Thread by @MatthewOToole2

Two budgetary 💷 moments in NI this week, but there is minimal public understanding of what they mean - frankly there is limited *Assembly* understanding of what they mean.

Beneath the headline numbers, there are major issues.

Here is a thread unpacking some of them.

What are these docs?

First, is the draft - I.e. not final yet - Executive Budget for the *next* financial year, 2021-22, starting in April.

Second, is the 'January Monitoring' round, which is the last opportunity to move around unspent money in *this* financial year, 2020/21...

Draft Budget came earlier in the week, but its more logical to explain where we are in this financial year before moving to next.

On Covid and non-Covid, there are welcome allocations, small and large - @depTf allocating 100m on restrictons support & 0.6m on n'paper rate relief

But even allowing for the uniqueness of this fin year, the size of underspends is big, esp in Economy dept.

👀 @ postponed high st voucher scheme. £93m not spent. Was it wise to commit so much to a scheme dependent on new year retail normality with a pandemic still raging?

Econ dept return is a strange list of abandoned or unsuccessful responses to Covid.

Even more concerning is the impact of lost EU funding.

In Jan monitoring, their Brexit supporting minister bid for 26.5m to cover lost EU Social Fund cash.

NB this is not even a full year loss

But while all new bids have been met, we are still have LOTS of unallocated money left to spend by the end of March.

How much?

Well when you add together the covid and non-Covid funds, resource (i.e. day to day spend) and Capital (I.e. investment spend)

430 MILLION QUID

We either find ways of getting it out the door somehow, ask the UK Treasury to allow us to 'carry it over' - I.e. spend it next year, post April - or we simply hand it back to them.

Now, we will definitely be able to carry SOME of it over. At least 85m, under existing rules..

But probably not all of it. The dysfunctionality of Executive decision making is exacerbated by the structural flaws of the spending rules Treasury set and a fiscal calendar they chop and change to suit English political demands.

Which brings us to the draft Exec 21/22 budget...

This was presented by the finance minister with a brief statement to MLAs and scant detail (full doc online now)

The UK Govt's failure to provide more than a single year of spending review (the planned multi year one was binned) has *again* exacerbate Executive short termism..

They have also failed to live up to commitments on various funding streams previously agreed.

As well as making Executive short termism worse, it undermines trust in the UK Government at a time when they are making dissembling and misrepresentation to NI a standing practice..

But for his part the finance minister should be delivering better than this document. In places it looks like it hasn't even been proofed. One line in the economic chapter says the EU/UK FTA has 'yet to be decided'...

Really? That was a month ago...

There are things to welcome: the minister has finally embraced use of RRI borrowing to fund capital spending when debt costs are so low. @SDLPlive has been calling for this but it shouldn't simply be used as normal capital - it should be funding real value add investment

But broadly speaking this document highlights the lack of strategy behind Exec policy.

For a surreal start, Exec depts are still working to draft Programme for Government outcomes agreed in... 2016.

From those long forgotten days *when the UK was still a member of the EU*

It may not be in the PfG plan, but the impact of EU exit is still littered throughout the document.

A few selections below..

The funding is flat as has been said, but it will rise as the Treasury formally agree to carry forward and there may be other Barnett consequentials announced in the March Budget.

But even if the funding rises and even if we manage to get more of this year's cash out the door...

There is a terrible combination of Whitehall indifference and skewed rules that only serve to undermine good devolved government here.

But of course the antics and shirt termism of the two major parties make the problems worse.

No way to run a railroad, as the saying goes. END