To ask the Minister of Justice to outline the budgetary pressures facing her Department in 2025-2026.

Mrs Long

My Department's additional allocation from the Executive in draft Budget 2025-26 is £134 million, compared with our stabilisation pressures, initially reported, of £207 million. His Majesty's Treasury has earmarked £38 million of additional security funding for the PSNI. That funding, combined with a reported £5 million reduction in pressures, leaves my Department facing over £30 million of stabilisation pressures. That excludes an estimated £15 million pressure as a result of the Chancellor's changes to the rules on employer National Insurance contributions. My Department also submitted capital bids of £146 million and received an allocation of £100 million. Whilst the allocations in 2025-26 are welcome, difficult decisions on the prioritisation of service provision will continue to be required to manage the remaining pressures. That will continue to present challenges for legal aid payment times, the ability to grow police numbers and delivery against the draft Programme for Government.

Mrs Long

One of the Executive's priorities, under the New Decade, New Approach agreement, was to increase police numbers to 7,500. That is the same figure that was recommended by the Patten report 20 years ago. However, police officer numbers are at a record low. Without additional funding, it will not be possible for the PSNI to recover and grow as we would wish it to. In order for the PSNI to have adequate funding to stabilise and recover numbers to a sustainable position, I have repeatedly raised the need for a better financial settlement for my Department with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as well as with the Finance Minister and other Executive colleagues. I pay tribute to the Finance Minister, who, in recent allocations, showed that she had listened to that argument. My officials are considering a business case from the PSNI on stabilisation and recruitment, and we continue to work closely with PSNI colleagues to help support them to prepare a robust business case for onward submission to the Department of Finance.

When the work has been completed, I will make the case to the Executive for additional funding for that purpose. For the affordability requirements to be met, however, we will need to deal with the additional £30 million pressure in the Department. Otherwise, the affordability component of any business case will not be met. It is therefore important that the Department continue to work to reduce that pressure insofar as we can and that the PSNI and our other arm's-length bodies seek to do likewise.

Mr Durkan

I ask the Minister whether it remains the case that the Executive are not in line to get one-off Treasury funding of up to £240 million for the unforeseen and unavoidable costs arising from the PSNI data leak? Does that, along with the pressures that the Minister has outlined, mean that the PSNI's ambition — indeed, it is all our ambition to see this happen — to recruit up to 500 PSNI officers in the next financial year is now extremely challenging, if not impossible?

Mrs Long

I agree that it is extremely challenging, but I disagree that it is impossible. I do not believe that it is impossible. Rather, I believe that it is possible and that, if we work together, we can achieve it. The first and most important part of doing that is for us to get the business case together. That business case will need to be robust. Remember that there are costs associated with having too few police officers as well as with recruiting more. We need to consider what those costs will be. That will form part of the business case. It is important to recognise, as the Member has done, that, in addition to the immediate pressures that it faces, my Department faces exceptional pressures of £227 million from McCloud injury to feelings legal claims, from the data breach and for holiday pay. Those costs are not affordable within my Department's budget under any circumstance. The Finance Minister would conclude that they are also not affordable within the Executive's Budget under any circumstance. I therefore continue to support the Finance Minister's efforts to secure a reserve claim from HM Treasury to fund those particular costs, which are outwith the normal workings of policing. Finally, on the question of whether investment in police services here keeps pace with that elsewhere in GB and on these islands, none of the money is hypothecated when it arrives with us, with the exception of security funding, which is sent directly from Treasury to the PSNI. As does every other Department, we have to bid through the local devolved processes to obtain the resources that we need to run our Police Service, our Prison Service and all the other elements of justice that we have to cover within the budget. To date, we have managed to do that reasonably successfully. I again thank the Finance Minister for her work on that, because it is an uphill struggle.

Dr Aiken

I wish the Minister a happy new year. Minister, the cost of the separated prison regime is significant. Has your Department been able to annualise the costs and look at their impact? Will you report those costs, please?

Mrs Long

My understanding from the last time that I looked is that the cost of the separated regime is somewhere between £2·5 million and £4 million per annum. That is a relatively small amount in the context of my overall budget, but, as the Member said, it is nevertheless significant. As I said in response to the Member's colleague's question, we raise the matter routinely with the NIO, which is ultimately responsible for whether people are committed into the separated regime. We need to look carefully at the fact that, whether they are in the separated or normal regime, prisoners have to be accommodated and that there will be costs pertaining to their security and other issues. We should therefore not lose sight of the fact that there will be a cost to people being imprisoned, irrespective of how they are housed. An additional cost, however, results from separation, and I raise that matter with the NIO periodically.