have spoken to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. I went to London and I said, "Look, under the coalition Government, the previous Minister agreed with you a line which was then put out to the industry. The Conservative Party then came into power as a single party and moved the goalposts for onshore wind". They moved the goalposts, not me. They then changed their position at different times.

I want to assure the House that I will always look at what delivers the best value to Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, I have had to deal with changing positions from DECC, and that has led to the uncertainty that we have. I will try to bring it to a conclusion as quickly as possible to allow people to go forward; however, let no one misunderstand that the changing position has come from the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. Mo bhuíochas fosta leis an Aire as na freagraí go dtí seo. We all have some sympathy with the Minister in that these decisions have emerged from London, but I want to move on past the ROC to the renewable heat incentive (RHI). This morning, we spent two distressing hours in the Committee for Enterprise, Trade and Investment listening to officials tell us that another bombshell has been dropped on the renewable industry sector and that the RHI is to be removed.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Order. Can we have a question, please?

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Can the Minister guarantee that he will give us clarity on that issue, work in collaboration with the sector, and include the Committee as he reaches a decision? Let the date not be next week, Minister.

Mr Bell: At the end of last year, there was an increase in demand for the renewable heat incentive scheme. My Department faces a huge budgetary pressure, given the Chancellor of the Exchequer's decision to limit the amount of money paid to Northern Ireland out of the UK pot for renewable heat. That is why, last week, I signalled my intention to ease that financial pressure, which could amount to over £27 million, by announcing the immediate closure of the scheme and bringing forward an order to suspend the scheme as soon as possible. I want everyone to know that I am listening to the industry and to individuals who are installing renewable heat boilers. I will come back to try to give that clarity at the earliest possible date.

Mr A Maginness: Unlike the previous questioner, I really do not have very much sympathy with the Minister in relation to his summary decision on the renewable heat initiative. It is not acceptable. It will impact adversely on many small installers. Will he review his decision or take remedial action to strengthen those small tradesmen?

Mr Bell: I think that the Member has misunderstood what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done with regard to renewable heat and the fact that the goalposts have been moved and that a limit has been put on Northern Ireland. If we go beyond that limit, we have to bear the costs ourselves. It was introduced in November 2012 to the non-domestic sector and in 2014 to the domestic sector, and it has been taken up very successfully. To date, over 3,500 renewable heating installations have been incentivised. Uptake has been higher than in GB. We have exceeded the Northern Ireland Executive's 2015 target, which was 4%. About 6% of Northern Ireland's heating needs is now provided through renewable heating technologies. The Member would do well to look at the Chancellor's autumn statement and what follows it and also consider the costs to Northern Ireland.

Mr Bell: In February 2014, my Department contracted BT to deliver the Northern Ireland broadband improvement project. That is primarily aimed at rural areas and seeks to extend the availability of, primarily, basic and, where possible, superfast broadband to those who have limited choice across Northern Ireland with a target of 45,000 premises. The project was scheduled to be completed by 31 December 2015. However, there was engineering complexity, and that date has been extended by three months to 31 March 2016.

Improvements have already been carried out to over 40,000 premises across Northern Ireland, including almost 5,000 in postcode areas in the North Antrim constituency.

On 22 January 2016, I announced the introduction of a satellite broadband support scheme, which falls under the auspices of the Northern Ireland broadband improvement project. It seeks to provide residents and businesses that are still experiencing speeds below two megabits per second with the option of applying for a subsidy of up to £350 towards the cost of installing a satellite broadband connection.

Mr Frew: I thank the Minister for his answer. Is he aware of my constituents' concerns? It seems to be the case that BT is degrading its copper system and its other old systems. What can he do to make sure that BT meets all its obligations and does not let people wither on the vine with a copper system? People are experiencing even lower speeds than they were at Christmas.

Mr Bell: I am aware of a lot of problems, particularly in rural areas. A number of months ago, people from west Tyrone spoke to me. A number of people raised complaints with me that, if there is congestion on the system — the beam and different things — that effectively causes them not to have a service.

Not all areas will be able to access superfast broadband once the Northern Ireland broadband improvement project is completed. We awarded the contract for the second project to BT. That was the superfast broadband roll-out programme.

I will take up those specific issues with BT on behalf of the Member. I had a very detailed meeting with its senior officials last week at which I raised a number of concerns. It is unacceptable, particularly when, first, I have people coming to me whose children have either to be taken back to school or driven to the library just to get their homework done. Secondly, other children are experiencing extreme difficulties just managing against the curriculum, and we are raising that issue with BT. Thirdly, we have some hugely successful businesses in the area of computer-aided design (CAD). They must submit their programmes to tender, so people are literally leaving their machines on at night in the hope that, when they get up the next morning, their CAD or specific design, which they must use to tender for business, has come through. I will emphasise to BT that we cannot condone that set of circumstances into the future.

Mr Boylan: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. I welcome the Minister's answer, but I put this to him: why, after spending millions of pounds on assisting BT to provide broadband, do we still have major gaps right across the North, particularly in Newry and Armagh?

I ask that question on behalf of Matthew Nugent of 58 Tievenamara Road, Carnagh, BT60 3JA, who lives 90 metres from a box that was upgraded last year and is one of a number of people in rural Armagh and south Armagh who has no broadband provision, after we have spent millions of pounds of public money on it.

Mr Bell: Those are important points. If the Member wants to send me details of that specific case, I will certainly look at it.

We continue to make broadband services widely available via a mix of technologies. Almost £64 million, as the Member says, has been invested since 2008 to encourage private sector upgrade to networks, particularly in rural areas. Seventy-nine per cent of households are currently accessing the Internet. I find that a very difficult figure when I compare it with the UK figure of 85%, and 72% of those who are accessing the Internet are doing so through a broadband connection. The number of premises that are connected to a broadband service offering speeds of 2 megabits per second or higher is continuing to increase, and now stands at 94%. Owing to the extensive next-generation access network put in place by my Department's investments, there have been over 239,000 fibre-based, high-speed broadband connections to date. Although we acknowledge that download speeds in Northern Ireland are continuing to increase, the average download speed stands at 28·3 megabits per second, and that is below the UK average of 29 megabits per second. We will continue to pursue how we can get that to a more level playing field.

Mr Dickson: Thank you, Minister, for your answers thus far with regard to BT. I declare a personal interest in that BT totally and utterly failed me in my service for nearly two months. As a result of that, I discovered that BT has set aside only 60% of the capacity of the green cabinets that it has installed to deliver its so-called super-fast broadband. So, in any one area, not everyone, even if they wished to purchase super-fast broadband, can have it. Is the Minister satisfied that 60% capacity per cabinet is a reasonable commercial decision by BT?

Mr Bell: I will raise that particular case with BT. I am not satisfied with broadband provision across Northern Ireland. I do not think that anybody who has a genuine interest in seeing all of Northern Ireland develop could be satisfied, knowing how much depends upon a broadband connection, particularly for business. The rules are changing. Businesses in rural areas are saying to me, "We have to present it in this way. We need the connection to actually do this." So, we will have to continue to work to what is a difficult system, but, as Minister, I accept that nobody in the House could be satisfied with the level of complaints and dissatisfaction that we have, particularly in the rural community.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): I call Mr Paul Givan for a question.

Mr Givan: Mine was joined to the first question, Deputy Speaker.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): I call Mr Ross Hussey.

Mr Bell: I thank Mr Hussey. The latest results from the Northern Ireland composite economic index, which measures economic activity, show that we experienced growth in three of the last four quarters, with an annual increase of 1·6%. Despite those positives, the figures for the latest quarter were negative. Those findings are disappointing. Most economists who are advising me are saying, "Don't get too fixated on just one single quarter's data." Northern Ireland is relatively small and quarterly statistics, as the evidence shows, can be inherently volatile. There have also been substantial improvements in the local labour market during this time, with unemployment continuing to fall and private sector jobs at their highest level ever. We cannot be complacent about that, but I think that everybody in the House would like to celebrate the fact that unemployment is falling and the private sector is growing and at its highest number ever.

Mr Hussey: Is the Minister not concerned about output? For example, Ulster Bank says that we grew in economic terms by between 1·5% and 2% in 2015, whilst the rest of the UK grew by 2·3%, and the Republic grew by over 5% for the second successive year. Is he not concerned that we may be stagnating?

Mr Bell: I am always concerned when it appears that other parts are performing better. We can look at statistics in a range of ways. We have massive challenges in our manufacturing sector but it is posting 3% annual growth and added 4,000 jobs over the past year. While we look at experiencing a relatively modest recovery since the local downturn, our biggest sector, the services sector, has posted 1% annual growth, with jobs at an all-time high.

There is a big issue for me and many in the House from constituencies that depend on construction. Our construction sector was the most impacted during the downturn but, even there, we are seeing what appears to be very real signs of recovery. Output is up 14% on an annual basis and the sector added 870 jobs over the latest year of data.

If you look at the quarterly figures, I do see concerns. I take the advice to look not only at those but to note the volatility. Looking at the annual change, in services we are 1% up, in manufacturing output we are 2·9% up, and in construction output we are 13·7% up.

Mr Dunne: I thank the Minister for his answers. As Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, your job entails marketing Northern Ireland throughout the world, and I think that we all admit that you do that enthusiastically. What economic levers can you use as you travel to attract new business into Northern Ireland?

Mr Bell: The big one that we have been taking forward in this last particular period is the game changer of corporation tax. That is when we asked the independent research to come to us on the rate of 12·5% that we will have from 1 April. The independent advice was that we should be looking at creating 30,000 additional jobs and that we should be growing our economy by almost 10% over 15 years. In the last short period, I have taken, I think, 13 companies across three cities in China. Two weeks ago, I was with 15 of our companies that have a particular focus on technology, and we went from San Francisco right through to New York.

I can tell you that there is major interest in Northern Ireland. I estimate that a huge percentage of what I do I cannot tell you until the ink is dry on the contracts because they are commercially sensitive. There is huge interest in Northern Ireland because we have three unique things. We have business costs that are about 84% or 85% of the rest of the United Kingdom. We have a talent pool and a very low attrition rate. In fact, 80% of all the businesses that have invested in Northern Ireland have subsequently reinvested, and, when I bring in new investors, I am grateful to those businesses for telling a success story. And then we have the attraction of corporation tax, giving us the most competitive corporation tax rate in western Europe.

Mr Lyttle: Given the key role played by our manufacturing sector in economic growth in Northern Ireland, why is there no manufacturing strategy currently in place with long-term commitments and targets on key issues like rates, energy and infrastructure?

Mr Bell: I think that the Member knows the answer to that question because his party was party to the economic strategy. His party agreed that we would put all of our strategy into one specific strategy, which was the economic strategy, which his party at Executive level agreed to. Manufacturing is a very important sector for Northern Ireland. I do not take away from anybody who has lost their job. Anybody who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Belfast, as I did, and who watched their family and other people lose their jobs knows how devastating that is. Equally, the manufacturing sector is telling me of the successes that it is having, and it has been performing well. Over the past year, it has added 4,000 additional jobs. The manufacturing output is up by nearly 3%, and that is more than the UK average.

We want to ensure that we continue with a strong recovery. That is why I have done specific things for manufacturing. Look at what I did to try to help Bombardier address its energy costs. We also had a proposal on the table with Michelin. We will never know what would have happened if it had taken that up. Last week, I spent time at Montupet with about 15 companies from the manufacturing sector that are all high energy users. We spent quite a bit of time looking at where the strengths, the weaknesses and the opportunities were coming from. Also, as the House knows, I have established the manufacturing energy task force. It is being chaired by a person who, as I understand it, is the fifth-largest energy user in Northern Ireland. I await the outcome of that, and I intend to give very due diligence to that to see how we can further support the sector.

Mr Allister: The Minister describes the reduction that is pending in corporation tax as a game changer. Can he explain why it did not change the game in my constituency for either JTI or Michelin, which are leaving our shores, sadly, approximately at the time when the reduction in corporation tax will come? Clearly, it did not impress them as something causing them to make it worthwhile to stay, so is it really the game changer that the Minister proclaims it to be? Experience to date in my constituency does not suggest so.

Mr Bell: I think that the Member raises some very important points about Michelin specifically. Not only have I spent several hours trying to ensure that we get that workforce all the qualifications so that the employees are in the best place to get new jobs, but I have spent quite a bit of time with the Michelin management.
I asked them whether there was anything more that the Government could have done, and they said no. When I asked them to list the reasons why Michelin left north Antrim, they explained that there was a glut of thousands in the truck tyre market — it made a very specific product there. They talked about fluctuations in the euro and Asian imports costing £130 against the vastly superior Michelin product that cost over £500.

I can tell the Member that there is huge interest in Northern Ireland. Companies like Allstate say to me, "Jonathan, we came for the costs; we stayed for your people". Other companies like Citi come to provide hundreds of jobs and now provide in the region of 2,000. The likes of Randox and Wrightbus, which is in your constituency, are tripling their profits and talking about what they can do into the future. If we present a collective message of low cost, low tax and an excellent workforce, we have a winning message for the economy in Northern Ireland.

Mr Bell: Invest Northern Ireland's role is to support companies that bring forward investment projects on the basis of merit, irrespective of where they are based. Through local government reform and the process of community planning, councils can shape job investment in their region by tailoring a subregional proposition to drive investment into, and set relevant targets for, their respective areas. Invest Northern Ireland will assist in the development of those council-led subregional strategies to help to drive economic development on an equitable basis throughout Northern Ireland.

Mr Milne: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. Mo bhuíochas leis an Aire as na freagraí a thug sé go dtí seo. I thank the Minister for his answer. Will he detail his Department's success or otherwise in securing investment in Mid Ulster, which I represent, and, in particular, the south Derry end?

Mr Bell: From 2011-15, Invest Northern Ireland support totalled £118 million. That contributed to planned investment of £673 million in areas west of the River Bann and helped businesses to promote 9,679 jobs. During the same period, businesses in that area created some 7,416 jobs. Those figures include assistance and investment totalling £15 million and £20 million that was offered to external delivery organisations and universities, which promoted six jobs. The number of jobs promoted and created is directly proportional to the adult population of each area. Twenty-seven per cent of the adult population resides in the west, and that is directly comparable to the 26% of jobs promoted and 27% of jobs created by businesses with Invest Northern Ireland support.

Mr Diver: Minister, your description today of prosperity and jobs coming forward is, I think, as someone from the constituency of Foyle, almost like Harold Macmillan saying that we have "never had it so good." The Executive's north-west ministerial group met only twice in the last year. Is that appropriate action given the level of disadvantage that we face? Should we be looking at a bespoke measure like a city deal for Derry?

Mr Bell: I can understand the Member needing a sound bite, but he should not talk down the area that he represents. He will know, if he has been following this for the last 12 months, what I have done publicly in that area specifically. I have also been in the area privately on a number of occasions, and I want to see fruit grow from that. He will know from the announcements about OneSource Virtual, ModSquad and Nu Print Technologies that we have created, with Invest support, hundreds of new jobs in his area.

If he does not know that, he should.

When I addressed the Chamber of Commerce and spoke to the skills sector and people involved with the universities, I sensed that there is an upbeat, can-do nature. I want to facilitate that, from small businesses such as Oakgrove, which is creating a quality, premium product for export, right through to those big job announcements such as that from ModSquad, which has created hundreds of jobs in the area. We will build on that. Come with me and I will support you 100% in trying to bring business into the area and telling people that they have 84% of the business costs of the rest of the UK, they have very well educated people, and, on 1 April 2018, they will have the most competitive rate of corporation tax. That should be a winning message.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): That ends the period for listed questions.

Mr Bell: Yes, I do. I have had tremendous support in the one year that I have been in office, and I have seen what Mr Farry did as Minister in trying to ensure that we address long-term economic inactivity. It is reducing but only by percentage points, and we want it to reduce further.

Mrs Cochrane: I thank the Minister for his answer and for the fact that he acknowledges that there is an issue. What steps can be taken in the coming months to identify the financial resources to begin to implement the Executive's economic inactivity strategy that his Department co-produced with DEL?

Mr Bell: We have been trying to ensure that that budget delivers against the strategy that we set out. The Minister for Employment and Learning had discussions with the First Minister when she was the Finance Minister, as most of us did in our Departments, and extra money was allocated directly to skills. None of us got everything that we wanted, but it was recognised that we have a wonderful opportunity in front of us.

Minister Farry was with me in the States when we went to a number of specific companies to look at what we can do together to address economic inactivity. He is doing excellent work in bespoke training for companies. The training is taken through, and the person has only to be interviewed by the client at the end, and they are delivering real success. That is the right model: go with the business model and then back it up with training. In a new Department for the Economy, we will try to align the skills to factor in the jobs that we can and will have.

Mr Bell: I should correct the record, as I made a mistake last week when I talked about not knowing the nature of the "question". I should have said the nature of the "terms", so I will correct the record.

Businesses have spoken to me but have not done so exclusively with one voice. Different approaches are being made. We have commissioned Oxford Economics to provide the best information so that people can examine what may or may not come next week.

Mr Dickson: I thank the Minister for his answer. With the First Minister leaning towards out of the EU, is it likely that you will be the only Enterprise Minister in the United Kingdom who is anti-EU and will lead the charge against industry and business in Northern Ireland?

Mr Bell: I support 100% the position adopted by Mrs Foster as First Minister, by our MEP and by our parliamentary leader. What I have asked people to do is look seriously at the information that we are commissioning from Oxford Economics on the range of options and examine it against the terms that come through.

Mr Bell: Tourism in Northern Ireland is going from strength to strength. I think that the last set of figures that I looked at showed that it is worth £751 million, and we intend to grow it to a £1 billion industry by 2020. I get very encouraged when I hear about 81 cruise ships coming into Northern Ireland and when I see statistics saying that 2·53 million people are visiting Titanic Belfast. I am also very encouraged to hear that, as I announced on Friday, 100 major Chinese tour operators are coming to visit Northern Ireland in the next number of weeks. The potential of that is absolutely huge. I had them down at Mount Stewart, and they were, quite frankly, blown away with what they could offer. They were telling me that they could surely attract significant numbers of Asian tourists, who are in one of the biggest markets in the world, to Northern Ireland.

Of course, I know that the Gobbins cliff path is in the Member's constituency. That is a feature. When you put it alongside Titanic Belfast, the Geopark in the west and Mount Stewart and combine them, you see why we have a unique tourism offering in Northern Ireland and why I am confident that we should achieve our target of a £1 billion industry by 2020.

Mr Lyons: I am very pleased that the Minister highlighted the Gobbins cliff path as one of the attractions in our constituency. It is great to hear that so many good things are happening within tourism at the minute, but we do have a slight problem. An awful lot of people go to Titanic Belfast and then perhaps up to the north coast. Would it not be a good idea for more tourists to go via the east Antrim coast to visit Carrickfergus, the Antrim coast road and the Gobbins cliff path? Will the Minister agree to work with and meet Mid and East Antrim Borough Council so that we can work out how we can maximise the tourist potential of that area?

Mr Bell: I will, of course, meet the council. The Member was with me the previous occasion we met the council specifically on the tourism initiative. I will continue to work with the council because I want all of Northern Ireland to benefit from the tourism that comes in.

We have found that, when people come and visit us, they like it. They come back and want to bring their family and friends. Part of our challenge is to make sure that they come and visit us specifically. The whole Causeway coastal route is worthy of international appeal, and it has been identified as an area for growth for visitor numbers and for spend.

When you add the other things that are going on on the periphery, you can see things like the huge success of 'Game of Thrones' tourism. The Irish Open in 2015 had 107,000 paying spectators, and we will get the Irish Open back in 2017. We will also have one of the biggest tournaments in the world, The Open, in 2019. You can compare those with things like the Women's Rugby World Cup. My Department is putting a lot of strength into trying to attract the Rugby World Cup to Ireland, which has the potential to bring some 350,000 rugby supporters here, and into working on how we can maximise that benefit for Northern Ireland. When you look at that, you will see that we can all be encouraged by the tourism offering.

Mr Bell: I welcome the Member to the House. I said that there was a huge increase in the demand for the renewable heat incentive scheme at the end of last year. That has given not just my Department but Northern Ireland a huge budgetary pressure. As the Member should know, the Chancellor of the Exchequer decided to limit the amount of money that was paid to Northern Ireland out of the UK pot for renewable heat. That is why I signalled my intention last week to ease that financial pressure, which could amount to over £27 million.

Mr Patterson: I welcome the comments of the Minister, and his welcome to the House.

The Minister announced the sudden closure of the renewable heat initiative last Friday, after 6.00 pm, in a press release. In his press release, he mentioned that around 6% of Northern Ireland's heating needs are now provided through renewable technologies. The Executive's Programme for Government renewable heat target is 10% by 2020. Has the Minister abandoned that target? Does he still have an incentive policy for renewables? A lot of firms have invested money into this and need answers from the Minister.

Mr Bell: The reality is that we have exceeded the current target. I now want to listen specifically to the industry. I have been listening to individuals who are currently installing the renewable heat boilers. I think it is important that we, as politicians and everyone in this House, listen and do all that we can to help as many people as possible. I will reflect on what is being said to me, and I will examine ways in which I can help those who have been affected by my decision from last week. I also want to say that, inevitably, there will be an investigation into why we have found ourselves in this position. I have, as a matter of urgency, asked my own officials to ensure that the scheme is running to the letter and spirit of the law. I will be keeping a very close eye on that.

I think the Member also needs to understand that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has limited the amount of money being paid to Northern Ireland out of the UK pot as regards renewable heat, and that puts challenges on every Member of this House.

Mr Bell: Any investor will want to consider the employment legislation against the backdrop of putting a significant amount of investment into Northern Ireland. I have to say that in all my discussions, from Asia through to America and Europe, I have learned that when they look at Northern Ireland they are looking specifically to a talent pool with a very low rate of attrition; I think that, in some cases, it is less than 7%. Investors are looking to save business costs and are attracted by us having, in the future, the lowest rate of corporation tax in Western Europe. I think all of that has helped us to reduce our unemployment figures to approximately 6%. This stands against a European average of above 9%, and, the last time I looked, the Irish figure was 8.9%. So we are in a very competitive position. We cannot rest on our laurels. We have the unique opportunity of there being 30,000 jobs in front of us. The challenge is for us to ensure that we have young people with the skills to rise to that challenge and also to ensure that, as people progress, we see a decrease in economic inactivity.

Mr Ross: The Minister has talked about the competitive nature of attracting investors to Northern Ireland. One of the elements of the Employment Bill going through today is an amendment that will allow Northern Ireland's qualifying period for unfair dismissal to be the same as that in GB. Would he share my concern that, if Northern Ireland has a different employment law environment than, perhaps, Glasgow or Liverpool, we would be at a disadvantage, in terms of investment, if we did not keep in step with change in the GB employment law?

Mr Bell: Yes. Let me answer the question in the following way: one of the groups that I was with came here to create hundreds of jobs and is now in a position where they have created thousands of jobs. Their chief executive told me that one of the things specific to Northern Ireland is that, on an international market basis, people love the fact that, in terms of compliance, law and regulation, we are on the same page as the rest of the United Kingdom.

You could have all the advantages of United Kingdom business, with lower costs and, I would say, a very attractive employment pool to work from — one of the best educated — and, into the future, the lowest rate of corporation tax in western Europe. However, it has been mentioned to me that that compliance across the United Kingdom, and particularly the regulation across the United Kingdom, has led to further investment in Northern Ireland.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Mr Gregory Campbell is not in his place. I invite Mr Paul Girvan to ask a very short supplementary question.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Minister, can you answer that in a few seconds?

Mr Bell: Yes. First, I congratulate Graham Keddie and his marvellous team for the success that they have had, not just in job creation but in increased passenger numbers. I believe that the UK as a whole should address air passenger duty, and we lobbied very strongly for that to happen. That does not take away from the fact that it should happen on a UK-wide basis to drive tourism in Northern Ireland. I will continue to work with all our airports; I have been to City of Derry Airport and I have seen the success of Belfast City Airport in increased passenger numbers and the boost to the economy. There is a really good news story in the Member's constituency, and I will look at every avenue that I have, not just in lobbying the UK on air passenger duty but seeing what we can do around air route development funds and marketing strategies that could lead to continued further success.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): Time is up.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order, despite our many differences, to commend the Minister on the Alert Logic job investment in Belfast yesterday, which, incredibly, he did not mention? I think that the House should congratulate him on that.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): I am sure that that is not a point of order, but the Minister will have heard it.

Mr Bell: Thank you very much. Unfortunately, I could not announce it myself because I was on other business that, I hope, in the long term, will deliver for the economy of Northern Ireland.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Dallat): I invite Members to take their ease while we change the top Table.

Amendment Nos 10 -17.

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Beggs): We will now return to the debate on the second group of amendments in the Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill.

Mr Flanagan: Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. I am going to speak on amendment Nos 10, 14 and 15. Amendment Nos 10 and 15 are in my name and those of my two colleagues Bronwyn McGahan and Fra McCann and amendment No 14 is in the name of Mr Basil McCrea.

Amendment No 15 deals with the issue of zero-hours contracts. There is widespread acknowledgement in the House that it is an issue that needs to be dealt with. There is still no consensus on this issue, as the Minister and others have said. The Minister brought forward policy proposals to the Executive last February for consideration but, unfortunately, he could not get political consensus on those proposals and withdrew them.

Zero-hours contracts are one of the biggest issues —

Dr Farry (The Minister for Employment and Learning): Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: I certainly will, Stephen, go ahead. You are at it early.

Dr Farry: Just for the record, I did not withdraw the proposals because I was not getting political consensus; that hope still lies before me. I withdrew them because we were effectively out of time to draft the complex clauses that would have put the Executive paper into effect.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Minister for his intervention. He has taken all the blame now instead of trying to blame Sinn Féin for a change, so that might be a positive development.

Zero-hours contracts are one of the biggest issues facing this generation of working people. They have a deeply negative impact on workers' rights and protections and on employment practices. The Minister engaged in a very extensive and laudable public consultation on zero-hours contracts, and I think that the feedback he got was that such contracts are bad for the 28,000 workers who have them. They are also bad for their families, wider society and, indeed, the economy. Zero-hours contracts disproportionately affect women and unskilled workers and, therefore, have an impact on human dignity and self-esteem. It is very important that we take this opportunity to address zero-hours contracts.

During his public consultation and his presentation to the Employment and Learning Committee afterwards, the Minister acknowledged the negative impact that zero-hours contracts have for many workers, yet the proposals he brought forward to address that were, in my view, totally inadequate. I believe that the best solution for dealing with zero-hours contracts is to ban them, and that is why we have tabled this amendment today. If we allow zero-hours contracts to continue as they are, it will create a further unequal balance between workers' rights and employers' obligations, and, at the minute, that seriously disadvantages workers.

Dr Farry: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: Certainly, Stephen.

Dr Farry: Does the Member, therefore, feel that his colleague the Minister of Education has been guilty of exploiting workers, given that he, his predecessor and the Sinn Féin Minister before that presided over a system where supply teachers were used in schools? That is a form of zero-hours contract.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Minister for his intervention. I had intended to return to his allegations that the health and education services would be put into crisis overnight if this amendment were passed. The fact is that casual worker contracts have been in place for generations. It is my view that, with those types of contracts, people were seen as workers rather than employees, because there is a very clear legal difference between the two. It actually suits having people as bank nurses and substitute teachers much better than having them as employees. I do not think that bank nurses and substitute teachers should be seen as employees; I do not think that they should be on a zero-hours contract. I do think that giving staff zero-hours contracts seems to be the new fad that all employers are doing. It is an excuse for lazy, ineffective and bad management. Instead of figuring out what staff you will need to run your business, people put everybody down for zero, even if they work 35 or 40 hours every single week. That is an issue that has been raised time and again with me as an MLA, and I am sure it is the same for the Minister and other colleagues in the House.

We cannot have a situation where the health service is being run by staff and nurses on zero-hours contracts. There is a reluctance in the health service to give nurses a proper full-time job. The over-reliance on as-and-when staff — or bank staff, as they are called — is a serious problem in the health service. This amendment would not make it worse. It would actually discourage the health service from using those types of contracts for people who are, in effect, full-time staff but who are down as zero-hours contract staff or employees. This amendment would force people who need casual workers to hire casual workers, instead of hiring employees and giving them zero-hours contracts. What we are seeing is that people are being punished — having their hours put down to zero — if they are not available for work, join a trade union or exercise any rights at all. The employer then has every right to punish them by moving them from a regular 30- or 40-hour-week basis of employment and putting them down to zero. Then, there is no mechanism for an employee to take a case for unfair dismissal or to take it to a tribunal because it is not covered. That is one of the big issues with zero-hours contracts.

I think it is important to remember that, when the Minister appeared before the Committee, after his consultation closed and I put to him the prospect that zero-hours contracts should be banned, he, more or less, said "We can't do that, because employers would find a new way of treating employees badly". I agree with him; that would be the case. A small minority of employers who want to treat their staff badly, abuse them and not give them any rights as workers or employees, or give them any dignity as human beings, will find a way to circumvent the law.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: I will, Basil.

Mr B McCrea: I want to ask the Member whether he has identified these really rogue employers, these really bad people who are absolutely outrageous to those whom they employ. Does he think that we should ban them altogether? Does he think that we should tell them to sling their hook, leave Northern Ireland and not be part of us because we do not want that type of employer here? That is where the logic takes us — if these people are so bad, so heinous and so wrong, there is no saving them. Let us get rid of them all.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for his intervention. I do not necessarily agree that we should force all those employers to leave. However, we are a legislative Assembly, and we should introduce legislation that they have to comply with that affords dignity and self-respect to workers. I do not think that we should ask Sports Direct to close all their shops and move out just because they treat their staff badly. However, it is a fairly basic requirement that employers operate within the law, and what we propose to do is implement and introduce a law that ensures that workers are treated with a bit of respect and dignity.

I do not think that the Member's intervention is rational, and I certainly do not agree that we should ask those who are over-reliant on staff with zero-hours contracts to up and leave. We should bring in a legislative framework that protects workers. That is a fairly basic requirement, and I do not think that it is asking too much.

What we are seeing at the minute with workers' rights — the Minister referred to it in his opening remarks — is an increase in casualisation. Staff are now being hired increasingly on zero-hours contracts. We are told that everything is rosy in the garden, that unemployment is going down and that more and more people are in work, but, in reality, how many of those jobs are zero-hours contracts? How many of them are low-paid ? How many of them are for people in underemployment, where people who want to work full-time or want to work more hours cannot get them? The amendment would prohibit —

Mr Ross: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: I will, Alastair, yes.

Mr Ross: The Member has posed a series of questions about how many of the employed are on zero-hours contracts. Has he any answers? We need evidence-based policy making. Has he specific answers to the questions that he has posed?

