Ministerial Familiarity with Legislation

These recommendations can be accepted in full, with the exception of the consideration of an independent mechanism to assess special advisers’ compliance with the Code of Conduct.

They have been addressed through work to date, including:
• revisions to the Ministerial Code of Conduct, Code of Conduct for Special Advisers and NICS Code of Ethics, and the introduction of new Guidance for Ministers;
• the publication of new enforcement arrangements for ministerial standards of behaviour;
• agreement on the development of a multi-year outcomes-focussed Programme for Government, aligned with the Budget, including stakeholder engagement and consultation;
• departmental induction and briefing for Ministers on the return of the Executive, and Executive away-days;
• the strengthening of Private Offices including the higher grading of the Private Secretary and Assistant Private Secretary roles;
• identification of the team where matters of policy in respect of Special Advisers are to be dealt with.

Further work is required to:
• deliver induction programmes for Ministers and for special advisers;
• arrange for publication of relevant interests of civil servants.

Ministers commit to read and be sufficiently familiar with legislation that they bring to the Assembly.

Ministers agree that this commitment should be demonstrated through their participation in the Assembly legislative scrutiny processes rather than an administrative procedure.

The inquiry recommended that Ministers should read the legislation that they bring to the Assembly and that the evidence should be made available. It is incumbent upon Ministers to familiarise themselves with the legislation that they are presenting to the Assembly for approval. The relevant evidence is published at consultation and scrutinised in the Assembly. The question is not whether the Executive intend to implement that recommendation; it is about whether we can ever put in a dedicated audit process to demonstrate that a Minister knows the legislation or the policy that they are introducing. That is part of the scrutiny function of the Assembly.

I will go through that, and David will come in on the technical aspect. In drafting any legislation or policy, consultation, development, evidence and rigour is provided. That is led by the Minister. It is then brought to the Executive, and, again, information will challenged and there will be a scrutiny process. We could not identify through what mechanism you could prove that someone had actually read it. We worked with the Northern Ireland Audit Office, and it could not provide an inference to say how we could satisfy that beyond the broad areas.

Our current assessment remains that the recommendation is not currently likely to be fully implemented based on the planned action.

It is not the role of NIAO to specify how the recommendation should be addressed, however, we are currently unable to confirm that this recommendation is likely to be implemented in the absence of a specific action or change that addresses the original issue.

DoF has told us that it is unsure what arrangements could be put in place to adequately evidence that the Inquiry’s recommendation has been addressed in full going forward.

Additionally, the NI Assembly response to Recommendation 38, that consideration is given to improved Assembly scrutiny, also has a bearing on this assessment, in that the Assembly is to improve its scrutiny function – an element of this is likely to include greater scrutiny on Ministers and the evidence base for policy/legislation being brought forward.