Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We will move to Committee deliberations. Hansard will produce a report for us if we are all content with that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): In the Committee's meeting pack are papers relating to the Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill. Responses have been received from the Communities Committee, the Agriculture Committee and the Executive Office Committee. Those Committees were asked to scrutinise the clauses relating to their respective remits.

The Agriculture Committee has completed its scrutiny and indicated that it is content with the text and the ambition of clause 16, entitled "Marine licensing". It indicated concern about exemptions for certain types of marine licensing fees but highlighted the benefits of marine fees.

Similarly, the Communities Committee has completed its scrutiny of clauses 12 and 13 and is supportive, in principle, of the policy objectives behind both clauses. It highlighted a number of issues that will require follow-up work by the Committee and the Department for Communities. I will remind members what those clauses do. Clause 12 creates powers for the investigation of housing association tenancy fraud. Clause 13 is about a fun subject for all of us: councillor allowances. As I said, the Communities Committee indicated that it is supportive of the policy objectives in principle, but it mentioned a couple of bits of follow-up work that, I presume, it will do rather than ask us to undertake.

The Executive Office Committee's response is on clauses 7, 9 and 10. Clause 7 relates to asylum and immigration support services. Clause 8 is on the provision of development opportunities for people who apply for, or are required to hold, public appointments. It gives TEO the power to pay for skills training for people who accept public appointments. Clause 10 is on supplementary powers and relates to powers under clause 9, which is entitled "Ending violence against women and girls".

I am sorry: I mentioned clause 8, which the Committee's response did not mention. Maybe it did, or perhaps the Executive Office Committee did not come back to us on clause 8.

From its response, it is not clear whether it is content with the clauses that are relevant to its remit or what scrutiny of them it has carried out. We need to reiterate to the Executive Office Committee that there are significant powers in the Bill that touch on the work of the Department that it is supposed to scrutinise and that the Committee needs to say clearly whether it is content with the clauses. If it has no view, it should tell us that. Similarly, if its members cannot come to an agreement, it should tell us that. It needs to provide us with that clarity.

The Committee Clerk: It is just so that we know. Other Committees have indicated that they are content, which means that we can move on. The Executive Office Committee has not given us that —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We are talking about significant enough powers, or powers that relate to a significant issue. We will write back to the Committee to ask whether it has completed its scrutiny and say, "Guys, we would prefer you to give us a more direct view on clauses 7,8, 9, and 10, which relate to important matters, namely violence against women and girls, public appointments and support for asylum integration services". Those are not trivial matters.

We will move on to the Education Committee's response.

Dr Aiken: Sorry, may I come in there, Chair, on the response of the Executive Office Committee?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes; sorry, Steve. By the way, members, it is fine to stick your oar in at any point.

Dr Aiken: I agree fully with you, Chair. Maybe our Committee Clerk could contact the Committee Clerk of the Executive Office Committee, because the powers in those clauses are substantial, and I cannot believe that that Committee did not spend a bit more time scrutinising them. It worries me that those clauses may have been waved through without that Committee really understanding their implications.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I understand that its members did get a briefing. They have, obviously, had correspondence from us, and they have corresponded with their Department. Effectively, we are asking them whether they are satisfied with their due diligence on, and scrutiny of, the powers in the Bill that relate to their Department. The powers are not, as it were, ours: they are for the Executive Office Committee to scrutinise. That has been the key thing all the way through the process with the Bill. At this point, it is also worth me saying in parenthesis that, given the nature of the Bill, there will probably be significant amendments. As I have said in the Assembly, we will not be able to cover, to use a phrase that was said in this very room, every jot and tittle of the Bill. We cannot get into every power and every body, so we are writing to other Committees to get them to do their due diligence on the relevant powers.