Mr Flanagan: I have, and it is good to hear a Member on the opposite Benches arguing for evidence-based policy. It is certainly a far cry from some of their previous policies and the Member's support for extending the qualifying period for unfair dismissal. It is clear that there is no evidence to support that policy proposal.

The Minister's public consultation highlighted that there were 28,000 people here on a zero-hours contract. You cannot tell me that every one of those 28,000 people wants to have no surety about what hours they work this week, next week or the following week or that they can land into work today at 4.00 pm and be told, "We do not need you; go on home" and not be compensated for that at all. I do not think that that is acceptable. I accept that there is a need for flexibility in the workplace for employers and employees, but, at the minute, the pendulum is far too much in favour of employers, and, unfortunately, a minority of employers is abusing that right.

If we do not take this opportunity to tackle the scourge of zero-hours contracts, it will be a missed opportunity. To be fair to the Minister, he tried to bring forward some pragmatic solutions that would have dealt with the worst aspects of zero-hours contracts, particularly exclusivity contracts, where somebody works for an employer exclusively and is not allowed to work for another employer. That might be the case or might be justified in some high-end employment places where an extremely rare set of skills is required and confidentiality is required between one employer and another. However, I do not think that that is necessarily the case in a restaurant, a high-street store or a job where people are not even paid the living wage.

Mr B McCrea: Just before the Member moved off the issue of evidence-based policy, he quoted in response to Mr Ross the figure of 28,000. Is he aware that that is a simple pro-rata estimate for Northern Ireland? It is just plucked from the air. We have no real idea what the number is. It is a simple pro-rata estimate, where 4% to 5% gives 28,000 to 35,000. In other places, we say that it is only 1·2% of the employment of Northern Ireland. Before we pass any legislation, would it not be better to get some evidence base?

Mr Flanagan: The Minister engaged in a public consultation to identify the scale and extent of the problem and find out directly from people on zero-hours contracts how they were being treated as employees and whether a zero-hours contract was the right employment contract for them. I think that all of us, as MLAs, received many pieces of correspondence from people who had responded to the public consultation and copied us into their response. Some of the practices of employers who routinely employ people on zero-hours contracts are very alarming. Zero-hours contracts are not illegal. They are not illegal because we have not dealt with them as a legislative body and a case has not been successfully taken through an industrial or fair employment tribunal to make them illegal, but that does not mean that they are ethical or right. Employers should not be allowed to treat employees in such a way.

The difficulty with the Minister's argument about the health and education services running into crisis overnight is the different legal status of a worker and an employee. There would certainly remain flexibility for employers of all sorts to have casual workers on the books, including a medical ward that needed to bring in agency or as-and-when staff to cover staff sickness. However, I do not think that it is acceptable to give a health and social care trust carte blanche to hire a significant proportion of its nurses as bank or as-and-when staff —

Dr Farry: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: — and move away from having full-time, permanent nurses.

Dr Farry: It is important that the Member be aware that supply teachers, who were previously regarded as agency workers, are now regarded as employees with zero-hours contracts. There are good reasons for that shift having taken place. Casualisation, which, as the Member implies, can occur on an agency basis, would be an even more retrograde step, not just because of its impact on staff rights. It also opens up issues around inefficiency. For example, one area is child protection and how schools would engage with people who are even more at arm's length from them if they were on a de facto supply teacher list as opposed to a de facto zero-hours contract.

Mr Flanagan: I largely accept what the Minister says, but I still do not accept that teachers and nurses have to be employed on zero-hours contracts. There has to be some way of getting casual worker contracts — not necessarily through an agency — to meet the need for flexibility in the public sector. However, the target of the amendment is not the health service, the education system or the public sector generally, and I do not think that either service would be negatively affected.

I accept, once again, that flexibility is required by some employees and some employers, but the problem is that a small minority of employers are abusing the system, generated in recent years, of zero-hours contracts. It was not a concept that existed 10 years ago. You had full-time and part-time members of staff and casual workers to come in to do a piece of work when required. The situation now is that employees are called in whenever the employers want. They are not given any notice of when they will be working or when their shift will be cancelled. They are not compensated if the work is cancelled at the last moment, even when they have turned up. There is a vast amount of documentary evidence about the abuse, particularly by employers such as Sports Direct, whose whole business model is based on employing staff on zero-hours contracts. That needs to be addressed. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and say that we are not going to do anything.

The debate on zero-hours contracts has gone on long enough, and I accept that, at this stage, we do not have consensus on an outright ban. I accept that, but that is my party's position on the matter. It is a missed opportunity, however, not to address the issue now when there is an opportunity through the Employment Bill for us to put in place at least some measures to protect employees from abusive employers who base their whole business model on zero-hours contracts and do not understand that people need surety. We are told about the needs of our housing market, but how can people get a mortgage if they are on a zero-hours contract?

When the Minister brought forward his proposals to tackle zero-hours contracts, one of the issues that Mr McCann and others put to him was the ability of people in low-paid jobs to access benefits and working tax credits. The Minister assured us that his Department and the Department for Social Development were working on a joint departmental approach. A year later, we have not had any kind of update on how the benefits system will be changed to meet the need for flexibility of employees who one week may get 30 hours and the next three or four weeks get none and, because that is the case, do not get any benefits at all. That is another issue to be sorted. It does not appear to be a legislative barrier, and it is something that Departments can work on together.

I will now move off zero-hours contracts and on to the other two amendments. The question that I want to pose to Members is this: do we want to return to a system of employment where workers turn up at the gates of the docks or the workhouse on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning to see whether they are lucky enough to get pulled in the gate for a day's work?

That, in effect, is what is happening with zero-hours contracts. People are turning up at their workplace in the morning or afternoon and either being told that there is work for them or sent home. The employer has absolutely no duty to organise their workplace effectively. It is being done not only to completely erode workers' rights but to cover up for lazy and ineffective management within organisations.

I will move on to Mr McCrea's amendment No 14 about extending the qualifying period for unfair dismissal. There is absolutely no justification to warrant this legislative change. Extending the qualifying period for unfair dismissal does not make any sense. The CBI, the FSB and employers' representatives of that nature will tell you that it makes it easier to hire staff. It does not make it one bit easier to hire staff; it makes it easier to fire staff. My understanding is that the whole purpose of having a one-year period in which you cannot take a claim for unfair dismissal is so that the employer has a chance to figure out whether the employee is capable of doing the job and to give the employee a chance to become skilled up and able to do the job so that the employer can make a determination as to whether or not they are capable of doing it. If, after one year, an employer cannot figure out or does not know that an employee is not fit to do that job or that they are not performing, they are never going to know. A full year, 12 months, is enough for an employer to know that that employee is not cutting the mustard.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Member give way?

Mr Flanagan: Yes.

Mr B McCrea: Given that the Member is so keen on evidence-based assessment, how long does he think that it would take an employee who is joining work, having been unemployed in the past, to get up to speed so that he is fully protected? Does he have any figures?

Mr Flanagan: I do not have any figures but I will come on to a piece of evidence in a moment that will explain why there is no economic or social justification for this policy. I make the point to the Member that anybody who has applied for a job in recent years will have seen that, when you apply for a job, one of the criteria states that employees will be on probation for the first six months. I do not understand why employers give a probationary period of six months, yet there is a full 12 months in which an employee cannot take a case for unfair dismissal. Some Members want to extend that qualification period to two years. You go into a job and you get a six-month probationary period. So, the employer is saying, "After six months, I will know whether or not you are fit to do this job." However, a minority of Members here want to extend that to two years. Really, all that would do is deny people the right to go to a tribunal.

The whole purpose of the rule where you cannot take a claim within one year — I think that one year is probably a bit too long, given that most employers put people on probation for six months — is to allow people to bed in. It is not to allow businesses to downsize and get rid of staff without having to make redundancy payments. No matter what you have been told or what you think, it is not to bring additional flexibility into the workplace. The whole point of it is to allow employers to establish whether employees are fit for the job and to allow employees to figure out how to do the job before an assessment is made of whether or not they are fit for it. Moving to two years does not make any sense.

The only evidence that exists in this regard in recent years was the move, within the first year of the coalition Government in England, from a one-year qualification period to a two-year period. We stayed the same and kept the one-year period. We will be told that that is a massive barrier to inward investment and that no companies would come and base themselves here because they could not sack their staff within a year. I do not think that companies come here to hire staff so that they can sack them. What actually happened in that year when employers in England could sack staff within up to two years without any legal recourse and employers here could only do it within 12 months was that we had record levels of inward investment and job creation facilitated by Invest NI. So, the only evidence that exists highlights that this actually does not present a barrier to job creation at all.

As I highlighted to Mr Buchanan earlier, I was really interested to hear the comments from Mr Hilditch at Second Stage when he said that he supported the idea of not following suit with the rest of the UK by deciding not to increase the qualifying period for unfair dismissals from one year to two years. In the same debate, Mr Anderson outlined that he was in favour of extending it to two years. It appears that there is a difference of opinion within the DUP, and it is hard to know why that has changed. I accept that Mr Ross is a long-time advocate of the proposed change and has raised it consistently since 2012. It may well be the case that employers are raising it with him, but I do not think that it is a barrier to job creation or growing our economy. If we made the change, all it would do is erode workers' rights, with no tangible benefit in return for employers.

Amendment No 10 is about putting a statutory duty on companies to publish information on the extent of differential levels in pay between male and female employees. It is important to highlight the fact that, as the Minister said, it is largely based on legislation that exists in Britain that was enacted in 2010 but which has never taken shape here. The legislation enacted in Britain was slightly different, and I will highlight some of the differences that exist. Forty six years after the introduction of the first Equal Pay Act, women can still expect to earn significantly less than men over their entire career as a result of differences in caring responsibilities, clustering in low-skilled and low-paid work, the qualifications and skills that women acquire and outright discrimination. Thankfully, discrimination, in that sense, has been made illegal, but that does not mean that it is not happening. The whole premise of the amendment is to shine a light on where women are being paid less than men for doing similar jobs.

Recent evidence indicated that, at a macroeconomic level, women here earn more than men. However, if you drill down into those statistics and look at them in some detail, you will see that that could be explained by the higher proportion of females employed in the public sector and the fact that jobs in the public sector tend to be better paid than those in the private sector. It is also the case that those statistics were gathered after the complete collapse of the construction industry. The fact is that so many men across the North lost their jobs in a well-paid, skilled trade. As a result, they are unemployed, they emigrated, or they have opted for less-well-paid or even part-time employment. I meet men who have left the construction site and are now stacking shelves in shops on a zero-hours contract. There is a reluctance amongst those people ever to go back into construction.

In the gender pay gap, even though the difference in Britain is, I think, 13·9%, women are actually paid more here than men, but there are some unique explanations for that. However, there is no information as to whether men and women carrying out the same job are being paid differently in the same organisation. Many groups that campaign to eradicate the gender pay gap acknowledge that the first thing we need is accurate information on the scale and extent of the problem to allow it to be addressed. As I said, the British Government introduced similar legislation, but they made it applicable only to organisations that have more than 250 employees. If we were to follow that course of action and go with 250 employees, that would be the minority of employers and employees. I would have been minded to go for companies with 10 employees or more, but, in the interests of getting maximum political support, 50 is a happy medium.

In England, it was largely done in the same way: the 2010 Act was an enabling piece of legislation that allowed the British Government to bring forward regulations to enact it. However, we are still waiting on those regulations to be brought forward. That is why the amendment includes the date of 10 November 2016 by which the first regulations must be made. That date, of course, is Equal Pay Day, which is the day on which, women argue, they stop being paid for the rest of the year in Britain because they are paid 13·9% less. The Minister indicated that there may be some difficulties for his Department in meeting that deadline. I do not necessarily agree with him, but I accept that maybe he has a better understanding of how his Department works than I do. The officials in it certainly have a better understanding. The information that will be published will apply only to companies with 50 or more employees. It will have to set out the extent of the pay gap in each organisation. They also have to carry out an equal pay audit. I have left it up to the Minister to set out much of the detail required, but I have set out some parameters that need to be included in such a report, including a demonstration of the methodology used to calculate any differential in pay between male and female employees.

One of the biggest criticisms of the legislation in England is that there is no mechanism for employees or recognised trade unions to get sight of the information about their employers, so we need the Bill to include a requirement for the information to be shared with company employees and any recognised trade unions. The legislation in England refers to the publication of a report, but what does that mean and where does the report go? It needs to be shared with employees and trade unions.

Finally, the amendment would also require the Executive to introduce a strategy to tackle the gender pay gap within 18 months. Another big difference between this Bill and the legislation on the statute books in England is that the proposed sanction for non-compliance is capped at £5,000 in England. We have decided to apply a cap of £5,000 per employee because many people feel that a penalty of £5,000 for a large company with 5,000 employees is not much of a sanction, not much of a deterrent and not much of an incentive for companies to comply. A sanction of £5,000 per employee would mean that companies were extremely reluctant not to comply with the legislation.

It is clear, even though we do not have the information to the extent that we need it, that there is no one clear cause of the gender pay gap. There are important factors, such as discrimination and the fact that roles predominantly done by women are undervalued by many. Men tend to dominate the best-paid positions, and there is an inequality in the level of caring responsibilities. The gap appears to be wider for older women, women from ethnic minorities, women in certain occupational sectors, such as skilled trades, and women on higher earnings. If we got the information, it would give us a much better insight into the scale of the problem and allow the Department to produce a much more informed strategy on how to deal with it.

The Minister said that the timeline was not realistic. Although I do not necessarily agree with him, other Members seem to share his concern, so I am prepared not to move the amendment on the gender pay gap and work with the Minister and other colleagues to find an amendment that meets the Department's needs. The Minister also has concerns about the responsibility for this being put on his Department as opposed to OFMDFM, which currently has responsibility for equality. I am happy to discuss those issues with the Minister and, at this stage, am minded not to move the amendment. Hopefully, we will return at Further Consideration Stage with an amendment that meets the approval of the Assembly. Go raibh maith agat.

Mr Diver: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the group 2 amendments. There are three issues that I want to touch on: the gender pay gap information; amendment No 14, tabled by Mr Basil McCrea; and amendment No15, which seeks to introduce a new clause on zero-hours contracts.

Amendment No 10 would introduce a new clause on gender pay. I take on board that its proposer has decided not to move it, but it is still appropriate to speak to it. It would be a welcome step towards fully investigating the extent of the gender pay gap in Northern Ireland. There can be no doubt that it is a matter of concern and that such inequality still exists

Last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that there had been relatively little change in the gender pay gap over recent years. In the UK, the gap between women and men's pay for full-time workers was 9·4% in April 2015 compared with 9·6% in 2014. Even with the legislation in England that Mr Flanagan referred to, the pay gap is still a considerable issue. That was the narrowest difference since figures were first published in 1997, but there has been little change overall.

It is positive to say, and Mr Flanagan touched on this, that there has been better news in Northern Ireland about our ability to address the pay gap. It has lessened here, with full-time female workers often earning more per hour than their male counterparts in 2014-15. That, as Mr Flanagan said, is due to the propensity of people here to work in the public sector. There is, however, a concern about that, with tensions in the public sector and the possibility of its shrinking, and the feeling that, mainly due to cuts in the public sector, people will increasingly be working in the private sector. I accept that many people think that that is the way that our economy should be going, but that seems to be where the greatest risks of pay differentials are. Nevertheless, it is good protocol to investigate gender pay gaps and collect employment information.

The SDLP suggests that it would have been positive to include the Equality Commission in the monitoring and reporting section of amendment No 10.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for giving way. We had considered that, but, unfortunately, due to the amendment being proposed at Consideration Stage, there was not enough time for the British Secretary of State to grant approval for its inclusion in the Bill, and I certainly did not want to do anything to jeopardise the passage of Minister Farry's flagship Employment Bill.

Mr Diver: Thank you very much for that, which I accept. Obviously, it is a matter of concern. I take on board the fact that the timescales may not have allowed it to happen.

I turn now to Mr McCrea's amendment No 14. I was perplexed, as were my party colleagues, by the amendment. I spoke to Mr McCrea about it, and he explained the rationale behind it. I look forward to hearing an extended explanation, but it will probably not come as any great surprise to him that, as members of a social democratic and labour party, we will not support it. We believe that the amendment would effectively diminish an employee's rights to extending the qualifying period of employment by one year in relation to a written statement of reasons for dismissal. That would be a backward step. I understand the arguments for the embedding period for people in employment, but, speaking as somebody who, in a previous life outside the House, was directly involved in training people for employment, I had a lot of exposure to people, at all sorts of levels, in the early stages of their jobs. In my view, the risk in extending that period by two years would be not so much about its being used to see whether somebody worked out or was an errant employee, for instance, but, in extreme cases, an employer using it as an opportunity to get rid of people if their face did not fit or the employer was not comfortable with them. We are concerned about that. Not all employers adopt that approach, but it has happened.

Mr B McCrea: I appreciate the Member giving way. I have always wondered about this argument: if an employer takes that action at 11 months, why would he not take it at 23 months or at some other time? If employers are unscrupulous, surely they will just say, "You're gone". You could argue, controversially, that a two-year extension is better, because at least someone got two years before they were unfairly dismissed.

The Member mentioned his expertise, so I want to ask him another question. I asked this question of Mr Flanagan, but he did not know the answer. I have information on how long, on average, it takes an employee who comes in off the street to get up to speed and be a fully functioning employee so that his or her suitability for the business can be assessed. In your experience, how long would it take for someone to get up to speed?

Mr Diver: The answer to that question is extremely complex, because it depends on the nature of the job that the person is carrying out, what is expected of him or her and the nature of the organisation that he or she is working for. There are variations. I am not satisfied that extending the period to two years is justified in this case. In most cases, employers are able to come to an opinion within normal probationary periods for jobs, which are usually three to six months. I do not think that extending the period to two years is acceptable. The SDLP is not prepared to support that under any circumstances.

I now turn to amendment No 15 on zero-hours contracts. A lot of information on these contracts has come across in the debate, so I do not want to overplay it. The SDLP has been raising the plight of those working on zero-hours contracts for some time at a number of levels: in the House, in Committee and in councils. We are extremely concerned about the issue, as we are about the potential exploitation of people.

I know that Mr McCrea challenged the accuracy of the figure of 28,000. I have to be honest and say that I do not care whether it is 28,000, 24,000 or 15,000, the fact is that we have significant numbers of people in zero-hours contracts at the moment. A lot of those people are under 25. They are young people in the very early stages of their career. Is it right for this society to be exploiting people in that way, where they have uncertainty day and daily, week in and week out, not knowing how to plan for the future or what money they will have at the end of the month?

Ms Sugden: Will the Member give way?

Mr Diver: Yes, I will give way.

Ms Sugden: I was at university not so long ago. In one of the first jobs that I had to pay my fees whilst I was working through university, I actually had a zero-hours contract. It worked quite well for me because it meant that I was able to prioritise my studies and work my job around those. There was no obligation on me to work set hours. I did actually appreciate the flexibility there. Does the Member have any thoughts on that?

Mr Diver: I thank Ms Sugden for her intervention. I am glad to hear that it worked out very well in her particular case, but I have to say that, for other people, that has not been the anecdotal experience that I have heard about. People have told me that, with zero-hours contracts, it is very difficult for them to plan for the future and almost impossible to get any sort of mortgage or significant loan from the bank on the basis of uncertain income. I am willing to accept that, in some instances, it will work for people, but I think that, generally, it presents a lot of challenges for people.

Dr Farry: Will the Member give way?

Mr Diver: Yes.

Dr Farry: Surely the logic, therefore, of what he is saying is that we need to devise a system that allows us to tackle abuse where it exists and to devise a system that allows the flexibility that benefits people to continue. That way, everyone wins. Surely an outright ban, as the Member is potentially about to endorse, would prevent us from having that ability to adapt to the particular circumstances that people find themselves in.

Mr Diver: I understand that that is a perfectly logical approach to the issue. I have to say that, ideologically, I disagree with it. I think that part of the problem here is that we have bought into some sort of neo-liberal view of how people should work. What we need to do is go back to the blackboard, back to scratch, and try to recalibrate things in a way that is fair and by which we can create proper employment opportunities, particularly for our young people. I think we have a responsibility as a community to try to create appropriate employment opportunities and to have them presented in such a way that means that those young people are treated fairly and, even if they are on a relatively low salary, they can at least have some dependency on their likely income month in, month out.

In my and my party's view, zero-hours contracts are a way that can be used by some unscrupulous employers in some cases to avoid paying employees properly and to avoid giving them other reasonable employment rights. A study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that over 60% of those in zero-hours contracts wanted more hours and could not get them from their employers. I do not think that is a satisfactory situation.

As regards the Minister's remarks about the likelihood of creating chaos in the health and education sectors, again, I think that goes back to how we calibrate these things and look at creating employment opportunities in those sectors. I do not believe it would actually create chaos. I think there is a need to look at the HR needs in those sectors and at how they can be dealt with and managed properly.

Mr Ross: Will the Member give way?

Mr Diver: Yes, I will.

Mr Ross: The Member mentioned that the survey found that 60% of those in zero-hours contracts wanted more hours and could not get them. Does he acknowledge that that is not actually evidence that those people are being exploited? There are plenty of people on part-time contracts who want more hours and cannot get them. There are others who are on full-time contracts who want additional hours or promotions and cannot get them either. That is not actually evidence that those people are being exploited.

Mr Diver: I am sorry, but I think that, for somebody is in a situation where they are on a zero-hours contract and they have been offered three or four hours a week, if that is the only work that they can get, and they have to take it because they have no alternative, in a way, that is, in my considered view, a form of exploitation because the employer decides. The power resides with the employer to decide the number of hours they are willing to give the employee. The employee needs the work and must work to eat and take their lives forward. In my view, there is an element — potentially at least — of exploitation in that.

Mr Ross: I thank the Member for giving way. He is now using the example of four hours a week. That is not the example that he gave. He talked about 60% of those on zero-hour contracts. He did not say how long those people were contracted to work each week. That is not actually any evidence that those people are being exploited.

Mr Diver: I do not accept that, I am sorry. We will have to agree to disagree on that one.

Mr B McCrea: Will the Member give way to the back here?

Mr Diver: Yes.

Mr B McCrea: I just want some clarity. Are you calling for a right to have whatever hours you want to work? Are you saying that if you are on a zero-hours contract, you can say, "I will work 36 hours a week and you must provide it"? You could take an extension to that. Are we putting into a bill of rights that you have to have full employment in Northern Ireland as an absolute right?

Mr Diver: I hear what the Member is saying, but, in some respects, he is being facetious by giving that example. It is not unreasonable that people should expect some minimum threshold of hours, no matter what arrangement they have with an employer, whether it is part-time or full-time. In some instances, in certain sectors, when people have zero-hours contracts, they literally do not know how much they are working from one week to the next. They may present themselves at their place of work to find out that they have work or do not have work that week. I do not think that any employee will be able to dictate to their employer what hours the employer will be able to offer them, but it is not an unreasonable expectation to have some sort of minimum threshold. I accept that that has to be debated in the future. The principle of zero-hours contracts is something that, as a society, we all have to be concerned about.

As I said, the SDLP is against zero-hours contracts and is supportive of the Sinn Féin amendment. That said, we would have liked to have seen greater detail on how the prohibition of zero-hours contracts will be carried out. I accept that, in view of the proposer of the amendment not moving it today, there is potential to flesh out many of these ideas.

We retain some concerns about the Bill. The provisions in group 1 may make tribunal proceedings more onerous for the claimant. We welcome the review amendment submitted at Consideration Stage. We support the Sinn Féin amendments on gender pay equality and zero-hours contracts, and we are extremely concerned about Mr McCrea's amendment to extend the employment qualifying period to two years. That concludes my remarks on the group 2 amendments.

Mr Easton: Of the group 2 amendments, I will support amendment Nos 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16 and 17.

Amendment No 10 will not be moved, but it would have allowed for information to be published by employers on differences and pay gaps between women and men and for employers to give reasons for that. That would have made sure that all employers had to give reasons why, and, if they had not adhered to that, they could potentially be fined. I understand that the Member will not move that amendment and will work with the Minister and the Department. We might see that at a later stage as the Bill progresses.

Amendment No 14, which is Mr McCrea's, would basically allow anyone to take an appeal after one year and extend it to a two-year period. When receiving evidence from the Department, it was pointed that it had consulted quite widely on the issue. Certainly, the CBI and Federation of Small Businesses were in support of two years. On balance, because of that evidence, I tend to support that amendment.

Amendment No 15 is on zero-hours contracts. I believe that that amendment would do untold damage to those who want to work flexible hours and the number of hours. It would do untold damage to the hospitality industry and to nurses because the employer requires flexibility be able to bring in staff when needed for those jobs. I think that it is a badly worded amendment, and I will not support it.

Mr B McCrea: Nobody but nobody in the Chamber will, I believe, stand up to advocate for rogue employers who are doing bad things to employees. I do not think that anybody would try to make that argument. The argument from a number of people is, "Show me the evidence" or, "The evidence that you have is not correct".

I want to make it clear that in proposing my amendment, I am not seeking to attack workers' rights. One thing that was missed in the debate, but which perhaps came out on the periphery, is the impact of zero-hours contracts in certain circumstances, which people are rightly concerned about. However, there was little discussion about agency working, except when the Minister, in an intervention with Mr Flanagan about teachers, said that this gives even less protection. The problem is that when you start to get over-tightening of labour legislation, people move to other areas. They go into zero-hours contracts or agency working, or they take steps to avoid it.

Why is that important to us? Look at our regional employment statistics. Here is where we rank: the UK employment rate for the three months ending November 2015 shows that the lowest is Northern Ireland with 68·8%. The UK unemployment rate was highest in Northern Ireland at 5·9%. The UK economic inactivity rate is highest in Northern Ireland at 26·7%. The highest UK claimant count was in Northern Ireland at 4·3%. Our economic employment statistics are not good.

The Member from Sinn Féin proposing this took great delight in quoting views from different parties, and asking, "Did you really agree this?", so let me return the favour. Apparently, at least 40 people are leaving County Tyrone per week. The high rate of unemployment means that many are looking for jobs in Australia and elsewhere. I wonder if Mr Flanagan would support his colleague the Sinn Féin MLA Barry McElduff in calling for the Government to address the issue of emigration and create jobs where they are most needed — in Tyrone and, presumably, Fermanagh as well. Those are areas where we need to do that.

Mr F McCann: I thank the Member for giving way. I understand what you are saying in terms of emigration. Going back to the days when you were in the Chair of the Committee for Employment and Learning, that was something we discussed widely. Are you now saying that we should be looking at zero-hours contract, agency and other jobs to try to keep people from emigrating?

Mr B McCrea: Actually, Mr McCann, quite the contrary.

Mr F McCann: It does not sound like that.

Mr B McCrea: Well, you see, what is sometimes missing in this place is an articulate argument, where you set out certain bits of information and come round and say, "But let's look at the alternative". I do not want to upset people. In fact, I was saying to Mr Diver that I am sorry that my contribution seemed to have moved him from, "I'm interested in what Mr McCrea has to say" to "Under no circumstances will we ever support it". Maybe it was not one of my best interventions. My intention is to say it is entirely reasonable for us to be looking for ways to protect people who are exploited by unscrupulous employers. Mr Flanagan made that point, and I agree with it. The point I am making, however, is that when you tighten down information or legislation, you force people to go in the opposite direction.

This is just information. People say, "Would you like evidence?", so here is some evidence about the length of time it takes to get up to speed if you have just started a job. As Mr Diver said, it does depend, but an HR report says:

For SMEs, it is 24 weeks. For workers joining from another sector, it is 32 weeks. For new graduates, it is 40 weeks, and those coming from unemployment or inactivity take the longest time at 52 weeks. Part of the problem we are looking at here —-

Mr Ross: I thank the Member for giving way. It is a useful statistic to have, but for those going into sales jobs, not only does it take time for them to be trained, there is also a period of time for their performance in sales to be assessed adequately. In many jobs, it takes perhaps six or seven months to train somebody, and you also need a longer period of time to assess how they are performing in that job. That is why the two-year qualifying period is beneficial to employees. They are given adequate time to prove their worth to that employer.

Mr B McCrea: I am grateful for the argument, and I think that it should be put. I take the argument. You could use a similar argument when Mr Flanagan talks about how good we were for inward investment when the UK changed its rules. There is a lag between performance and outcome. We are trying to argue here on emotion. We are trying to talk here from a philosophical point of view rather than looking at the information. One of the things that I thought that Mr Diver's contribution highlighted is this philosophical stance of, "I am socially democratic, so I think that we should take this response". That is not necessarily the correct logical position, and I think that the word "logic" was in there. We are all trying to look to see what would make things better and how we would get more employment. I read out a list of statistics to show how poor things are in Northern Ireland, and I am going to talk about how poor things are in certain constituencies.

Mr Diver: Will the Member give way?

Mr B McCrea: Yes.

Mr Diver: The Member is talking about how we can make things better, but it seems to me that the thrust of what he is talking about is how we can make things better for employers rather than employees. Obviously, we need to have effective employers who are able to create jobs, but we need to protect the interests of the employees who are being exploited.

Mr B McCrea: Let me just take that argument. I had a very good meeting with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), which came to me a little bit alarmed about my amendment and asked to talk about it. We had a very good discussion. We agreed on many, many things, including the need to invest in skills and that we want to get early resolution and conciliation. We agreed that the independent assessor was a good idea, and it said, as a union, that it would not support taking anybody through a tribunal case if there was not a reasonable prospect of success. We agreed on all those issues. The representatives even said to me that the current workers' rights are relatively weak and that all that an employer has to do to get rid of anybody is to go through the process. You just go through the process, have the meeting, and do all of that. These are issues that are an existing position. I thought that this was an entirely constructive position for the union because it said that maybe the qualifying period is not the big deal and is a sort of headline figure that we can just ignore.

It may be what the Minister was talking about when he said that you have to be hard on some things and get a negotiation on others. I do not know, but he will maybe say when his turn to speak comes back around. It seems to me that the argument over whether the qualifying period is one year or two years does very little to affect the unfair dismissals claim. In fact, that is what people have said in evidence. They have said that it makes no difference. Mr Flanagan, in earlier contributions, was saying that the numbers went up and the numbers went down, but, actually, it makes no difference.

I will tell you where it does make a difference — not to the employees but to the people who are looking to employ people. Here is our position, which we should all be particularly worried about. About a year ago, a 'Belfast Telegraph' poll focusing on young people showed that 67% of them see their future as being outside Northern Ireland and that 70% of them think that our politicians are incapable of agreeing a joint vision for the future of the country. That is the problem facing us all. The biggest tragedy in Northern Ireland, often not spoken about, is our young people who have to leave to get a job.

Mr Flanagan: Will the Member give way?

Mr B McCrea: I will give way in just a moment.

This is the issue that I am trying to address. When you do not have a job, you cannot get experience. Therefore, you cannot get another job.

