Five Questions Facing Members When the Assembly Returns

Spending, appointments and trade all sit at the top of the winter list.

The Assembly reconvenes on Monday after its autumn recess with a crowded order paper and a governing arrangement that has never looked more fragile. No party holds more than 24 of the 61 seats, the minority administration relies on a confidence agreement that expires in March, and the two independents from the hill towns have made clear their votes are not to be taken for granted. Here are the questions that will shape the winter session.

Money and appointments

The first question is whether the budget can pass before Christmas. The finance minister, Lorna Pettigrew, wants the spending plan for next year approved before the chamber rises on 19 December. Her draft includes a 3.5 per cent increase for health, a freeze on most departmental running costs and a new capital fund of 40 million for flood defences along the River Ardle. Opposition benches have already signalled they will try to amend the settlement for local councils, which they say falls short of inflation for the third year running. With 31 votes needed for a majority, the government must find at least seven from outside its own ranks.

The second is who will lead the audit office. The post of auditor general has been vacant since the summer, when the previous holder retired early. A cross-party panel shortlisted three candidates in October, but the appointment requires a two-thirds vote of members, and talks about a preferred name broke down before the recess. Without an auditor, at least four reports on major contracts, including the tram depot extension, remain unpublished.

“Every week the post stays empty is a week in which public money goes unchecked. Members need to stop treating this as a bargaining chip and fill it,” said Neville Okonjo, chair of the Assembly’s public accounts committee.

Mr Okonjo, who sits on the opposition benches, said he would table a motion forcing a vote on the shortlist if no agreement is reached by the end of November.

Trade and the uplands

Third comes the port trade deal. The proposed agreement covering freight through Port Selwyn has been under negotiation for two years. Business groups say it would cut paperwork for exporters by a third. Unions at the docks fear it would allow more work to be moved to automated terminals. The trade committee is expected to report in the first week of December, and the vote that follows could be the hardest of the session to call.

Fourth, members must decide how far to meet the hill towns. The two independents representing the upland seats have attached conditions to their support on the budget: guaranteed funding for rural bus routes, faster broadband in villages above the valley and a review of how hill-town seats are drawn. The last demand overlaps with a petition for a dedicated upland seat that passed ten thousand signatures this month. Ministers have so far offered warm words but little detail.

The deal holding it together

The fifth question is whether the confidence agreement survives. Behind all of these sits the arrangement that keeps the government in office. Signed eighteen months ago, it commits the smaller of the two supporting parties to back the administration on budgets and confidence votes until March, in exchange for progress on housing and transport. Senior figures in that party have begun to say publicly that progress has been too slow. If the budget is delayed into the new year, the renewal talks will begin under far worse conditions.

Agnieszka Brennan, a lecturer in politics at the University of Calder, said the winter session would test whether the current model of minority government could survive a full term. “The numbers have always been tight,” she said. “What has changed is that every group now has a reason to make its support visible and conditional. That makes for a lot of brinkmanship.”

The first set-piece moment comes on Wednesday, when the finance minister opens the budget debate. Members will then have three weeks to settle the questions above, or carry them over into a new year that already promises its own list.