Cut expenses so Northern Irish politicians feel consequences of powersharing’s collapse, says ex-minister Stormont’s generous office expenses should be stopped because it is unfair that Northern Ireland’s “political class” is not sharing in […]

Stormont’s generous office expenses should be stopped because it is unfair that Northern Ireland’s “political class” is not sharing in the pain as a result of the collapse of devolution, a former secretary of state has said.

The absence of a devolved administration has meant no approved budget for public services, leading to uncertainty over funding and some individuals who rely on short-term government funding have already lost their jobs.

But, although it is now 10 months since Stormont collapsed, each MLA has continued to be paid their full £49,500 salary – despite spending just 46 minutes in the Assembly chamber in that time.

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On top of that, each of the 90 MLAs can claim £50,000 a year to employ staff, up to about £17,000 a year to run their constituency offices and up to £600 a year for mobile phone bills and up to £7.450 for travel and subsistence, depending on the location of the MLA’s constituency.

Consequences

Political parties also pay some of their key staff through another Stormont funding stream which costs almost a quarter of a million pounds a year.

As i revealed two weeks ago, the total bill to taxpayers for MLAs, their staff and party funding streams is now more than £10 million since the collapse of Stormont.

Today former Labour secretary of state Peter Hain told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster programme that “the consequences of this should not just be felt by the people of Northern Ireland – who are helpless watching all of this – but by the political class”.

Lord Hain went on: “If I were in the Secretary of State’s shoes…I think there should be consequences for the political class if they continue not to do their jobs.

“At a minimum, I think the expenses and the salaries of their staff should should be withdrawn; they should be given notice under proper employment law procedures, something that I did in 2006 to bring matters to a head and I know for a fact that that had a big impact for example on the DUP labour group at Stormont .

“I think that funding the political parties get at Stormont , which is considerable – millions of pounds are spent on the political class…I’m not in favour at this stage of withdrawing salaries, though we could look at reducing them [but] they’re the only group of workers in Northern Ireland who don’t have to go to work to draw their salaries and the same goes for their staff.

“This cannot go on because what you risk is not just destroying or undermining severely the Good Friday Agreement process…but you get such an alienation of the people from the political class that actually if they ever did decide that they should start doing their jobs properly and govern together there would be deep, deep disenchantment; turnout at elections would fall and you would get into a populist disillusionment with the whole lot of them.”

Money ‘has helped in the past’

Appearing on the same programme , Conservative MP Theresa Villiers – who until last summer was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland – was asked about speculation that the DUP and Sinn Fein are now asking the Government for more money for the Stormont budget before they go back into power-sharing.

When asked if money could be the answer to the standoff, she said: “It often has helped in the past to bring the parties together…I’m sure the UK Government will do its very best to try to facilitate and respond positively to the request that have been made if they can.”