What you want is a mechanism whereby you are given an opportunity to show what you can do. That is key to my amendment. It is not trying to deprive people of rights; it is trying to create an environment in which we will get more jobs for our young people.

Mr Flanagan: Excellent. I thank the Member for giving way because that is exactly the point that I want to ask him about. Can he please outline to the House how allowing employers to sack staff after up to two years without recourse for any rights for that member of staff leads to the creation of one more single job in our economy? It might well displace jobs and allow some staff to be sacked so, then, somebody else can get that job, but it does not create a new job. You are talking about people wanting or needing to emigrate for employment. They will not stay if they have to get a zero-hours contract or if they face the prospect of being sacked at any stage within the next two years, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the reason for sacking them.

The Member's argument does not make any sense; it does not stack up, and it does not wash. It is based on an illogical position: that giving employers more rights will somehow lead to a position where they will not abuse those rights. I do not accept his narrative or his arguments.

Mr B McCrea: That would be a no, then?

Mr Flanagan: Maybe.

Mr B McCrea: I am just checking.

I am not afraid — you probably know this — to stand here on my own and say what I think. I did not know whether anybody would support this amendment. I brought it forward because I thought that we should have the debate. I have already made the point about us ducking the issue by moving it to affirmative procedures rather than negative resolution and about how that will set in stone what will happen. I am open to debate and argument. What I will say to each and every one of you is this: expect me to return the argument. If you make an argument, expect me to challenge it. That does not mean that I disrespect you or that I do not think that you have good points. The proper role of scrutiny is to ask questions.

Mr Flanagan, you have stated quite often that there is no evidence. In fact, I think that even the Minister, in his Civil Service-speak, said that there is no evidence to suggest such and such. You could also have said, however, that there is no evidence to the contrary. In the absence of any research, you might ask yourself why there is no research to inform the debate, given that we started in 2012, if memory serves me, when I was Chair of the Committee, but there is research. If you want research, it comes from the Federation of Small Businesses — a very respected organisation that, I think, many Members in the Chamber have attended and supported.

It talks about small businesses, not the big multinationals, not the ones that have HR committees and not the ones that you can say, "Yes, they have to go and do these procedures". What you find out from the Federation of Small Businesses is that there are 118,000 small businesses in Northern Ireland, but only 32,000 actually have employees. The survey that it brought back says that most of those businesses have between one and five employees. They were asked what problem they faced. If you want to get jobs for our young people or even, dare I say it, for those who are not so young and are having to get a new job after being made redundant, you have to persuade somebody to take them on. Here is the unpalatable truth and the words that maybe you should not say but which should be said, if that makes sense: the world does not owe you a living. People demand a job as a right, but, in the employment world, you have to negotiate with your employer: I will do certain work, and you will give me a certain amount of money. What everybody wants is a chance.

Mr Agnew: Will the Member give way?

Mr B McCrea: Yes.

Mr Agnew: I take on board the Member's point to an extent. However, if you are in a negotiation where one side has the opportunity to sack the other, there is no level playing field or negotiation. The employer calls the shots.

Mr B McCrea: The point that I made earlier, Mr Agnew, was that you can do that at 11 months as well, because what you get at the moment is churn. Most of the people who are showing up for further employment have been made unemployed after 13 weeks. Look at the casual staff that are taken on over Christmas. What could be worse than turning up for a job and being asked, "In the past five years, how often have you been employed?" and having to say, "Five times for 13 weeks". What you actually want is to get a bit of continuity of experience. You want to work in the one job and get a chance to show what you can do, and, frankly, if it takes you a bit of time to get up the learning curve, so be it. Let us give you the chance to do it. Perhaps it is counter-intuitive, but that is why a one-year constraint does not help anybody. It almost forces employers that are so minded — I am not saying that I agree with them — to act in one year and not two. You would benefit if you could move to doing two years. That is what the Federation of Small Businesses says.

Mr Swann talked about his position. The FSB, I am quite sure, is a reputable organisation in his constituency. In Ballymena, which, I believe, is close to his abode, 1,230 firms employ fewer than 10 people. Many of them replied to the survey. They are saying to him, "We would like to take on more people, but we do not have the HR department to take them on. We are worried about this. Give us a chance, and we will employ your local people — your constituents".

I say to Mr Diver that, in Derry, the figure is 2,500. It is slightly lower, I have to confess, than the economic metropolis of Lisburn. The issue is that you are trying to encourage those people who have work to take on more people, and they are telling you in evidence that they will not do it because they fear the employment law.

Some people in ICTU came forward and said that it is not such a big issue. I think that it said that it was nineteenth on the list, but you have to remember that it is comparing with what happens in GB. It is talking about a country where an SME is fewer than 250 people. Our economy is not like that. Our economy is made up of microbusinesses — businesses that employ fewer than 10 people. They are owner-driven, and you want them to employ people. Just think what would happen if we could encourage each one to take on one person. The real challenge for us is how you make such a thing happen.

There is some discussion about zero-hours contracts, and there was a really good intervention on that issue that they are not bad for everybody. Some people like zero-hours contracts. Of course you do not want people to be exploited, but I was struck by the Minister's proposals for dealing with zero-hours contracts. They were produced about a year ago, and I heard Mr Agnew say to the Minister, "Tell us what your proposals are for this zero-hours business", but the proposals, as I understood them, were that, if you were working for six months or whatever, you would be entitled to a contract. In fact, employers would be forced to state why they were not giving you a contract. All of that works only if you are not working for an agency. I can tell you that, if you make it too difficult to employ people, as is currently happening, people will not take the chance of employing anybody. There is no bigger challenge for our economy or us as legislators in the Assembly than to find a way of getting gainful, local employment.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Member for giving way. Once again, he talks about how extending the qualifying period for unfair dismissal makes it easier to hire people. It does not make it easier to hire people; it makes it easier to fire people. Does he accept that the actual outworking of increasing the qualifying period for unfair dismissal does not help employers to create a single job? All that it does is make it easier for them to fire people within two years.

Mr B McCrea: We are going to go over this again. I am not an expert in employing people, but I will tell you who is: the Federation of Small Businesses, the CBI and engineering employers. Those are the people who actually employ. What you are going through at the moment is shedding labour from the Civil Service. That is our big process. You are going to have to find a way in which to get those people work or else put them on the scrapheap.

Unless you can come up with better information for me or some other alternative evidence, all that I can go for is what people have said. The employers have said that they would like to recruit more people but that they are afraid of the legislation.

Mr Diver: The Member said that employers have a fear of employment law. Part of the question is why we have employment law. We have employment law and protections so that people cannot be exploited as they were in the past. Any employer that treats their employees with dignity and has that fundamental relationship where they work and they are paid in return for the work that they do should not have anything to fear from employment law.

Mr B McCrea: Mr Diver said that he had some expertise in matters of recruitment. I have here the costs associated with recruiting somebody. It is from an established HR report, which states that, on average, it costs £30,614 to recruit somebody, per employee. You can argue about how they got to that methodology. Part of it includes work loss because of an inefficient process and having to put mentors in or whatever else. Those are the statistics that I gave earlier about how quickly it takes to come up to speed. I can also tell you that it costs about £6,000 in management time, recruitment fees, advertising and whatever. No employer in their right mind will try to waste money; that is not their purpose. They should be trying to recruit people who are right for their job and give them time to show what they can do. Occasionally, those things do not work.

I will tell you this straight off: when I was the Chair of the Employment and Learning Committee, there was an initiative from the Department to try to encourage people to take on workers and to go through a scheme. I went to a very respected organisation in my constituency and said, "Listen. I am really interested in this. I would like you to take people on". You can tell me that it does not happen in your constituency, but they told me that they were also interested but the problem was that, when they take on people who are forced to them on a scheme, they do not really want to work and that the first thing that happens is that they cut their hands on saws or something like that and put in a claim. They told me that they prefer to hire them as agency workers for a couple of years and, if they are OK, they then take them on. That is the point I am making. You cannot look at that one issue in isolation. If you want employment law that encourages employment but also looks after the rights of individuals, you have to look at it as a whole.

I sometimes get a little frustrated when I make these arguments. I get the feeling that people adopt a position that is based on ideological thought processes rather than a rational, logical evidence-based process. All the evidence from those who employ suggests that, if you do the right thing by giving employers some encouragement to take on employees, they will do so. Northern Ireland needs to do that because our employment performance is not good enough.

I put the challenge to those parties that are going to reject my amendment. When you look to those in your constituency, they will ask you whether you do not support those who are trying to create wealth. Are you saying that no members of the FSB are good employers? I heard a lot a lot of talk about Michelin, the tobacco factory and all those people. Are you saying that there are no responsible and reputable employers? I see that most people are trying to do a good thing because it is in their interests to do so.

When you come back to the numbers and to the evidence, the number of people who may be on zero-hours contracts is somewhere between 1·2% and 4%. I would like to know what that figure is before I pass any legislation. I am not saying that I am opposed to zero-hours contracts that are properly regulated. Of course there are abuses and issues, and I am interested to hear more about what the Minister has to say on the matter, but I want it to be evidence-based. When you do not address agency working at all in an employment Bill, there is a huge chasm in the arguments being put forward.

So, when I come to a conclusion on this, I realise that the style of debate that I have had and the challenge that I put out to people does not engender them to go, "Ah what a good fella. Let's go and vote for his amendment after all — you know, it's not so bad". I get all of that. But sometimes you just have to take a stand and say, "You are trying to push this through without considering the full effects".

I do not know if you are part of it or whatever, but I say to you, Minister, that I saw immediately what the procedural moves were about in moving to affirmative action on this. In my opinion, it was not that you might worry about some rogue Minister — heaven forbid we would have rogue Ministers in this place and we would have to go and stop it. I mean, if we had rogue Ministers or rogue employers, where would it all end? Rogue politicians?

This is a procedural thing. I think that we should be having this debate, and I am not trying to tell anybody here that they are wrong. I understand that there are heartfelt feelings on all sides and that people want to see what is best for their constituents. That includes looking after the employers that will employ them. Those are things that we have to deal with. But what I really think is good, even though it has been a bit fractious in this debate, is that at least we have got it out in the open. At least the amendment was put, and we put our position and had our chat, and we can stand on it when it comes to the next election. This is what I believe. But if you really want to know what I think would be good for Northern Ireland on this issue — from a non-partisan position — it is that we could agree to do everything possible to create jobs for our people. Jobs are what it is all about. It is about the economy, stupid. And on that, I will sit down.

Mr Ross: I will try to keep my comments relatively brief. I only want to talk to amendment Nos 14 and 15. I do so because they were two areas that I was particularly interested in when I served on the Employment and Learning Committee for two and a half or three years at the beginning of this mandate. The debate has not moved on an awful lot since then. I remember sparring across the table with Mr McCann, who often rehearsed some of the arguments that we have heard today about whether it was to do with standing up for employers or employees. Unfortunately, that is the kind of debate that we have had again this afternoon; that somehow it has to come down to a competition between employers or employees. Actually, what we want to do — I agree with Mr McCrea on this point — is to get to a position where both benefit, and both benefit from having a productive workforce who are in employment. That is the circumstance that we want to create in Northern Ireland.

All politicians are great at posing for photographs with the FSB, the CBI or other business organisations. Politicians are great at talking about how they want to see more jobs created in their constituency. They are great at calling for the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister to get more jobs created in their constituencies. But when it comes to actually creating an environment in Northern Ireland that is business-friendly and job-creation-friendly, I am afraid that some fail to live up to the expectation.

Employment law is important. Earlier, I listened to the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister talking about the key components involved in bringing investors to Northern Ireland, and he talked about our skills force. We have a highly skilled population in Northern Ireland. Our universities and further education colleges are excellent, particularly in how they work with employers in making sure that they provide appropriate training. Northern Ireland has a lower cost base than other countries, and that lower wage and office cost base attracts investors.

However, employment law is important, particularly when you think of the bigger companies from the Middle East and the States that are looking at a range of different environments across Europe. The most restrictive employment laws, seen in places like France, turn away investors. So, we need to make sure that we are cognisant of that and have a business-friendly approach. When it comes to a decision about whether to set up their company in Glasgow, Liverpool or Belfast, an employer will look to an area where they have the greatest level of flexibility. That is a significant thing. In 2012, the Government — I think that it was Vince Cable, a man hardly renowned for being a mad right-winger — introduced the employment law reforms and moved the qualifying period for unfair dismissal back up to two years.

Of course, as Mr McCrea pointed out, over the last number of decades, it has continually flipped between two years and one year, back and forth without any significant evidence that it caused any upsurge in employees being treated badly. At that time, Vince Cable and the coalition Government tried to create an environment in which employers were given the confidence to take on additional staff. When employers are telling us that it would give them more confidence, the litmus test is whether they take on more staff or train more people and whether they continue to grow as businesses.

The evidence from Great Britain over the last three years is hardly that the roof has fallen down and, suddenly, people are being abused right across Great Britain. It is simply not the case. What is the case is that Northern Ireland now looks like it is a step behind the rest of the United Kingdom in reforming employment law, and that, I am afraid, concerns me. It is a point that I made three years ago to the Minister and repeatedly made to him in questions for written answer: I asked him when he would follow the lead of Great Britain by reforming our employment law on unfair dismissal. I understand that he has all sorts of difficulties in getting proposals through the Executive and that there are difficulties in getting cross-community support. However, I am disappointed that we talked about it at the very beginning of the mandate, yet only today are we seeing the Bill. That is disappointing, given that the Executive keep talking about doing everything possible to help to create jobs. I am afraid that the Minister has not pushed this agenda forward anywhere near strongly enough, and that concerns me. I support Mr McCrea's amendment and have consistently done so. If Members are serious about ensuring that we are competitive, particularly against countries across the United Kingdom, they should also move towards that position.

I want to touch briefly on Mr Flanagan's amendment on zero-hours contracts. I remember arguing on the Employment and Learning Committee about the merits of zero-hours contracts in a flexible workforce. We want a flexible workforce and an economy that works for employers and employees. In an intervention, the Minister made the point, as did Mr McCrea, that nobody is talking about exploiting employees. If there are circumstances in which employees are being exploited, of course we should take action against the employers — of course we should.

Mr Agnew: Will the Member give way?

Mr Ross: Yes.

Mr Agnew: Does he not see how someone being on an exclusive zero-hours contract is a form of exploitation and that we have no proposals to do away even with that?

Mr Ross: That is not what we are discussing today. The amendment does not mention exclusive zero-hours contracts; it deals with all zero-hours contracts. There would need to be a very strong argument and a highly specialised justification for having exclusive zero-hours contracts. One of their benefits is that they give people the flexibility to turn down hours, take on hours or look for work elsewhere. Mr Flanagan made the point that there may be some areas — where someone has a particular skill set or works in a highly sensitive environment — in which certain commercial confidentialities could not be breached. It would be quite rare, I must say, for someone with a particularly high skill set to be on a zero-hours contract — that is unlikely. I do not see how employers would argue that there should be exclusive zero-hours contracts, but that is not what we are discussing today. We are discussing a blanket ban on zero-hours contracts.

Mr Flanagan said that the contracts were bad for workers and bad for the economy. They are not bad for the economy. The fact is that all the major employer organisations say that they give flexibility to and help the job market, and he should listen to them. In a very real example, Ms Sugden said that, when she was trying to get work and was on a zero-hours contract, it worked for her. It works for many students across Northern Ireland who do not want or cannot work regular hours, or perhaps they are busier in one week with university work than in another. They have the opportunity to turn down work if they are too busy but take it on another weekend. That is what a flexible workforce and a flexible labour market are about, and it helps our economy. The same goes for people who may have been out of work for a long time and want to return to the labour market gradually. It is a perfect opportunity for them and gives them the flexibility and control over their hours to do that.

Many Members asked this question: what if you want a mortgage or regular hours? In that case, a zero-hours contract is not for you. You will not take a job on a zero-hours contract if you need a mortgage. It is not suitable for everyone, but nobody is arguing that it is. My argument is that it has to be part of the mix in a flexible labour market. We talked about how zero-hours contracts benefit employers, and bigger employers use them as well. If they get a big order in, they take on more staff and, once the order is complete, they lay off those staff.

I have a real-world example from my constituency. When this was first discussed two or three years ago, a former Member, Mr Ramsey, talked about the potential of tabling a private Member's motion. People came to me and said it would be absolute madness for small businesses in certain industries. The example that I was given was of a small catering company based in Carrickfergus. It had no idea what its order sheet would look like a month in advance. It often took orders on a Monday for the following weekend or the weekend after that, so how busy it would be depended on a very short-term order book. Zero-hours contracts allowed that company to take on such work, knowing that it had a list of people who could come in at short notice to help with a catering job. If the company did not have a big order for the following week — it might have a small order — it would not have as many staff in. However, if a small family company were to keep all those people on a paid salary contract, it could not do business.

Zero-hours contracts are important for a flexible labour market, and they very much help small companies. I really take exception to Mr Flanagan saying that employers who use zero-hours contracts are lazy, inefficient managers. I can tell him that the people from that catering company who came to me work incredibly hard, long hours to ensure that they make a living, and there is nothing lazy about entrepreneurs who go out and try to set up their own companies and strive to get business and employ more people. It is a disgrace that Mr Flanagan used that language here today, but it does not surprise me: he has form.

I will leave it at that. I suggest to the House that, if people are serious about a flexible labour market that creates jobs and helps our economy, they will reject Mr Flanagan's nonsense amendment on banning zero-hours contracts. I endorse Mr McCrea's amendment.

Ms Sugden: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the second group of amendments at the Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill. I congratulate the Minister on getting the Bill this far. I also thank the Committee staff for turning the Committee Stage around in such a short time, although it is regrettable that the time was so short. I am no different to other Members in that my focus is drawn towards amendment Nos 10 and 15, which have been tabled by Phil Flanagan, Bronwyn McGahan and Fra McCann, and amendment No 14, which has been tabled by Basil McCrea.

I turn to amendment No 10. The bulk of my contribution will be on the gender pay gap, but I understand that the Members are not seeking to move that amendment. It is important, however, that we have an opportunity to discuss the issue, and I agree in general with the intentions of the proposed new clause. However, I do not agree with the amendment and the wording that has been put forward.

As I said, the proposers are correct to table the amendment, if only to raise the debate and encourage the Minister, the new Minister or, indeed, the Minister of another Department in the new mandate to seek an opportunity to address inequality realistically. As Members said, across the UK, although gender pay equality is improving, it has not changed dramatically over four years. It is thought that pay parity for men and women will take 50 years. In fact, the Prime Minister seems really enthusiastic about getting it within the next generation, so I certainly look forward to my grandchildren having the same opportunities as their male counterparts. In the UK, we are behind by 20%, so that is not a great figure. The figure also varies by occupation. The pay gap is probably biggest in the skilled trades, processed plant machine operations and for managers, directors and senior officials.

I am more than sympathetic to Sinn Féin's proposal, but it is complicated. It deserves more attention than a last-minute amendment that has not been analysed or consulted on properly. According to 2014 figures, as Members said, we do not have a gender pay gap in Northern Ireland, and, in fact, men are behind women. Although that may indicate that, for once, Northern Ireland is at the forefront on progressive issues, it actually highlights a symptom of a huge public sector compared with a small private sector. I am interested in up-to-date figures, particularly in light of the recent voluntary exit schemes, to see whether that gap has widened any more. Typically, gender pay gaps exist in the private sector, and I imagine that most businesses do not realise that a problem exists until they are forced to look at it. That is why today's debate is helpful.

While the amendment is unlikely to pass, it is important and needs to be considered as we move forward. I think that, particularly as we seek to grow our private sector and shrink the public sector, unless we address this, we could have an unwelcome situation where, as our private sector grows, the gender pay gap also grows. That will mean that we will actually be going backwards.

The detail of amendment No 10 has led me to oppose it. It will not apply to employers who have fewer than 50 employees. England, Scotland and Wales are proposing equal pay legislation for employers who have more than 250 employees as a first step. Whilst I appreciate that Northern Ireland's economy is significantly different from those across the water, with SMEs making up the majority of our private sector, I am unsure about the figure of 50 that has been put forward in the amendment. I cannot come up with a figure because I am as uninformed about it as anyone else in the House. Again, I think that that is due to the lack of consultation and something like this not being proposed sooner.

The amendment also sets out regulations for this to be in effect by 10 November 2016. The Member said that that was because that was Equal Pay Day. Whilst that is quite a nice concept that seems to tie in everything nicely, it seems a little soon to me. I hope that those who tabled the amendment are mindful of the realistic difficulties with implementing legislation that will cost businesses more in the same year as we implement the living wage. Unless the amendment comes alongside government proposals to support private businesses in implementing it, we could be putting pressure on our small businesses.

I do not want to misrepresent myself. Gender pay parity and the living wage are absolutely the right things to do, but we need to be mindful of the current economic climate, particularly in Northern Ireland. Missing from the amendment is something that I hope will inform the debate moving forward: there has been no consideration of the bonus gaps between men and women. That contributes greatly to the figures that seem to show so wide a gap. There are many reasons why men get paid more bonuses than women, and a lot of it is not down to performance. I will not go into the details, but we need legislation that addresses that as well.

For all the reasons above, I will not support the amendment. I do not think that it is the right vehicle. I will not support it at Further Consideration Stage either because I do not think there will be an opportunity to do that. The Bill has been rushed at the end of the mandate, and I feel that there has been no time to consider it properly. I encourage the Government to ensure that it forms a part of the new Programme for Government.

I will not go into too much detail about the other amendments, as other Members have said much of what I feel about zero-hours contracts and increasing the qualifying period of employment from one year to two. Briefly, zero-hours contracts need reform because they are open to abuse. We all know what that looks like. I do not think that an outright ban, however, is appropriate. As I said, in my experience, a zero-hours contract satisfied me to an extent because it allowed me to prioritise something that was more important in my life. I was able to work and earn something to pay for any bills that I had. Equally, it was a bit of a struggle because I had a hire purchase agreement at the time, and I was hoping that I would get enough hours every week to pay for it. Fortunately, the employers were biting the hand off me to work for them as much as I could. That flexibility is important, and, as Mr Ross said, we cannot lose it. As Mr McCrea said, employers will seek other opportunities to get the flexibility they want, again squeezing out the people who maybe would have taken a zero-hours contract in the process.

As others have said, there is the case of teaching staff and lecturers. My partner is a lecturer in the Northern Regional College (NRC) — I declare that interest — and he started his role with NRC on a zero-hours contract. That enabled him to build up experience while he studied and got the qualification that enabled him to have a full-time permanent job. I see the pros and cons of the zero-hours contract, but, as for amending the Bill, our wings are clipped within the lifetime of this Assembly mandate.

In amendment No 14, Basil McCrea proposes increasing the qualifying period from one year to two. To be honest, I think that this is quite an interesting amendment, and I am willing to understand it and explore it further. To be honest, I feel entirely uninformed about it. Just hearing about it in a nutshell before lunch was not enough to convince me that we might not put people at a disadvantage by giving employers more opportunities to sack their staff by extending the period to two years. I recognise the arguments — others have said that industry is quite behind it — but I need more information to consolidate them in my mind. However, I am willing to look at that again as we move into the next mandate.

Mr Agnew: Like other Members, I plan to speak to amendment Nos 10, 14 and 15. I start with amendment No 15 on zero-hour contracts. There has been considerable debate about it already. We face a stark choice between Mr Flanagan's proposal to ban zero-hour contracts and doing nothing. At Committee Stage and in other public discourse, there has been an acceptance that there is a problem with zero-hour contracts. The difficulty is that the Minister has made no proposals to address that problem. I am open to proposals, and the talk, up until now, was that there needed to be some form of regulation. I thought that there was growing consensus that there needed to be some regulation, starting from the very minimal form, outlined in the Minister's consultation, of banning exclusivity contracts. If that were before us today, I would certainly be attracted to it as the minimum that we should do on zero-hour contracts. It is not in front of us.

We are left with the option of a ban or doing nothing, which means completely unregulated zero-hour contracts. That leaves the opportunity to exploit workers, and I believe that there are exploitative zero-hour contracts. As has been pointed out, if that was not the case, a lot more highly skilled, highly paid professionals would seek the flexibility of zero-hour contracts. Maybe they would like to take three months to travel the world and then come back to their job. The reality, however, is that we do not see it at the high end of the labour market; we see it at the low end. We see unskilled, low-paid workers employed on zero-hour contracts. It touches on Mr McCrea's amendment about the balance of power between employer and employee. Unfortunately, the demand for jobs in our economy is much higher than the supply, and that gives the employer power. The employee, particularly the lower skilled, has very little power. As Mr McCrea said, there is very little negotiation to be had. It boils down to, "Do you want the job? These are the conditions. Take it or leave it".

I have to come back to why we have no proposal from the Minister when there has been so much talk about the issue in the media and in Committee. Indeed, he has consulted on it. The speculation has been that even the minimum regulation — a ban on exclusivity contracts — was too much for the Executive and could not be agreed.

Dr Farry: Will the Member give way?

Mr Agnew: Certainly.

Dr Farry: I will save the Member from five minutes of speculating erroneously. The context is that we have had a significant paper, which I mentioned in my opening statement on this group of amendments, before the Executive since February 2015. It made a number of proposals, including a ban on exclusivity. Frankly, the Executive and the Assembly agreeing to ban exclusivity would just be a drop in the ocean. Something like 2% of zero-hour contracts are exclusive, so it would be scratching the surface. We were looking for a statutory code of practice and an expectation that an employer would have to justify not giving someone who has fulfilled a normal working pattern over a set period a regular contract. Those proposals were rejected by the Executive not because they went too far but because Sinn Féin — no doubt, Mr Flanagan can respond to this in due course — did not feel that they went far enough. They wanted an outright ban. We have been locked into a situation where it has been an outright ban versus the proportionate reforms that I have been trying to get through the Executive for the best part of a year.

Mr Agnew: I appreciate the Minister's clarification. He probably did save me going off on one particular tangent, so I will go off on a different one, but on a similar point. I ask this question: what is the Minister's role? I have questioned him on a number of issues, including this one. The reforms that he is seeking seem reasonable, but he has not been able to get them through the Executive to be debated here today. I have seen other reasonable reforms proposed by the Minister, such as those trying to make teacher training colleges more efficient and more integrated, not getting through the Executive. At the other end, when I questioned him on what he can do in relation to universities — for example, as regards modern languages at Ulster University — he said that the universities are independent and that, while he funds them, they run their own affairs. I will ask a question that Mr Attwood is fond of asking about knowing the difference between being in government and being in power. The Minister is clearly in the Government, but is he in power? It seems to me that every —

Dr Farry: Will the Member give way?

Mr Agnew: — change that he proposes is blocked at the Executive. I will certainly give way.

Dr Farry: OK. I am not sure if the Member has been paying attention over the past five years, but we have a higher education strategy, a widening participation strategy, an FE strategy, an apprenticeship strategy, a youth training strategy and a NEETs strategy. We have additional STEM places, and we have doubled the number of PhDs. I can go on at length if the Member so wishes. I am in a position to address a large amount of things. I also stress to the Member that he is coming very close to advocating political interference in how universities do their business. I urge caution on that. I am sure that that is not really where he intends to go.

Mr Agnew: I thank the Minister for his intervention. He talks about a higher education strategy but, as he does not want to interfere in the universities' business, I wonder if it is worth the paper that it is written on. My point was more about his role within the Executive. If he cannot even get simple reforms through the Executive to be debated — not passed, as the Executive parties can vote against them if they wish, but even debated — I question what his role in the Executive is. That is part of the crux of why we are here debating one extreme, which is to ban zero-hour contracts, and the other extreme, which is to do nothing. As the Minister has outlined, there are other stages in between, but we are left with this stark choice. Given the stark choice that we have, I am, as I have said, more minded towards Mr Flanagan's approach. The labour market already benefits the employer in the sense that the demand for work is much greater than the supply —

Mr Ross: Will the Member give way?

Mr Agnew: — particularly at the lower-skilled end. I will give way.

Mr Ross: It strikes me that the Member is almost saying, "We have an opportunity to either wait and see if we can get amendments brought forward on this and take away the problem area of zero-hour contracts, or we can just have a scorched-earth policy." It seems to me that the logical and rational position would be to say, "Let us see if we can work on getting some agreement on tackling exclusive zero-hour contracts and make sure that we have tight enough regulation over their usage." He seems to be taking the other position of, "Let us not go for the logical thing. Let us just get rid of them all, and to hell with the consequences for the labour market." Why on earth is he taking that approach?

Mr Agnew: I thank the Member for his intervention. The obvious thing to do would have been to agree that at the Executive and bring it forward in the Bill. That has not happened, and I have no confidence that we are going to see something better at Further Consideration Stage. If he is telling me that he is going to bring that forward —

Mr Weir: Will the Member give way?

Mr Agnew: I will when I make this point. If the Member chooses not to move the amendment today and something is going to be brought forward from the Benches opposite, I will be willing to look at it. I stated that there was a stark choice. I do not envisage the same problems if we ban zero-hour contracts that he does. There may be better options, but I do not see it as the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is what we have. I will give way.

Mr Weir: I am a little bit perplexed. The Member seems to indicate that we are stuck with two extremes, that he is choosing the lesser of two evils, and, essentially, that it is all the Minister's fault for not being able to get this through the Executive. What was to stop the Member, if he has a particular issue, bringing forward an amendment himself? I have not seen him submit any.

Mr Agnew: I thank the Member for his intervention. As he well knows, I have brought forward plenty of amendments to plenty of Bills. I am one MLA. I brought forward my own private Member's Bill. It was passed and is now an Act. I have done my work in the Chamber. This is a Bill. I am not on the Committee, but I am seeking to provide a contribution, and I will stand over my record happily. Indeed, I will go up against the Member and the Minister in the forthcoming elections and I will put my record to the people. I have no fear in that regard. I am making a contribution on the proposals we have in front of us. There is only so much that you can do, as one MLA, which is why I look forward to my party having more MLAs in the next Assembly. We will contribute further through amendments, questions and holding the Executive to account.

The point has been made that zero-hour contracts work for some people. Ms Sugden gave her own example, but she qualified it — and I am happy to give way if I misrepresent her — by saying that she was under pressure, and, because her particular employer happened to provide a lot of work, that worked for her. I was a student. I needed time to study. I had an eight-hour-a-week contract. That worked for me. I do not see why that was particularly onerous on my employer when, perhaps, there was not so much work available. That was the minimum commitment to me as an employee. I had holiday pay with that, which you do not get with zero-hour contracts. I had the flexibility to take those holidays when I needed time to study for exams. I was fortunate that, when business was up, I got extra hours, which helped fund me throughout the rest of the year. My employer made that minimum commitment to me. They gave me those minimum rights of holiday pay and breaks etc when I was working. If we banned zero-hour contracts today, as some fear, I do not see any reason why low-hour contracts cannot still be a flexible mechanism that give employees some of the basic rights that they should be entitled to.

