Speeches by Benn.

“It is how I get up in the morning.”

“We have touched on some of those already this morning.”

“Thank you very much for inviting us to come in and talk about this. I have had a number of discussions with the Finance Minister in April and May. I talked to the party leaders on 11 June about the Budget. We convened all-party talks, as I think the Committee is aware—indeed, one of your members was present there—on 2 …”

“The Budget is clearly not being managed properly and effectively because of the persistent overspends that the Fiscal Council has drawn attention to and that we can see for ourselves. There are reasons for some of those pressures. Let us take the size of the public sector. When a pay increase is made in England, that i…”

“Why not?”

“I put the question back, and it is a very fair question to ask. Why would the Executive not be willing to collectively step up to their responsibilities? Why?”

“I know you would not invite me to just echo the quote of the Treasury. The Treasury’s position is very clear. The Government’s position is very clear. It is set out in the words that you read out.”

“Good morning.”

“Since you refer to the PSNI, we do that through the additional security fund, and we increased that when we came in as the Government. I think that it had been flat for about 10 years and we increased it. The last time I was before the Select Committee, I think it was you, Mr Robinson, who asked me about the security g…”

“Thank you for the question, because you have given me the chance to say that being in compulsory coalition with parties with whom you are in really quite fundamental disagreement is really hard. It is really hard. If we were to contemplate for a moment a compulsory coalition where we were all told, “For the good of the…”

“I really hope that that is not going to prove the case, because, I repeat, it is the responsibility of the Executive to set a Budget. It is. They can set a budget, as they did last year, and then end up overspending, which resulted in them coming to us and asking, “Can you help us out?” Eventually, the Government agree…”

“The parties will have to speak for themselves. It is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive to produce a Budget. That is part of their job. The Finance Minister published a draft three-year Budget at the start of the year. One thing the Government have done to try to help was to agree a spending review ov…”

“I know, but I wanted to make sure that I heard the question too.”

“Could you just say the last bit again?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“The open book process was an attempt to do it. It was done in a limited period of time. It provided some valuable and useful information. Different people have different views about it. There is no reason why the Executive should not have done their own open book process before. There is no reason why the Executive sho…”

“There is buy-in to the process that we initiated through convening the all-party talks. There was clearly buy-in to that. Whether there is buy-in to setting a Budget is a question you would have to ask the Northern Ireland Executive.”

“I want to come back to the political parties, when the process that we agreed in the talks at Hillsborough Castle have been concluded, with the answer to the question of the nature of the potential overspend. I am very reluctant to set a timetable, because, the next time I appear before you, you will tell me that I fai…”

“It was exceptional last year, but there is a longer pattern. I will grant you that, of course.”

“We, mercifully, did not face that because we took the decision that we did.”