Audit Committee
OFFICIAL REPORT
(Hansard)
Budget 2017-18: Northern Ireland Assembly
Commission
26 October 2016
NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY
Audit Committee
Budget 2017-18: Northern Ireland Assembly Commission
26 October 2016
Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr John O'Dowd (Chairperson)
Ms Claire Hanna
Mr David Hilditch
Witnesses:
Mrs Lesley Hogg
Northern Ireland Assembly Commission
Mr Richard Stewart
Northern Ireland Assembly Commission
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): From the Assembly, we have Lesley Hogg, the Clerk/Chief
Executive, and Richard Stewart, the director of corporate services. This is the Assembly
Commission's first presentation to the Audit Committee. You are very welcome.
Mrs Lesley Hogg (Northern Ireland Assembly Commission): Thank you.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): Please proceed with your presentation.
Mrs Hogg: Good morning. I thank the Committee for scrutinising the Assembly Commission's budget
proposals for 2017-18. This is part of a dry run of the Commission's proposed new budget-setting
methodology, which has been developed with colleagues in the Department of Finance and is with the
Finance Minister for consideration. I see the new budget-setting process as a welcome development
of our financial and governance management process.
Before getting into the detail of 2017-18, I want to highlight the Commission's financial position over
recent years by way of context. Like all areas of the public sector, the Commission has sought to
constrain and cut costs in recent years. Since 2010-11, the Commission's DEL resource budget has
reduced by £5·7 million, excluding depreciation and impairments, which is about 13% of the overall
budget. Some £3 million of the savings have been delivered in the past two years. During that time,
staff numbers have fallen from 416 full-time equivalents to 346, a reduction of 70 posts representing
about 17% of the workforce.
The briefing sets out the Commission's non-ring-fenced DEL resource budget proposals for 2017-18,
which total £38·4 million. That is just over £1·1 million less than the baseline allocation for 2016-17.
The Commission's budget can be split into four main areas. First, there are the costs associated with
MLAs, including salaries, allowances and expenses, which are set by the Independent Financial
Review Panel and are outside the control of the Commission. Secondly, there are the financial
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assistance to political parties (FAPP) costs, which are voted on by the Assembly. Thirdly, there are
the costs that are required to run Parliament Buildings and service the work of the Assembly, which
are collectively called administration costs. Fourthly, there are the salary costs of the Assembly
secretariat.
The estimate for MLA-associated costs for 2017-18 is £15·78 million. That is just over £1 million less
than the cost for 2016-17, because 2016-17 includes a number of one-off costs, including resettlement
and winding-up payments for Members who were not returned or did not stand for re-election.
The total FAPP cost is £857,000, and we were advised in 2016 to give enhanced funding for
Opposition parties. Those will remain static until such time as they are reviewed by the Assembly.
The Commission's administration costs cover a wide range of costs, including utility costs and
contracted services. There are also costs that are unique to the work of the Assembly, such as
subscription costs for periodicals to assist research, the broadcasting of plenary sittings and
Committee meetings, and travel and accommodation costs for Committees. Administration costs for
2017-18 are forecast to be £55,000 higher — around 1% — than for 2016-17, and that is primarily due
to maintenance costs. Maintenance expenditure in Parliament Buildings has been curtailed over
recent years, but some aspects of maintenance such as windows and floorings require further spend
over and above the normal planned preventative and reactive maintenance. Maintenance costs are,
therefore, expected to be £240,000 higher than in 2016-17.
The Commission has committed to meeting the cost of any pay award for staff and the increased costs
associated with the apprenticeship levy — a total of £180,000. We will meet those from savings in
administration, leaving a net pressure of £55,000.
The largest item included in controllable costs is secretariat staff salaries. I just mentioned that the
additional cost from any pay award and the apprenticeship levy was £180,000, which we will fund.
There are, however, staffing shortages arising from the increasing volume of parliamentary work, and
that will create salary pressures in 2017-18. The most significant of those arises from the increase in
private Members' Bills (PMBs) so far in this mandate. To date, 19 PMBs have been presented, and
requests to support a further 10 PMBs have been received. Other Members have enquired about
support services, although they have not yet lodged an initial proposal. That compares with 25 PMBs
supported during the full five years of the last mandate. In addition, the number of Assembly
questions has increased considerably and is now 50% higher than in the last mandate. On average,
we receive 531 Assembly questions each week compared with 351 in the last mandate. Private
Members' Bills and Assembly questions are a necessary cost of meeting the Commission's statutory
duty to support the work of the Assembly.
