Stormont’s government programme is just another serving of the same thin paste we have been served for decades

Having a programme of government is better than no programme of government, but otherwise the production of this “plan for the future” is not cause for celebration. In the strange world of politics in the north, many have lined up to congratulate the Stormont government on agreeing nine priorities and producing an 88-page document.

Criticism and highlighting of glaring shortcomings were rejected as deeply unhelpful and unnecessarily negative. Pessimists and malcontents should not be allowed to spoil the fun. Only Panglossian views are allowed.

The First and Deputy First Ministers praised the plan as a milestone, a remarkable achievement. The Deputy First Minister noted: “We want to build on the fact that we are world leaders in key sectors such as cyber, fintech and health and life sciences.” She added that “we make no apology for being ambitious.”

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Apparently the nine priorities were agreed upon after “complex negotiations”, but even with the best of intentions it is hard to understand why or how it took seven months to agree on this list.

According to Emma Little-Pengelly, they focused on what they could agree on, as if our executive should be praised for finding common ground. You would imagine that long-standing issues like health and the economy would have been exhaustively debated and debated during the two years the executive was suspended. Many of these “priorities” are in fact actions that should be considered through a much broader policy lens.

In Scotland, by contrast, John Swinney presented his first programme of government in September, setting out just four priorities: ending child poverty; building prosperity; improving public services; and protecting the planet. Significantly, it is accompanied by a supporting programme of legislation.

Let’s strip away the rhetoric and platitudes, and our draft government program will be business as usual. It is not a practical plan for dealing with the deep evils of the public sector. It reads like a wish list or a party manifesto.

In many ways it raises more questions than answers. Where is the content, the valued strategies, the movement away from old ideas towards new? They tell us that eight weeks of consulting will put more flesh on the bones, but honestly, that is ridiculous.

Given the woeful state of our health and social care system, it is hard to imagine that this would not be high on the list of priorities. Oddly enough, instead of transforming the system, the priority was to ‘reduce waiting lists for health care’. Waiting lists are a symptom of systemic failure, not the problem itself. They are not a backlog to be cleared, but an illustration of the pressures within the system.

There is no discussion of the scale of the task, nor the fact that our waiting lists are by far the longest in the UK; there is no sense of ownership of this tragic situation, no recognition of the impact of previous neglect. It is time for the Government to take responsibility for the fact that without decisive action, patients are being denied timely access to life-saving treatment.

In terms of waiting lists, one would expect the focus to be on four areas for operational implementation: increasing healthcare capacity, prioritising diagnosis and treatment, transforming the delivery of planned care, and better informing and supporting patients.

No sense of urgency, no focus on solving problems, no empathy for citizens who are suffering in the most unbearable way. People don’t need more senseless platitudes and gibberish about being a world leader when they don’t have access to basic services

We were able to receive detailed information on plans to provide more people with access to private sector treatment, targeting those with the longest waiting times, the development of community diagnostic centres, surgical centres, and a timetable for the reintroduction of the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive – an ambitious, detailed plan setting out key objectives, milestones and targets.

Setting targets for the overall number of people on the waiting list can be complicated because it is difficult to predict, but it is possible to set metrics for treatment, productivity and new ways of delivering services.

Instead, this “ambitious” document states that waiting lists are out of control. It even helpfully provides a graph to illustrate how serious the situation is. It then states that unfortunately we do not have the money to address this life-or-death issue. That’s all. That’s the best it can be.

Funding is not the be-all and end-all. It is hard to see any path to significant reductions in waiting lists that do not include significant increases in healthcare productivity. This needs to be acknowledged and addressed.

Does anyone believe that more funding will translate into tangible change, despite the new UK Government’s promise to increase investment in the devolved regions?

In short, it’s a familiar story; warm, sweet words and thin platitudes about making the North globally competitive. More of the uninspiring, thin gruel we’ve been served for decades. There’s no sense of urgency, no focus on solving problems, no empathy for citizens who are suffering in the most unbearable ways. People don’t need a salad dressing of a bunch of meaningless drivel about being a world leader when they don’t have access to basic services.

If civil society, academia, the community and the voluntary sector are to fulfil their role as critical friends and effectively hold this government to account, we need a much more comprehensive and detailed plan that clearly and transparently sets out the rights-based targets to be achieved in key policy areas. Change is hard, requires hard choices, the cost of evasion is immeasurable.

We need a government that will take responsibility, a government that will be held accountable and a government that will deliver.