Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the Barnett Consequential for Northern Ireland will be as a result of the 6.5% pay increase for teachers in England.

The Government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s pay recommendations for the 2023/24 teacher pay award in England in full. We are reprioritising from within the Department for Education’s existing budget to deliver the additional funding to schools in England for the costs of the pay award over 3.5%.

The Northern Ireland Executive (NIE) receives funding through the Barnett formula when UK Government departmental DEL budgets change. As there is no change to the Department for Education’s DEL budget associated with this announcement, there are no associated Barnett consequentials. Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland would already have resulted from the Department for Education’s initial budget settlement at Spending Review 2021 (SR21).

The devolved administrations are well funded to deliver all their devolved responsibilities. SR21 set the largest annual block grants for the devolved administrations, in real terms, of any spending review settlement since the Devolution Acts. This provided on average £15 billion per year for the NIE. The NIE continues to receive at least 20% more funding per head than the UK Government spends on the same things in the rest of the UK.

A full breakdown of changes to devolved administrations’ block grants, including Barnett consequentials, is set out in the published Block Grant Transparency document.