Members of the Executive Office Committee will not be watching this meeting because their Committee is meeting at the moment, but if they are watching this meeting back later, I say this to them: you should be satisfying yourselves that you have scrutinised those powers. Even if they do not come to an agreed view on the clauses, they need to have scrutinised them and understood their meaning. That is really important, because we can understand, in broad terms, what the Bill does, but we have to outsource a fair bit of the scrutiny on it because of the nature of its powers. Whether a private conversation is necessary or not, the other Committees should be doing that scrutiny, and they have correspondence on it.

Dr Aiken: I agree, Chair. The key term that you used was "due diligence". That needs to be proven.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Grand. As I said, jump in or indicate if you want to wish to come in on any area of the Bill.

In its response, the Education Committee has copied in correspondence from the Department of Education to queries that it submitted about the legislative basis for the clauses that are specific to the Department's work. It is not clear whether the Committee is content with the clauses that are relevant to it or what scrutiny it has carried out in that regard. I make the same point to the Education Committee that I made earlier: it needs to discuss those clauses, satisfy itself that it has understood them and raise any concerns that it has. If it is satisfied and able to indicate that it is, broadly, supportive of the clauses relevant to it, as other Committees have, such as the AERA Committee in relation to marine licensing, we would welcome its doing so. However, it is not our job to completely understand or scrutinise the powers that are being taken or sought by its Department in the Bill.

If members are agreed, we will write to the Education Committee, along the same lines as we will be writing to the Executive Office Committee, and ask whether it is satisfied with the scrutiny of clause 11. To go back to that, clause 11 is pretty specific. It relates to postgraduate qualifications in educational psychology. It is not, therefore, on a major area: it is basically about giving the Department the power to fund the cost of qualifications, presumably for educational psychologists.

The Committee Clerk: The Education Minister has indicated that he will seek to table an amendment to clause 11 to expand the bursaries that are offered. That brings with it a new and exciting twist. This Committee asked other Committees to scrutinise the Bill as drafted. It will be up to this Committee to decide whether it would like to bring in officials from the Department of Education to talk about that amendment so that it can be satisfied that it understands what is going on. It is not in the Bill as drafted, but it would be an expansion of one of the clauses, and we know about it in good time, so my advice is that it would probably be a good idea to do that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Bring them to this Committee, rather than the Education Committee bringing them in?

The Committee Clerk: Yes, because we would not expect the Education Committee to go back to start looking at amendments. We have asked the Education Committee to look at the Bill as drafted. This Committee could take that on and get a briefing, and I suggest that it does.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. I restate, however, that we wrote to certain Committees due to the fact that the Departments that they scrutinise are seeking in the Bill additional vires to do things in general, make powers to do things or spend money on certain things. We do not have the bandwidth to understand every bit of that precisely. We should understand the Bill in broad terms — that is our job — but it is on those Committees to understand the challenges and issues for their Departments.

Dr Aiken: I reiterate that, Chair. The RaISe briefing referred to problems with the Bill and the fact that it is an apples-and-oranges Bill. If amendments are tabled by other Departments, we will not, as you quite rightly said, have the bandwidth to deal with them. What should have been a financial provisions Bill is becoming a "miscellaneous and any" Bill. I have grave concerns about the degree of scrutiny that we can give the Bill, because I do not think that we have the bandwidth to do what is necessary on our own.

The Committee Clerk: We will do our very best, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes, we will. We are scrutinising the Bill, and we have performed our function correctly thus far. The point needs to be made to the other Committees and every other MLA and interested party that the Bill is now a very broad omnibus Bill, which, largely, instead of doing things itself, creates the powers to do them. They may, down the line, express concern that they were not aware that a particular power had been taken, but during this process they will have had the opportunity to understand exactly why it was being taken and to ask the officials in the relevant Department to explain why. It is their job to do that, so what we are saying is reasonable.

Dr Aiken: Do we know what the Education Minister is proposing?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The Committee Clerk just said that it is an amendment to expand the Department of Education's financial power. From my reading of it, it would allow that Department to meet costs related to educational psychology qualifications. I presume that the Minister is seeking to expand it to include other areas.