Although capital expenditure is not included in the briefing paper, I will touch on it briefly. The
Commission anticipates that it will incur expenditure of £1·65 million in this financial year, which
includes £520,000 on accessibility works and £390,000 on a PC upgrade. Capital projects for 201718 are still being considered, but, so far, projects totalling £890,000 have been identified. They
include projects such as the replacement of the annunciator and telephony services, which are now at
the end of their useful life and require replacement, and upgrades to the internal and external security
systems. The estimated capital expenditure figures for 2017-18 are, therefore, still tentative at this
stage and need to be discussed with supply.
That was really all that I planned to say at this stage. Thank you again for the opportunity to come
along. We are happy to answer any questions that you might have.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): Thank you very much for your presentation. While I accept that 40%
of your budget is out of your control in that sense — in fairness, you have outlined some of this in your
presentation — what measures are you taking to ensure that you are striving to achieve efficiencies
and savings within the other 60%?
Mrs Hogg: We are constantly looking for efficiencies and savings. We have been trying to adopt
electronic processes where possible. We have introduced electronic Committee packs, and we are
looking at e-petitioning. We are always looking for new and innovative ways in which to continue to
provide the services that we require but make savings at the same time.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): I think that you said that 70 staff had left under the voluntary exit
scheme (VES).
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Mrs Hogg: Seventy staff left over the last five years, with 20 staff leaving through voluntary exit.
Sorry, it is 22 staff.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): You then went on to outline the considerable uplift in work around
written questions, private Members' Bills etc. How can you balance that? Giving money to the
Assembly or to politicians is never a popular subject, but democracy requires to be financed to make it
work. If our Committees are to be effective and efficient, we need the support of our Committee staff.
I know examples of Committees that are looking at their work programmes and saying, "Well, we
cannot do as many visits because our resources will not allow us to do that". It would be a huge
mistake if we ended up confining ourselves to this Building. We need to do outreach and go out and
do work. How can you assure us that the Assembly Commission can continue to deliver services to
democracy in that sense?
Mrs Hogg: Obviously, we will endeavour to provide the highest-quality services within our available
budget. We have identified some pressures and would, therefore, seek an increase in next year's
budget to help to support that. If that is not forthcoming, we will have to make some difficult choices
and look at areas that we would have to stop or reduce the level of service provision. It is a difficult
balancing act. One reason why we want the new budgeting process is to provide that additional
scrutiny and so on and have a mechanism whereby we can, I suppose, assess the benefits or
otherwise if we consider that we need additional funding.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): Does that mean that some of the posts that were let go during the
voluntary exit scheme will be filled in future?
Mrs Hogg: They will not necessarily be the same posts. The pressures that we have identified are
particularly around PMBs and Assembly questions and so on. There has been a huge increase in
them since the start of the mandate, to a level that is significantly higher than the work that was
supported during the last mandate. With Opposition and so on, we see more work that Members want
to undertake, so more support is required in those areas. Previously, there would not have been the
same level of questioning or support required, so resources in those areas were less.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): Let me get this right: you are blaming the Opposition? [Laughter.]
Mrs Hogg: No, no.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): I only jest.
Ms Hanna: There's a lot of that going on at the moment.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): I only jest.
Does the Assembly Commission avail itself of shared services from the Civil Service, such as in HR?
Mrs Hogg: I will ask Richard. Before I joined, considerable work was done on shared services, and
Richard is probably in a better position to provide you with an update on that.
Mr Richard Stewart (Northern Ireland Assembly Commission): The answer to your question is
yes; we avail ourselves of some shared services, specifically in the areas of learning and
development. We also use the Central Procurement Directorate and the properties division for
maintenance of the Building. We also avail ourselves of their contracts. The Commission does not
avail itself of the main shared services — IT Assist, HR Connect and Account NI. The work that
Lesley referred to arose after the Stormont House Agreement. We looked at the cost and quality of all
those services, and, in January this year, the Commission decided to retain the services in-house on
the basis of cost and quality. We use some but not the three main ones: IT Assist, HR Connect and
Account NI.
Ms Hanna: Are you confident that they are better value for money in-house, or is it about access and
control?
