18 January 2008
Northern Ireland's government departments are guilty of 'unacceptable' underspending because of weak financial management, say the Assembly's scrutiny committees.
Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin, chair of the Assembly's finance and personnel committee – speaking on behalf of all 11 Assembly scrutiny committees – said: 'Over the last three financial years, the annual amount of underspend in resource budgets has been between £113m and £155m. Also, in the same period, between £97m and £227m of capital budgets has remained unused each year.'
McLaughlin said departments must eradicate 'the culture of underspend' and become more efficient. The underspend is 2% of departments' budgets and this 'unacceptable' level should be cut to 1.5% in the next financial year and no more than 1% thereafter, said the committee.
Measures suggested to improve financial management include departments reporting faster and more transparently to scrutiny committees and an end to the requirement to obtain Treasury permission to apply year-end flexibilities on underspends.
The committee also recommended that government shared service centres should be extended beyond departments to include other public bodies, and that departments' capital spending plans should contain proposals on how to raise funding. The committee's conclusions came as part of its review of the Executive's draft budget, which it broadly supported.
PFjan2008
