NI review 'not asking enough questions'

A major review of how Northern Ireland is run is failing to ask searching questions about the number of government departments there, it was claimed today.

The Conservatives’ Northern Ireland spokesman David Liddington expressed disappointment at a conference in Belfast that the Review of Public Administration (RPA) was not asking whether the North really needed 11 government departments when Scotland had only nine.

The review, which was ordered during devolution but is now being administered by direct rule ministers in the Northern Ireland Office, is focusing on the number of local councils, their powers and the future of quangos and public bodies.

However, Mr Liddington said it should also be asking questions like whether the Equality Commission and Human Rights Commission should operate as separate bodies or whether an efficiency commission, as proposed by the Rev Ian Paisley’s DUP, was needed to look at savings in government departments.

The Aylesbury MP asked the Stormont conference: “Is having 11 different Northern Ireland (government) departments really the best way in which to deliver services to the people?

“If there is, at some stage in the future, an agreement not just to restore the Executive but also to devolve responsibility for police and criminal justice, will we really want to have 13 departments, each with its own minister and senior Civil Service team?

“Scotland, with a bigger population and control over police and criminal justice, manages with nine government departments, including one to support the First Minister and another to provide legal and parliamentary services.

“Perhaps we are still too close to the 1998 Agreement to look again at the number of government departments, but my personal view is that, by excluding government departments from the terms of reference of the RPA, we are missing the opportunity for a dispassionate, non-partisan assessment of the pros and cons of the present set-up at Stormont.

“The findings of the RPA could then have been considered in any future talks about a comprehensive settlement.”

Under the review, it is believed the number of local councils in Northern Ireland could be reduced from their current level of 26 to as low as seven, 11 or 15.

Mr Liddington said with a population of around 1.6 million, 11 government departments, around 130 quangos and public bodies, 26 district councils with 582 councillors, 108 Assembly members, 18 MPs and three MEPs were simply too much for the province to bear.

He also noted that while the Irish Republic had cut its public sector from around 55% in the 1980s to around 33% today, the public sector accounted for 67% of Northern Ireland’s GDP compared with 58% in Wales, 52% in Scotland and around a third in the South East of England.

The Conservative MP asked: “To venture a little further into political controversy, do the functions of the Equalities Commission and the Human Rights Commission need to be discharged by completely separate bodies?

“Yes, there are protocols that are supposed to delineate the responsibilities of the two commissions but there is no avoiding the fact that every time we politicians create, usually with the most benevolent of intentions, a new department or agency or commission, we oblige businesses, charities and individuals to get to grips with yet another hierarchy of officials, another set of targets and inspection standards, another batch of forms to fill in and boxes to tick, and another set of rules to bid for money.”