- Official figures show the DoJ budget has grown at a considerably slower rate than the block grant.
- The current core DoJ annual budget is £1,231m, which is around 13% higher than the comparable figure for 2011-12 of £1,091m.
- Over the same period, using comparable figures, the block grant has gone from £9,936m to £15,137 (a rise of 52.35%).
On 8 August during an emergency recall debate about racism and violent protests, Justice Minister Naomi Long claimed:
“As I have said many times, policing and justice have not been this stretched since devolution in 2010. Though the total Northern Ireland block grant has increased by 53% in the past 13 years, the DOJ has seen just under 13% growth in its budget allocation. Policing makes up around 65% of our budget, and so it has endured the same sustained and profound squeeze.”
This is supported by evidence.
The core DoJ budget for this year amounts to £1,231m, whereas the comparable figure for 2011-12 was £1,091m, representing an increase of 12.83% which, as per the claim, is “just under 13% growth”.
The core block grant for this year is £15,137m, while the comparable figure for 2011-12 was £9,936m, indicating growth of 52.35% – which is slightly lower than (but very close to) the Minister’s claim of 53%.
Noting the fact that the Minister’s figure was out by a single percentage point (53% vs the actual figure of 52%), this claim is accurate with consideration.
For more details, including a trawl through some changes in government accounting over the past decade and a half, read on.
- Then and now
FackCheckNI contacted the Justice Minister to ask about these figures.
We received a response including the following table, which outlines the relevant figures:
Figure 1 – source: DoJ (via email)
Based on the figures in this table, what the Justice Minister said is fairly accurate. The block grant has increased by 52.35% since 2011-12 which is almost (but not exactly) the same as the figure quoted by Ms Long (53%), while the justice budget has only risen by 12.83% (the Minister said 13%).
If these numbers are correct, the claim is accurate with consideration. But where do they come from?
- Context
The Department of Justice, as with other Stormont departments, can receive money in multiple ways. The main source of funding comes via the Block Grant. This may be supplemented by in-year monitoring rounds, where individual departments bid for a share of any extra cash.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) receives most of its funding from the department however it is also in receipt of payments from additional security funding stemming from Westminster. In 2022, former then-Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris MP summarised this by saying:
“Obviously, recognising the unique security situation in Northern Ireland, the UK Government make additional contributions to the PSNI’s counter-terrorism work through the additional security funding.”
This fact check focuses primarily on the DoJ’s core grant from the DoJ – in short, its baseline funding. This is because monitoring rounds are unpredictable, one-off allocations and the additional security payments are not directly related to the DoJ’s core budget, albeit they supplement the finances of the PSNI which itself is a major part of the DoJ’s responsibilities.
With all that said, where do the DoJ figures come from?
- Numbers
The DoJ told FactCheckNI that:
- The figures for the department’s 2011-12 budget contained in Figure 1 above “are not published” and “were supplied directly to DoJ by the Department of Finance.”
- The 2024-25 figures, as per the same table, are outlined in annexes to a Written Statement from the current Minister of Finance, Caoimhe Archibald MLA, made in April.
However, there are some wrinkles here. Details of the 2011-12 budget are available online. It was, in fact, part of a multi-year budget for 2011-15 which indicates that the Department for Justice’s financing for 2011-12 was £1,213m, considerably more than the £1,091m in the table above.
The reasons for this discrepancy centre on technical details about how a budget is formulated, and how this has changed over time. According to the DoJ, the 2011-12 figures contain amounts for depreciation and impairment (for an explanation, see here) which is now shown separately as ringfenced Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL).
The Department of Finance provided the DoJ with an updated budget figure for 2011-12 of £1,131m. That year saw £40m in additional security payments so, once this was also taken into account, the comparable budget for that year is calculated as £1,091m, as per Figure 1.
Similar adjustments have been made regarding the figure for the total block grant itself (stated as £10,329.1m in the final budget for 2011-12 but adjusted to £9,936m to allow for comparisons with now).
Regarding point #2, Annex A to the Dr Archibald’s April statement put the 2024-25 DoJ budget at £1,262.5m, compared with the £1,231m in the table – however, when this year’s additional security payments (worth £31.2m, noted in Annex C of the same statement) are removed, the figures match.
Again, when it comes to the full budget figure, there is a small difference between the April statement (£15,168.2m) vs the table in Figure 1 (£15,137) – with the difference explained by the £31.2m in additional security payments from Westminster to the PSNI.
Based on all available evidence, the claim is accurate with consideration.
- Proportional policing
This check focuses on how the Justice budget has changed over time, compared with the total block grant.
However, the Justice Minister also noted that “policing makes up around 65%” of the DoJ budget. This is also backed by figures supplied to FactCheckNI by the department – which also told us that “the PSNI allocation has continued to be approximately 65%” for every year since 2011-12.
As an illustration, the baseline figures for both 2011-12 and 2024-25 were:
Figure 2 – source: DoJ
And, when the 2024 June monitoring round is factored in, the current PSNI budget for this year is shown to be 65% of the DoJ budget:
Figure 3 – source: DoJ