The Committee Clerk: He is seeking to expand it to provide initial teacher education bursaries.

Dr Aiken: If he is expanding it to cover other areas of teacher education, it is a big expansion. That is a substantial chunk.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There are two points on that. The first is that that is exactly the kind of thing that may be totally reasonable for the Education Minister to do. We will be discussing the expansion of clause 11 later. I do not know whether the policy is right or wrong, but it is legitimate for a Minister to use legislation to do that sort of thing. However, given that it involves the Education Department, primary awareness on that falls to the Education Committee. We can get the headlines and scrutinise whether, in broad terms, that is a correct and satisfactory use of the Bill and advise the Assembly accordingly. We cannot, however, do detailed scrutiny on the adequacy of teacher training funding. That is not our job, and it is important to say that. I am not being unreasonable by saying that, am I?

The Committee Clerk: There will be a financial implication that, obviously, this Committee will be very interested in.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes, that is true, but we are not the primary scrutiny Committee for the policy. Are members content that we write to the Education Committee to ask whether it has completed its scrutiny and is genuinely content with clause 11? Also, I think that we will have to ask it what it is thinking about the proposed extension to clause 11.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I presume that we also agree, members, to reflect the responses from other Committees in our report on the Bill and add them to the electronic Bill folder.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I will give members the chance to raise broader issues. Does anybody else wish to raise any other concerns?

Ms Forsythe: In light of the detailed conversations that we have just had about the Education and Executive Office Committees, I highlight the response from the Infrastructure Committee. All that it has done is forward a letter from the Infrastructure Minister on the matter of charging for SmartPasses. The Infrastructure Committee has not stated its opinion on that. In the spirit of the conversation that we have just had about the other two Committees, I would like to go back to the Infrastructure Committee and ask it what it thinks of the fact that that is sitting as a negative resolution clause. The Committee has only said that the Infrastructure Minister wrote to it, and it has forwarded that to us. It did not include a paragraph to tell us what it thinks about the clause. Can we revisit that?

The Committee Clerk: Members will remember that there was a bit of discussion on the level of resolution. Although the current position is that any regulations would be subject to negative resolution procedure, the Committee talked a little bit about the potential novelty of a regulation being passed by draft affirmative procedure the first time before reverting to negative resolution procedure once the parameters of charging had been debated. It is worth reminding members that although the policy intent is very much for other Statutory Committees to focus on, the level of resolution that regulations are subject to is, as the Examiner of Statutory Rules (ESR) has indicated, something to which this Committee will need to give some thought.

For clause 17, it might be worth bringing in officials from DFI — they are on our list — to talk through their reasoning for going for negative resolution procedure for the regulations from the start. That has come up at this Committee, it has been a point of discussion and it follows a lot of conversations that we have had on using draft affirmative procedure regarding charging for baby loss certificates. It is the same sort of issue, so we have provisionally arranged for DFI officials to attend the Committee.

Miss Dolan: I thought that it was up to each Committee to scrutinise its relevant —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is.

Miss Dolan: So, why would we be getting DFI officials in here?

The Committee Clerk: It is a courtesy that this Committee sends the Bill out to the subject Committees.

Miss Dolan: Yes, but why are we getting DFI officials in? Is that what you are saying we should do?

