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Proposals to reform Stormont are not about “the ladder being kicked out from any community”, SDLP leader Claire Hanna has said.

The MP for South Belfast said the Northern Ireland electorate will not “suspend their disbelief” in powersharing institutions for much longer if changes to “stabilise” governance are not brought in.

The Executive is five months into the financial year and is yet to agree a budget, meaning departments are operating on contingency budgets of 95% of last year’s spend.

Ms Hanna said the lack of an agreed budget now will lead to “fast spending” later in the financial year which she said “is the exact opposite of what we need”.

Ministers have argued setting a budget with the current financial package from the UK Treasury would necessitate cuts to public services, but Ms Hanna said they were “using public services as a negotiating tactic”.

“I think it’s a failure to take responsibility,” she said.

“There are undoubtedly constraints, and we’ve been very supportive of the executive’s push with the UK government to get a bigger funding package and a consistent funding package because it kind of goes up and down year on year because of all the different stops and starts and collapses and side deals and all of that.

“But public services need certainty and people do too, and it’s the number one responsibility of the executive to agree a budget, so it is a failure.

“I hope we’re getting closer to that being resolved, but harm has already been done.”

Two changes to the power-sharing system the SDLP wants to see brought is to alter cross-community rules so that a single party cannot bring down the institutions by withdrawing from government; and removing the ‘St Andrews veto’ which they argue allows the largest nationalist and unionist parties to dominate decision making.

Ms Hanna said these measures aim “to get the patient out of intensive care and into somewhere where we can do long-term rehabilitation”, Ms Hanna said.

Sinn Féin, Alliance and the UUP have all backed some element of systemic reform, but major constitutional changes would require cross community consent.

Senior DUP figures have argued that those in favour of reform are seeking to remove safeguards brought in when unionists were the largest bloc at Stormont now that they have less electoral power in comparison to nationalists and non-designated parties.

The SDLP leader said she doesn’t want “any sense of the ladder being kicked out from any community or any identity.”

“I have not heard, and I have asked for a long time for any coherent argument for how the existence of an assembly can disadvantage any community, any identity, any party,” she said.

“And it’s also not true to say that unionism doesn’t support reform.

“Some of the reforms that we’ve brought have been supported not alone by the Ulster Unionist Party and by (independent unionist MLA) Claire Sugden, but by the TUV even in parts as well.

“And indeed the DUP, who are giving a classic ‘not an inch’ negotiation strategy at the moment, for years presented their party as the party of reform and had assembly reform in their manifesto.

“So I think it’s on them and it’s on the Secretary of State and it’s on the media to get them to explain to their electorate if they think everything’s fine, they think nothing needs to change, and exactly how it would disadvantage any community or their community to have an assembly.”

Ms Hanna said the UK and Irish Governments had also been brought to the stage of  “accepting that there’s a problem” with the functioning of power-sharing government.

“The SDLP have secured assembly majorities for a number of these proposals, and we made that very clear to both governments.

“This wasn’t just something we pulled out of the air, we didn’t design these proposals for things that would do our party particularly well.

“We deliberately looked and found places where parties, in either word or deed, had supported what we’d done, or where they were originally in the Good Friday Agreement.

“So I am hopeful actually, I get a sense now from the UK government, we’ve said it’s not just the elephant in the room everybody knows it’s failing.

“It’s evasive to pretend it’s not, and we’d be dealing with a bigger challenge if we don’t find a way to stabilise it.”

Ms Hanna described “a real sadness” over the performance of the current assembly over the last five years.

“Not least because people did have that hope and sense of purpose after the last election when the assembly came back,” the SDLP leader said.

“No, I don’t think the public will suspend their disbelief for too much longer, particularly if there’s another collapse or a hiatus.”