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Mr Stewart: It was a combination of both. There were financial factors and what you might call quality
of services or access to services. Seven days is one of IT Assist's target times, for example, and the
Commission felt that seven days to install a computer for, say, a new Member was not an acceptable
standard of service.
Ms Hanna: Is there any mechanism to feed that back? In theory, you would usually have seven days'
notice of a new Member coming in to make that request, but I appreciate that it does not always work
exactly like that. Is there a wider mechanism to feed those things back? Obviously, if there are
inadequacies in the service for you, there will be for other users. Ideally, we should resolve those
things rather than making separate arrangements. I appreciate that it is not necessarily your problem.
Mr Stewart: Is it in terms of feeding it back to the shared services provider?
Ms Hanna: Yes.
Mr Stewart: We have not had those discussions with the shared services provider. Given that we are
not a user, it might be inappropriate for us to comment on the quality of service. Certainly, when
services are provided by the shared services centres that we can avail ourselves of, we will readily use
them.
Ms Hanna: Maybe this is something for us to pick up on. I do not know what the mechanism is, but, if
we are getting feedback that the centrally provided services are inadequate for whatever reason, we
need to raise that.
On private Members' Bills, you highlighted the structural changes. Without prejudicing the outcome of
the Procedures Committee report, what do you think is an appropriate level of support for a private
Member's Bill?
Mrs Hogg: Do you mean in terms of additional numbers and so on?
Ms Hanna: Yes.
Mrs Hogg: At this point, we envisage that we would need two and a half additional staff to support
that. Obviously, we need to keep that under review, and we await the outcome of the review. If the
numbers continue to increase over and above even what we have anticipated, we may have to review
that further.
Ms Hanna: Do you anticipate putting a ceiling on the number of private Members' Bills that you will
support?
Mrs Hogg: No. We will implement any recommendations that come out of the review. If there were
additional resource requirements, we would need to see how we could meet them. Obviously, the
Speaker is keen to support Members with their private Members' Bills.
Mr Hilditch: You mentioned some capital works that were not in the presentation. Will you recap on
what you said about those? Is it right that most of those were for accessibility?
Mrs Hogg: Yes. This year, a large amount of our capital work was to do with accessibility works and
PC replacement. We have a rolling programme of works that need to be done. We are assessing the
projects that we would like to do next year and that we think would be feasible to do then. So far, we
have identified about £890,000 of works for next year. This year, we plan to spend £1·6 million. As I
said, we are still identifying the projects that we would like to complete next year.
Mr Hilditch: Is there any opportunity for income generation? From the layperson's point of view, there
are different responsibilities with the estate, the buildings and whatnot, but is there any opportunity for
income generation?
Mrs Hogg: We have an income generation plan that we are working on. That has involved things like
opening up the Members' Dining Room, trying to encourage the use of facilities when they are not
being used by Members and so on.
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Mr Hilditch: How would that generate income for the Commission?
Mrs Hogg: We have paying customers who use the dining facilities, for example. We have also had
functions in the Long Gallery, and there is a cost associated with those. They help us to reduce the
likes of our catering costs and so on. It is a contract in which any income generated effectively offsets
the cost.
Mr Hilditch: It was very busy during the summer up here, was it not?
Mrs Hogg: It was. We have seen a huge increase. There has been a lot of interest, and a lot of that
has been spread by word of mouth. Any feedback that we have had has been extremely positive, and
members of the public are now maybe combining a tour with lunch or afternoon tea and so on. There
are benefits in income generation, but it is about making the whole Building accessible to the public
and removing some of the shroud that maybe exists about what goes on here. Anybody who has
come has been extremely impressed.
Mr Hilditch: Last year, the review panel looked at Members' costs and whatnot. Has there been any
impact on the Commission from that?
Mrs Hogg: There was a significant amount of work for us in implementing the new determination and
providing support to the panel.
Mr Hilditch: It seemed very heavy — for want of a better word — at the time. Some of us almost
moved into the finance office at one stage.
Mrs Hogg: There was a considerable amount of work in implementing the new determination and
working with Members as they understood the implications of that. That was particularly the case over
the summer when we provided quite a lot of support to Members on rent, rates, identifying new
premises, signage and all those areas.
Mr Hilditch: Has that now tailed off a wee bit?
Mrs Hogg: Yes. Thankfully, that particular end is tailing off.
The Chairperson (Mr O'Dowd): Thank you very much.
Mrs Hogg: Thank you.
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