NORTHERN IRELAND
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley (pictured) says she does not want to oversee spending by the Province’s Public Servants in the absence of a functioning Executive at Stormont.
Her shock move is seen as doubling down on previous statements that she would not impose direct rule from Westminster even though it has been more than two years since there was any Ministerial oversight on spending decisions, which have now amounted to billions of pounds.
Privately, some senior members of the Northern Ireland Public Service are deeply uncomfortable about the situation in which they have been placed by Mrs Bradley’s decision not to implement direct rule, saying they are now quasi-political figures.
The Secretary of State was pressed about the issue while being questioned by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in the House of Commons.
Mrs Bradley said that in giving officials the power to take some Ministerial decisions, she had deliberately crafted legislation to ensure that PS staff could take decisions that do “not put them in the uncomfortable position of being scrutinised by politicians”.
“It would be absolutely wrong for officials in … any part of our Civil Service in the UK to find their decisions being scrutinised by politicians,” Mrs Bradley said.
“That is not the way our system works, and it undermines our system.”
She said there would be “constitutional difficulty” if PS staff were at some future point asked to work under the direction and control of a democratically elected Minister and they “had previously had those decisions scrutinised by those same politicians”.
However, Mrs Bradley said that she would not seek to increase the powers of the Northern Ireland Public Service beyond the additional powers she had already given it.
“I think we have gone as far as we can without upsetting the Constitution fundamentally,” she said.
London, 30 March 2019