The issue of the gender pay gap has been debated and discussed. I commend the Members for bringing it forward and bringing it to light. As has been clear in the debate, we have the evidence that there is a gender pay gap. We, perhaps, do not have sufficient evidence as to why that is. The proposal to require employers to look at, monitor and report on the issue is one of the ways in which we could get the data. We need to tackle the issue. There is an assumption among many that gender inequality issues have somehow been resolved and that our employment laws etc provide sufficient protection. The evidence is that we still have a gender pay gap. We should be debating how we tackle that issue.

Amendment No 14 concerns the two-year qualifying period. Mr McCrea said a lot of things that were hard to disagree with, such as wanting to create more jobs and stop emigration. We are back in the situation where more people are leaving Northern Ireland than are coming to live here. That is regrettable. However, I did not hear how his proposal addresses that issue. He said that it gives more power to employers, and so that can only be a good thing. That is not necessarily a good thing. There should be a balance between the employer and employee in terms of rights and roles. Mr McCrea talked about the different scenarios and how long it takes an employee to get up to the optimum level of working. His worst-case scenario, where somebody was coming from unemployment and had not worked in that particular role before, was that it would take 50 weeks to get to the optimum level. I do not see the rationale for saying, "Well, you should have another year, then, in which you can sack that person at will". A year is more than sufficient, as Mr Flanagan pointed out. We give six-month probationary periods. Those time frames are reasonable.

Mr Ross: I thank the Member for giving way. In the circumstances where it takes 50 weeks — we are talking theoretically rather than about a real job — to train somebody and they have not yet been assessed on whether they are good at the job, are you seriously saying that the employer should not have the opportunity to get rid of that staff member if they are not doing their job well after the training period? He seems to be suggesting that once you have gone in you should not be sacked, but that is not how the labour market works. An employer has a right to have productive employees working under them. We want to make sure that we have a fair enough period to allow the employee to prove their worth to their employer. That is the point that I tried to make to Mr McCrea. It is not just about the training period; it is also potentially, in some jobs, the time to prove your worth. So, the two-year period in those circumstances would benefit the employee because they could prove their worth to the employer in that time.

Mr Agnew: I thank the Member for his intervention. Maybe we are interpreting differently what Mr McCrea presented. I have not read the document, but it seems to me that the time taken for an employee to get to the optimum level of productivity would not include the training period. I do not see that as being the same as the training period; it is about experience and growing in a role not about being productive and contributing. So, I would not equate it with a training period. That is not how I interpreted what Mr McCrea said, although he is not here to answer.

Mr McCrea rightly asked, "If not this, then what?". As I said, I do not feel that he provided a compelling argument for how his amendment will create employment. It gives more flexibility to the employer but fewer rights and less security to the employee.

If we look at the evidence, skills have been mentioned. I do not think that anyone will disagree with that, so I make the point that getting a well-trained workforce is one of the best things that we can do. The other evidence is on the living wage and shows that the better you treat an employee the more you get from them. The living wage is one example of that. The Oxford Economics report showed that if we paid a true living wage — not the Chancellor's proposed increased minimum wage — net employment in Northern Ireland would go up. When you pay people at the lower end of the labour market more, they spend more in the local economy, and there is a greater multiplier effect. The evidence also shows that a worker who is valued by their employer has higher productivity. Those are some of the things that we can do to boost employment. It starts with looking after your employees.

Mr McCrea talked about emigration. One way to stop a person leaving is to pay them well. It is very rarely the low-skilled worker who leaves; it is usually the educated and those with university degrees. It is not because there are not jobs here; it is because there are not jobs with good pay and conditions, or at least such jobs are not in sufficient number. It is normally those with degrees or master's degrees and those who have the family support to travel and take opportunities abroad in the first place who leave. It is not the low-skilled and low-paid workers who leave: unfortunately, they stick around, left with the zero-hours contracts, which, in some cases, are their only options. It is the higher skilled who leave; the brain drain, as it is referred to, is the problem. I see nothing in amendment No14 to address that. It would only add to the problem by saying to graduates and the skilled, "There are other countries and other employers providing better pay and conditions. Chase those jobs, because the jobs are not here in Northern Ireland." For those reasons, I will oppose amendment No14.

Dr Farry: This debate has been an interesting one and certainly took longer than the debate on the group 1 amendments. Obviously, most of the interest has come on the amendments that were not processed by the Department or the Committee. Those amendments came in from Members at the eleventh hour. It is their right to do that, but it brings the disadvantage of there not being proper scrutiny of them or a full understanding of the consequences that would flow from them, deliberate or otherwise. Sometimes, the unintended consequences are the ones that people may not necessarily be aware of. It is important that people bear that in mind when they come to support, or otherwise, the proposals that are before us. It is one of those instances when you could say, "Legislate in haste, repent at leisure". Therefore, we need to be rather careful around some of the points.

I will take the amendments in the order in which they appear in the Marshalled List. First, we have the issue of the gender pay gap. I commend Mr Flanagan for what I gather he is going to do, which is to pause and not necessarily move the amendment today at Consideration Stage but consider bringing it back at Further Consideration Stage. I think that that is a wise approach and is very much in the spirit of where the Assembly is today. I appreciate that some Members have said today that they do not believe that we should be addressing the issue at all at this time. I, and probably my officials, have considerable sympathy for that point of view. However, we are where we are. If there is the ambition that we do it at this time through the Employment Bill, not moving and re-presenting the amendment at Further Consideration Stage is the more responsible thing to do.

The amendment does not directly impact on my ministerial responsibilities at this stage, although it may do so in due course, so I do not take a formal view as Minister. Wearing my own hat, may I say that my party colleagues and I would be sympathetic to supporting a revised amendment in principle, subject, of course, to seeing its wording and ensuring that it is something that is going to be viable? Without putting words in other people's mouths, I detect that there would be a similar viewpoint from other corners of the House. Therefore, there is certainly something for the Member and his colleagues to work on.

If I may be so bold as to suggest, in this format, some of the issues that the signatories to the amendment may wish to reflect on, and the reasons that they should wish to reflect on them, I will do so. I think that it would be productive to do so. The first point that I will make is that a balance has to be struck between what is said in the actual wording that goes into primary legislation and what aspects may be left to regulations. Ms Sugden made a valid point about the rationale for the thresholds for the number of employees. Obviously, in Great Britain, they are talking about 250 employees, and the proposer of the amendment discussed a point around 50. That is an issue that may be better left to the public consultation by whatever future Department would be responsible for engaging on the regulations. That is an issue that may well be better determined after that public consultation. Therefore, a future amendment could make reference to a responsibility to bring forward regulations, state that regulations must consider points a, b, c and d and state that point a, for instance, is the threshold for the number of employees.

Mr Flanagan: I thank the Minister for giving way. The economy in Britain is somewhat different from the economy here. Siphoning off only companies that have more than 250 employees may well deliver a considerable number of companies to present a picture of the extent of the gender pay gap, allow some information to be delivered on why it exists and maybe present solutions for how to tackle it. However, if we were to adopt a situation here of trying to get information only from companies that have more than 250 employees, you would be looking at a very small information base. That is the rationale for choosing 50. If we went only for companies that have more than 250 employees, the number of companies that you would be looking at would be very small, and the level of information and detail that you would get might not be enough to shine a light on the true extent of the problem.

Dr Farry: I make this very clear to the Member: I fully accept that the premise of what he is saying is that we may wish to do something different in Northern Ireland from what is being done in Great Britain, so a threshold of 250 in Great Britain does not necessarily have to be carried across into Northern Ireland. The point that I was making is that the rationale for 50, as he outlined, is nonetheless an arbitrary threshold. It could be 40; it could be 60; it could be 100; it could be 10. Those are the sorts of issues that would be best considered through the public consultation around the regulations. Therefore, no violence would be done to the ambitions that the Member and his colleagues have by simply putting less detail into the amendment and giving more scope for the consultation around any regulations that a future Department will bring forward. That way, you will have much more buy-in from stakeholders, address your policy outcome and have full capacity to do something different from what the case is in Great Britain, but you will also have a much stronger confidence base that what you are doing is something that is going to be workable in the Northern Ireland context.

In a similar light, it is important that the Member reflects on which Department he gives the responsibility to. I am not sure whether it was deliberate or otherwise but, as the amendment stands, it refers to "the Department". Clause 25, I think, defines the Department as being the Department for Employment and Learning. That power would subsequently transfer to the new Department for the Economy. While, in the eyes of some people, that may well be the logical place to do it, we have a situation where equality responsibility currently lies with OFMDFM and that is transferring to the Department for Communities. We may not want to see a situation where we fragment equality responsibility and give one small sliver of equality issues, particularly in relation to sex discrimination, to the Department for the Economy as opposed to keeping it alongside other aspects of sex discrimination under the Department for Communities. As the Member reflects on that, he will probably see that it is best that equality is kept together. Certainly, the Executive, of which his party is a primary member, would no doubt wish to see equality powers consolidated together rather than split in different areas. Again, that may well be something that the Member wishes to reflect on.

We need to be realistic about the timescale. That is not me wishing to argue that we need to take our time on it or drag our feet; we simply have to be realistic about the fact that an election is coming up and a new Department is coming on stream. There will have to be public consultation on the regulations. No matter how much or how little detail goes into the primary legislation, when you have a requirement for regulations where there has been no policy work done in Northern Ireland, there will need to be a formal public consultation. Any Department that tries to bring forward regulations without that public consultation will be successfully judicially reviewed. That consultation has to occur. Any new Department has to do the necessary policy work. It has to have the opportunity to have the public consultation, consider the implications of the consultation and then bring it through the normal processes in the House. The prospect of that being done by the middle of November are fairly remote; it is ambitious. I give those points to the Member more as potential suggestions, but they are constructive suggestions on how he may find that he is able to garner what may well be, in the main, cross-party support in the Assembly for the way forward on that point. I commend him for at least showing the initiative to bring it forward and for his wisdom in potentially waiting a fortnight or so and reflecting on how the amendment could maybe be crafted somewhat differently.

On the issue of unfair dismissal, I reiterate that I will certainly retain an open mind and encourage other Members to do so as well. What we are asked to do today is take a final decision on the issue in the context where the evidence base is not yet established for change. If people wish to go back and review the documentation from my Department on the employment law review, they will see that we have made a request for organisations to bring us evidence and that we have not received conclusive evidence from those organisations to justify change. We have also done some comparative international analysis that, again, at this stage does not back up the case for reform. People are making what are essentially anecdotal comments around our competitive base to justify the change in policy. When the change occurred in Great Britain, they essentially moved on the basis of anecdotal instinct as opposed to a solid evidence base. Members are perfectly entitled to take a decision to move on that basis, but it is important that they understand the basis on which they may or may not take a decision today.

Looking ahead, the issue can return to the Assembly. Any future Minister for the Economy can bring forward regulations to the Assembly to change the qualifying period from one year to two years. The existing law says that that is done through the confirmatory procedure. That means that there has to be a vote in the Assembly. The amendment that is before us changes that to the affirmative procedure. That, in no way, shape or form, changes the balance of voting: there will need to be a vote in the Assembly. It cannot be slipped in through the back door. It could not previously be slipped in through the back door. All we are doing is moving from a situation where there will be a short period in which a Minister could act unilaterally with the prospect of being overruled by the Assembly. That, in itself, would create chaos in our employment law. We have a situation where the Minister and Assembly would have to act before the change could be made. I have outlined where I could see that change happening in the future if the evidence base was there. It could be part of a wider package of reforms. People viewed that as worthy of consideration.

I had other ambitions on changing the collective redundancy notice when more than 100 employees were affected, which is a bigger issue for us in terms of our competitive position in attracting investment. That would require primary legislation, and, unfortunately, due to a lack of agreement on that, that will not be immediately available to us.

That brings me to the issue of zero-hours contracts, which probably generated most of the discussion on group 2. I stress that my preference is that we have a proportionate regulation. We have to move with the times. Those contracts are becoming an increased feature of our labour market, and it is important that regulation keeps up to speed with the casualisation of the labour market. In doing so, we have to recognise that we have a responsibility to address abuse as far as we can, at the same time as ensuring that where flexibility works for employers and employees we allow that to happen. We also have to ensure that whatever we do is credible and will address the problem. To be perfectly frank, leaving aside the wider impacts of the proposed amendment, it would be very easy for employers to circumvent the current definition of a zero-hours contract with a different form of casual contract that would add very little protection. The proposed way forward would not actually deliver much in terms of its wider policy intent.

At the same time, we need to be very conscious of where this could lead us. Some people seem to be operating under the illusion that, if we were to ban zero-hours contracts and, in doing so, had a definition that was sufficiently watertight and covered similar contracts or variations of that, we would maintain the same level of employment and employers would keep all their existing staff who are on zero-hours contracts and put them on a different contract. In some cases, that would happen; in other cases, people would lose their job. Employers may choose not to put people on a different contract. They may choose not to employ those people because, for whatever reason, it is not consistent with their business model, for better or worse.

My ideal situation is very clear: I want proportionate regulation, but the Executive have not been able to agree on that. Today, we have a choice between the status quo and an outright ban. Some people seem to be suggesting that an outright ban is probably the lesser of two evils. Let me put it the other way round and make the point extremely clearly: in the context that the Assembly puts through an outright ban on zero-hours contracts, I would not feel in a position to continue with the Bill. Such violence would be done to the Bill that we would have to stall the process. I, for one, am not prepared to stand over a situation where, through lazy legislation and not fully considering the implications, we inadvertently put the jobs of tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland in jeopardy. That is the implication of what we are talking about.

Leaving that aside, there are wider implications that would flow for our health and education sectors. To suggest that we can simply flick a switch and the health and education sectors would reorganise their workforce plans overnight is extremely naive. There would be massive disruption. There would need to be renegotiation on how the systems of supply teachers and bank nurses were delivered. We are talking about a period of months in which the current systems would be de facto illegal and people could take cases to industrial tribunals for breaches of the law.

It is important that we are conscious of the implications of what is before us. I point out to those who tabled the amendment that their Ministers have been presiding over the use of zero-hours contracts. They talk about a ban today, but, unilaterally, any of their Ministers could have acted to ban them in their area of responsibility. Why were those opportunities never taken up? I am happy to give way if someone wants to clarify that.

Let us be clear: today is more about grandstanding than about a realistic approach to how we address a serious problem. I am deeply frustrated that we have not been able to get consensus. Over the past year, we have wasted the opportunity to do something far more radical than Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, and we will now be forced into the situation of being left with nothing on the statute book on zero-hours contracts.

Mr Agnew seemed to have more interest in my position as an individual than the policy issues. I am not quite sure what was going on there, but I am sure that we can speculate on what was going on in his mind. The simple fact that this did not get through the Executive does not mean that I am without power or influence. In a multi-party Executive, we all have difficulties in getting consensus. I wish that that was not the case. We need a lot more outcome and delivery. However, the deadlock and division in our Executive have affected every Department, and we need to reflect on that. We need to reflect on the way in which we approach business and how we can move forward on areas where there are disagreements, even minor disagreements, to stop them becoming blockages. Once we are in a constructive place, we can get the issues moving.

I rather fear that the zero-hours contract has become the victim of how our Executive work. That was a plea for reform, not a plea for me to abandon all hope and leave things to other parties to get on with. It is an Alliance Minister who has been trying to reform the context of zero-hours contracts, but, in cooperation with the Committee, we have taken forward other reforms that will make the system of employment law in Northern Ireland better and, indeed, the envy of the world.

I remind Members that what we are proposing today is about making our employment relations system in Northern Ireland much more efficient and effective in the interest of employers and employees. This does not have to be a zero-sum game of setting one off against the other. The unions and employer organisations support what is in the Bill. Much of what we are doing in alternative dispute resolution is world leading. We are not simply copying what happens in other jurisdictions. We are the people showing leadership and doing things with a degree of creativity and innovation that will set the standard for others to follow.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: That concludes the Consideration Stage of the Employment Bill. The Bill stands referred to the Speaker.

Mr Storey (The Minister of Finance and Personnel): I beg to move

Accelerated passage of the Bill through the Assembly is needed in order to ensure Royal Assent before the end of March. That is necessary to obtain legal authority for the Departments and other public bodies to spend the cash and use the resources included in the Bill in 2015-16 and to ensure a smooth continuation of public services into 2016-17. Preparation of the detailed Estimates and the related Budget Bill under consideration today was a challenging undertaking, given the timetable involved. The Bill and the Estimates made must reflect the latest financial monitoring position, which concluded in January, yet the Bill requires Royal Assent prior to the end of this financial year. I am therefore grateful that the Committee for Finance and Personnel has confirmed, in line with Standing Order 42, that it is satisfied that there has been appropriate consultation with it on the public expenditure proposals contained in the Bill and that it is content that the Bill may proceed by accelerated passage. I welcome and appreciate the assistance of the Committee on the matter.

I shall now briefly outline the purpose of the legislation before us today and draw attention to the Bill's main provisions. The debate follows the Bill's First Stage yesterday, which followed the debate and approval of the two associated Supply resolutions. The Bill's purpose is to give legislative effect to the 2015-16 spring Supplementary Estimates and the 2016-17 Vote on Account. Copies of the Budget Bill and its explanatory and financial memorandum should have been made available to Members today. I do not intend to repeat the detail provided to Members at First Stage. In fact, Standing Order 32 stipulates that the debate should concern itself with the narrow content of the Bill, a point that I hope Members will remember during this evening's proceedings.

For the benefit of Members, and in accordance with Standing Order 32, I will summarise the main features of the Bill. Its purpose is to authorise the issue of £15,770,704,000 from the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund in 2015-16. The amounts for each Department are detailed in schedule 1 to the Bill. That is £359 million more than was authorised in the June Main Estimates. That cash is drawn down on a daily basis, as needed, from the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund, which is managed by my Department on behalf of the Executive. The Bill also authorises the use of resources totalling £17,135,765,000 by Departments and certain other public bodies. That is some £389 million more than was authorised in the June Main Estimates. Those amounts are detailed by Department in schedule 2 to the Bill.

In addition, the Bill revises the 2015-16 limit on the amount of accruing resources that may be directed by DFP to be used by Departments. That limit includes operating and non-operating accruing resources — in other words, current and capital receipts — and amounts to £2,628,155,000. A breakdown by Department is shown in schedule 2 to the Bill. Under section 8 of the Government Resources and Accounts Act (Northern Ireland) 2001, a direction on the actual use of the accruing resources will be provided by way of a DFP minute, which will be laid before the Assembly in March following the Bill's Royal Assent.

Therefore, not only does the Bill authorise the use of resources but it authorises accruing resources, bringing the total resources for use by Departments and other public bodies to almost £19·8 billion. The amounts now requested for 2015-16 supersede the Vote on Account in the Budget Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which was passed this time last year, and the Main Estimates provision in the Budget (No. 2) Act (Northern Ireland) 2015, which was passed by the Assembly in June 2015.

The Bill also authorises the 2016-17 Vote on Account for cash of almost £7,899,052,000 and resources of £8,680,276,000. That is to allow cash and resources to flow to public services in the early months of 2016-17 until the Main Estimates and the related Budget Bill are approved in June this year. The cash and resources are to be appropriated and used for the services and purposes set out in column 1 of schedules 3 and 4.

Clause 5 authorises temporary borrowing by the Department of Finance and Personnel at a ceiling of £3,949,526,000 for 2016-17. That is a normal safeguard for any temporary deficiency arising in the Consolidated Fund. I stress that clause 5 does not provide for the issue of any additional cash out of the Consolidated Fund or convey any additional spending power. Instead, it enables my Department to run an efficient cash management regime.

Finally, the Budget Bill authorises the Public Prosecution Service to use an additional £6,032,000 in 2013-14, by way of an Excess Vote. This issue has arisen due to a fair employment tribunal ruling against the Public Prosecution Service on an equal pay and indirect discrimination case. The necessity to make provision for these costs at year end then breached the Public Prosecution Service annually managed expenditure budget for 2013-14. The Public Accounts Committee recommended that the Assembly provide the additional resources through an Excess Vote.

At this stage, there is little more that I can usefully add on the Budget Bill. I look forward to the debate and will endeavour to respond to as many issues raised by Members as possible.

Mr McKay (The Chairperson of the Committee for Finance and Personnel): Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-LeasCheann Comhairle. As we have heard, the Budget Bill before us provides statutory authority for expenditure as set out in the spring Supplementary Estimates 2015-16. The Bill also includes the Vote on Account, which allows Departments to incur expenditure and use resources in the early part of 2016-17 until the Main Estimates are voted on by the House in June.

Standing Order 42(2) states that accelerated passage may be granted for a Budget Bill, provided that the Committee for Finance and Personnel is satisfied that it has been appropriately consulted on the public expenditure proposals in the Bill. At its meeting on 3 February, departmental officials briefed the Committee and answered questions on the Bill being debated today, including on issues relating to a range of Departments. In addition to that evidence, the Committee has scrutinised each of the monitoring rounds during the current financial year, which, in this case, took place in June and November 2015. In both instances, the Committee considered the overall outcome across Departments and the position for DFP as a Department. In view of this evidence-gathering exercise throughout the year, the Committee was content to grant accelerated passage to the Bill. I therefore wrote to the Speaker, informing him of the Committee's decision.

As I pointed out in yesterday's Supply resolution debate, the scale of the cumulative changes resulting from the normal reallocations through monitoring rounds, combined with the in-year technical changes, will, in some cases, have resulted in significant differences between the opening and closing resource and capital allocations of Departments.

As I have said, the Vote on Account is on the basis of the current structure of 12 Departments. However, the Main Estimates in June will reflect the new structure of the nine Departments agreed by the Executive. In this regard, the Committee noted that four Departments — DSD, DETI, DRD and DEL — will be allocated more resources under the Vote on Account than normal. This is to ensure allocations to cover their existing functions as well as the new functions that will be transferred when the restructuring takes full effect. This practice will, hopefully, minimise the financial risks as a result of the transfer of functions.

I have previously emphasised to DFP officials the importance of ensuring transparency in the restructuring process over the coming months in the budgets that will transfer along with functions.

Undoubtedly, the process will present challenges, but the Assembly and, in particular, the Committees in the new mandate will need to be provided with the information necessary to scrutinise the budgets associated with the transfer of functions as they occur.

There will also be a need for a clear and accessible reconciliation between the moneys allocated on the existing basis of 12 Departments, through the Vote on Account in this Bill, and those allocated on the new basis of nine Departments in the Main Estimates in June. In that regard, it will be important that the applicable statutory Committees engage with their respective Departments to ensure that the budgetary requirements of transferring functions have been identified and settled as applicable. Furthermore, at the meeting on 13 January, DFP officials pointed out to the Committee that Ministers would be given significant discretion in the June monitoring round to reallocate resource and capital budgets and:

Therefore, this is an opportunity that the outgoing Committees may wish to pick up on in their legacy reports to the successor Committees in the new mandate.

I am hopeful that we will also see improvements to the overall Budget process in the next mandate. As I have reminded Members already, a solution to some of the difficulties and flaws in the current process could be found by the Assembly and Executive agreeing a memorandum of understanding on the Budget process. I have written to the Minister recently to reflect on the progress made in developing the MOU, and I am hopeful that the Department will work with the new Committee for Finance to see this brought to fruition. It would establish a framework for improved cooperation between the Executive and the Assembly in respect of budgetary matters and facilitate Members and Committees in fulfilling their scrutiny and advice functions, which, in turn, will assist in overseeing the effective and efficient delivery of the Executive's strategic priorities. Importantly, the MOU would help to front-end the Assembly's input to draft Budgets and afford scope to influence key issues in advance of future Budgets being agreed by the Executive. That in turn could provide scope to rationalise and streamline the latter stages of the financial process, in particular the duplication of effort that we face between yesterday’s Supply resolutions debate, today’s Second Stage debate and the subsequent stages of the Budget Bill. Given the need for greater oversight and closer scrutiny of our public expenditure, coupled with the recurring difficulties experienced by Committees in the time and information available for meaningful scrutiny of budgets, an agreed memorandum of understanding between the Assembly and the Executive is essential going forward.

On behalf of the Committee, I support the motion. I will now make a few comments as an individual Member and on behalf of Sinn Féin.

Recently, I went round local businesses. It is important to put some of the issues in a local context, because moneys in the Budget are used for rate relief. I welcome the work of the Department in consulting on the rate reliefs currently in place. There is certainly a need to put in place new reliefs and perhaps remove some of the old ones. I went door to door around businesses in Ballymena to discuss rates. The main issue that was raised was not rates; it was the roadworks on the main streets through Ballymena. We would make the suggestion — it was raised with me by my local councillor, Paul Maguire — that we introduce what they have in Wales for when there is flooding or serious roadworks. I do not know exactly how that is measured, but it is something that the Department should look at. Businesses showed us their turnover figures, and there is a clear correlation between major works in the town and a reduction in profits. Those businesses were under pressure as a result of the works carried out in the town.

Mr Storey: I thank the Member for giving way and apologise to other Members that this may become a bit of a discussion about what is going on in Ballymena. I listened to what the Member said. However, I spoke to traders when I was in the town on Saturday, and some told me that, as a result of the rally on Saturday, their business was down — in some cases by a third. There are always challenges for our businesses for a variety of reasons. However, as the former Minister for Social Development, I still believe that the investment of £4 million in the public realm works in the centre of Ballymena is vital. There are issues with how that is managed. When I was Minister for Social Development, I came very close to suspending the contract because I was not content with the way in which some elements of it were being progressed. However, we always have to strike a balance between how we deliver and ensuring that that is done in a way that does not have a negative impact on the continuance of a business. I would be interested to hear the examples from Wales.

Mr McKay: I thank the Minister for his intervention, and he is right: it is about getting the balance right. The end product of the works being carried out will no doubt be very beneficial to those businesses, but there is a transition period. Also, changes in the market and in the economy in the past five years mean that it is sometimes hard to distinguish whether this is a result of the economic downturn or the work taking place. It is worth looking in greater detail at the effect of works being carried out in a town over a prolonged period. The Committee and individual parties have looked at the small business rate relief, and there is a view that it does not have that great an effect. However, we believe that it should stay in place until we find something more targeted. Perhaps this is one example of businesses struggling to make a profit being affected by an outside factor. The Department should look at it in greater detail.

Other issues were raised. I know one businessperson in Ballycastle — we passed this to the Department as part of the consultation response — who believed that he was doing the right thing by filling out the survey on turnover figures and matters relating to his business and returning it to Land and Property Services (LPS). However, the response rate to those surveys was only something like 50%. He felt that it was unfair that rates estimates, which increased by a few hundred per cent in his case, were based on the figures that he had provided, whereas the rates for businesses that did not provide figures were based on some other formula that was perhaps not as precise as the one used for his. Brian McClure took that point on board in our meeting in Ballymena. Perhaps it should be made mandatory. If the Department or LPS are to survey businesses for their figures, all businesses should return the survey or none, rather than having a situation that appears unfair to certain businesses.

Increasingly I believe that there is an appetite among the business community and the local economy for the Assembly and the Executive to take hold of further fiscal levers. Outlined in the Budget Bill are figures relating to the powers that we have on revenues and spend. Of course, across the water, they have had Smith, Calman and Silk; there have been so many reports about adding to the suite of fiscal levers that the Scottish and Welsh Administrations have. We have not had that here in Belfast. We need to look at that again for the new Assembly for the next five years. We have made significant progress on corporation tax and should look at income tax as another possible example. I have also been highlighting air passenger duty for a considerable period. I welcome the progress that the Executive have made on the air connectivity fund. I look forward to seeing how the ETI Minister progresses that in the weeks ahead. The more you learn about such matters, the more likely it is that politicians around the table will seek their devolution. The new Executive will finally have to come to grips with it in relation to further powers.

The JTI and Michelin sites in Ballymena must be an Executive priority. Invest NI is getting significant funds in the Budget. As I said yesterday, a strategy that goes beyond Belfast is needed for rural towns such as Ballymena. There is certainly a sense that more could be done. Do not get me wrong: Invest NI has secured significant investment. Even this week, we have seen significant job creation in Belfast and elsewhere, and that needs to continue. However, the new Executive and the new Department for the Economy — I certainly welcome the fact that the Executive have taken the decision to have an economy-based Department — need to get to grips with the focused problems in Ballymena. We have two excellent sites and an excellent manufacturing skills base. Manufacturing benefited many families in north Antrim; it benefited my family over 20 to 30 years. We all realise the value of manufacturing jobs, and we need to ensure that those jobs are recreated.

There are always global factors such as the slowdown in the Chinese economy and oil prices. Our skills base trumps some of the lower-wage economies that some companies feel are more attractive. We need to sell that skills base more effectively on the international stage. Some SMEs and indigenous companies have been taken over by larger international companies, and, in some cases, that is welcome. Invest NI has ensured that Wrightbus received significant support in recent years. We have secured big contracts from San Francisco through to the London buses. There are a lot of successes, but we can always do better. We can sell ourselves better. When we have that skills base, there is absolutely no reason why we should not go out there with confidence to sell the skills base in Ballymena and our manufacturing tradition in that part of County Antrim.

Mr Storey: I thank the Member for giving way. When Invest goes out across the world to sell Northern Ireland, a big issue is ensuring that it has a suite of products for potential customers. Corporation tax will play an important role in that. Some of the comments made by some of the Member's colleagues on the issue raise a concern about their commitment. Given the issues that he rightly raises about the sites in Ballymena, does the Member agree that part of the overall suite in selling is the date and the rate that we have now secured for corporation tax? When we visit the United States in March, every effort must be made to ensure that that is a key component of the sell for Northern Ireland.

Mr McKay: Absolutely. I agree with the Minister. The deputy First Minister and others, including my party colleague Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, have greatly trumpeted the benefits of getting the corporation tax rate correct and selling it to the United States and to the many economies that we are looking inward investment from. However, I have to say — I said this yesterday — that we need to get it right by having a fair deal from Westminster. If we are to reduce the corporation tax rate, we need to ensure that Westminster gives us a fair deal. Scotland has raised the issue of getting a fair deal, and I use the party opposite's slogan extensively these days about getting a fair deal, but it is absolutely right because we need to ensure that we get the rate of corporation tax right and that we are not short-changed by Westminster, especially the Treasury.

The Treasury is a secretive organisation that gives us some quite woolly figures about the revenues that come out of this part of the world. That needs to be a priority. There needs to be more transparency from the Treasury, and I think that the new Executive need to ensure that we take a magnifying glass to the revenue figures that come out of Belfast and the North and to ensure that Treasury is providing us with the full detail. The centralised nature of the Treasury has caused great frustration amongst all the devolved Assemblies — here, in Wales and in Scotland — and I think that we need to strengthen our challenge function. Certainly, the Finance Committee has not been found wanting in exploring that and looking at matters such as the Barnett formula, but I believe that is something that the Executive and the new selection of Ministers need to prioritise.

