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OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) Committee for The Executive Office OFFICIAL REPORT (Hansard) Briefing by Executive Office Ministers 8 June 2016 NORTHERN IRELAND ASSEMBLY Committee for The Executive Office Briefing by Executive Office Ministers 8 June 2016 Members present for all or part of the proceedings: Mr Mike Nesbitt (Chairperson) Mr Danny Kennedy (Deputy Chairperson) Mr Cathal Boylan Mrs Pam Cameron Mr William Irwin Mr Phillip Logan Mr Seán Lynch Mr Richie McPhillips Mr Ian Milne Mr Christopher Stalford Witnesses: Mr McGuinness Deputy First Minister Mrs Foster First Minister Ms Fearon Junior Minister Mr Ross Junior Minister The Chairperson (Mr Nesbitt): We have with us whatever the collective noun for the full panoply of Ministers from the Executive Office (TEO) is. We welcome Arlene Foster, Martin McGuinness, Alastair Ross and Megan Fearon. Megan, of course, was a long-standing member of the legacy Committee. Ministers, we take your presence here as a positive sign of your willingness to engage with us and thank you for that. I hope that during the session we will prove our willingness to engage critically and constructively with your Department over the mandate. Mrs Foster, I hand over to you for your opening remarks. Mrs Foster (The First Minister): Thank you very much. We welcome the opportunity to come along with the full team, as you rightly say, on this early occasion. I look forward to a positive and ongoing relationship with you, Chair, and the Committee. I will make a few brief general remarks about the new mandate and the landscape shaped by the decision of the people on 5 May. I indicated during the election campaign that I was seeking a mandate based on my five-point plan to get things done for the people of Northern Ireland. I have been given a mandate to do that, along with the deputy First Minister, and we are determined to govern in a way that delivers for all our people. The new Executive, comprising my party, the deputy First Minister's party and the new Minister of Justice, Claire Sugden, will seek to build on the progress of the last years. For my part, I welcome the fact that only those who are enthusiastic about being in government have taken their place. I believe that it is the right approach, given the will of the people as expressed on 5 May, and that it will 1 strengthen the democratic process. I look forward to working with opposition parties when it is in the collective interest of the people. As Ministers, we want to drive an Executive agenda that is reform-driven and people-centred. You will all be aware that the previous Programme for Government tended to focus on commitments that were typically expressed in terms of inputs and outputs: amounts of money to be invested or numbers of projects to be run. That approach, however, constrained the focus on assessing actual need and impact or whether the actions of government were making any real difference, and we intend that the new Programme for Government will be different. We also intend that it will have a relevance stretching beyond this Assembly mandate. The intended outcomes-based Programme for Government is designed to be, as the name suggests, focused on outcomes, not on activities or, indeed, processes. "Outcomes-focused" is synonymous with "citizen-focused" and "evidence-based". It will require a collective approach that draws in all the contributions from within government and beyond to have the impact that we want. We believe that this approach makes a real statement of shared purpose at a political, administrative and societal level as well. Outcomes express societal impacts and situations of well-being, enabling us to target the things that make a real difference to our quality of life and to identify the route that we should take to get there. They point us towards actions that will reduce poverty, address inequality, boost the economy and enliven our culture. A key feature of the Programme for Government will be its dependence on collaborative working across the public, voluntary and private sectors. It is a programme in which individuals and communities can and, we hope, will play an active part. We will work collectively to deliver the programme and drive work across departmental and sectoral boundaries. I was, Chair, rather amused to read the comment that, by talking a lot about silos, Arlene Foster gives away her Fermanagh background; in any event, it is long past the time that we should work outside our departmental silos and across sectoral boundaries. Individual Ministers will, of course, play their part by overseeing their Department's contribution and ensuring that it is part of a joined-up effort in which the focus is very much on outcome and not simply on what their Department is doing. We have identified 14 strategic outcomes in the framework. They impact on every aspect of government and are designed to bring about the societal well-being that we want to see. We touched on this on Monday during the debate in the Assembly. We very much hope that those 14 strategic outcomes will lead us on to the 42 indicators, which are clear statements for change. The measures accompanying each indicator will show how we are performing and where, if required, we need to take corrective actions. Departments are working to identify key stakeholders and partners. Even as we consult on the framework, we are putting together draft action plans that will detail the programmes, projects, actions and any legislative proposals needed to progress the achievement of the outcomes. The full Programme for Government that will include the detailed actions will be put to the Executive for agreement after a further public consultation and finally debated by the Assembly before the end of 2016. We know that we will have challenges along the way, not least in coordinating the Programme for Government with the Budget process and the need to be conjoined with a refreshed economic strategy, a new investment strategy and a social policy that will clearly set out how we deal with poverty. For the new approach to be successful, it will require much greater focus on corporateness, on the whole government working and on a whole-system approach, taking into account the contribution that other sectors such as local government, the private sector and the third sector will make. That is it on the Programme for Government. As regards the rest of the Executive Office, we are, of course, committed to a number of other work areas: Delivering Social Change, with which the legacy Committee was very familiar, as, I am sure, this Committee soon will be; the social investment fund; the historical institutional abuse (HIA) inquiry, which is on target to report in January 2017, having recently commenced its final module; the whole area of victims and survivors and the difficult issues associated with dealing with the past is very much one of our priority areas as well; and the full implementation of Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC) through the provision of £60 million over the next five years as outlined in the Fresh Start Agreement. We look forward to working with the Assembly. As you rightly said just before I started my remarks, we published yesterday the report by the three-person panel that we appointed last December to bring forward recommendations for a strategy to disband paramilitary groups. The appointment of the panel was one of a series of commitments that we made in Fresh Start to end paramilitarism and tackle organised crime, which has been a scourge on our society for far too long. We very much welcome 2 the comprehensive report. We are most grateful to Lord Alderdice, Professor McWilliams and John McBurney for, first, taking on the very difficult and challenging role and, secondly, for delivering such a wide-ranging suite of recommendations within the agreed time frame. As we said at the time of Fresh Start, no plan or framework is self-implementing, and it will not be delivered without strong leadership. It will now be for the Executive to take it forward. Again, it is our intention, in line with the commitments that we made last November, to publish an action plan aimed at ending paramilitarism by the end of June. That, of course, will include the panel's recommendations. With your permission, I will now hand over to the deputy First Minister. Mr McGuinness (The deputy First Minister): Thank you, Arlene. I thank the Committee and you, Chair, for this opportunity. As the First Minister said, the approach and style of the next Programme for Government will be different. Whilst much of the work started previously — that will continue — the difference this time is that we will have a much clearer idea of what we want to achieve, described in terms that are meaningful to people rather than to those in this Administration. Through intelligent use of the framework, we will be in a much better position to tell what is working and what is not. By adopting an outcomes-based approach to the Programme for Government, the Executive have made some significant statements of intent and ambition. It sets the bar at a high level and commits to taking on the most difficult challenges facing our society. When evidence demonstrates that efforts are not making a difference, we will be quick to alter course and redirect resources to more meaningful effect. The draft Programme for Government framework recently agreed by the Executive and the Assembly is just the beginning; it is, as the name suggests, a structure for carrying more detailed programmes, strategies, actions and plans.
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