Budget rubber-stamped by MPs
This year’s Budget was finally rubber-stamped by MPs on Friday after more than 50 hours of debate over the past two weeks.
The passing of the Appropriation Act 2024, which was read by David Burt, signalled the end of the marathon series of parliamentary sessions, during which MPs from both sides discussed how government funding will be distributed in the next fiscal year.
The Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the Year 2024-25 was passed unanimously — prompting the Progressive Labour Party to claim that the Budget was fully endorsed by the opposition One Bermuda Alliance.
In a statement, the PLP said that the party was “grateful for the outpouring of support” that the Budget had received from the business sector, the community — and the OBA.
It said: “All OBA MPs present voted in favour of the PLP Government’s Budget — agreeing that the economy’s finances are being managed well.
“As the PLP pushes forward with freezing health insurance rates, creating more affordable housing, putting more money in workers' pockets and restoring our roads, the OBA will drop the political theatrics and continue to support the work of this government.”
In one final Budget-related item on Friday’s order paper, the Government ratified its Supplementary Estimates for the past financial year — overspends paid out to cover unforeseen costs — that came to a total of $32.92 million.
They included a bill of $4.4 million — shared between the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Finance — to pay for “external vendors” drafted in to restore the Government’s IT systems and tighten security after last September’s cyberattack.
“They ensured that the perpetrators were no longer in the environment and they dealt with the remediation of activities to allow systems to be restored,” Vance Campbell, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, said.
The Premier and Minister of Finance said that his ministry needed a further $4.3 million to draft legislation pending a global corporate tax agreement in 2025.
In addition, the Ministry of Health’s budget needed to be topped up by more than $16 million to subsidise the Bermuda Hospitals Board’s operating costs, while a further $4 million was spent by the Ministry of Education to cover the cost of pay increases for teachers.
That claim contradicted comments made earlier in the day by Michael Dunkley, the Shadow Minister of National Security.
During a debate on the Government Loans Amendment Act 2024 — a Bill that all four opposition MPs in the chamber would later vote against — Mr Dunkley said that although the OBA had supported the Budget, the party disagreed with much of its content.
He said: “The Premier mentioned at least once that the Opposition supported the Appropriation and I wanted to touch base on that because there are some people who got back to me today and wondered why we supported it.
“And here’s why: because I’ve been going through budgets for some years now and I haven’t seen any year where an Opposition hasn’t had disagreements with the Budget.
“Some of those disagreements have been voiced and debated quite vehemently. That’s the case quite frequently, and we made our case here today.
“But the Government must have the ability to take care of the people and their services that they deserve.
“And that’s why we wouldn’t vote against the Budget. We understand that we can have debates in our chamber and at the end of these debates, while there might be some differences, we need to make sure that this country moves forward, and we’ll deal with those differences at other times.
“The Premier shouldn’t feel like it’s the greatest thing in the world that the Opposition voted for it. I would never think of voting against it unless there was something so wrong that I couldn’t sleep tonight — that my public conscience wouldn’t let me sleep.”
The Budget will be debated in the Senate on Monday. It has to be signed off by the Governor by the end of this month for the Government to operate over the upcoming financial year.
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