I am very conscious that we are in for another late night, so I look forward to the debate, and I support the motion.

Ms Hanna: I will try to be reasonably brief as well, as I know that people like to check in with their families a couple of times a week.

We outlined some of the concerns that we have at the first stage of the Budget and during the debate on the spring Estimates yesterday. I think it is worth pointing out that a symptom of the failures in the process, as I referred to yesterday, is that we have had two debates on the Budget in a couple of weeks but, at the same time, have had very little time for the Ministers to bring forward their estimates and there has been very little scrutiny of those estimates.

In response to my point about that flaw yesterday, Minister, you pointed out that this is a one-year Budget to reflect the stretching of the mandate, but we do not think that that negates the overarching need to reform the budgetary process. In the Opposition Bill, we suggested a budgetary Committee, which was, inexplicably, opposed.

Suffice to say, we are not confident that this Budget has either the imagination or the detail to respond to the very many challenges that we have here, including rebuilding the economy and giving confidence to investors, not just through a cut in corporation tax, and giving confidence to young people to stay. I am glad that the Member for North Antrim is also looking across to Scotland for ideas, but I am afraid that I do not see very many of them reflected in this Budget. I peek over the pond quite often to see how Scotland is using devolution to its best advantage, and it makes my heart sink a wee bit when I see the fiscal opportunities over there and the missed opportunities for using devolution here.

We do not think that the spirit of power-sharing and of possibility that gets and has got Northern Ireland through bigger problems than a few Budgets is evident in this Budget. We do not think that there is, as I said, the required level of accountability. In what other Parliament would one scrutiny session per Committee be justified for a Budget of £16 billion? I highlighted particularly the deficit in the scrutiny of the Education portion of the Budget in that regard.

Respectfully, I think that the response to our criticism has mainly been to deflect and talk about the lack of alternatives provided by the other parties, but without the detail, all we are able to look at are the bulges and the contractions in the numbers. We are not really able to fairly scrutinise the priorities and set out alternatives, and I am not sure whether that is done intentionally.

The life story of the Budget began with the disagreement over welfare and the failure, we think, to engage with reasonable proposals; you would not have agreed with all of them, but there was a failure to even engage with them. There was also the rejection of the ideas of other parties during the talks process, and then there was the presentation of the Fresh Start Agreement to parties like ours about half an hour before it was published. This Budget then followed. As I said, it is not about opposition to the money going to the various Departments. There is a lot of talk about mandates and the size and use of mandates, but it wipes out and ignores the mandates of all of the other parties.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Will the Member give way?

Ms Hanna: The Member will be happy to give way.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: I am not suggesting that you are running out of steam, my fellow colleague from South Belfast. Last night, you were good enough and bold enough to give us examples of things that the SDLP would do. Now that we are debating the Budget, I think that, despite the special and, perhaps, rushed, circumstances, it would be helpful if you were to give us an opportunity to see some of the alternative ideas that the SDLP has about spending.

Ms Hanna: I will. I pointed out some last night, and colleagues will point them out. As I said, we are not opposed, but if you would be more specific and tell us exactly what you are spending the money on, as other Parliaments and Houses do, it would be easier to set out the alternatives. What are the big ideas? If you can tell me what the big, creative ideas in the Budget are, and provide the detail of those, it will allow us to more effectively scrutinise them. The fact is that you are giving us figures like £1·9 billion, without the detail. How can we set out the alternative without knowing what your alternative is and what exactly you are going to do with that money.

I want to pick up, briefly, a couple of the points that I raised yesterday, and which you responded to, Minister, in winding up the debate. We are still not sure about the £5 million added and the £10 million off skills. You also mentioned a potential £20 million in the June monitoring round. We still do not understand why there is all of that shuffling about. If that money is for anything other than departmental use and getting used to the changes in Departments, why is it not being allocated now?

I also raised the increased funding for the Strategic Investment Board and was told that £2·5 million of it was for Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) and the Urban Villages project. In the absence of further detail, I took to Google, this afternoon, and learned that:

I am open to correction, but that sounds a lot like administration, coming in an OFMDFM budget which, as we know, is quite administration-heavy; the administration budget of which, as I pointed out yesterday, has gone up, year on year. Yesterday, I also pointed out a better use for that money. Some £880,000 could support the women's centre childcare fund. Adequate childcare would unlock a lot of possibilities for families, women and working people. As I pointed out yesterday, Scotland, and even the Conservative Party in London, are providing a lot better for working families in that respect.

We also expressed our dismay about the decision to spend more on redundancies and the failure to create conditions for creating jobs, as well as the failure to give security of funding on flagship projects like the A5 and the A6 and an explanation as to how those projects are going to be funded during their lifetime. I will defer. My colleagues will outline those specific projects, and I guarantee that they will be clearer than I am on the locational differences between Crawfordsburn and Castledawson in relation to that project.

Mr Lyons: Will the Member give way?

Ms Hanna: Thank you.

Mr Lyons: Will you give way?

Ms Hanna: If I am allowed.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Have you given way?

Ms Hanna: I have sat down. You can come in.

Mr Lyons: I will come in, anyway. Thank you very much, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. I am genuinely perplexed, because the Member has said why she is opposed to the Budget, but she has not set out any detail whatsoever. It is as if she is saying, "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine", but she has given us no detail of anything that she would do differently. Give us something; tell us what it is.

Ms Hanna: That is exactly the point. In any other Parliament, anywhere else in the world —

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Can I ask —

Ms Hanna: Am I allowed back up? In any other Parliament, that is —

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Will the Member resume her seat?

Ms Hanna: I do not know. He was —

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: For clarification, had the Member finished her speech when she sat down?

Ms Hanna: No.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member has the right of reply then.

Ms Hanna: That is exactly the point. The House's job is to scrutinise the Budget. My point is that you have given us almost nothing to scrutinise. You have rushed this through. We appreciate that there were reasons for the rushing through. I gave the potted, disappointing life story of the Budget, but, in many cases, there has been one Committee session for each Department. I have referred to the allocation for Education and the total lack of scrutiny. We are not able to scrutinise the priorities that you are setting out, because you have not set them out. Despite the ideas that parties will set out in their manifestos, they will not present an alternative because you basically have not given us your opening gambit on it. That is the point. I have finished.

Mr Cree: I hope that I can get a few laughs tonight, but I am not so sure. Again, I am pleased to be able to speak on the Second Stage of the Budget Bill. It is funny; we all seem to set off by putting out the main parameters. I noticed that the Minister did it and the Chair did it, and I see that I am doing it now as well. I will stick to convention.

The Bill covers the 2015-16 financial year and provides legal authority to spend for the early part of 2016-17. The Main Estimates will not be considered until June, but it remains crucial that Committees continue to monitor the spending of their respective Departments so that underspends are minimised and the return of funds to the Treasury is avoided.

We are told that the 2016-17 Budget is predicated on the full drawdown of available reinvestment and reform initiative (RRI) borrowing. I understand the logic of capital projects which support economic growth, but in the same paragraph of the Budget, reference is made to the Executive's considering mechanisms for capping RRI borrowing. I am just wondering whether the Minister can develop that thinking so that the apparent contradiction may be explained. There is a figure of £8 million to be held centrally for distribution as a result of the joint investment with Atlantic Philanthropies. In 2014, £58 million was agreed. Can the Minister advise what balance of the fund is as yet unspent?

The Stormont House Agreement has provided for up to £350 million of additional borrowing to support important capital investment projects. Again, for clarification, will the Minister confirm that the first £100 million was used in the year 2015-16? What is envisaged for the £100 million in 2016-17? It would be interesting to know whether there is a strategy in place to cover that additional borrowing.

I will turn to European funds. I know that we can expect income from the various European programmes which are at closure stage. Do we know how much that is likely to be, and is the sum included in the Budget detail? If not, is it available for allocation? The change fund figure is reduced to £7·1 million and includes £1·5 million for estate rationalisation. How much resource has been released from the sale of assets, and how will these have been dealt with in the Budget?

I have to say that I am pleased to see that manufacturing rates will continue to apply a 30% liability for the next year. If we are serious about developing the economy, we need to support our manufacturers in a tangible way. It is also important to extend the small business rate relief scheme, the empty shops concession and the rural ATM exemptions for a further period. However, there are still issues with the recent non-domestic rate review. Is the Minister in a position to update us on the current situation? I know that, for many, there is concern from businesses and indeed clubs right across the Province. The Chair referred to that as well.

Much hope appears to be placed on the June monitoring round to make easement changes and redistribute resources. June is a long way off, but I ask the Minister what assurance he has, if any, that significant resources will be there as a result of the year-end movements, Barnett consequentials and underspends.

To finish, corporation tax has been touched on. Indeed, it was touched on last night as well. I remember speaking about it a month ago. It is very important that we publicise that availability because, as the Minister said last night, there is a gestation period for new businesses setting up and moving on to another country, so we need to get that message out now. I see some reference to the promotion of corporation tax. Maybe that sort of promotion is included in that, but we need to do that.

Air passenger duty (APD) is certainly a punitive tax. It started off as a green tax, but that is no longer the case. Several countries in Europe have just scrubbed APD because it worked directly against their interests. I certainly support that idea.

This evening, again, we have had the call to look at the devolution of further taxes. I hear that every so often, but in the Budget report we have a reference to the taxes that are generated in Northern Ireland and how they weigh against what comes from the Westminster Treasury.

I think that I trotted this one out about a month ago: the fiscal deficit is £9·2 billion. It says here that taxes generated in Northern Ireland are considerably less than that. I do not know whether it is fair to ask the Minister whether we have any idea of how close it is to that, but my feeling is that it is light years away from £9·2 billion. I will leave it at that.

Mr I McCrea: Given that we have had quite a few debates on the Budget, we will probably hear a lot of repetition of what people either like or dislike about it. Indeed, some will maybe take credit for things that they oppose in the Budget and, when writing their manifestos, they will try to take credit for them. Nonetheless, time will tell.

So far, we have heard from the SDLP, which has expressed nothing other than negativity about the Budget. We have heard that the party is against it because of the lack of scrutiny. That is fair enough. My colleague said that he is perplexed, and we are all perplexed, that, so far, we have not heard any real alternatives as to how the SDLP would do the Budget any better. All we hear are sound bites. I believe that it is time that the SDLP, which reminds us —

Mr McKinney: Will the Member give way?

Mr I McCrea: The reality is that it is still a party that is in the Government. It is time that it acts responsibly as a party in the Government or does the honourable thing. I will give way.

Mr McKinney: Will you take a point of clarification? Is the Member saying that it is fair enough that the allegation was made that there was a lack of scrutiny or that it is fair enough and that there is not a lack of scrutiny?

Mr I McCrea: I am saying that it is fair enough for the SDLP to believe and state that that is why it believes that this is a bad Budget. No one is even suggesting that not having a longer period to scrutinise Budgets is the best way forward. The reality is that we are debating the Budget today, and there is no point in a party, just because it wants to be seen to be opposing the Budget, whining that it has not had the opportunity to properly scrutinise it. It really is time for the SDLP to either put up or shut up on those matters.

I have a number of issues from a constituency perspective. Whilst I have mentioned some of them in previous debates, it is important to again put on record the £130 million that the Budget provides for the Minister for Regional Development to deliver the Randalstown to Castledawson dualling. That project is long overdue. Whilst there are some difficulties with land — and I know that work is ongoing in dealing with the landowners — it is, all in all, a long overdue project, and hopefully it will deal with the large volume of traffic that travels that way on a daily basis, especially in the morning. For many years, the residents who live along that road have had difficulties. Whilst other Members and colleagues of mine will demand that the rest of the road up to Dungiven is delivered, I think that the announcement made is very good and very welcome. That is on top of the around £35 million that was allocated previously for the Magherafelt bypass, the work on which is ongoing. These are certainly good news stories for my constituency.

Yesterday, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party continued on his hobby horse of attacking the social investment fund. I was delighted that the Minister was able to outline that £58 million had been committed for social investment fund projects. A total of £1·4 million of that is in my constituency, and has been committed, and I have spoken to those who are working through the process and are trying, at this stage, to get contractors put in place. Anyone whom I have spoken to about this has said that this is a good news story and that they are certainly glad to see it coming.

I certainly will not take the negativity from Mr Nesbitt about the social investment fund, and I have no apology to make for ensuring that, when it was being discussed, I made representations to the First Minister. I am glad that the Executive have agreed to widen it. This is a good news story not just for my constituency but for the whole of Northern Ireland. Those who continually snipe from the sidelines should remember the impact that it will have on our communities.

The Department of Education's minor works project has been a good scheme to allow schools to benefit from minor capital works funding. In my constituency, a number of schools have benefited, so I hope that that funding will continue. Mind you, I have a list of schools that probably need new builds. I had the Chair of the Education Committee in my constituency recently to see some of the needs. I hope that more capital money is put into the education budget.

With corporation tax, it is great to see that the Chair of the Finance and Personnel Committee is now coming over to this way of thinking and referring to the fair deal. I said to one of my colleagues that he could change his name back to David and maybe join, but we will maybe not go that far. [Laughter.]

Nonetheless, it is a good news story for Northern Ireland. As APS to the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, I know full well the efforts that have been put into delivering corporation tax and the debates on trying to get a date and set the rate. Many are calling it a game-changer, but what we have in reality are the levers for Invest NI to travel across the world selling Northern Ireland as a place that is open for business.

Those who oppose the Budget will, no doubt, take credit for being part of an Executive that have delivered those financial levers. I, for one, make no apology for supporting the Budget. The Minister has done an excellent job in the short time that he has been in post to bring forward the Budget — as did his predecessor. This is a good Budget and something that the House should support.

Mrs Cochrane: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Budget Bill. I will endeavour not to do the parrot impression that I did last night and cover the points that everybody else had covered.

Members will be aware that the Alliance Party opposed the Budget at the Executive and when the Budget resolution came before the Assembly in January. That was the time when there was still an opportunity for an alternative to be agreed. However, now that these democratic decisions have been taken for better or worse, we have a duty to support the measures to put in place the finance for our Departments and public agencies.

We recognise that 2016-17 is a transitional year and is to be followed by a four-year Budget. Therefore, I still have some hope that, when the rationalised Departments are in place and a new Programme for Government agreed, we will see a more strategic approach. No more circulating a Budget the night before an Executive meeting with the two largest parties displaying a disregard for the views of other parties represented on the Executive but a properly consulted-on Budget that effectively aligns with the strategic priorities for all our Departments across the period to 2021.

Whilst I still have hope, it does not mean that we should simply brush over the 2016-17 proposals that, I believe, missed the opportunity to begin to lay any groundwork for the radical reform needed to deliver better outcomes for everyone in Northern Ireland. I ask the Minister how the proposed spending in front of us will begin that process of making our public finances more sustainable? Perhaps I missed it.

Does he believe that the Budget will assist in reforming the health sector? Will it ensure that necessary action is taken on education? Will it feed into addressing the cost of a divided society and investing in the economy?

Looking at the Department of Health. Yes, the 2016-17 Budget, compared with that for 2015-16, has allocated an extra £128 million, and, of course, that is welcome news. However, even with that increase, the cost pressures facing the Department are extremely worrying. Our population is increasing in size and getting older, and more people are living with chronic conditions. Unhealthy lifestyles are creating more demand for services, and new developments in medical technologies and drugs are increasing demand and adding to the cost pressures. The focus of the Department of Health therefore needs to be on reform, not simply on using the resources to cover gaps here and there by way of a sticking-plaster approach. We need to rationalise the way in which services are provided and invest in further prevention measures.

Mr Storey: I appreciate the Member giving way. It is easy for Members to come to the House and use general phrases, but when the Member uses a phrase such as "rationalise services", which I have heard other Members use and no doubt will hear other Members repeat later, that is the same as saying that we need more tax-raising powers. Does that mean that we are going to support water charges? Does the Member mean that she can identify those locations where health provision is currently but that will have to close? That is the issue for us all, given the debate that there has been this week about the Manchester experience. Can the Member be specific about what is meant by "rationalisation of services"?

Mrs Cochrane: I thank the Minister for his intervention. I was going to come to that in my speech. Of course, I am not the expert who can tell you exactly what needs to be there, but I do know that an independent panel has been put in place, and I believe that there needs to be serious public political commitment to see through changes that may be brought forward by that panel. We cannot expect people to come forward with ideas and then respond with, "Not on my doorstep". We have seen that so many times before. I am calling for that political leadership from all parties, and I welcome the Health Minister's apparent commitment to reform and the fact that he has put a panel in place. I am just hoping that any necessary changes that are proposed by the panel will be realised.

On a previous occasion in the Chamber, I think that there was a mention of a transformation fund for some of the cost-saving initiatives that may come about. I ask the Finance Minister to confirm that he will be supportive of that type of investment being prioritised. I hope that there will be a focus on using improved IT solutions, as communication in the health sector really seems to be one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest wastes of resources. Just yesterday, I had to make three separate phone calls to secondary care providers to find out one simple piece of information about an arm injury that I have. I was eventually told to phone my GP, who would be able to access the records and provide the information. That bounced the responsibility back to primary care, which is already under pressure. It is clear that there are processes crying out for reform in our health sector, so it is not just about closing services in different places. It is about really, really reforming those processes.

Even through high-level benchmarking of costs compared with other jurisdictions, we can see that efficiencies need to be made in education, yet the large degree of protection that has again been given to the Department of Education seems to create less incentive for that reform. The Alliance Party of course supports investing more resources directly in schools, but we believe that that can be achieved by better use of the Department's budget in the first place.

More money is already spent on education in Northern Ireland than in neighbouring jurisdictions, but less money is being invested directly in the pupils. Part of that is due to our divided system, and another part of it is to do with our high administrative costs. We therefore also need a more meaningful approach to area planning to reduce the number of empty desks and leadership — again, from all our political parties — so that, when difficult decisions have to be made about mergers, amalgamations or closures, people face up to them, are honest with the public and say, "This is what needs to be done". However, I welcome the budgetary allocation for capital expenditure, which Mr McCrea also mentioned. I am hopeful that, in this incoming year, capital resources will finally be allocated to Strandtown Primary School in my constituency of East Belfast for the badly needed modernisation of the accommodation.

I would like to make some comments on the budgetary allocation for economic development. We know that the new Department for the Economy will be established in this incoming financial year. That is good news, as it will bring together the further and higher education sectors alongside our business community and should help to strengthen the economy and drive it forward. However, Alliance has concerns that the 2016-17 Budget has prioritised Health and Education at the expense of the economy. It is a fact that we have disinvested in higher education for a number of years. The cynic in me might say that that is because it fell under an Alliance portfolio. Nevertheless, it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Reskilling and upskilling our people is essential to give everyone the opportunity to realise their full potential and to make a valuable contribution to society. It is one of the challenges that our Budget really needs to focus on and properly address if we want people to be ready for the devolution of corporation tax. If we need more resources in that area, perhaps we should reconsider the total allocation under the Delivering Social Change banner. That funding is being maintained as per previous allocations, but I am not confident on delivery given the previous failings of the social investment fund, which I know some have referred to as the "pet projects fund".

I apologise if I have come across as completely negative this evening; I genuinely have tried not to. Alliance will accept the democratic process that has agreed this Budget but, going forward, I urge the Minister to enter into full consultation and discussion on meaningful reforms, including considering some revenue-raising such as prescription charges, which could be taken forward quite quickly, and exploring some other medium-term options as well. I also ask him to include a commitment to publish the independent audit of the cost of division that was part of the Stormont House Agreement.

Our Budget process is difficult as we continue to live in difficult times for public services. Responsible leadership is therefore needed, and that means being honest with the public and taking the difficult strategic decisions that will ensure the best outcomes for Northern Ireland as a whole. We support the passage of the Bill.

Mr Weir (The Chairperson of the Committee for Education): I will be speaking as Chair of the Education Committee, so obviously it would be totally wrong and remiss of me to mention that, in terms of any budgetary allocations particularly to Education, priority should be given to the Holywood schools project in my constituency, which would impact on Priory College, Holywood Primary School and Holywood Nursery School. It would be equally remiss of me to indicate the need for new school builds at St Columbanus' College and Bangor Central Integrated Primary School, given the high pressures there and the fact that both are in dire need of long overdue capital investment. So, I will not mention those in the speech.

Although speaking as Chair of the Education Committee, I must admit that I have some sympathy with what Mrs Cochrane, Ms Hanna and others have mentioned. There is always a slight sense of déjà vu with finance debates, particularly those on the Budget, because we quite often have the Budget debate on the back of the debate on the Supply resolution. As somebody who spent many years in different guises on the Finance Committee, probably as punishment in the first mandate and possibly as closer to a reward in latter days, I totally empathise with the sometimes frustrating difficulty when you are effectively dealing with the same subject for the second or third time but are trying to find a new and novel spin on it. I congratulate Members on doing that.

On a broader level, one of the challenges of this Budget is the readjustment of Departments, which makes any degree of read-across difficult. Therefore, it is very difficult to compare like with like. To be fair, there is at least some opportunity for that in Education and Justice, because the changes to those Departments are very minimal. There is a de minimis type approach to Education, so you can look at a degree of read-across there. There is clearly some difficulty in going too much into the detail of the Education budget because, as with other Departments, we are awaiting the detail. I think that there will be key issues for the Minister to look at in terms of the prioritisation within that budget.

As such, all we can really do is look at the overall Budget position. What some others would see as a criticism of partial protection of Education would be seen by the Education Committee as having at least some level of virtue.

When we look at the Education budget or, indeed, any of the other departmental budgets, we have to realise the constrained circumstances that we are in. Looking around the House, I do not see anybody who has been here since 1998, but I am one of the few people who, as if in some sort of latter-day Canaan, lived through the days of milk, honey and plenty in the early days of the Assembly under the high level expenditure under Gordon Brown, where revenue budgets went up each year by a considerable amount. In many ways, it was a relatively easy job for any Assembly to decide how to spend that money if you were looking at a 5% rise in real terms. The task of dividing up that revenue is perhaps easier than when you are looking at what are effectively real-terms reductions. It is in that context that we need to look at the overall Education budget. Undoubtedly, there will be pressures in that budget. I suggest that they may not be quite of the nature that, at times, has been suggested by the Department, but, undoubtedly, there are pressures on the budget. One looks, for instance, at the pressures of an additional £30 million for National Insurance changes, which will impact on the departmental budget.

In actual figures, the revenue budget for Education sits now at just under £2 billion. One of the things that needs to be welcomed within that is that at least we have seen a small overall increase in the budget in actual terms but possibly not in real terms. The budget compared with last year is up £40 million. A lot of that is due to the fact that problems arose last year when money had to be found to meet additional teacher pensions. It was welcomed at that stage that not only was the £35 million found for that but that has now been put in the baseline of the Department. That, at least, relieves a degree of pressure in the Department.

In addition to the money that has been made available, it should be noted that, when some of the redundancies, particularly teacher redundancies, were met last year in the Department of Education, some of that effectively had to be found from the pre-existing Department of Education budget. The fact that that is not having to be found this year creates a degree of relief of pressure because you are not necessarily comparing like for like. There is the removal of a certain level of pressure, which gives a little headroom to the Department.

With regard to the transformation fund, the Department of Education, through a number of schemes, is the largest single beneficiary, with three schemes totalling around £72 million. Part of that — probably been the most controversial aspect — has been the proposal from the Minister of a £33 million scheme for teachers who are over the age of 55 on the condition that schools employ someone who has under three years' experience. At the bottom end of that, there has been a level of controversy about that. It is true to say that there is some concern in the Education Committee about whether the balance on that has been got right, but, undoubtedly, in respect of the £33 million, there are also figures that suggest that that will generate a certain level of savings for schools. That also needs to be taken into account, but I think that the Committee will want to hear more on that scheme. Hopefully, we will soon have the opportunity to quiz the Minister on that. The Committee will want to assure itself as to whether the detail of that has been got right.

The focus at times has, therefore, been so heavily on the £33 million that what has been ignored is the other £39 million in the budget for changes in redundancy. Some £14 million of that is directly for the potential redundancies of 300 teachers, and £25 million has been set aside for non-teaching staff. In certain respects, that will ease some of the pressures in the overall Education budget. Before Mrs Cochrane left, she referred to efficiencies. We should look at the non-teaching side of the Department of Education, where there is an opportunity for a level of reduction. In recent years, there has been a 6% increase in staff and a 10% increase in savings, so perhaps we are not starting from a position of the highest efficiency.

Last year, the Committee expressed concern about cuts made to the Curriculum Advisory and Support Service (CASS), the promotion of STEM and home literacy programmes such as the Book Trust. We wait with interest to see what the Minister prioritises in his budget. Perhaps it would be wrong to comment in too much detail at this stage. Suffice it to say that the desire is that there will be as much protection as possible for the aggregated schools budget to ensure that the money is spent on the front line. That would find resonance across the Chamber.

Finally, I want to touch on capital spend, and there is, potentially, a good news story, particularly in education. I will explain why. The capital budget reduced from £182 million in 2014-15 to £145 million this year, but it will move up to £193·7 million next year, which is very welcome. Mr McCrea and others referred to schools in their areas, and I suspect that we could all have a long list of schools, as is often the case with a capital budget. I suspect that the Minister will want to announce prior to dissolution how that money will be allocated among schools, and work on that is ongoing in the Education Authority. We all hope that the money will be spent in the best possible fashion, in the right place and in an equitable and equality-proofed way.

I sound a small note of caution. Mention was made of the very good work done on minor works, but we should put that into context. During this Assembly term, 56 major works have been announced. For a variety of reasons, including planning and procurement issues, work on the ground has started on only 21. The Committee will want to ensure that, when capital builds are announced, there is a quicker follow-up. Some minor works, which are welcome in and of themselves, arose because the capital budget could not be spent in-year. That money was diverted, so there was a shift. Nevertheless, with those caveats, we should all welcome an increase of about £48 million or £49 million for capital works. We look forward to drilling down with the Minister and his officials, hopefully in a relatively short time, on what the priorities and allocations are in the Education budget, and the Committee will very much take a watching brief.

Speaking as a DUP Member, I welcome the Budget, which comes before us in the difficult circumstances of wider financial pressures. I believe that the Minister and the Executive have done the best that is possible with the resources that they have. Therefore, I commend the Budget to the House.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-LeasCheann Comhairle. Tá áthas orm páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht seo inniu faoin cháinaisnéis. Mr Weir brings good news: I did not know that we had an extra £50 million for capital build.

I want to speak in favour and in defence of the Budget. It is a Budget of which we can be proud. These are tough issues and tough times. Despite that, we have come up with a Budget that will serve our people well. It does not have everything in it that I would like, and there are areas in which I would have liked to see additional expenditure. However, being in government, sharing power with others and having to come to agreed settlements mean that you do not get everything that you want. Despite that, there are many things in the Budget that the electorate will be grateful for. In particular, I am proud of the fact that we have set aside over half a billion pounds for welfare top-ups. No other place in these islands has managed to match that in any way at all. It is testimony to the generosity of the political parties that lead the Executive and to our constituents that they have agreed that we should set aside such a monumental sum of money to ease the effect of Tory welfare cuts.

I am also proud of some local things in the Budget. The school of law at Queen's will get £10 million. I really hope that the social investment fund prospers in the year ahead and that the money allocated to it is spent. I think of the Markets tunnel project, a magnificent project to link the Markets to the city centre. I hope that that will be realised —

Mr Weir: I thank the Member for giving way. One tends to think purely of departmental budgets, but it is important to acknowledge that a number of projects in SIF have an educational focus. It was remiss of me not to mention them when I was covering education. Hopefully, that will make for a very positive intervention, particularly with our young people and the issue of underachievement.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Absolutely. Some of the projects-in-waiting are in the inner city. Some parties here do not have a lot of support in inner-city areas and are caustic about the social investment fund. In my view, however, the Sandy Row enterprise hub is a project that can transform Sandy Row. We need to put our shoulder to the wheel to make sure that these things happen. I am very proud of the fact that the A5 and A6 are now up and running. I salute those who convinced the Irish Government to put in their £75 million against our money. I welcome the fact that, through this Budget, we will start the north-west gateway between Derry and Donegal, as mentioned in the Fresh Start Agreement, with £1·5 million set against it.

I am enormously proud of the fact that we are spending £4·8 billion on our health service and well over £2 billion on our education service. Those who criticise and snipe at what we have done need to tell us what they would take from the health budget or the education budget and where they would put it. That is what has been absent. There have been attempts to denigrate the Budget, but there is no suggestion of where those people would take money from and where they would replace it.

In my view, not enough money is being set aside for economic development, but you can never have enough money. What we have done amounts to a good day's work: £170 million for Invest NI, £27 million for Tourism NI, £11 million for our friends in Tourism Ireland and £3 million for InterTradeIreland, with the last two being doubled by the Irish Government. That puts us on a strong footing as we move towards the introduction of corporation tax, making it affordable and ensuring that our people are skilled up and that we can grasp the full opportunity. Those are key achievements in the Budget of which we can be proud.

We can be very proud of the fact that we have capped student fees. Voices in the Chamber have said, "Heap more pain on students. Make them pay more for the liberation of a third-level education". We have said no to that. We have resisted calls in the Chamber to introduce water charges, which would be another tax on working families. We have stood by our senior citizens and refused to introduce fares for pensioners, and we will keep that free of charge. We have kept prescriptions free of charge. We can be proud of all those things. We have managed to deliver on those because of the leadership of the parties in the Chamber, in the Executive and in the main parties.

The only alternative that has been put up to the Budget is a suggestion from the SDLP that we take £800,000 from the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister and give it to women's centre kindergartens for childcare. Minister Morrow spoke positively last week, and I hope that he will find the £800,000 this week that we need for those hard-pressed women's centres and thus resolve the issue. But who will go into the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister in the morning and tell them that they are losing £800,000 from their budget? Who will hand out the 20 P45s to the 20 workers? Who will go to the Victims and Survivors Service and say that we are going to take away its entire budget of £800,000? It is my belief that they have not looked at the figures. They say that OFMDFM administration costs are going up at 23%, but they have not looked at the complexities or the programmes that it has taken on board since 2012-13 and the logical reasons for that. The reasons why administration costs have increased have been spelt out and are on the record. If we allow for the additional work and contingencies that OFMDFM has taken on — for example, responsibility for advertising and other things from Departments — like every Department, OFMDFM has reduced its administration budget between 2012 and 2015-16.

So, from my point of view, does this Budget deliver everything and is it a wish list for everyone? No, it is not. Is it a good day's work? It is a very good day's work. When I listen to Eileen Evason and others who are at the coalface of delivering change and a fair deal for those who are on the dole, those who are seeking work and working families, I think it is a good day's work. I support the Budget, and I am proud to support it. I think that we have done well, and we will do better in the time ahead, especially as we unite to build the economy.

