2. Mrs Dodds asked the Minister of Finance when he will present a draft Budget to the Executive. (AQO 2740/17-22)

Legislation constrains the Executive on presenting a draft Budget until at least 14 days after a statement is laid before the Assembly setting out our control totals as notified by the Secretary of State. That statement was formally laid on 4 November. I have undertaken a series of bilateral meetings with Executive Ministers on the Budget. My intention is to bring a draft Budget to the Executive as soon as possible and to present a draft Budget to the Assembly once Executive agreement is secured.

I thank the Minister for his answer. I am glad to note that the Sinn Féin Finance Minister intends to bring a Budget to the Assembly at last.

When officials were at the Education Committee the other week, they indicated that there would be a £350 million shortfall in their budget, going on the baseline that had been provided for them. Will the Minister make that cut to Education, or will he prioritise children and young people in Northern Ireland?

The Member will know, from the outcome of the spending review, that the Budget is certainly not what the Executive require for the services that we want to be able to offer to all citizens here. The situation has forced the Executive, over a long number of years, to prioritise the services that they can afford to provide over those that they would like to provide. Health has been the primary recipient, although Education has always come a close second. I met the Education Minister last week, and I am very much aware of the challenges in the Education Department, as well as those across all public services. The challenges are particularly acute when it comes to children and young people, to whom we want to give the best possible start in life.

The decisions on prioritisation and, indeed, on the outcome of the draft Budget, will be for the Executive as a whole to take. I have spent the past while and will continue engaging individually with all Executive Ministers, as the Member will know from her experience, to hear what their priorities are and what challenges they face, so that we can stretch a limited Budget — although we are pleased that it is over three years, because it gives us the ability to do more planning — as best we can across the range of priorities that the Executive will have. Ultimately, however, it will be for the Executive to decide that.

We have the opportunity to have a three-year Budget. Will the Minister explain what discussions he has had on it with Ministers and how he will link the Budget to the Programme for Government or, more properly, to its delivery?

Over the past week or so, as I said, I have had bilateral engagements with almost all the Executive Ministers; I have a few still to go. As the Member knows, we had the pre-spending review outcome discussion at Executive level about our priorities before we were aware of the outcome of the spending review. We discussed what our priorities would be in the time ahead, how we would plan for them over three years and how we would try to match them to the Programme for Government commitments and ensure that we have outcomes attached to them. That is the challenge that lies ahead for the Executive. We have had that discussion, largely, with all the Ministers. My job will be to bring a draft Budget to the Executive and to seek their approval for it. That will, of course, be a matter for the Executive.

As the Member says, we very much wanted the ability to plan over three years. We therefore have to ensure that, however we prioritise — and it is a stretch to try to fit in all the priorities that Ministers want — we do so in a way that achieves tangible outcomes for the public that we represent.

Minister, given that victims' payments will have to be incorporated into the draft Budget, can you confirm whether the British Government have yet agreed to step up to the plate and honour their responsibility to help to fund the payments?

No, they have not made that commitment as yet. We are in dispute resolution with Treasury on the issue of victims' payments. We have committed up front to ensure that those payments are met so that no one who will potentially be a recipient will have to wait, or be concerned that they will have to wait, on such a payment coming through. The issue of funding is still a matter of dispute between the Executive and the Treasury. I raised the issue with the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury when I met him about a month ago. The dispute resolution process has not yet completed, and I intend to get back to him in the very near future to try to secure an agreement for that. It is a very substantial cost on the Executive's annual funding at a time when our annual funding does not come anywhere close to what we require to provide decent public services.

The Minister is now clear that we have a multi-year Budget ahead of us. As part of that, there is an uplift in capital funding. I have a concern about our ability to spend that effectively given that, this year, there is still capital funding that is unspent. What more does the Minister intend to do to ensure that the capital funding for the multi-year Budget will be spent effectively? Can the Minister provide an update on the infrastructure commission, which the Executive agreed to establish?

I am not certain that there was capital money unspent this year. The Audit Office presented a report into major capital programmes and how those could be improved. My Department has had a role in responding to that report, and there are lessons in it for all government Departments to make sure that there is an improvement in addressing the issues that it raises. With a limited Budget and so many competing priorities and projects looking for capital and resource money, the worst thing that we could do is not spend that out properly. There is a real onus on us to get that right. If there are lessons coming from that Audit Office report, we need to make sure that those are recognised and that appropriate action is taken.

On the infrastructure commission, I know that the Infrastructure Minister has raised issues around that. It will be a matter for the Executive to establish that and I am sure that they will get around to that in due course.