I know how strongly the right hon. Gentleman feels about that point, which he has raised on several occasions. He will know that we consulted on the process with all five main parties in Northern Ireland, with the Opposition and with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to allow some prior scrutiny of the figures. All parties had full sight of the figures that we published in last week’s written ministerial statement. He is absolutely right that normal scrutiny procedures are not in place—they will be in place only with the restoration of devolution—but I caution him against trying to create artificial scrutiny processes that might well set a precedent for the future across all the devolved nations. The right scrutiny processes are available to respect the constitutional arrangements across the whole United Kingdom and all the devolved Administrations.
Civil servants are taking decisions—not major policy decisions, but the decisions that the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 enables them to make and that we want them to be able to make. We have to be very careful about the civil service’s separation and independence from scrutiny by political masters. It is the political decisions that need scrutiny, not the decisions of civil servants. We would like to see Departments given full scrutiny in Stormont, as happens in this House, but we have to be very careful about the constitutional arrangements.
That brings me back to my point that the Bill would ordinarily have been taken through the Assembly. Clause 7 therefore includes a series of adaptations that ensure that, once approved by both Houses in Westminster, the Bill will be treated as though it were an Assembly budget Act. That will enable Northern Ireland public finances to continue to function, notwithstanding the absence of an Executive.
Alongside the Bill, I have laid before the House, as a Command Paper, a set of supplementary estimates for the Departments and bodies covered by the budget Bill. Those estimates, which have been prepared by the Northern Ireland Department of Finance, set out the breakdown of resource allocation in greater detail.