THE Budget sitting of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly has been delayed as MLAs “were not collectively satisfied with the final outcome as presented.”

The annual session of the Assembly, where MLAs announce the budget for the forthcoming financial year, was due to take place on June 3. A press statement released by Gilbert House on May 16 announced that the formal announcement is “anticipated” to take place in  early July instead.

Speaking to Penguin News about this unprecedented move MLA Roger Spink explained, “it was decided that there were several choices to be made. There wasn’t unanimity on those choices. And it’s understandable that people want some more time to go back to make those decisions.”

Going into detail about the backdrop this budget is set against MLA Spink spoke about lower taxation revenues due to the cancellation of the second loligo season in 2024 and investments in vessels. On the expenditure side, he cited a large capital programme, against which they have just secured loans to fund projects including the port and power station, and operationally, “we’ve seen expenditure rises year on year within government that are unsustainable if we wish to stay within our spending envelope that we’ve got at the moment.”

MLA Spink explained that the final meeting before the draft budget was submitted to Executive Council (ExCo) saw the paper “go forward with a bit of a split decision.”

The draft budget went to ExCo on May 8 where another  split vote meant the paper was referred back to Budget Select Committee. MLAs Roberts and Pollard voted against the paper, with MLA Ford voting for.

As well as government departments, there are a number of subvention groups that await the budget announcement to learn what their budgets will be for the upcoming year. On an individual level any changes made to pay, pensions and personal allowance are amongst items revealed during the budget session.

 MLA Spink said that “it’ll be business as normal” with payments being made as usual, but groups wouldn’t know the total amount of funds they would have for the upcoming year, which MLA Spink described as “regrettable.” After the budget announcement has taken place, where necessary, payments will be backdated.

MLA Spink did not go into detail about the areas within the budget that had seen contention arise, “I think that would be wrong, because those are released as usual when we finally release the budget, but there are difficult decisions about capital programme, the revenues that we raise and how we raise those and government spending…

“They’re not decisions that I think any one of the eight people fully agree with everything because they are difficult decisions to make, but they’re probably necessary decisions to make and we have to make some choices if we wish to balance our budget.”

When asked whether it was hoped that agreement would be found within the extra month, MLA Spink said “delay is regrettable” and that he hoped it would provide enough time. The number of meetings required to come to a decision “probably depends on how long it takes everybody to make their minds up.  I’m probably one of the people who would make their mind up fairly rapidly… it’s a matter of how quickly my colleagues will make their minds up as well.”

When asked whether he was happy with the budget or if there were also areas of concern personally, MLA Spink explained, “from my point of view we had reached the stage that I was fairly satisfied with. I wasn’t particularly happy because difficult budgets have difficult decisions in them, but at the same time I think we’d spread some of the issues that we face across the board.

“I was reasonably happy but I’m open to listen to what other choices other people think might be better than the ones that we had in the final paper.”

This is the first time the budget sitting of the Assembly has been delayed in this way. When asked whether this was the right step to take MLA Spink responded, “if there’s not unanimity and it’s going to be voted down in the Assembly, it’s better to try and thrash out that in a budget process.”

During the first budget select committee meeting of this budget process MLA Ford spoke about austerity.  PN asked MLA Spink whether using terms like this, and the description of the budget as “difficult” was being pragmatic or fear mongering. MLA Spink responded “I think austerity is fear mongering. I don’t think there’s any intention to have an austerity period, we just need to be more careful in the way in which we operate and we can’t spend money like we have in the past. I don’t think that’s austerity, that’s just being cautious”