The Committee Clerk: If there is further information, we will not necessarily put that back to the other Committee. It is procedural. We would write to the Minister and ask for officials to come up so that this Committee has satisfied itself around the level of resolution. It is probably worth pointing out again that, while the Committee has asked other Committees to do their own due diligence, it will need to copper-fasten its own position. This is still a Finance Committee Bill. As the ESR indicated, members need to report on the Bill and send it back to the House, completely sure that they have buttoned-down everything thing that they want to button-down. In such circumstances, it is perfectly normal to bring in officials from another Department, particularly where you are looking at something like levels of delegated power. This Committee has had that bit more insight into that issue as it arose during its scrutiny of another Bill and was discussed in that context. Obviously, there will be discussion with the Committee for Infrastructure — the process would not proceed without its input — but it will be necessary to get officials to give evidence to this Committee. We are also very conscious of the fact that other Committees will have their own forward work plans, and, as this is the Finance Committee's Bill, it is up to the Finance Committee to do all the extras, if that makes sense.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes. We will complete the report, so we are the scrutiny Committee. When I used the word "outsource", I did not mean that we will be getting other Committees do to their own reports on the Bill. We will have to own the report. I was making the point that it is a reasonable for us to ask them whether they are satisfied with the detail. They do not legally need to do that — they can ignore us if they want — but it is a reasonable ask. It is right for us to be direct with them about that, and now is the time to do it.

The Committee Clerk: This Committee receives legal advice and advice from the ESR that the other Committees do not have specific access to. As it is legal advice, we have indicated to the Committee for Infrastructure that the ESR has said that the levels of delegated power are not inappropriate. However, we have also added the interpretation that that is not necessarily where the story ends. Therefore, this Committee has a lot of advantages in having access to all that advice. The other Committees do not necessarily have that. Part of the exercise is making sure that they know what is happening and have an understanding of the Bill. However, there are additional dynamics, and this is the Committee that has access to them.

Miss Dolan: I get you.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Members will recall that the Audit Committee, Economy Committee and Infrastructure Committee have submitted similar returns regarding the scrutiny of the Bill's clauses. Also included is the nil return from the Justice Committee. That return is fair enough because I do not think that there are any specific clauses related to the Justice Department's remit. Also, the Justice Department has its own Justice Bill, which is so broad that it could probably attach to that anything that it wanted to do.

The Committee will wish to consider which Departments it wishes to call to provide oral evidence. We have already discussed that.

The Committee Clerk: We generally have. If members are content, we will seek oral evidence from Infrastructure officials and from Education officials, particularly on the amendment, although we will have to wait for that to be laid. We will also seek evidence from Executive Office officials. Again, we will do that subsequent to further correspondence on sign-off from that Committee. Obviously, we still have briefings to receive from Finance officials as well.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. If members are content, we will schedule briefings with officials from the relevant Departments.

In the meeting pack is a RaISe paper on clause 18, which sets out the comparative perspective on Consolidated Fund advance limits for contingencies. It sets out a number of scrutiny points for the Department of Finance and will be added to the evidence base and electronic Bill folder. Also in the meeting pack is the departmental Assembly liaison officer (DALO) read-out response, which sets out further rationale for the Department's requesting an increase to the contingency limit for Consolidated Fund advances. The Department highlights the risk of delay, the impact of the 2% limit and the size of the limit compared to that in Scotland and Wales. Members will wish to consider that response as part of our discussion following the research briefing.

We have with us Nathan Mulholland, who is a research officer at RaISe. Thank you, Nathan, for coming to see us, and thank you for being patient while we went through other items. Please give us an opening statement, and then members can indicate if they wish to ask a question afterwards.

Mr Nathan Mulholland (Research and Information Service): Good afternoon, Committee. Thank you for having me here today. I will briefly take you through the contents of the paper and then give the Committee time for some questions.

As the Committee will recall, on 17 September, RaISe presented a Bill paper on the Administrative and Financial Provisions Bill. At the meeting, the Committee requested further information on clause 18.

Section 1 of the paper details clause 18. The Committee has been through that previously, so I will not go into too much detail, but I remind members that clause 18 proposes to amend article 6 of the Financial Provisions (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 by increasing the limit of advances from the Consolidated Fund for civil contingencies from 2% to 4%.

Section 2 concerns the use of article 6 of the 1998 Order. Section 2.2 looks at the introduction of the 2% limit, based on the authorised supply expenditure for the previous financial year. Article 6 was a response to article 5 of the 1998 Order, which abolished the Northern Ireland Civil Contingencies Fund. In 1998, the Civil Contingencies Fund had a limit of £750,000 and was considered insufficient to meet the requests at the time.