Mr Irwin (The Chairperson of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development): I will speak on behalf of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development. The fact that the Budget for 2016-17 relates to the newly restructured Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, or DAERA, has muddied the waters a little for our Committee. As Members know, DAERA will not have responsibility for the Rivers Agency. However, it will have absorbed a number of other functions, including environmental and marine responsibilities from the Department of the Environment and inland fisheries responsibilities from the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. It will also take policy responsibility for sustainable strategy from OFMDFM.

What we do know is that the budget for DAERA will be subject to a 5·7% cut to its resource. As a result, the new Department has been allocated a total of £197·9 million resource and £48·8 million capital. Departmental officials informed the Committee that that 5·7% resource cut will be applied pro rata across the three areas that are joining together to form DAERA. That equates to a cut of £10 million for DARD, £1·7 million for DOE functions and £0·3 million for inland fisheries.

The Committee has taken its duty to monitor DARD’s financial performance and its delivery of key services very seriously. However, it is important to note that it has been difficult for our Committee to anticipate or assess the true impact of the 5·7% cut to those areas that were previously under the remit of DOE and DCAL and, indeed, to the sustainable development functions under OFMDFM. Over the past year, DARD officials have told the Committee that there will have to be major changes in the services that are delivered and in how they are delivered by the new Department. We have heard that, to meet ongoing budgetary pressures, DAERA will have to be a more modern, leaner and digitally focused Department. The Committee is concerned that that might result in a reduction in the quality and availability of key services. However, Members also believe that the formation of the new Department presents an opportunity for efficiencies to be made. The streamlining of inspection regimes is an obvious example of that, and the Committee will certainly call for these types of savings to be realised as quickly as possible.

The Committee repeats its call for front-line services to farmers and the rural population to be protected from the worst of these cuts. In particular, the timely administration of CAP payments must remain a priority for the new Department. I am sure that all Members are aware of the falling farm-gate prices and ongoing struggles that are faced by farmers in Northern Ireland. Many of you will have read last week that farmers in Northern Ireland suffered a very significant drop in their incomes in 2015. That means that they rely more than ever on these direct payments as their major source of income.

The Committee acknowledges the work of DARD in the past year to ensure that over 96% of eligible farm businesses received their basic payment by January 2016. The Committee is anxious to see that record maintained and surpassed by DAERA, but that may prove challenging in the face of the cuts imposed by the Budget and the loss of over 300 staff to the recent voluntary exit scheme. On voluntary exit, the Committee was told last week that DARD expects to make savings of almost £5 million in staff costs in 2015-16. The first two groups left under the VES before the end of last year. The third tranche of staff left only at the end of January 2016, and the fourth group will not leave until the end of March 2016. DARD has chosen not to avail itself of a fifth tranche of voluntary exits. This means that the full impact of 300 staff leaving has not yet been felt in service delivery. The Committee feels very strongly that the departure of so many staff should not be allowed to impact the administration of all the EU payments that farmers and rural communities depend on so much.

I would now like to specifically reference the issue of TB compensation. The TB scheme costs DARD in the region of £30 million a year. This amounts to almost 15% of the resource allocation for the new Department. At a recent meeting where we discussed finances with DARD officials, the Committee was informed that there is still an outstanding pressure of £4 million for this scheme. It is alarming that DARD has not yet managed to get both the disease and the costs under control. Indeed, there are actually signs that TB rates are increasing again, which, in turn, means an even bigger call on the purse of the Department.

The funding of TB compensation has long been a concern for the Committee. DARD continues to make monitoring round bids in order to top up the funding for the scheme; this is not sustainable. Members have repeatedly called for the mainstreaming of TB compensation funding, which is, after all, a statutory obligation. We understood that this had been done, so it is very disappointing to see that DARD has had to make use of the monitoring rounds for this funding.

The Committee expects the new rural development programme (RDP) to play an important role in improving the lot of those who make their living in farming. Under the 2016-17 Budget, £5 million has been allocated to RDP. Officials confirmed to us that this will be used to fund the farm business improvement scheme, which they plan to launch in the 2016-17 financial year. This includes a capital investment element called the business investment scheme, which will provide capital support to farmers. However, the Committee has a number of outstanding concerns in relation to this scheme. For example, it has not been made clear to Members whether DAERA has received the necessary funds under Budget 2016-17 for the business investment scheme. We are also aware that DFP approval is required before any RDP-funded programmes can open. However, we have yet to be updated on the status of the business investment scheme business case. The Committee is certainly very eager to see the details of this scheme announced as soon as possible.

The Committee recently received a briefing on a major DARD IT project, the new Northern Ireland food animal information system. We were glad to hear that the procurement exercise for this is finally approaching completion. We were also reassured to hear that the project costs are likely to be less than originally estimated. The Committee was previously told that resource costs between 2014-15 and 2019-2020 were estimated to be £14·8 million. Capital costs for the same period would amount to £19 million. However, as a result of the tendering process, it seems that these projected costs can now be revised downwards.

Finally, I would like to make some brief remarks about funding to the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) in the 2016-17 budget. AFBI plays a key role in Northern Ireland in providing research to our farming and agrifood industries. The Committee has received several briefings on AFBI in the past year. Members have repeatedly voiced their concerns about how budget cuts will affect the delivery of services. It is crucial to the industry that the institute’s capacity to carry out agricultural research is maintained. The plan to end several research programmes as part of AFBI’s Shrink to Grow strategy has certainly caused us concern. However, I will finish on a positive note. The Committee has been assured that AFBI’s R&D budget will be more protected in the future as a result of a change in Treasury rules. The Committee has always recognised that the success of the agrifood industry is dependent on research and development. As a result, we welcome this change.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin (The Chairperson of the Committee for Health, Social Services and Public Safety): Go raibh maith agat, a Phríomh-LeasCheann Comhairle. I welcome the opportunity to address the House as Chair of the Committee for Health, Social Services and Public Safety and to contribute to this debate. I wish to make a number of points, and maybe develop a number of points flowing from the spring Estimates debate last evening. Looking at the Budget, and it has been mentioned by colleagues, the Executive have allocated the Department of Health £128 million additional to its 2015-16 position, and that is very welcome news, right across the services sector and the wider constituency.

There are, however, ongoing cost pressures, which have been referred to. Costs continue to rise each year, and they are running roughly at about 5% to 6%. Typically, they are linked to pay and non-pay inflation. Obviously, they are linked to meeting the healthcare needs of an ageing population and continuing developments in technologies and treatments. That trend is expected to continue as we move forward into 2016-17 and beyond. In order to meet those pressures and supplement the baseline budget allocation, the Department is attempting to identify savings from trusts. It is attempting to look at other arm's-length bodies and its own administration costs, and that is an important point. From what we have heard, that will prove difficult, given the savings that it has already attempted to make in previous years.

Mr McKinney: I thank the Member for giving way. She will probably recall a Public Accounts Committee report, published last week, which alludes to a £131 million trust deficit. Has she any idea, in that case, where the £128 million increase will go, given that this is a one-year Budget? Will it go into that trust black hole? Is that something which Mr Ó Muilleoir can be proud of?

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: I thank the Member for his intervention, and I will develop the points around the real challenge in health: where current spend actually goes. There is no doubt that all of us, collectively, can stand behind the need for a reform agenda which will, I believe, if done properly, address some of the core issues. On the one hand, we have a Department that says it wants to protect front-line services; on the other, it allows trusts to cut the very same services that are required. I will develop that point further.

Of key concern to the Committee is the very point that I refer to. How will the Department allocate this budget for 2016-17 across a range of spending areas? It is an important point. When the officials were in front of us in January, we asked directly for that information. We asked directly for the Minister's priorities. That information is crucial because, obviously, spending decisions should be informed by ministerial priorities. The Member who previously spoke knows that officials were only able to provide us with a very broad-brush picture of the Minister's priorities. I will quote the officials, because they told us that the overall aim and vision is to build a world-class health and social care service, obviously. That should be the collective aim of all of us: to drive up the quality of health and social care for patients. Nobody in this House or beyond would disagree with those high-level objectives, but that does not provide us with the detail of how the £4·88 billion will be spent in 2016-17.

We were further advised that information on the Minister's priorities would be set out in the commissioning plan. I make the point that we were told that a draft of that would be forwarded to the Committee for comment by late January/early February. That document has still not been received for consideration by the Committee. That is disappointing, because the commissioning plan is really the key document setting out the services that the Minister wishes to fund in the coming year. For example, Members are very keen — as I am sure that wider society is — to hear how the Department will tackle the significant waiting times for elective care appointments. Again, officials were not able to advise us how much money would be allocated to that issue. They said that it would depend on what savings could be found in other areas. In the Committee's eyes, the rationale for that approach is really not clear. Surely, if something is a priority, money should be allocated to it. It should not be rocket science, but we need a set of clear priorities in order to do that.

Committee members have also been concerned about the areas where savings would be made. There has been a tendency to look for quick savings rather than take a long-term strategic approach. The Committee was firmly of the view that it does not want trusts to cut back on things like domiciliary care packages as a quick fix to balance the budget for 2016-17.

There are key questions about the spending plans for 2016-17 that remain unanswered, questions that are of vital interest to Members, healthcare professionals and the wider community. I make reference to one such question. When will we find the pay award for nurses? A total of £28 million is required out of the 2016-17 budget to fund the 1% pay increase.

I will make a number of comments as an individual MLA —

Mr Ó Muilleoir: I thank the Member for giving way. As we work out how to spend this £4·8 billion, do you agree that it would be beneficial to the community if the Minister, in conjunction with the Minister of Education, found a way to tackle the long waiting lists for autism assessments? I know that there is a gathering this week in Stormont — maybe it was today — on that issue. Many of my constituents are in limbo: they are unable to get a child assessed and are therefore unable to source the correct educational route for the child.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: I thank the Member for his intervention. Indeed, as we move radically to reform the delivery of our health system, we need to do so on the basis of targeting the need that exists. It was very apparent, and I am conscious that I am also a member of the Education Committee, that the responsibility for delays in processing special educational needs assessments lay at the door of the health trusts. There needs to be a direct intervention.

I want to make a number of comments in concluding. The system needs radical reform, and we very much welcome the Minister's reform agenda in that regard, but we need to get the meat on the bones. We need to get a sense of what that clear, costed, time-lined action plan will be. The real issue in the delivery of our health service is where current spend goes. There is a huge debate, and I do not think that anybody in the Chamber or beyond could, hand on heart, say that current spend is having the right or maximum outcome, so a radical reform agenda is needed.

We need to look at the opportunities that the streamlining of commissioning will bring. We need to appeal to the Minister's better judgement in and around the better GP prescribing programmes, which have been well documented in the Audit Office reports. We need to stop wasting public money on legal cases, over the ban on blood donations from members of the gay community, for example.

Finally, we need to look at the genuine removal of clinical excellence awards: £55 million has been paid out in the last five years, at a time when we cannot pay an extra 1% to our front-line nurses. There needs to be a radical overhaul of how we deliver health, and we in our party are up for that challenge and for the political leadership required to deliver.

Mr McKinney: I have to say that I am deeply worried — I would not say aghast — by some of the contributions. It is not the contributions themselves but the contradictions in those contributions that I am hearing. The last speaker was absolutely right in just about everything she said. She was right to be critical of the commissioning plan. She was right to be disappointed at not seeing targets in the overall Transforming Your Care plan. She was right to point out that waiting times are in disarray and that we are getting quick savings and quick fixes. She was right to say that there are key unanswered questions in the overall healthcare system. She was right to point to the fact that nurses are not getting a 1% pay rise.

Her colleague was also right in his point, although he did not go into the details of it — and I will give him some of them — that some waiting lists for autism assessments are two years long. The children are nearly grown up before they get a diagnosis.

Yet, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker, we have to be proud of all that. We are hearing two voices from Sinn Féin today, one that is deeply proud; and I am trying to work out what the pride is here. Are we deeply proud that we took a whole load of numbers, however many billions, added them up, shared them out, and they added up on the bottom line? The underlying stories are what we really should ask questions about. Those are questions that my colleague from Derry rightly asks and which I will now continue to focus on.

As the Finance Minister and all of us are aware, there are many genuine pressures on the health service, which eats into nearly 50% of our overall Budget. The SDLP has expressed concern over the last number of years, and I think that colleagues agree that questions need to be asked. A lot of it emerges from fiscal shortfall, and the result is intolerable pressures on the Health and Social Care service. I do this in all my contributions because I think that it is important to reflect on it, but those pressures are felt by nearly 65,000 dedicated, professional staff who work to the highest standards, often in difficult circumstances. Their commitment, energy and compassion must receive the highest praise. I think that we should acknowledge that.

I am glad that the Minister has moved to introduce a well-deserved pay rise for staff, although the scale is criticised by unions. Nevertheless, nurses are still not getting what they deserve, and I do not think that that is something to be proud of. It remains worrying that the Minister is still embroiled in a dispute over junior doctors' contracts, while the same issue is to arise over consultants' contracts. We have to be aware of the implications of that, not just for the delivery or ultimately, if they move away, lack of delivery and the overall effect that it could have on the system. Those workers are an integral part of it. It is vital that any changes do not put patients' lives at risk and do not deter health staff from working here.

As we entered 2016, the Northern Ireland public again felt the cold face of the health service crisis, with seemingly insurmountable pressures on A&E and colossal queues for elective care. There are 400,000 people on waiting lists in the health system in Northern Ireland. Can we honestly stand in the Chamber today and say that we are proud of that? Over 20% of Northern Ireland's population is on a health waiting list. We have to start to think differently about how we deal with this. We have home closures followed by the stripping of home domiciliary care services. Maybe we should be proud of that. This is not about arriving at a figure and saying that we should be proud of allocating that over there, a little bit of that over there, or a big bit of that over there. It is about the delivery from what we spend. We need to hear in the Chamber that we are delivering for people, particularly vulnerable people. However, given that we are reaching figures of 400,000 people, this is extending beyond what we would normally think of as vulnerable people living in poverty. This is extending into a much wider circle that has grown over five years.

The system could be said to be at breaking point. Patients and staff are suffering on the front line. It is our responsibility, in the Chamber, to point that out. That is not just being negative; it is what a good Budget is about. It is about allocating the right amount of money to achieve the right outcome. Against that backdrop, the latest winter hospital statistics are not surprising. We have been pointing that out for months. What continues to shock the public and others is that the Minister and the Department have continually failed to implement a robust and coherent long-term strategy to deal with increased demand on the system.

Another fact is that Northern Ireland now has the worst record in the UK on the 12- and four-hour waiting targets for emergency care. That is reflected in emergency departments across the North of Ireland.

Patients are being put at risk, with hospitals continuously breaching targets that were put in place to ensure speedier diagnosis and treatment. Are we to be proud or critical of that? When I say "critical of that", I mean not just negative criticism. I think that the Minister understands that. If I interpret him rightly, he comes from a background that likes to see a sufficient allocation, outcomes for people, and money spent well and properly so that we get the maximum return from it. I do not think that we will disagree on that issue. That is a very important aspect of what we are arguing about.

We have seen a massive crisis in elective care. Once again, we shifted money away from one area to A&E and created a new crisis. As I said, it now extends to 400,000 people. That is worrying on two fronts. First, some of the £40 million that was allocated to elective care operations could not be spent, because the administration was too bloated and the photocopiers could not deal with the system. Secondly, we heard that a number of cancer operations were cancelled, so it is not just elective care but emergency care.

Mr Storey: Will the Member give way?

Mr McKinney: Yes.

Mr Storey: I have listened to the Member raise genuine issues about concerns that are out there. He rightly acknowledges the work of our healthcare professionals. I did that in the House even yesterday. That is the right thing to do. Is the Member telling us, however, that his party would now reverse its position on welfare, for example, and say that the money that was negotiated for the mitigation measures and the money that we will spend on welfare should be put into our health service? Let us remember that his party voted against the Budgets, so is he saying that we should not have allocated an additional £133 million resource DEL to the Department of Health or provided £40 million before Christmas to help with waiting lists? Is he saying that those are things that we should not have done?

I take his point that I like to see outcomes, but I realise that the sad reality of the House — I have said this time and again — is that we have political wish lists longer than the length of the Chamber. Collectively, parties are going to have to say, "Yes, we would like to be able to do that, but our priority is our health service and delivering for that". It is time that his party stopped making the case for some of the things that it has advocated. We would then have the resources to deal with the issues.

It also comes down to another issue, and I said this to Mrs Cochrane the Member for East Belfast. When we talk about rationalisation, tell us where you want the services to end. Tell the people. In my constituency, does it mean that we have to tell people that the Causeway Hospital should close? Is that the sort of rationale and rationalisation that the Member and his party support?

Mr McKinney: I will give a very short answer: no. That is not what I am proposing at all. In fact, as I go through my speech, I will point out areas in which we could save money in the system, because there is enormous waste in the health system.

I will deal with this now, given that the Member elaborated on it extensively and asked me directly about it. The reality is that it is not just about money. I have not so far said anything about wanting more. The one point on which I intervened concerned the trust money — the £128 million — that you pointed out. My worry is that, because this is a one-year Budget, that is going into a black hole. At the time of the conclusion of the PAC report, the trusts were sitting with £131 million of debt. Of course, the PAC report was published some time back — somebody can tell me when it was — so it could be £160 million now. In other words, we are pushing money at problems and we are not solving them, which gets me to my core point.

The Minister asked me a question in a particular way, and I hope this answers it: this was foreseen in 'Transforming Your Care'. There was a sentence in 'Transforming Your Care' that was very good and summed it all up; it said that a failure to plan would lead to "haphazard change". We have got haphazard change now by any measure, and it is wasting good public money. The wastage in the system is the issue.

If the then Minister of Finance and Personnel, the then Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, the then First Minister and the then Minister for Social Development — I am pointing to four DUP Ministers — had even sat round their own kitchen tables, they might have got some consensus on this. They did not have to reach out to everybody else, because there was a consensus in 2011 that we needed to deal with the issue in terms of flow.

Like a business, what flows through the system is what is important. It would have taken some money, and if the Minister is saying to me what I think he is, he too will back our proposal to put health at the very top of the Executive's priorities so that we can begin to sort this problem out once and for all. That will entail investing some money at the start to alleviate the problems at the Causeway Hospital and in Ballymena on the community side. We need to take the pressure off the expensive accident and emergency side and the elective care side so that we are dealing with people and giving them a service in their own areas — not necessarily a hospital service, because we could shift the context —

Mr Storey: Will the Member give way?

Mr McKinney: Yes.

Mr Storey: That is already being done in Ballymena with the new centre that will be opened. The Member is almost arguing against his own point. At Altnagelvin, a huge investment has been made in a service that will be of immense benefit to people who have particular issues and challenges due to cancer, which is something that far too many households face. Let us not try to paint a different picture.

The difficulty I have had since coming into this job in recent weeks — this was mentioned by the Member opposite — is that it is almost as though we have not been spending almost half of Northern Ireland's Budget allocation on health. Sometimes, we focus on specific problems. As the son of a father who has spent almost nine months under the care of the health service, I know all too well the huge amount of money that that has cost our system but, as a family, we appreciate everything that has been done, and there are many other thousands of families like mine.

Mr McKinney: I get that. I have also had experience, and I refer to it in every contribution. If we were properly dealing with the community side, we would not have had 791 patients in hospital over Christmas who could not get domiciliary care packages. Somebody needs to do the maths. There were 124 of those people who stayed in hospital for more than two months. Those were people who did not need to be in hospital but stayed there. Depending on the part of the system they were in, it might be more or less expensive than domiciliary care, but my guess is that, when we do the maths, we will find that it was significantly more expensive than the adequate provision of a home-care package in the first place.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Will the Member take a point?

Mr McKinney: Yes.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Thank you. I was waiting with bated breath to hear about the prosperity plan. I am happy to have a health debate. I do not know whether the Member is proud of the fact that we have set aside £4·8 billion for health, but I am. If he thinks that anyone on this side of the Chamber or the other side of the Chamber is not going to demand and insist on delivery, he has not been listening to what we have been saying today when we challenged the Economy Minister on some of the problems within DETI. We will insist on proper delivery and excellence in every Department.

However, I am still waiting to hear what the SDLP would do.

The only suggestion so far is that you will take £800,000 from OFMDFM, perhaps closing down the Victims and Survivors Service — that is £800,000 — or making 20 people redundant. You want to give that to the women's centre childcare unit, which, in fact, is being sorted out. However, you make a fair point: you have suggested that, out of a huge budget, you will take £800,000 from one Department and put it into another.

After all of the talking tonight, are you saying that you have laboured long and hard over this but will not tell us how you would move money between Departments? Do you want to spend more on health? You seemed to be saying that in your earlier suggestions. If it is more than £4·8 billion, where is it coming from? If it is to come from savings, that is interesting because, then, the SDLP's position is that the only thing that should be different in the Budget is that there should be more efficiencies. I think that everybody would sign up for that. If there is to be a bold — we heard that word used earlier — ambition behind the prosperity plan, which we are still waiting for, let us know what it is, because we would like to see an alternative. There is no monopoly on budgets, so tell us where you would remove the money from. Would it be from the Culture Department, from DOE, from DRD or from the economy? Where will you take money from to give you that additional spending power, or is there no additional spend intended? I do not know whether that will be in the prosperity plan, when we see it, but, to me, raiding £800,000 from OFMDFM and making 20 people redundant is kindergarten economics.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Before Mr McKinney speaks, I draw Members' attention to the fact that, althought this is an important debate about legislation, interventions ought to be short, sharp and focused.

Mr McKinney: Thank you, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. I will get to addressing some of the issues. The Member said that Sinn Féin would interrogate the issues: where was the interrogation of the failure to implement Transforming Your Care? There were 99 targets, but little was done. The Department produced a report, but I did not see much interrogation of that. I have to laugh: Sinn Féin's economic plan includes paying off everybody's credit card debt, and he wants to hear from me about my plan. Maybe you should come and join the SDLP, Máirtín. That would be the answer. We will give you plenty to talk about and chew over. You do not have any plans. All that you have is a plan to say that you are proud of adding up figures on one side and not on the other.

I talked about the prospect of investing to save, but I said that in the context of making that we make health the top priority in the Executive. If we do that, it will involve Departments other than the Health Department seeing health outcomes as a priority for them. In other words, let us begin to deal with the core issues and get to the root of the debate: the real issues that cause problems in our health service — not just the flows through it but the issues that cause the logjams. They emerge from long-term unemployment and long-term deprivation in communities such as west Belfast, and you know all about that. Statistics show that west Belfast, north Belfast, my colleague's West Tyrone constituency and Derry and places like it still top the UK league tables for deprivation and long-term unemployment. If we were to begin to tackle those issues strategically, we would have a different approach, but Máirtín is stuck on the figures. He is just adding up figures and saying that he cannot think beyond that. He says that we are asking to move money on the abacus from here to there and back again: that is not what I am talking about, and that is not what the SDLP is talking about. The SDLP is talking about beginning to make Northern Ireland work, be self-sufficient —

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Will the Member take a short intervention?

Mr McKinney: No. I think that you have had enough.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: I think that a short intervention would be in order, if I were allowed.

Mr McKinney: You have made it clear that Sinn Féin is bereft of ideas and is reaching out to ask the SDLP. I am explaining the prosperity process, and he is not listening. It is about making Northern Ireland work, once and for all. We have had 40 years of people destroying this place and imposing the very deprivation and long-term unemployment that led, for example, to the long-term mental health issues that my colleague continues to refer to. We, across the Chamber, know that only too well, and we know how much it costs the Health Department. We have to wake up. We have an election in three months' time. The Programme for Government negotiations have to include those elements at its core, or we will have forgotten what we are about.

Mr Storey: I thank the Member for giving way. I listened to him and thought that he had a copy of the Ulster Unionist Party's 'Vision' document, because it seems as though they are using the same script. It talks about wanting to make Northern Ireland work. Hold on: let us remember that the SDLP stayed in the Executive and voted against everything, and the Ulster Unionist Party walked out of the Executive. They had their opportunity to make Northern Ireland work and, clearly, were not capable of doing the job. Either they do what the SDLP does, which is stay in and snipe from the sidelines, or they do what the Ulster Unionist Party does, which is pack up your school bag and leave.

Mr McKinney: I am sorry, Mr Speaker, the one thing that I was not doing and have not done during the debate is snipe from the sidelines. I am trying to come up with constructive answers to some of the bigger long-term problems that this constituency has. The Minister did not refer to the chronology of when he heard whatever, but, if he is suggesting that Sinn Féin is looking for our ideas on the one hand and the UUP has stolen our ideas on the other, I will be entirely happy with his intervention.

I want to ask the Minister a question directly. I have referred to it, but I want an answer if possible. It also refers to the nature of that. The budget rise is £128 million, but the trusts' deficit is £131 million. We need to know where that money is going. Is it going to future provision? Could it go to transformation or current pressures? Is it merely going into that black hole? For us, that is deeply worrying.

I take issue with the repeated concept that we are sniping. Neither I nor the SDLP is sniping. We see an opportunity going into the election and beyond, starting in this mandate and potentially going across mandates, to begin to deal fundamentally with some of the big issues that affect this society. These are societal issues, and that is what we are here for — at least, that is what I understood we were here for, not merely adding up numbers and claiming to be proud of that as an active act in itself.

The Health Minister pointed to a transformation fund aimed at encouraging reform and innovation. Given the earlier comments, I cannot see anywhere where that has been fleshed out in the Budget. It may form part of Professor Bengoa's deliberations or analysis — I am not sure what to call it — but I look forward to his proposals. We have had reports — I have referred to the Transforming Your Care report — and we have had reports on reports. Donaldson came in and said, "Get on with implementing Transforming Your Care, and that might get you off the starting blocks". My worry is that we will simply, through these other processes, have activity disguised as movement. As I have been arguing, now is the time for action, not analysis. We had consensus on reform, as we have said, and very little in outcome through implementation.

I touched on the TYC plan momentarily, but maybe I will flesh it out because it was the plan. Even the Department's analysis has shown that it has barely moved on its update. Proposal 9 dealt with domiciliary care and the home being the hub of care, which is a key provision. What do we end up with? The report states:

In other words, the homework has not been done.

We also need a direct answer on this. The Minister released £1·6 million for the independent sector, and if the homework has been done and if that sector has been in touch with the Department, the Department will know that, in fact, that sector is saying that it needs £36 million between now and April and another £9 million annually thereafter. Recipients of those care packages are some of the most vulnerable and frail people in society, and the Chamber owes it to them to ensure that their care needs are adequately met. I will make the point again that it is as a result of the failure of delivery of those care packages or the weakness of the care packages that, very often, our old people are presenting in accident and emergency because they cannot get the proper service or are not getting the GP service that they need. Their presenting at A&E is causing the crisis. The logical conclusion is not just about moving money around; the logical conclusion is that it is a systems failure and that the system needs to be fixed.

I could go through much more of the detail, but I am glad that we have had the debate and that it has widened out to some of the issues that I referred to. We need to make a health and social care system that is fit for the 21st century. We have an opportunity to do that. I reiterate: we can allocate money from now until the cows come home, but we need to do it with a plan that delivers for the people of Northern Ireland.

Mrs Overend: I am pleased to speak as the Ulster Unionist education spokesperson on the Budget agreed for 2016-17 by the DUP and Sinn Féin. My focus is on the future generations of Northern Ireland. Education is a key Department and one that we, as elected representatives, need to get right. Our young people deserve our focus and attention.

As we look ahead to the new financial year and a new mandate for the Assembly, we know that Education is one of the Departments that will remain largely in its current state. All the Department's current functions will be carried forward, with some additional responsibilities in the new Department. Last month, in presenting the DUP/Sinn Féin Budget for 2016-17, the Finance Minister announced an extra £40 million for the Department of Education. At £1,948 million, the opening baseline resource budget for Education in 2016-17 is almost identical to the 2015-16 figure. That represents 19% of the non-ring-fenced DEL. That appears to be a very placid situation compared with the recently recurring annual crises over school budgets, but we know that schools are having to deal with other costs and with inflationary costs, which I will refer to later.

It seems like only yesterday that savage cuts to the Department of Education were being proposed. Last year, it was suggested that up to 1,000 teachers and 1,500 support staff could lose their jobs. Whilst that doomsday scenario never came to pass, very worthwhile schemes were cut and discontinued, such as the primary-school modern languages programme, the Sentinus programme and, particularly regrettably, the signature programmes in numeracy and literacy.

I would like to turn to the Youth Service. Given that the Education Minister announced his decision to dissolve the Youth Service and subsume the responsibilities into the Education Authority, I question whether cost savings are foreseen in that regard and whether there is evidence that money will be saved. I have concerns that our Youth Service may lose out on much-needed funding for the sector, since the Youth Service Northern Ireland multiplied the funding that it received fivefold.

Focusing on schools, I reiterate something that my colleague and predecessor as education spokesperson, Danny Kinahan MP, used to call for, and that is a joined-up education plan for the future so that schools know what is happening and have some degree of certainty about their annual budget allocation. I have been speaking to numerous schools, and they are frustrated with the lack of information and the lack of the stability that the Budget system brings them. They want to be able to be more proactive rather than reactive when it comes to figures that are given to them. I acknowledge that we are in a unique situation because of the one-year extension to the Assembly's mandate, but surely a better and more certain budgetary process can be worked out for schools. The Chair of the Committee referred to the aggregated schools budget, and I agree that it could be better secured from one year to the next. After the election, the Minister will be able to make a budget over the period of the mandate, yet there will be fluctuations year on year within the aggregated schools budget.

The Department of Education faces significant funding pressures going into 2016-17. The funding of shared education in the incoming year and further years deserves careful consideration. Over a year ago, £500 million of new capital funding for shared education over a 10-year period was announced in the Stormont House Agreement. However, the DUP/Sinn Féin Fresh Start Agreement states that that money can also be used for mixed housing projects. It is time that we had clarity on this issue, and I would appreciate that.

More widely on shared education, and being conscious of the Bill going through the Assembly, it is time that questions over the financial viability of that policy were explored. Option 4 in the business plans for shared education would cost £44 million annually, which, after four years, will apparently be absorbed into the mainstream schools budget. I wonder whether that is realistic or sustainable. I hope we can get answers to these questions.

The Programme for Government has a commitment to creating 10 shared campuses by 2018. The total cost of implementing these sorts of infrastructure projects could approach £1 billion, yet there is no funding secured for that. It is assumed that the EU Peace IV might be a possibility, even though the EU has already spent a total of £2 billion in Northern Ireland since 1994. So there is considerable uncertainty about funding for shared education, both in 2016-17 and into the future.

