Mike Nesbitt: NI Health Minister says £350m in reallocated funding 'not enough'

Mike Nesbitt said today (Monday) that reallocated Stormont funding worth £350m was still £100m short of what the Department of Health needed.

The Health Minister said he could not support the Executive's October funding monitoring round because there would not be enough to cover pay rises for health care workers.

Despite receiving 57% of the total funds shared among departments, Mike Nesbitt insisted he is still £100m short of the money he needs to make pay awards of at least 5.5% to all health staff.

First Minister Michelle O'Neill said it was unfortunate that Mr Nesbitt did not support the October monitoring round agreed by other ministers at an Executive meeting on Monday morning.

The exercise allocated around £630mn of additional day-to-day spending funds that came to Northern Ireland after the UK Government's budget last month.

Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald has warned that, despite the funding boost from the Chancellor's budget, the devolved administration is still overcommitted by around £180m this year.

She has made clear that ministers need to find more savings and balance the books, highlighting that failure to balance the overall Stormont budget by the end of the financial year would see the Westminster Government withdraw a previous offer to write off £559m of debt owed to the Treasury.

The Treasury offer, made by the last government, to set aside the £559m was conditional on the Executive delivering a balanced budget in 2024/25.

Mr Nesbitt told reporters at Stormont that he was "incredibly reluctant" to even contemplate overspending his budget. He said that meant he would have to enter pay negotiations with health unions starting on the basis that he would be unable to make the recommended awards and keep pay parity with healthcare workers in the rest of the UK.

He said even though health trusts had already made "unprecedented savings" of £200m in the current financial year, he had still been faced with a funding gap of £450m - £130m of inescapable pressures within his department and £320m for the recommended annual pay awards for staff.

That gap has been reduced to £100m as a consequence of the £350m allocated to his department on Monday, he said.

Explaining his decision not to support the monitoring round, Mr Nesbitt said: "I'm not prepared to look at a health worker in the eye who's gone through what they've gone through over the last number of years, trusts who've delivered over £200m in unprecedented savings this year, and say, 'I'm not trying to maintain pay parity for you'.

"So I put it to Executive colleagues, this has to be an Executive decision, and it is an Executive decision to balance the books and, as a consequence, not be able to maintain national pay parity."

Mr Nesbitt added: "The choice to me is either to overspend, which the Executive made clear is an option that should not be on the table, or go into negotiations with the unions, making clear from the get go that I don't have enough money for the various national pay awards to be met.

"I am incredibly reluctant to even contemplate going over budget because of the implications, not least in that loan being clawed back by Treasury, but it will depend on the attitude of unions.

"I'll be going in with a plan. It's not something I would expect the unions to particularly like, because they think they deserve pay parity with England and Wales. But there is, I hope, room for some negotiations."

Ms O'Neill said ministers needed to focus on public sector pay awards, and urged Mr Nesbitt to "get on and do that now".

"I think that every minister around the Executive table recognised that it's going to be challenging," she said. "We don't have enough money to do all the things that we would want to do, that we've prioritised, even collectively.

"Unfortunately, the Minister for Health didn't support the allocation today, but that is to ignore the fact that he did, in fact, receive 57% of the entire funding that was available to us."

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly said the budget had created "very difficult decisions" for all ministers.

"It has been very, very tough, and I think it is absolutely fair to say that no minister has received what they have asked for in this, and therefore these processes are always about trying to work with ministers around what they can get," she said.

Ms Archibald warned that the monitoring round was likely to be the last significant injection of added funding in the financial year. She said it was important for all ministers to prioritise public sector pay.

"I have encouraged ministers to try and prioritise pay within their (funding) envelopes, because if we are going to deliver and drive the transformation agenda that we need to do, then we're going to have to have the support of our workforce," she said.

As well as the £350m to health, the monitoring round saw £170m allocated to the education department and £36m to the justice department. That department also got an additional £2.8m to pay for costs incurred by the PSNI during the race-related disorder of the summer.

The Department for Communities was provided with a general allocation of £11.3m and an addition £17m to provide further support to some pensioners set to lose out on winter fuel payments.

The Department for Infrastructure was given £22.8m.

The Executive also agreed a capital funding allocation of £68m from the UK budget.

A total of £24m was given to the Department for Communities for new social housing and almost £40m was directed to capital pressures in the Department for Infrastructure's budget.