Rather than making an arrangement to increase the Civil Contingencies Fund year-on-year, the mechanism created by article 6 provided for advances to be made out of the Consolidated Fund, which was considered to be simpler. Introducing the 2% limit meant that the amount available in each year would increase in line with increases in the authorised expenditure available in Northern Ireland in each year.

Table 1 in the RaISe paper presents recent advances from the Consolidated Fund under article 6. The first column presents written ministerial statements made since February 2024 that detail advances to be made to particular Departments up to a maximum amount. The second column shows an itemised total of cash issued from the Consolidated Fund to each Department or public body. The figures are published in the public income and expenditure accounts. RaISe was unable to identify written such ministerial statements that were made before 2024. By going through the public income and expenditure accounts published each year, however, RaISe established the advances that have been made from the Consolidated Fund for civil contingencies in each year since 2009-10, and those are presented in table 2. Prior to 2023-24, the amounts were presented in the public income and expenditure accounts as a total rather than being itemised as they currently are. I draw the Committee's attention to the 2016-17 financial year, when over £42 million was advanced but, due to interrupted devolution, not repaid until 2021, because repayments can be made only when the Assembly has approved the excess incurred.

I move on to the annual 2% limit. The Bill's explanatory and financial memorandum describes increasing the limit as a "prudent measure" to safeguard against the risk of the lower limit being insufficient to ensure the continued provision of public services. At its meeting on 17 September, the Committee indicated its interest in understanding how close to the limit the Department had come in previous years. RaISe contacted DOF officials to seek clarification on that point. Detail was requested on what the 2% limit meant in cash terms, and table 3 shows that. I note that the 2% limit in 2024-25 was equivalent to almost £479 million. Table 4 shows the total amount authorised for issue over the past five years. As you can see in the table, the amounts authorised in 2020-21 and 2021-22 exceeded the 2% limit. Table 5 presents a series of notes explaining events and rationales that influenced the need for such advances. The advances that are authorised represent a maximum amount, so the amounts that are issued may be smaller. For example, authorisations expire along with the reason for seeking the advance. The relevant Budget Bill may be passed after the maximum amount has been authorised, meaning that the total amount is not required. In addition, as detailed in table 5, if a repayment is made during the year, the amount available to be issued — the 2% total — resets and the sum repaid therefore becomes available again in the same year. Table 6 shows that the amounts actually issued in financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22 equated to 60% and 79% respectively of the amounts that were available under the 2% limit.

Section 3 of the paper provides a comparative analysis of contingencies legislation in Scotland and Wales, noting a number of similarities between those jurisdictions. I will highlight a few points. In Scotland and Wales, the limit is 0·5%. Only Ministers can authorise the issue of funds and, where resource has been issued under the relevant Acts, the Minister must lay a report before their Parliament as soon as possible. A summary of the legislation of each Administration — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — is in section 4 of the paper. Notably, in Scotland, the powers under section 3 of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000 have not been used. In Wales, the power granted under section 128 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 for civil contingencies has been used once, in 2013, for the purchase of Cardiff International Airport. The purchase occurred close to the end of the financial year, and the then Finance Minister noted that the section 128 mechanism was used:

I will finish there — that was just a brief overview of the paper — and take questions from the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Thank you, Nathan. That was extremely thorough, and it unpacks a lot of the stuff for us. Very briefly, in headline terms, can you explain whether, given that, on the face of it, Northern Ireland already has significantly higher limits than Scotland and Wales, there are any particular reasons why we have higher limits — and, obviously, the Minister is looking for higher limits on top of that?