More immediately pressing, and referred to earlier, are the pension scheme revaluations. Those are likely to result in additional employer contribution costs and increase operating costs by 4·1%. With the single-tier pension scheme in place from April this year, schools will also face an increase of 3·4% in National Insurance contributions. In the current financial year, the Department received additional in-year funding to address the pension-related pressures. I would like to hear from the Minister where those costs will be covered in 2016-17.

The teaching workforce scheme was announced by the Minister but is going through an equality impact assessment only now, and we are not clear at this stage where that is going. It is not clear how the scheme will be allocated funding and what savings — if any — will be realised. It has been mooted that savings made through the scheme will remain with individual schools. I would appreciate clarity on that. What has been announced is a £33·1 million investment for the early retirement of 500 teachers over the age of 55 years, replacing them with recently qualified teachers. That proposal is causing considerable unrest on equality grounds, but a financial question has not been addressed: the £33·1 million quoted is at variance with the £47·3 million allocated to the teaching workforce in the Executive Budget for 2016-17 under the public sector transformation fund. I would appreciate clarification on that matter.

There are unanswered questions with regard to the Budget in respect of education. I can tell you that principals are worried. They are concerned about the future of their schools and the education of the children in their care. I share their concern, but I am sure that this is not as good as it gets.

Mrs Cameron: I rise as the DUP lead on the Committee for the Environment, and I will be brief.

Much of what is being discussed is based on the restructuring of the Department of the Environment and the transfer of functions following the reduction in the number of Departments from 12 to nine as outlined in the Stormont House Agreement. The Department of the Environment will cease to exist and its powers will transfer to three new Departments in the hope that the work will become more efficient and streamlined, and its functions more cohesive.

Whilst work is ongoing as to how those functions will be delivered, it is hoped that the priorities for the new Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs will include improving waste management, protecting our ecosystems and improving water quality. Powers that will transfer to the Department for Infrastructure will, amongst others, aim to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on our roads through improved road safety and better regulation of the transport sector, with the new Department for Communities working towards supporting the economic benefits of vibrant and diverse communities in a manner that protects our built heritage.

As the Budget is based on the new nine-Department model, I have concerns as to how these extremely wide-ranging functions will be met, particularly given that there will be a further budgetary reduction of 5·7%. Whilst a huge saving has been made in the current Department of the Environment through the voluntary exit scheme, I fear that, once the scheme has been exhausted, we will be faced with a gaping hole in funding for environmental schemes, road safety and historical protection.

The unprecedented flooding that many areas have experienced over the last number of weeks is a stark reminder of the danger posed to our ecology and how changes in our weather systems can have a devastating effect on communities. We must be working towards protecting our environment, and my concern is that further stretching of an already overextended budget will mean that the departmental functions will become so watered down that they will fail to provide the protections that we so desperately need.

I welcome the opportunities for greater departmental cooperation and the financial economies that this may bring, for example in the transfer of built heritage, which will see greater partnership with National Museums and public records to improve public viewing and ease of access, or in sharing departmental staff with roads, rivers and emergency response units. Also, the opportunity for greater collaboration on air quality, wildlife regulations and agriculture will provide a common-sense approach to working, and I look forward to seeing the efficiencies that this will bring.

In closing, my primary concern is in protecting our environment, both natural and built, for future generations. I hope that we can continue to identify where efficiencies can be made and that this does not come at the expense of our ecosystems and heritage.

Mr Lyons: I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate this evening. Perhaps interesting is not the word I will use, but we have certainly heard a number of things from a number of different Members. I think that there are two things that we need to bear in mind as we consider this Budget and, indeed, any Budget that comes before us. The first is that we are still heavily dependent on funding from Her Majesty's Treasury. It has already been said that our fiscal deficit is in the region of £9·2 billion. That is over £5,000 per person. Secondly, and as a consequence of that, if we want funding for a particular area or project, we either have to take money away from another area or project or we need to raise revenue. We have heard a lot of criticism of the Budget, but we have heard very little that has been volunteered on areas in which we would cut spending to compensate for increases elsewhere, and we have heard very little about the revenue that others would like to raise. I think it is important that we consider these things as we approach this Budget. We are dependent on the Treasury and the block grant, and that is something that we need to keep in mind.

I very much support the Budget that is in front of us, and I do so for a number of reasons. First, there is the priority that it places on certain issues. I think that the priorities in this Budget reflect those of the people of Northern Ireland. If you go onto the streets and ask people what they think needs protecting and where we should be spending most of our money, I am sure that on nearly every occasion they will tell you that they want to protect health and education. I think it is right that, although we are in a very difficult and constrained environment, we have still been able to offer a degree of protection to those Departments. I think that that is welcome.

Mr McKinney: Will the Member give way?

Mr Lyons: I will indeed.

Mr McKinney: The Member is critical of others who have not come up with ideas yet, and he pointed to a £9·2 billion black hole in our finances. Can the Member outline his plans for reducing that and for making Northern Ireland more sustainable?

Mr Lyons: I thank the Member for his intervention. Of course, it is not a black hole in our finances in so far as we have the money coming towards us. What the Member perhaps means is that we get more from Westminster than we raise in taxation, and that is absolutely right. One of the ways in which we fix that problem, or try to improve it, is by growing our economy and the private sector. It will be exceptionally difficult for us to completely bridge that gap, because when you have a capital city the size of London, where, I think, £1 out of every £7 in taxation comes from, with the growth that is there, it will always be difficult for other regions. I think that only London, the south-east and the eastern region are net contributors to the UK economy whereby more money is brought in through taxation than is spent on public services. We need to fix that. We also need to make sure that we grow our private sector and that we have more jobs and opportunities, which I will come to later, so that we can also reduce the size of the welfare state, take people off welfare and make sure that they are in work instead.

One of the reasons why I support the Budget is that I believe that it is a continuation of the positive policies that have helped us in Northern Ireland over the last number of years. What have the Executive been able to do? Let us first look at rates. The Executive have used the lever that we have for rates to help our economy and business here: 4,437properties have benefited from industrial derating. Business regional rates here have increased at a much lower rate than in the rest of the UK, and 35,600 properties have benefited from the small business rate relief scheme. That is to be welcomed because it has helped our small businesses, and I am glad that we will continue it.

What else have we done? We have used the rates tools available to us, but we have also invested in infrastructure. As a Member representing East Antrim, I am absolutely delighted at what the Executive have delivered on infrastructure. If you now want to visit Larne or Carrickfergus, you will be able to get there in a very short time, thanks to the massive investment that we have had in those projects. Of course, we see that in other parts of the Province as well since devolution returned. The road to Dungannon, which is, I think, the A4, the A5 and the A6 are other transport corridors that will benefit from Executive investment. So, we need to continue that investment in infrastructure.

In addition, look at what we have been able to do on tax with some of the powers that we have. It is good that we have devolved corporation tax, as it is another tool that we now have. We can say that we have a date and a rate, and we can go out there and sell that to businesses and investors.

On air passenger duty, I have used the United service from Belfast to Newark a number of times, and it is good that we have been able to maintain that service because of the devolution of air passenger duty on long-haul flights. I would say to the Minister and his successor, the next Economy Minister, that it is imperative that action be taken on air passenger duty across the whole of the UK. I do not believe that we can sort out that issue ourselves, but it would be of benefit not only to us but to the whole of the United Kingdom if the Westminster Government realised that that is a tax that we should not have.

I look at the example of the Netherlands. It brought in air passenger duty for, I think, only a year or two. It raised over €300 million as part of that duty, but it is estimated to have cost its economy €1·2 billion. I therefore urge the next Executive to ensure that we push the Government to get rid of that tax across the whole of the United Kingdom, because I believe that that would be of benefit to the whole of the United Kingdom. We need a hub airport in the UK, and we need to increase our aviation capacity in the south-east, and that should not be going to Amsterdam, Frankfurt or anywhere else.

Mr Storey: I thank the Member for giving way. I concur with his comments. He will be aware that I was recently in front of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which is holding an inquiry into the issue, and I think that there will be interesting conclusions as a result of that inquiry. He will also be aware that Willie Walsh made some comments today on the issue. Mr Walsh also referred to the air route development fund that we are seeking to bring into existence. I inform the Member that I intend to meet the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment tomorrow on that, because, in the absence of any movement on APD in the United Kingdom, we will need to pursue the air route development fund, which has already received some good comments from Mr Walsh.

Mr Lyons: I thank the Minister for his intervention. It is good to see that the issue is a priority for him and, I hope, the Executive. I completely concur with what he said about the air route development fund. We should be unashamedly trying to attract new routes and to grow the number of air routes that we have. Yes, it is good for business, but it is also good for tourism, which is obviously a priority for us. As a Member who represents a very beautiful coastal constituency, I want to see —

Mr Storey: North Antrim.

Mr Lyons: No, I do not represent North Antrim. It is one step better: East Antrim. I think that we have a much longer coastline than North Antrim does. George Robinson, who is sitting beside me, mentions East Londonderry as well. We have beautiful places all over Northern Ireland, and we want to make sure that we attract as many people here as possible.

The Executive have done a very good job of using the tools that are at their disposal to help our economy. If we are looking for some figures to prove that, in the year to September 2015, 12,000 private-sector jobs were created in Northern Ireland. That does not happen by itself. Those jobs were not created because we did nothing; rather, they happened as a result of the policies enacted by the Executive. That is to be very much welcomed.

Therefore, I support the Budget because of its priorities, and I support it because of the continuation of positive policies that have delivered so much for Northern Ireland. I also support the Budget because I believe that it is forward-looking. Some have criticised it for a lack of vision, but that is completely ill-founded criticism.

The new Department for the Economy is covered from page 55 onwards, and I am very encouraged by what I see there. We have an Executive that understand where we need to be. We cannot do things in the way in which we have always done them. We cannot continue to do what we have done in decades past, because our world has changed and the economy has changed. Recent job losses in Northern Ireland have demonstrated that, as a result of the globalised economy in which we now operate, we need to be more competitive than ever. Our workforce needs to be of the highest quality, with the best skills, and we need to be out there ensuring that we have that type of workforce so that we can attract jobs for our people. I read the document, and I see that the Minister has indicated the importance of stimulating:

It is also very clear that he has indicated that we need to prepare for the skills implications of the introduction of the lower rate of corporation tax, and that is absolutely right. Corporation tax is a very important tool that we have at our disposal, but we cannot just cut the rate and wait for the jobs to come. We have to prepare for it, and that is something that the Executive are taking seriously.

Investing in economic infrastructure, working with others and investing in innovation, research and development are all really important so that we can have the jobs for our people in the 21st century. That is very welcome.

We have before us a one-year Budget. I know that there has been a bit of discussion about that, and some people think that we should perhaps have had a longer period. As we come to the end of a mandate, it is right that we do not set a Budget that ties the hands of the next Executive. What we have is a road map for the way forward for the next 12 months. It will then be up to the new Executive and the new Assembly to decide their priorities.

I very much welcome the Budget. It is a springboard for us to move forward, and I thank the Minister for his work on it. I challenge the other parties: if you are going to vote against the Budget, you need to say very clearly where you will take money from and where you will put it. Otherwise, you are just doing a disservice to the people we represent. I support the Bill.

Mr Dunne: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Second Stage of the Budget Bill as a member of the Enterprise, Trade and Investment Committee. Our economy must continue to be a central priority for us all as we move forward. Over the last 12 months, our economy has seen challenges and opportunities. It is important that Northern Ireland continues to be positive about being open for business and a place that is welcoming and supportive of new business. We recognise the need to support Invest NI, which will continue to target inward investment, promote domestic growth, provide trade support, support the private sector in investment in R&D and grow our export base.

The planned reduction in corporation tax from April 2018 provides us with a real opportunity to grow our economy. The Ulster University estimates that the 12·5% rate could create up to 32,000 additional jobs and help to grow our economy by an additional 10% over 15 years. However, we need to be prepared for the new rate. We need to ensure that Invest NI is given adequate resources and the budget required to ensure that we open the proper doors across the world, wherever they may be. The work needs to start now to maximise the potential for our economy and ensure that the skills needed are in place to support any new jobs. We need to invest now to ensure that we get it right on foreign direct investment to really grow our economy. It is crucial that the right skills budget is in place to align the work of DEL and DETI in attracting foreign direct investment as we go forward with the Department for the Economy, particularly the £5 million that is needed for the skills agenda.

Invest NI's mid-year performance for 2015-16 highlighted positive developments, and a £550 million investment in R&D reiterates the value of attracting jobs to Northern Ireland. There is no doubt that the 7·1% reduction in Invest NI's resource budget will present challenges. However, I believe that it is best equipped to deliver for Northern Ireland and, with the right support from the Executive, I have every confidence in Invest's ability to deliver.

Energy costs continue to be a challenge to growing our economy, no more so than in the manufacturing sector. We need to see real progress on the North/South interconnector to help reduce energy costs across the sector. That has been kicked around the Assembly for years. The extension of the gas network to other parts of Northern Ireland is also vital to keep energy costs competitive for all our customers.

As has been mentioned by a number of Members, tourism is another key aspect of our economy, and I believe that it is a sector that has not yet reached anywhere near its full potential. The overall visitor figures confirm that Northern Ireland is now a must-see destination, with overall visitor numbers increasing by 9% in the 12 months to June 2015 along with other encouraging signs in external and business visitor figures. Northern Ireland is fast becoming a real destination for top sporting events. Funding streams such as the tourism events programme are crucial in helping to run top-class events locally. The value of international events, such as the North West 200, the Circuit of Ireland and the Irish Open, should not be underestimated. They all attract many international competitors, spectators and their families, bringing people to these shores for the first time. They get a real sense of what this place is about and cannot wait to return.

The Budget presents real challenges as we seek to grow our economy. Last night, I welcomed the Finance Minister's commitment when he stated in the House that skills investment was vital to our economic development. I note that, in addition to the £5 million being made available to the new Department for the Economy as part of the 2016-17 Budget, £20 million will be made available for the area as part of the June monitoring round.

It is crucial, as we move forward into the new mandate with the new more streamlined Executive that came through the Fresh Start Agreement, that the economy remains our number one priority. There is an opportunity for the new Northern Ireland investment fund and the economic strategy to bring real benefit, as we seek to make Northern Ireland the number one place to do business.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: As this is Mr McCrossan's first opportunity to speak as a private Member, I remind the House that it is the convention that a Member's maiden speech is made without interruption — that is, if you choose not to express views that may provoke an intervention; otherwise you may be likely to forfeit that protection.

Mr McCrossan: I welcome the opportunity to make my maiden speech in the Assembly. I am proud to do so as MLA for West Tyrone and in my new role as SDLP spokesperson on infrastructure.

Before I turn to the Budget for 2016-17, I pay tribute to Joe Byrne, the man whom I have replaced. Joe steadfastly served the constituency of West Tyrone since his re-election in 2011, having previously been a Member of the House from 2003 to 2007. A man of great party standing, Joe served in a multitude of roles in the SDLP and remains the party treasurer. During his time in the Assembly, he served as agriculture spokesperson and tirelessly stood up for the rural constituency of West Tyrone and its people. Mr Byrne has given me the opportunity to carry on the great work that he has conducted over a long number of years for the people of that area, both when elected and unelected. I can only hope that I can serve West Tyrone with the dignity and diligence that Mr Byrne showed. He is, truly, a great loss to the House.

The Budget for 2016-17, as outlined to the House in January, is unique as a one-year budget that has been put together in the aftermath of the Stormont House Agreement. This Budget has left no time for my colleagues and me or, for that matter, anyone else in the House to properly scrutinise the amounts contained for each Department. There is no doubt that the infrastructure budget faces serious challenges, and coming from West Tyrone, I can speak very clearly on that. There is a serious need for major investment in that part of Northern Ireland.

The average spend on our roads over the previous mandate has been roughly £70 million per annum. What is it this year? Twenty million pounds. I do not see this as a forward-looking Budget. I can only imagine that rural constituencies such as my own will be the first to fall foul of that budget decrease. Furthermore, we were promised real progress on the A5 and A6 in this Budget, which is laughable, given the allocation of a mere £100 million. That is a significant shortfall on what it is expected will be needed to complete the overall project.

The people of West Tyrone are not filled with optimism by this allocation. They are very depressed and have lost faith in the parties and politicians of West Tyrone and Northern Ireland, because they have failed to deliver time and again. All that have been delivered are false and broken promises about these major flagship projects. I sincerely hope that this is not — I repeat not — another empty promise about the A5.

The theme of empty promises is not alien to the people of West Tyrone. Last year, 17·7% of my constituents were in receipt of at least one disability-related benefit. A higher proportion of people who live in West Tyrone were in receipt of at least one disability-related benefit when compared to the Northern Ireland average of 13·7%. West Tyrone has the third highest proportion of disability-related benefit recipients. Last year, around 2,800 people in West Tyrone were claiming income support, of whom around 2,680 were of working age. That equates to 4·6% of working-age people claiming that benefit.

My home town of Strabane has fallen foul of chronic unemployment and underinvestment for decades. The people whom I meet each day in my constituency office relay their struggles to find work. Young people are desperate for opportunities and for a direction from the House on how they can better their lives, improve their lives, and survive and sustain themselves in their own home area. Some are stuck in a cycle of poverty and others are leaving to avoid it. Strabane is consistently highlighted as an area where deprivation is rife and little has been done to rectify that fact. This Budget will not rectify that fact.

Our young people are leaving in droves to find greater economic opportunities. It is often highlighted that they go to England or Australia; I know many of them, and many are family members. Often in West Tyrone, the reality is that younger people are migrating to Belfast. This is a glaring indicator of the extent of regional disparities in the North. We were told last year that Ministers here were taking responsibility for the generational neglect of the north-west by the Northern Ireland Assembly. The ministerial subgroup on economic inactivity in the north-west has met twice since then; the second meeting was called only 24 hours before it took place. That does not inspire much confidence.

It is not just job opportunities that are lacking in the west. One of the big disappointments in many rural areas across Northern Ireland is the vexed question of no, or poor, broadband services. We heard a significant debate in the House today about that. West Tyrone has terrible broadband services. Some areas are completely cut off and isolated, and businesses are suffering from poor connections. This greatly impedes existing small- and medium-sized enterprises from developing, and it discourages start-ups and enterprising activity. Many people who are trying to run small rural businesses in places such as Gortin, Greencastle in mid-Tyrone, Castlederg, the Glenelly valley and even in the glens of Antrim, Fermanagh, south Armagh and the Mournes have not seen broadband improvement in many years. I have come to understand that DETI has been spending a significant amount of money to rectify this problem, but it has not reached West Tyrone, or at least not in a tangible way just yet.

This Budget has within it many more problems than infrastructure. There is no breakdown of the education budget of £1·9 billion, of which some state they are very proud. There are cuts to student support, library services, museums and public services across the North. The west will ultimately feel the brunt, once again, of these cuts. In West Tyrone, the past 10 years have ushered in the closure of rural schools, urban schools, post offices, and rural banks and businesses — the shutdown and isolation of rural communities.

In health, social care services have been dwindling to such an extent that 15 care packages for the elderly have become the norm. People are concerned about this gradual erosion of services and neglect of the west.

Therefore, returning to the Budget, it is important that those services are given appropriate consideration by the Executive because it is clear that, so far, they have not. The Budget before us today does not offer that support. It adds to the depressing reality in my constituency, and although there is the promise of this big flagship project of the A5, which my party is in total support of, will it really happen beyond this election? Is it another election promise by some parties? That is the question on the doorsteps. People have lost faith in this House. It is a one-year Budget not properly scrutinised and passed; it has been passed by accelerated passage. This is not the budgetary system that will restore economic balance between the west and the rest of the North.

Mr Allister: I begin by congratulating Mr McCrossan on his maiden speech, not just because it is the proper tradition to do so but because it was a particularly well-crafted and equally well-delivered speech, and he spoke with very tenacious affection for his constituency. I think that many of us recall the service of his predecessor, Mr Joe Byrne, in his unassuming way. I think that many of us would like to join in wishing him well in his retirement.

Turning to this Budget, when I pick up a Budget Bill and read through it and look for some of the headline figures, there are always some things that strike me. One of the figures that struck me again was in clause 2(2) of this Budget, where we read that, in this current financial year, Northern Ireland has the benefit of resources of over £17 billion. It always causes me to pause and to ask: where does that money come from? Of course, the answer to that question, that some would rather not hear or face up to, is that that £17 billion comes as a direct consequence of our membership of the United Kingdom. It is because we are an integral part of the United Kingdom, entitled to share in its burdens and its riches, that we have that quantity of money at our disposal. For those who chase various constitutional moonbeams about alternative constitutional arrangements, one fact that they never like to face is where the money would come from. It is patently obvious that the benefits to Northern Ireland of being part of the United Kingdom, as reflected in the monetary settlement year-on-year, are colossal. I think that all citizens in Northern Ireland should reflect on that and be grateful.

I carried out a little exercise by looking at last year's Budget Bill because I wanted to see just where the variations were; where the uplifts were; and whether there were any telltale signs of why the uplifts were in respect of different Departments. The one that particularly caught my eye was DRD. In schedule 3 of this Budget, we have the sums granted for the upcoming year, 2016-17. If we go back and compare that to the comparable figure in last year's schedule 3, we discover that the Department for Regional Development has had a whopping 33% increase — £134 million extra. If you go to schedule 4, you will discover that resources for this year are an extra £107 million. How, or why, would that be?

Is it the hand of politics in this Budget? Could it be that, now that courtesy of IRA murder the DRD is held by the DUP, the idea of starving another Minister of funding is no longer appropriate and that, suddenly, largesse is the order of the day? Could it be that an upcoming election could also be a contributor to that? I find it rather striking; when you compare last year's Bill with this year's, that is something that jumps out at one quite significantly.

Other things that are obvious in this Budget include the extra money poured into welfare and to attain the so-called Fresh Start Agreement. Yes, of course, it was indeed a very significant climbdown by Sinn Féin from its promise that no one, whether a new or existing claimant, would ever suffer under welfare, but also a very significant diversion of funds that would otherwise have been available for health, education and other necessary expenditures. It was a very significant diversion from other aspects of the block grant into supporting welfare supplements, so that the Minister could sing off the same hymn sheet as Sinn Féin on welfare. Not everyone will know this, but the Minister has some claim to accomplishment in the singing stakes himself. He is not unknown for his singing talents and, indeed, he has, I understand, an O level in music. That is more than I have, I have to say, but he is well equipped to sing off the same hymn sheet on this particular issue.

Where it really strikes me as bizarre is that there is money for that, but when you look at the issue of economic inactivity in Northern Ireland, as we heard earlier today — I think it was from Mr McCrea — we are the worst performing region. We have the highest level of economic inactivity. Last March, the Employment and Learning Minister, Dr Farry, brought forward a strategy to tackle economic inactivity. Here we are, 12 months on and looking forward to another 12 months, and that strategy remains unresourced in this Budget. So we are finding money to prop up, sustain and supplement welfare benefits, but when it comes to the idea of dealing with our high level of economic inactivity and encouraging more people from being economically inactive to being economically active, there is not a penny piece in this Budget for the strategy to address economic inactivity. That, I think, is a gross failing.

Mrs D Kelly: Will the Member give way?

Mr Allister: Yes.

Mrs D Kelly: Does the Member agree with me that the words "economically inactive" could also be described as "gainfully unemployed", as some of them are, I think, on the OFMDFM Committee? One looks at all the strategies that remain on the shelf — the racial equality strategy, the sexual orientation strategy and, another example, the childcare strategy. I am sure that he heard the earlier scaremongering tactics of Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, who suggested that all those people would be unemployed under OFMDFM if the SDLP had the audacity to suggest that £880,000 could come from their very well-resourced administration budget to pay for childcare costs.

Mr Allister: I do not know how gainfully unemployed they are, because I am not quite sure what they are gaining — or, certainly, what the community is gaining — in consequence of their contribution, but, yes, there may be many strands to that. It is a flaw that there is this lack of focus on dealing with economic inactivity and that it is not thought important enough to resource in this Budget. That is a major failing, and it maybe tells us quite a lot.

We all understand that Budgets set down figures and that, as the year progresses, those figures become quite flexible and are adjusted as we go through various phases. However, it is instructive, towards the end of the financial year, after the exercise that was done yesterday on the spring Supplementary Estimates, to look at how some funding has been supplemented. I found it interesting, for example, that the North/South Ministerial Council required an uplift of 21·5% over the original money set aside for it. I looked for, but of course did not find, what the British-Irish Council, the poor relation, might have required. It seems to run on fresh air; but not the North/South Ministerial Council. Here is another 21·5% over what we were going to give it.

Then, I looked at the Maze/Long Kesh Development Corporation. If ever there was a quango that seemingly does nothing because of the dysfunctional logjam in OFMDFM — where Sinn Féin blocks any development of the opportunity that is the Maze site — this is it. Yet, this year it required a 21·5% uplift in its allocation. Why? What is it doing? More of the economically inactive or the gainfully unemployed, perhaps. What is the Maze /Long Kesh Development Corporation actually doing to warrant more money than it was ever intended to have in that year?

I notice that InterTradeIreland needed a 23·7% uplift. Yet, the resources for skills were reduced, effectively. Of course, in the rush to devolve corporation tax, we have had tunnel vision, as if reducing corporation tax was the answer to all our economic woes. However, very little parallel attention has been given to the very important matter of skills — not just skills for the economically inactive, but skills, generally, for our workforce. This, to me, is a Budget with no vision in that regard.

Then, of course, it is a Budget built upon higher borrowing than ever before in the history of these institutions, to the point where we now have indebtedness of £2·1 billion for this small part of the United Kingdom — a debt burden, not just for this generation, but future generations, growing, and presently at £2·1 billion.

That speaks to me of profligacy and mismanagement in the financial affairs of Northern Ireland.

Mr Lyons: I thank the Member for giving way. He refers to the debt that the Executive have accrued over recent years: does he not concede that a large proportion of that is a direct result of the voluntary exit scheme? Does he not see the benefit that:

Is it not a good thing to have that money available for investment?

Mr Allister: I hear what the Member says. He is ever to be relied on to ride to the defence of the Executive. Time will tell whether the voluntary exit scheme turns out to be so beneficial. We certainly know that it is costing a huge amount of money; whether it makes those savings remains to be seen. In the short term, the outlay is very considerable. However, that is only a portion. Long before the voluntary exit scheme or anything else, the graph of the borrowings of this Executive was on a huge upward drive. It has now reached the point where no one seems to care that we are now the most heavily indebted region of the United Kingdom. That is not something to be proud of, and nor is this Budget.

Mrs Dobson: I welcome the opportunity to speak at this stage of the Budget Bill. No one will have missed the fact that our health service has had a very difficult year. Indeed, the last 18 to 24 months have seen a total collapse of even the most routine health waiting targets and key performance indicators. Yesterday, the Assembly approved the Vote on Account and the adjustments through the in-year allocations, and I am glad that the stalemate on welfare reform has at last been resolved. We must not allow some Ministers, however, to fall back on their own propaganda and forget that, while the funding shortfall that ultimately resulted in the disastrous in-year cuts in 2014-15 was £212 million, the welfare penalty accounted for only £87 million of that: the rest came down to the sheer mismanagement of the Executive Budget.

Whilst I welcome the allocation of £40 million emergency funding for elective care for the remainder of this financial year, the Health Minister, not for the first time, got somewhat caught up in his own hysteria by making exaggerated claims about kick-starting the local health service. I have cautioned him before, so I will do it again. His expectation of kick-starting a system that is effectively on its knees needs to be considered with the wider knowledge that, in the 2014-15 financial year, his Department received over £80 million of additional funding but the situation continued to get worse. Indeed, the DUP's first Health Minister of this mandate ended 2013-14 with a deficit of £13·1 million, despite receiving £100 million in monitoring rounds in that year.

The 2011-15 Budget has left a lasting legacy of rushed financial decisions and an abject lack of leadership or strategic planning. It is ironic that the DUP and the current DUP Health Minister were so keen to boast about the Budget deal, even claiming that it was a good deal, with their former leader warning that it was obscene of my colleague Michael McGimpsey to seek additional funds under that agreement. It was stated that no resource expenditure bids in monitoring rounds should have been tabled by the Department of Health at all unless in the event of major and unforeseeable circumstances.

We all know that hundreds of millions of pounds were bid for and received, but it was less a case of unforeseen circumstances and more a case of politicking and stubbornness getting in the way of a fair allocation in the first place. Nevertheless, I accept that the £40 million allocation this year was better than nothing. The fact that official publications from the Health Department confirmed that nearly 400,000 people across Northern Ireland are waiting for treatment, a hospital appointment or a diagnostic test should have been enough to shame the Executive into action. I am sure that I am not alone in the House in writing to the Health Minister daily, on numerous occasions; indeed, I do not envy his mail bag of correspondence on behalf of constituents and their families who have been caught up in the waiting time cycle. I have said in the House before that statistics often mask the pain, fear, hurt and worry that our constituents feel. They have elected us to serve their best interests.

I am sure that none of us needs to be reminded that the longer a patient is forced to wait for a diagnosis or treatment, the more harm they are likely to come to. There is no greater issue facing the Executive or the Assembly right now than the horrendous situation of our hospitals and the inexcusable stress that that puts on patients. That is not even to mention the excellent staff, who are operating in extremely strained circumstances. It is regrettable that it took so long and so many patients to wait in pain for successive Health Ministers to realise that there was a problem and the extent of it. The plain truth is that £40 million will barely make a dent in our current unprecedented waits. However, I hope that it is followed in the next year, hopefully under a new Minister, with a recognition of what needs to be done. I have major concerns in the short term that the savings that the Department is demanding of trusts are putting an already stressed health service under even greater pressure. Those savings put pressure on services, including domiciliary care, that can and will lead to long-term pain and greater long-term financial costs for patient care for our most vulnerable. It is my —

Mr Lyons: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Dobson: Yes. It is as expected. I was waiting for you.

Mr Lyons: I am glad to hear that, and I am grateful to the Member for giving way. I absolutely agree with her: there are huge challenges in our health service. Obviously, she has been waiting for me to intervene, so she knows the question that I will ask: what steps would she take or where would she get the funding from to address the huge issues that she talks about?

Mrs Dobson: I thank the Member for his intervention. You have had three Health Ministers: if they had manned up, constituents of yours and mine would not be waiting in pain.

Mrs D Kelly: Will the Member give way?

Mrs Dobson: Yes.

Mrs D Kelly: The Member opposite should accept that OFMDFM has failed spectacularly to spend £80 million of the social investment fund. That could have gone into Health. Your previous colleagues roared across the Chamber at Michael McGimpsey, when he was Health Minister, that he had to live within his budget and could not tackle the cost of administration in the health service. When you are pointing at people, you should look at the three fingers pointing back at you.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: The Member is an experienced parliamentarian. I ask her to address all remarks through the Chair rather than across the Chamber.

