However, Benn stressed that Stormont needed to take more decisions to help raise additional funds.
“Northern Ireland gets more funding per head for health than England,” he told Red Lines.
“In Northern Ireland, a lot of people are waiting more than a year to see a consultant for the first time.
“So, the question everyone should ask is how come, with more money per ahead, the waiting lists are so much worse in Northern Ireland than they are in England? That is about the way in which you structure and organise the system.”
The secretary said there is a need for “transformation”, so people in Northern Ireland can get decent public services.
“There has to be political will to take decisions,” Benn added.
Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader and MP Claire Hanna welcomed the lifting of the two-child cap on means-tested benefits, but said Northern Ireland needed to plan for “our own future and that means doing the best things we can do at the moment with the Stormont Executive”.
Ulster Unionist Party MP Robin Swann said the money coming to Northern Ireland from the Budget “will not touch the sides of what Stormont needs to do”.