Mr Mulholland: As noted in the paper, the Order was made prior to the Assembly's existing. The Committee session at Westminster that debated the Order at the time, which I highlighted, noted that the pressures at the time were £20 million to £30 million. I assume that officials made a judgement that 2% was required based on that level of pressure at the time. Why 0·5% was subsequently chosen for Scotland and Wales — and their legislation was in 2000 and 2006, so some time after their institutions were established — I do not know. In relation to our own level, if you look at what was being requested at the time when the Order came in, perhaps calculations were made that came to the 2% figure. That would need further clarification. That happened quite a long time ago, so I am not sure exactly who might be aware of that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is possible, using article 6 of the Order, to draw down when there is no Assembly, whereas Scotland and Wales could not, obviously, because they do not really foresee —.

Mr Mulholland: As you can see, I have provided details of the legislation for all three Administrations. Article 6 of the Order clearly states "The Department", whereas in the legislation in Scotland and Wales, it is "the Minister will issue". That makes sense in that there was no Assembly for there to be a Minister of when the Order came in, so the Department was the only body. That may be something for the Committee to consider and ask further questions about. That is my understanding of the difference and why it is "the Department", and how the Department can then operate when there is no fully functioning Assembly. The power is given to the Department, not directly to the Minister.

Ms Forsythe: Thanks very much for that detail. We have two documents that are really useful for us to look at side by side. We have your report, and I want to jump to the table at page 16 in your report. We also have a response from the Department that sets out the levels of the advances and how much of the 2% that was authorised was actually used and how much of the 0·5% authorised was used. I know that you do not have that, but it speaks to the figures that you presented. It shows that 2020-21 and 2021-22, which you have in your report — those were the years of COVID, and there were extreme Budget circumstances — were the only two times when the 0·5% that is acceptable everywhere else was exceeded. However, it was never actually breached, because that is covered in your report. You actually show that the percentage of the 2% — that we reached more than that, but at the parts of the table with three and four stars, when I scroll down, you are able to state that whilst the 2% was reached, the legislation was never breached because it was possible to bring forward emergency legislation — Budget Bills — to keep things in order. That is the point that I have been trying to make, namely that we already have 2%, which is more than everyone else. The 0·5%, according to the numbers that we have, would probably have been enough anyway, because the only time when we were at risk of hitting it was during COVID when it was an emergency situation and at which point we were able to get emergency legislation in place to cover that. Therefore, it did not really matter whether it was 0·5% or 2%, because it was going to be substantially more than usual anyway. In both those instances, we were able to get the approvals in place, so there never actually was a breach.

Your report shows that, for those two years when there was COVID and extreme circumstances, we hit the 2%, but there was never a breach because there was time to act in the emergency, which I believe there always will be. If there is an emergency, you can always have some emergency legislation to go ahead of that. However, given that we are so far away from ever hitting the 2% in any other year that the Assembly has been up or down, I see no basis for us needing 4%. That is why I am struggling to understand why this legislation says that we need to increase the authorised amount from 2% to 4%, because I do not see us actually hitting the 2%. From anything that you have put together in the paper, do you see a risk that we might not have processes in place to enable us to act to safeguard that?

Mr Mulholland: When you look at the authorised amounts in table 4, if you are repaying, you can issue the full 100% in the middle of the year, and then repay that. You would then have your full 2% allowance, and you could do it again. You could have 200% there. As long as you repay that at some point in the year, that money becomes available again. If you are repaying, you are continually rolling it over. It is only when you do not have the ability to repay the money that the limit comes into focus. That is why there is a note — something to do with the Utility Regulator. Perhaps they were about to hit the limit, but repayments coming in from the Utility Regulator reset the budget to allow money to be issued to DOH at that time. That is when you are on those limits. If you do not get the repayment in, your 2% limit is gone.

I do not know how close that was; the detail is not entirely there. That detail came from the officials, so you may want to interrogate that more with them as to how close things were at that time. That was just lifted from correspondence that I had, so I am not entirely sure of the detail. Their point is that, without repayment, there would not be more issues. That is how they presented it to me. You could interrogate that more with the officials.