Mrs Dobson: I thank the Member for the intervention and for giving an unelected Member a lesson on the OFMDFM SIF, which I continually raise —

Mr Lyons: Where is the answer to the question?

Mrs Dobson: Excuse me. I just hear noises from my left.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: I ask the Member not to barrack from a sedentary position the Member who is speaking at the moment.

Mrs Dobson: Thank you, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker.

It is my sincere hope that the Department and trusts will be able to work together to deliver the savings in a way that does not compromise the safety of our patients. Of course, as well as approving changes to allocations in this financial year, the Assembly is being asked this week to effectively sign off on a significant proportion of next year's allocation. I understand that essential services need to continue and wages need to be paid, but the fact that, as we stand here today, we know little of the detail is indicative of a Health Department and Minister who believe that they are above scrutiny and accountability.

With an annual budget of almost £4·9 billion, it is simply unacceptable that the Assembly is being asked to approve this without any meaningful detail whatever. It is my fear that, given the obvious failure to address the crisis across our hospitals, we will be standing here this time next year making the same points and expressing the same bitter disappointment on behalf of the constituents who have elected us to serve in their best interests. Before the Minister talks about the additional allocation for next year, which I of course welcome, I ask him not to, because he and I both know that it does not come anywhere close to addressing the increase in demand and other inflation-related increases. So far, from what little we have been able to gather, the Budget does nothing to address what is undoubtedly this Executive's biggest failure.

Before I draw my remarks to a conclusion, I ask the Finance Minister to take on board the will of the House. Just last month, we debated changes to the Fire and Rescue Service. Following that debate, the Assembly resolved that the Health Minister should

When we talk about patient safety, it is important to remember the service that responds to critical incidents across Northern Ireland every day. They prevent injury and save lives, and without that financial support that critical service is placed at risk and even greater pressure is placed on our health service, not to mention the increased risk of loss of life.

I appreciate that we can often focus on the numbers on the spreadsheet and the statistics on a sheet of paper, but the central argument I make to the Minister, in all sincerity, is this: behind the numbers lie our constituents. They feel and bear the ultimate outworkings of budgets — the successes and the failures — and I ask the Minister, as I know he appreciates the point, to take that on board.

Mr Storey: Mr Principal Deputy Speaker, I have just checked with you and your staff about the time that I have to speak and have been informed that there is no limit. So, Members, you are in for a longer sit. However, I will try to be brief.

I want to make one point as I commence. I have heard a lot of criticism about there not being an opportunity to scrutinise. There are Members who could scrutinise it from now until the end of this year, and it would not matter: they would still come up with no solutions or ideas on what they would do differently. They do themselves a disservice. We are in the House for this debate, we were here yesterday and we will be back again as the Bill progresses: that is the process of scrutiny. It is not perfect — I see that the Member is perturbed by that comment — given the circumstances, but Members have been able to raise their concerns in relation to the Budget over the last number of hours.

I want to try to make some progress with responses to those issues that, I trust, will give some clarity to Members. I will not dispel all their concerns, worries and fears, but, as Minister of Finance and Personnel for the Northern Ireland Executive, I am glad that we are in this position as we progress the Budget, compared with where we could have been a number of months ago. We all need to take some cognisance of the fact that we are in a better place. However, there is much more to be done.

As I said last night, it will be interesting for the electorate and the voters who are watching this debate and the debates in the days to come to see what happens with the parties that have said we should have spent the money on this or that issue. We will see whether those parties are in government or in opposition. I have to say, however, that I read some of the comments that were made in the document that was published yesterday by the Ulster Unionist Party. They still have not made up their mind about whether they will be in government or in opposition, and they say that good government does not mean that everyone has to be part of the Government. I am sure that that will go down well when they go to canvass at the doors in the next number of weeks and months.

Let me move on to what the Members have raised, beginning with the Chair of the Committee. Again, I thank the Committee for the help that it has given in the process. I welcome the positive contributions that it has made to the Budget process. I am aware of the correspondence that the Member, rightly, raised — the memorandum of understanding between the Assembly and the Executive on the Budget process. I want to make it very clear that we are making progress. I am keen to ensure that that progress is continued so that we have something of substance, even before the end of this mandate. That is a commitment that I want to honour. I want to get to a place where we have a satisfactory conclusion to the matter. It has gone on for a period, and I would like to see some progress being made on it.

The Member also raised the business rates review. The review has concluded, and we are now considering what is to be the way forward. I will comment further on that when I meet representatives from the CBI later this week. I want to ensure that we begin to have a debate around the best way in which we can move the process forward. I will listen to the concerns. In my previous role as Minister for Social Development, I was always very conscious that a consultation should not merely be a process of going out to hear having already agreed a predetermined outcome, and I reiterate that as the Minister of Finance. If a consultation is to mean anything, it will genuinely take on board the issues that are raised on the matter that is being consulted on, and the issues will be listened to and responded to in a positive way. I look forward to trying to bring some clarity to that issue in the next number of days and in the weeks ahead.

The Chair also raised the issue of wider fiscal powers. Of course, the Executive's top priority has been to seek an agreement, which we have secured, on the transfer and use of rate-setting powers for corporation tax. That remains the Executive's top priority in relation to the devolution of additional fiscal powers. In that regard, the Executive's intentions are clear. They are committed to introducing to Northern Ireland the corporation tax regime from April 2018 at a rate of 12·5%.

Of course, Members will also be aware that we are considering the case for devolving other fiscal powers where doing so would deliver a clear economic or social benefit for Northern Ireland. The impact that devolution would have on the Executive Budget and, therefore, the provision of public services is also a key factor there. You will recall that we recently sent correspondence to the Finance Committee about the issue. I reiterate the comments of my predecessor, Mr Hamilton, that preface that document. He set out two key conditions in considering whether the devolution of additional taxation powers should be sought by the Executive. The first was affordability: the devolution of a tax or duty and the change from the UK policy must not impose a disproportionate burden on the funding available for public services. Secondly, the devolution of a tax or duty and a change from UK policy should be expected to result in a defined economic and social benefit to the people of Northern Ireland.

Those remain the issues for me on how to address wider fiscal powers.

That, of course, covers a point that was made by a Member, which is that we need to preface all this by saying, "Let us, as Members of the House, remember where our funding comes from". There are Members who want to cut off any association with Her Majesty's Treasury. When it comes to convincing the people of Northern Ireland, since its creation in 1921 until the present day, that we should move anywhere other than the United Kingdom, they have failed to do so. That money comes from the Treasury. That needs to be a reality check for all of us because the amount of money that would come from any other source is not available and is certainly not forthcoming within the current arrangements.

The Member also raised the issue — rightly so — of our constituency of North Antrim and the ongoing employment challenge with the loss of Michelin and JTI. Those are concerns for us as local representatives, for me as the Finance Minister and also, I trust, for the Executive. They remain a challenge and issue not only for Ballymena but for other areas across Northern Ireland. We outlined that we are always aware of the impact of job losses on individuals. It is very clear. It is very easy to come to the House and just repeat words. We always need to remember that, behind every announcement of job losses, there are individuals, families and communities who suffer.

As far as corporation tax is concerned, research suggests that the potential benefit to the economy of Northern Ireland would be the creation of well in excess of 30,000 additional jobs and economic growth of an additional 10% over 15 years. Those figures cannot be ignored or just set aside. That is why our attention should focus on this tool to ensure that we put Northern Ireland in the best place to be the beneficiary of the introduction of corporation tax.

Mr McKinney: I thank the Minister for giving way. Clearly, there is not one of us who would not welcome the prospect of 30,000 new jobs, but the quality of those new jobs is important. That goes to the very point that he makes about sustainability. In that context and with this Budget, surely it is a contradiction that we are not funding the education places that would provide us with more highly skilled people to attract higher-paid jobs to fulfil the corporation tax ambition as he outlined.

Mr Storey: Yet again, the Member is selective in what he wants to deal with. He has completely ignored the fact that an additional £25 million is going into skills. He just ignores the fact that we recognise the skills issue and are trying to deal with it with that £25 million. Let me also say this: he overlooks the fact that the economy of Northern Ireland is now becoming diverse, with a focus on new skills, technologies, opportunities and job creation. In fact, yesterday, in his constituency, we were able to announce the creation of an additional 88 jobs, with an average salary of £44,000. The Member can try to be dismissive of that, but I have to say that, yesterday, when I was speaking to the company's chief executive, who is from Houston in the United States of America, a story was relayed of a student who left Northern Ireland, went to England to be educated and, as a result of the company's locating in Belfast, had come back to south Belfast, to their home and to their local community, and is now employed. We want to encourage more of that and want to see it develop. The Member clearly wants to pick and choose what he focuses his attention on, and he dismisses the fact that £25 million for skills to prepare us for lower corporation tax is no small investment.

His colleague Claire Hanna referred to the women's childcare centre. I do not want to take away from my colleague the Minister for Social Development, but all that I will say is watch this space. We will not be doing what was suggested by her party and taking £800,000 out of the victims' sector and putting it into that.

Ms Hanna: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Storey: We have listened to the argument. Mrs Kelly knows that, when I was the Minister for Social Development, I took the decision to extend the funding for another year. I said that there was a challenge to the funding. However, we will see about that very soon.

If I continue to speak for this length of time and we go past midnight, we might be into tomorrow, and you never know what tomorrow will bring on that issue. I do not want to steal the thunder. The two Members are getting very exercised. Ms Hanna can go first and then Mrs Kelly.

Ms Hanna: I am sure that you have other points to respond to. Does the Minister agree that, as I said, one Committee session is not sufficient to provide scrutiny? The Member asked for alternatives. We have proposed one, and, if you check the record, you will see that it was not to remove £800,000 from the victims and survivors fund. I pointed out that OFMDFM's bloated £14 million administration fund was more than that provided for victims and survivors in total and said that that is the fund from which we hope you will take money to put into childcare. Does the Minister agree that it is not appropriate for us to provide this scrutiny live in the Chamber just before the Budget is being voted on and that it would have been more appropriate to provide that level of detail for all sections of the Budget?

Mr Storey: I remind the Member that this is a political process. This is the Chamber that we are elected to, and, therefore, I have no difficulty having the conversations and the debate on these issues. I think that that is where we should have the debate. Would I want to have more information? Yes. Would we have liked to have been able to have done this without using accelerated passage? Yes. However, for the reasons that we have repeated again and again and again, we have had to do what we have had to do. It seems as though some Members want to ignore that and still say, "But you should have more time, more scrutiny and more attention given to the detail".

Mrs D Kelly: I thank the Minister for giving way. There is absolutely no way that I doubt his sincerity about the childcare fund. He did put his hand in his pocket last year, but that should not rely upon emergency funding year-on-year.

On your latter point, Minister, I do not want to let it pass without saying that the reason why we will have to have such late sittings over the next few weeks is because Sinn Féin stopped the Executive from meeting for three years over Maze/Long Kesh and the DUP then had a go-slow for several months after the murder of Mr McGuigan. The Minister has —

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Can I draw the Member back to the debate on the Budget?

Mrs D Kelly: This is about scrutiny of the Budget, Mr Principal Deputy Speaker. I note that, in recent answers, the Minister of Finance and Personnel said that even he cannot get a good answer from the Minister of Education on how he is finding and spending his money.

Mr Storey: I thank the Member for her intervention. It is quite obvious that the election campaign has begun. The Member clearly wants to make her point. However, I will reiterate what I have said about the women's childcare fund. I listened when I was Minister for Social Development. I believe that the current Minister has listened. I have listened as Minister of Finance, and I urge Members to wait to see what will happen in the next number of hours.

I thank Mr Cree for the way that he approaches these issues. He raised a number of questions, and I want to try to deal with them. He mentioned industrial derating. In 2015-16, 4,437 properties have benefited from industrial derating as of 31 December 2015, and I have given a commitment about that continuing. A total of £59·7 million has been allocated to date in 2015-16.

That, again, is a delivery commitment that we welcome. My colleague referred to the empty shops rate concession. A total of 525 properties have benefited from that since it was introduced in April 2012. Over that period, £2·2 million was allocated as at 31 December 2015.

He queried the use of RRI borrowing. An important point is that the Executive can borrow up to a limit. We do not necessarily have to borrow the full amount, which means that we will draw down only the RRI borrowing that we actually need. In 2016-17, for example, the Executive have an additional £200 million of borrowing available for the voluntary exit scheme. That issue was raised and explained very well by my colleague from East Antrim. However, the Executive did not believe, on current projections, that the full amount will be required. That is why, in the Budget for 2016-17, we allocated £25 million of that facility for capital projects instead. Of course, my officials will keep the position under review and suggest changes if required during the next year's monitoring process.

He also raised Atlantic Philanthropies' £55 million investment, which was announced by the First Minister and deputy First Minister in 2014. That joint investment will deliver improved services to parents, shared education, and support for people with dementia and their carers. I am pleased that the Executive were able to make an allocation of £8 million in the 2016-17 Budget towards those very worthwhile interventions. Further funding requirements will be considered as part of the next Budget process.

Mrs Cochrane and other Members commented on the reform of the health service, and they continue to be critical of issues. My colleague the Health Minister is endeavouring to undertake a very difficult and challenging role. I do not think that any Member would take away from the real challenges to our health service. However, the Health Minister is seeking to address some of those problems. He announced a number of key reforms on 4 November in terms of structural changes and the creation of a panel to make recommendations on the configuration of services. He also gave a commitment to the transformation fund. The review of commissioning concluded that Northern Ireland's commissioning system is not as effective as it should be. The Health Minister is, therefore, seeking to delayer the system to remove the complexities in a way that brings greater accountability and responsiveness.

The Minister also announced a panel to lead on the debate on the best configuration of health and social care services in Northern Ireland. Those all continue to be issues that Members will welcome. In the debate in the public domain in the last number of days, we were told that that issue was depoliticised, although I am not so sure that it was in Manchester. You have to remember that there was a legal challenge, so it was not just as clean-cut as maybe some were trying to make out.

We had an opportunity, as a five-party mandatory coalition, to show political consensus. But what happened? Well, one party decided, "Enough of that. It's getting too close to the election and we'll decide to do the best possible Pontius Pilate exercise and get out of the tent." Another party decided, "It doesn't suit us now. We'll vote against the Budget." Then we have another party that decided, "We're never going to accept any Budget but we'll still stay in the Executive and still be beneficiaries." So, we had an opportunity to have collective responsibility in determining health budgets but it seems as though three parties — two that are still in the Executive and one that has left — decided, "No, that's not a good idea but we'll still say it's what we want to do." It is time that they made up their mind.

Mr McKinney: I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he accept that, yes, we did have a consensus and that, yes, we did have an opportunity to maximise the political will that existed around the House over the future of health but that that was in 2011 when the DUP took over Health and also had Finance and was also in OFMDFM but failed singularly to put sufficient funds behind the Transforming Your Care plan, which would have made a huge difference to our overall health service if fundamentally implemented? You had the consensus and you failed.

Mr Storey: Again, I think that the Member needs to be reminded that almost half of the Budget in Northern Ireland goes to Health. He does the service a disservice, and other Members do the health service a disservice by the way, sometimes, they continue to talk it down. I am a recipient of the health service in that I use it. We all are beneficiaries of a service that is free at the point of delivery. It is something that we have continued to protect and have continued to cherish, and I think that we cannot just talk about this in a glib way — and I know that the Member is not being glib, so I will not use that word — or in a way that sometimes does not give due respect to the fact that we spend 50% of the Budget on our health service. I will give one more intervention because I know that Members want to get home.

Mr McKinney: I thank the Minister for his indulgence. I go back to the point I made earlier. This is not just about the maximum amount of money or the percentage of the money that is allocated to Health. It is about how that money is spent, and we know that there is massive wastage in the system. There is £50 million spent on bank and agency staff, and there is £40 million spent on sickness. Major percentages can be saved out of overprescription. Those are the issues that are at the heart of this system.

I appreciate that the Minister has made the point that I am not being glib, because I have drilled down into this issue for two-and-a-half years. It all comes back to the point that the DUP failed fundamentally to invest in a Transforming Your Care plan that wanted money shifted left so that there would be investment in the community and we would not have what Transforming your Care predicted, which was haphazard change. Unfortunately, the failure to plan has led to that haphazard change, which is why we are experiencing the huge queues in elective care, with 400,000 people waiting for operations and appointments.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: I am being very liberal.

Mr McKinney: I do appreciate that.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: I ask the Member to come to his point.

Mr McKinney: I will leave it there. I have made my point.

Mr Storey: In response, despite all our efforts and despite all the agreements that we sought to have on the Budgets, the SDLP still sought to have a position where it voted against every Budget. I think that that is what the people of Northern Ireland need to remember, and that is what they need to keep a focus on when it comes to determining who were the best custodians of public finances in Northern Ireland.

Let me move on to other comments and try to make progress on some other issues that Members raised. The issue of the A6 Randalstown to Castledawson upgrade and the other flagship projects was raised. Like Mr McCrea, I am pleased to see that the Executive are committed in their 2016 Budget to taking forward the upgrade of the A6 road linking Belfast and Londonderry, including the dualling of the Randalstown to Castledawson section. The A6 Randalstown to Castledawson dualling scheme is a significant project that will help to remove a very major bottleneck and so improve safety and journey times on what is a strategic and very important route in Northern Ireland.

Ms Hanna asked about the A6 and the other flagship projects. She wanted to know how they would be funded over their lifetime. If she looks at the Executive Budget for 2016-17, a document that I know she has a copy of, she will see that it sets out the Executive's funding commitment to all seven flagship projects right up to 2021. This was done specifically to provide Departments with funding certainty for that period.

So, I do not think that we can be accused of doing little on the commitment given to the flagship projects. We have not been making false promises. Those projects have been clearly committed to, and moneys have been set and allocated alongside them. So, I do not see how you can interpret that as yet another false promise that will not be delivered.

I know that the issue of the A5 was raised, and I may come back to it. The Member will hear very soon about progress on the A5; in fact, maybe I will deal with it now. I concur with what some others said about the Member's maiden speech. It is always a daunting task to speak in the House on any occasion, no less for the first time, and I commend the Member for that. As I have already said to him, I look forward to working with him as a Member of the House. I think that we need to be clear about the figures so that there is no confusion. The Executive have committed to invest £230 million in the A5 and a further £260 million in the A6 over the next five years. I have to say that, if that is not a commitment on a substantial capital project, I do not know what is.

The Member mentioned broken promises. I think that we also need to remember that a judicial review stopped the process, which the Member will be well aware of. He should also take some heart from the investment made in the Lisanelly project in Omagh. A substantial amount of money is being invested in the education of young people in that locality, and we look forward to seeing the benefits as the project is rolled out.

My colleague the Chair of the Education Committee Mr Weir made some comments about the Department of Education. There is clearly cause to ramp up skills through investment. We have raised the issue of corporation tax, and a key component part of that is our education system. I have already put on record my support for an additional £20 million to address pressures in our schools, which, I think, will be welcome. I want to pay tribute to our education providers who do an outstanding job. I see that the Minister is in the House. He should not take that as an endorsement of him because he knows that, at this time of night, my generosity might not extend that far. I have listened to the concerns raised about the pressures that are there, and I have no doubt that the Minister, under my good guidance, will make an announcement on that in some detail shortly.

Mr O'Dowd: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Storey: Yes.

Mr O'Dowd: I thank the Minister for his engagement and that of his officials on the matter. Indeed, I thank the Executive parties that are engaging on Budget issues. This shows that, when you commit yourself to engagement on the Budget, you can make real change, even at this late stage. So, I want to put on record my thanks to the Finance Minister and to the Executive for the additional £20 million for Education.

Mr Storey: Members should take note that the Education Minister and I started out as members of the Education Committee, so if you want to succeed in your political career, maybe you should go onto the Education Committee. Maybe Dolores Kelly, who is now on the Education Committee, can look forward to returning to the Executive if the SDLP decides that it does not want to go into isolation — sorry, opposition. Maybe those two things are one and the same; I do not know.

On a serious note, I believe passionately, as, I think, all Members do, in the importance of our education system, but let us be under no illusion that there will not be challenges ahead as we look at our school estate and at the way in which we continue to provide for education. We are all precious about our local schools and other areas in which education is being provided. We have to address certain pressures that are in the system at the moment, but the new Minister of Education, whoever it will be, will face particular challenges for a number of reasons, no less than the issue of our school estate. There will be somewhat more capital available. The situation with capital may not be in the best place, but there is more focus on capital than there is on resource.

Let me move on to dealing with the particular issue that the Chair raised about taking forward a number of the exit schemes. The Department of Education received and approved 195 teacher redundancy applications in 2015-16. The cost associated with those applications was £3·2 million, and the costs were met through funding accrued by the education and library boards — the employing authority — from the 2014-15 Budget. A further 127 applications were approved, at a cost of £5·2 million, which was funding that the Department of Education received from the public-sector transformation fund.

As at 6 January 2016, the Department of Education had received and approved 248 non-teaching, school-based redundancy applications, at a cost of £2·9 million, which was funded from the public-sector transformation fund. The Education Authority initiated its voluntary severance programme in May 2015, and it projects the number of redundancies before the end of the financial year to be 262. The Department of Education has allocated £14 million, which will be funded from the public-sector transformation fund.

The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) also initiated a voluntary exit scheme in 2015-16, and the Department of Education has allocated £1 million for it, which will be funded from the public-sector transformation fund. That, again, is an indication that an attempt is being made to try to address the issue. It has all come about as a result of the public-sector transformation fund, and the Budget document gives some detail on that.

I move on to an issue that was raised by the Chair of the Agriculture Committee, my colleague Mr William Irwin. He mentioned the 5·7% reduction in the budget of the new Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. The overall level of funding available to the Executive means that it is inevitable that many of our Departments will face resource DEL reductions in 2016-17. I want to say something on that issue, because it is easy to forget why we are in the position of having to make reductions in the first place. I noticed in today's 'Belfast Telegraph' that we have been given some advice by Mr Johnny Andrews, who is the economy spokesman for the Northern Ireland Conservatives. He tells us all about the problems and challenges, but he never once mentions the fact that it is because of his party that we now have this situation in which there have been reductions. It is all very well to sit in splendid isolation as a member of the Northern Ireland Conservatives and tell us all about what we need to do and the difficulties that we are all going to have, but he makes no reference to the fact that it was his colleagues in Westminster who brought about the situation that created the challenges that we now face. However, we have had to deal with those challenges, and I accept that the budget outcome for the new Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs means that some difficult decisions will need to be taken.

I welcome the steps that the Minister has already taken to generate efficiency savings across the Department, but Mr Irwin raised the matter of the £48·8 million capital budget that will be available to the new Department. I am pleased that the Executive were able to make that allocation, which will allow the Department to deliver on its key priorities, including the farm business improvement scheme.

We look forward to seeing that in the future.

He also raised concerns about the cost of bovine TB and the difficulty that that poses to our local economy. I am committed to the vision of a competitive and sustainable livestock sector in Northern Ireland, which, along with the rest of our agriculture sector, helps to support the resilience of the entire food chain. While we cannot lose sight of the negative impact that bovine TB has on our local farmers, we must be cognisant of the cost to the taxpayer, particularly given the current budgetary position. The total cost of TB compensation payments to the end of January 2016 was £13·4 million. There is a clear need to explore all means of eradicating bovine TB, including the modernisation of our compensation regime.

He also referred to Going for Growth, the farm business improvement scheme that I have referred to. In supporting the implementation of the Going for Growth strategy, the Executive have recognised the importance of the agrifood sector. That is a vital sector for the future of the Northern Ireland economy. We all know from our constituencies, and from Northern Ireland plc, the importance of that sector to our economy. The £48·8 million capital allocation provides funding for the Department to implement the farm business improvement scheme, as I have mentioned.

I turn to comments that were made by the Chair of the Health Committee about waiting times and elective care. As I said, my colleague the Health Minister has advised me that the £40 million that he secured in the November monitoring round is being directed at tackling waiting lists, which have been an issue of concern. No one in the House would in any way try to be dismissive of the concerns that we are all well aware of with the challenges in relation to waiting times and the health service. That £40 million was secured in November, and it will benefit some 60,000 or 70,000 patients who would otherwise be waiting. It covers a range of particular specialities including orthopaedics, neurology and ENT. Since November, significant efforts have been made across the health system within a very tight framework to secure additional outpatient clinics and treatments within the trusts and to put in place appropriate arrangements with independent-sector organisations to transfer suitable patients for assessment and treatment. It is not the case that that issue is being ignored. We are endeavouring to do what we can to help to deal with the particular challenge that we face.

Mr McKinney raised the issue of the health black hole and asked where the budget allocation for health will be spent. The Health Minister has clearly stated that the additional money for health in 2016-17 will be directed towards front-line health and social care services. Reform across health and social care is ongoing, and I remind Members — I have said it repeatedly — that Transforming Your Care is not about reducing our investment in health and social care services; it is about making the best use of the resources available. That is the point that the Member was encouraging us to make about the overall Budget in how we address that issue. The Member criticised the delivery of Transforming Your Care, but we need to be reminded that, of the 99 recommendations in TYC, 50 have been completed and 46 are ongoing. It is not a case of it being yet another document that is sitting around and nothing being done with it, which is a point that I will come to in a moment or two in relation to comments made by Mrs Kelly. Proactive action is being taken.

I want to respond to the issues that were made by Mrs Sandra Overend, a member of the Education Committee. She asked about the public-sector transformation fund, and I have given some detail on that in response to my colleague the Chair of the Committee. I can confirm that the Department of Education was allocated a total of £70·7 million for the exit schemes, broken down as £47·3 million for the teaching workforce and £23·4 million for the non-teaching staff. There is no further funding for these schemes, and, if the Minister wishes to fund any further schemes, he will need to find that money from his own baseline.

The Member also asked how pension and National Insurance pressures will be funded. I can confirm that the pension pressures were covered in the financial year through allocations in the June monitoring round. These allocations will be baselined to carry through to future years, so it is not a case of them being a one-off. The additional National Insurance pressure will have to be covered from within the departmental budget. There is no funding set aside at the centre to cover it. I trust that that gives some clarity

I want to comment now on an issue raised about funding for the environment. Again, I have to say to Members that, going through all these comments, it is clear that we have a wide variety of issues and significant demand on the public purse to try to cover as many as we find to be important. As a member of the Environment Committee, Pam Cameron expressed the importance of funding for that sector. With the exception of built heritage, the Environment function will transfer as one block to the new Department. The Member will remember that, at the start of the 2015-16 financial year, the Minister of the Environment slashed funding to a lot of environmental groups, unnecessarily as it turned out, only to reinstate it in the latter part of the year. Maybe we all need to learn that lesson on how not to deal with your budget. I believe that the consolidation of the environment function with other rural matters in the new Department will be good for Northern Ireland's environment.

In conclusion, I want to —

Mr Ó Muilleoir: Will the Minister give way?

Mr Storey: Yes. No doubt, it will have to do with South Belfast.

Mr Ó Muilleoir: In eight hours of Budget debate, we have had only one proposal from our colleagues in the SDLP on what they would do differently: they would raid the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister of £800,000. They are telling us tonight that they would not take that from the Victims and Survivors Service. As Minister of Finance, can you tell us how many jobs would go if we were to take £800,000 out of the OFMDFM budget and whether the unions have been consulted on that? It seems that there are to be no redundancy payments for this as there are no costs attached. Is that unprecedented, and have you any idea where this idea came from? Unless I missed something, it just does not add up. Are there any other great ideas about what they would do differently?

Mr Storey: This just confirms my earlier comment that the election campaign has begun. The Member raises a particular issue that may need to be addressed by his colleagues sitting alongside him on the other side of the House. If that amount of money had been taken out, it would undoubtedly have resulted in a reduction in employment and other pressures. We were in a position in which it was not tenable to do that in that way, so the economics of the party that suggested it have been proven to be flawed. I will allow Mrs Kelly the opportunity to respond.

Mrs D Kelly: Thank you, Minister, for allowing me to come back to explain to Mr Ó Muilleoir where the money would come from and how we would do it. It looks like it is a very sore point with Sinn Féin that it was prepared to let the women's childcare centres close so that it could unnecessarily inflate the administration budget of an already over-inflated Department under a Sinn Féin/DUP authority.

Mr Storey: That is more material, no doubt, for manifestos and quotes.

I want to address Mrs Kelly's point. [Interruption.]

You are all starting to get very exercised. It seems as if you have no homes to go to. I want to reiterate something. I hope that it was down to confusion on the Member's part when she talked about documents that have not seen the light of day and that these documents have been produced, and we do not know where they are. She mentioned the racial equality strategy, but it has been agreed and published, and it is on the Department's website. That is not being secretive; that is not trying to hide anything. The children's strategy has also been published. I do not mind being criticised when we have not done something, but, when we have done something that is out there in the public domain, maybe the Member should give some credit and think about whether she got it wrong on this occasion.

Mr McKay: I thank the Minister for taking an intervention. I know that he is probably in a rush to get home to watch 'Spotlight' as soon as he can. [Laughter.]

The problem is that the SDLP has no alternative Budget. Most oppositions have an alternative Budget to put before the people. Indeed, I long for the days a couple of years ago when the SDLP came forward with a proposal to sell an airport that we did not even own. Perhaps that is the real reason why we are not seeing an alternative Budget, because, the last time the SDLP brought one forward, it had proposals to sell assets that we did not even have.

Mr Storey: No doubt that is more material for manifestos, press releases and all that. That is an issue for the Member.

I will conclude by addressing an issue — [Interruption.]

— do not encourage me — which is that we ignored young people who are not in full-time employment or training. Again, we do ourselves a disservice in that we ignore the fact that some €37 million has been secured from DEL and from ESF match funding, which will aim to provide 10,000 places. That is significant and is an investment in our unemployed and economically inactive. It should not be dismissed.

We were accused of playing politics with the Budget. Would it not be an awful thing if politicians did something political? Would it not be awful that we would be involved in such a thing? Let me explain — I think that I did explain, but the Member who made the allegation was not listening or was not present, and he is not present now. The reason for the increased Vote on Account for the Department for Regional Development is to provide it with the cover to take on the additional functions that it will inherit when it becomes the Department for Infrastructure in May after the elections. The Member implied that that is something to do with the party to which the Minister belongs.

As I explained, a number of Departments will take on new functions because of the reduction from 12 Departments to nine, where a similar increase has been needed, and the amounts are being made available in the Vote on Account, including for DARD, which is not a Department that any of my colleagues lead. I need to reiterate that the Vote on Account does not set a Department's budget for the year; it is simply a mechanism to allow a Department to keep carrying out its functions until such time as the Assembly considers the Main Estimates and the Budget Bill for 2016-17.

I am glad that I can recommend the Budget to the House, and I ask that the Assembly approves the Budget that is before it tonight.

Mr Principal Deputy Speaker: Before we proceed to the question, I would advise Members that, as this is a Budget Bill, it requires cross-community support.