Investment Strategy a Triumph of Form over Substance
09 October 2012
Below is the speech delivered by Jim Allister in yesterday’s debate on the Investment Strategy:
Judged by its cover and glossy presentation, this is an impressive document. However, like most things associated with this Executive, when you begin to read it, you discover that it really is a triumph of form over substance and, indeed, laid throughout with contradictions.
My first point is this: where has it been? When I pick up the OFMDFM business plan for 2011-12, and, if I am meant to take that document seriously and read it, I discover the promise to:
"By June 2011 submit a final Investment Strategy 2011-2021 for Ministerial approval"
Here we are, 16 months later. Has it been becalmed for all that time in the Executive? Was it submitted in June 2011? Has it been the object of some dysfunctional disagreement? Or was that promise not kept? Did it not get to the Executive by June 2011? Either way, it has taken a very long time to get to the House. Here we are, more than a third of the way through the first term of the period 2011 to 2015 before this shiny, glossy document lands on our desks. In itself, it is a demonstration of the failure and dysfunctional operation of this Executive that it has taken so long to get to this point.
I turn to page 6 of the document and read some very good-sounding, sensible affirmations:
"When it is appropriate, we will seek to bring forward investment in those public works that are more labour-intensive at the expense of schemes that would deliver a lower employment impact. Research has demonstrated that areas like facilities and roads maintenance, refurbishment, upgrades and extensions typically support twice as many jobs as similar value works that require the purchase of land and specialist materials. The Executive is determined to maximise the impact on jobs of every pound invested in order to speed up economic recovery."
I then turn over a few pages and discover that one of the projects that it lauds is the A5 project, which, of course, does not meet the criteria for a dual carriageway judged by the standards applied to others and does not have the required traffic volumes but is there because it is, essentially, a political demand. The Minister of Finance and Personnel, who might be thought to know something about these things, once said in the House about the A5 project:
"Believe me, that project is not job rich, because most of the money will go on buying land, and the rest will go on a capital intensive project." — [Official Report, Bound Volume 62, p382, col 2].
So much for making sure that every pound buys the most jobs, especially as one of the capital projects that is now highlighted in this document is something that the Minister of Finance said is not a job-rich project at all.
If we turn further into this document, we find at page 21 that it states that the focus now is:
"on moving people rather than moving vehicles".
That has been working. That has been a rip-roaring success in Belfast city centre in the past few weeks. Moving people rather than vehicles? We take half the road, prohibit vehicles other than buses and some taxis from travelling on it and say that we are in the business of moving people, not vehicles, while people sit in their vehicles for hours on end. Someone must have forgotten to tell those involved in the A5 road scheme that the focus is now not on moving vehicles but on moving people.
This is a document that I think, in itself, is flawed in much of what it has to say. It then tells us that one of the capital projects — this is about capital investment — is the moving of the DARD headquarters. I must say that the moving of the DARD headquarters will not create one new Civil Service job — not one new job in the public sector. So, it is hardly an example of jobs for pounds. It is another illustration of a strategy, if we can call it that, that does not really seem to have much idea where it is going.
Then I turn to page 44 and begin to read about things pertaining to our prison estate. I read about the enthusiasm for this consultation exercise on the outline estate strategy, with proposals for the development of the prison estate over the next 10 years. Not a mention of the fact that, just three or four short years ago, a programme was produced to rebuild Magilligan.
Four million pounds was spent on bringing that proposition to the point of detailed plans.
Not a mention of the fact that, in concert with that, we are spending £5 million just opposite the prison to build a new sewerage works to accommodate an 800-bed prison, as well as the local community. So, one has to ask in which direction this strategy is going. Alternatively, is it just going in whatever direction suits the expediency of the moment?
