Stormont: Civil servants 'may have to stop some services'

Sir David Sterling retired as the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in 2020

Senior civil servants in Northern Ireland will be put in a "near impossible position" if the secretary of state asks them to manage the current budget overspend.

That is what a former head of the civil service has told the BBC's Red Lines podcast.

Sir David Sterling ran the civil service during a previous collapse of devolved government, from 2017 to 2020.

Stormont departments are on course to overspend by £650m this financial year.

That is equivalent to almost 5% of the budget.

The power-sharing executive at Stormont has not been operating since February when the DUP withdrew from the first minister role in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Ministers ceased to hold office at the end of October when the deadline for reforming the power-sharing executive passed without agreement.

It means senior civil servants are controlling the nine government departments in Northern Ireland, but they are restricted in what decisions they can take.

Last week, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris confirmed he will introduce legislation at Westminster which "would enable the Northern Ireland departments to support public service delivery, and address the serious budgetary concerns".

"I don't understand how he can produce a budget in the knowledge that it will be overspent," Sir David told the BBC's Red Lines podcast.

Civil servants are running Northern Ireland's public services in the absence of an executive

"It will be interesting to see if he decides, to suggest that within that budget, there should be some cutbacks and expenditure elsewhere.

"If he simply says Northern Ireland's permanent secretaries are going to have to manage down the overspend that's going to put them in a near impossible situation."

Sir David, who retired two years ago, says permanent secretaries would face having to make cuts if they are required to manage the current overspend.

"My view is it would be constitutionally improper for them to take decisions that would normally be taken by ministers," he added.

"At this late stage in the year, the only way you can live within a budget is probably by stopping some services.

"There's clearly going to be a negative public interest. Somebody is going to lose and indeed somebody may suffer some harm, if that is the outcome."

Sir David criticised the lack of political will and the failure of previous power-sharing executives to take the tough decisions required to improve public services.

"There has been an enormous body of work done here to identify what needs to be done to improve our public services, particularly health and education," he said.

"We know what needs to be done. The reality is we haven't gone and done it. I think, by and large, that has been an absence of political will.

"There has been an absence of collective agreement at the executive that we will do the difficult things.

"This for me is the really big issue that needs to be resolved. We need to find some way that we can get the decisions that are necessary to improve our services and allow us to live within our budget as well."

The full episode is available now on BBC Sounds.