Ms Forsythe: Thank you. On the Utility Regulator example, I know that, when the money comes out, it is very much about the timing of the receipts and about moving it around. I know that it had come out. It seems simple enough for the AERA Minister, when presenting the profile to the Finance Minister, to say, "There has been a displacement of receipts", and we have seen that it is easy enough for the Finance Minister to say, "That is a timing thing. I will approve it in the interim and move it around". I see that it is being managed as it is, so I cannot understand why we would double, in the Bill, the percentage that would be authorised if we do not have evidence of problems or reasons for it.

Mr Mulholland: As I said, it is not for me to make a decision about the rights or wrongs of that. I am just presenting the evidence as it is.

Ms Forsythe: It seems a lot higher than anywhere else, and we are already higher.

Mr Mulholland: As I said, there seems to be a history to that, which has been ferreted out. The 1998 Order and what was being discussed in the Westminster Committee at the time — limits were being reached during that period. The institutions in Scotland and Wales were brand new, whereas there is a bit more legacy here of the older Parliament. I think that, for example, the Civil Contingencies Fund came from the Exchequer and Financial Provisions Act (Northern Ireland) 1950. That was seen as being limited — £750,000 in 1950 was a lot more money than it would have been in 1998 — so the Order tidied up that section by creating the 2% limit. I do not know how that carried on and how the judgement was made that the limit in Scotland and Wales should be 0·5% compared with ours, but you can look at what was being requested in Northern Ireland in 1998. Pressures of £20 million to £30 million were quoted, and 2% seemed reasonable at that time, but circumstances and events since then may mean that more questions need to be asked.

Ms Forsythe: Thanks very much, and thanks for the paper. It is really good detail, and there are lots of good citations in it, so it is very helpful.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Nobody else has indicated that they wish to ask a question, so we will release you, Nathan. Thank you very much for coming to give us evidence. I think that it is important that we write to the Department to get answers on the scrutiny points that Nathan has suggested in his excellent paper. Are members content with that?

We will move on to the correspondence from the Department of Finance regarding amendments to clauses 11 and 20. Clause 11 relates to education and payments for training for educational psychologists, which we have just discussed. Clause 20 is about how you appoint an auditor for the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO). Work is ongoing to provide an amendment to clause 11, which we have discussed. That will be provided to us in due course. The Department is also proposing to remove clause 20, which will have the effect of retaining responsibility for the appointment of the external auditor with the Department of Finance. Correspondence from the DOF to the Assembly's Audit Committee is also included for members' information. The DALO read-out response also confirms the removal of clause 20 from the Bill and that the Department will be engaging proactively with the NIAO and the Assembly's Audit Committee on reconsidering wider governance arrangements for the NIAO.

I suppose that there are two points. It is slightly strange that that has happened in that way. That is the process of scrutiny, however, so the fact that we have engaged and got some information, and that we have got the views of the Audit Committee, has been useful in all of this. I presume that, technically, the Department cannot just remove the clause from the Bill.

The Committee Clerk: There will have to be an amendment.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The Minister will oppose the Question on stand part; is that what happens?

The Committee Clerk: Effectively, yes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. That will happen at Consideration Stage, I presume.

Members, can we seek agreement on acknowledging and welcoming the removal of clause 20? I think that we had come to the view that it was going to be implausible for the Audit Committee to become a procurement body. We will add that to the report on the Committee Stage of the Bill and the Bill folder. Do members wish to comment on that? Does anyone wish to raise that? No?

The Committee Clerk: It is worth reflecting and reminding members that the previous Audit Committee said that this would be OK. It was being inflicted as a legacy on the current Audit Committee. That was why the Department believed that it was fine to go ahead. It has become very apparent, however, that much more discussion needs to take place. Back burner, I suppose, more than anything else.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The back burner indeed. OK, members. The meeting pack contains legal advice on clause 20. Given that the Bill is now resolved, that is of academic interest and is no longer relevant because the clause is not going to stand part of the Bill. OK.