Debate contribution: Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2023-24 and Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Estimates: Vote On Account 2024-25

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 9 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

9 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Spring Supplementary Estimates 2023-24 and Supply Resolution for the Northern Ireland Estimates: Vote On Account 2024-25

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4482213

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Finance Minister is today effectively asking us to endorse a new round of Tory-mandated austerity. Once again, the Executive are allowing themselves to be constrained and directed by a Government who are intent on destroying our public services and imposing a fresh round of pay cuts on public-sector workers. When a Budget Bill was rammed through the Assembly some weeks ago in the absence of spring Supplementary Estimates, my party warned that the Government were pulling the wool over people's eyes. We warned that the lack of scrutiny would suit the Executive's nefarious short-term agenda but have wide-ranging and harmful implications for people across the North. Absurd as it is, we are not just retroactively approving the spending of money already spent, and the Finance Minister is not asking us to simply let Departments keep spending or avail themselves of the theoretical headroom that some Members alluded to. She is asking us to hamstring Departments at the behest of the Secretary of State and to sign up to a fresh round of cuts that will decimate our health service, schools and communities across the board when the time comes. The motion refers to information that was provided to the Finance Committee on 20 March. Let me read something from that. The Finance Minister said:

"All Ministers have committed to constraining their Department's expenditure, including pay awards, to the budget allocation agreed by the Executive and not by the amount of headroom included in the SSEs, if it is higher."

There is talk about Tory austerity, but that is a commitment from Ministers, once again, to implement it. The Finance Minister said that she would work to ensure:

"the amount of Treasury funding required by any draft Budget does not exceed the amount notified by the Secretary of State".

What are those who bemoan Tory cuts saying when they agree to do their dirty work for them? What are they saying to the workers whose pay awards are outstanding? It was said earlier that pay awards were gratefully received by public-sector workers. First, it must be said that most of those workers were given a real-terms pay cut of about 6%. Secondly, we know that further education workers, transport workers, junior doctors and others are still in dispute and waiting for a pay rise. They will be due a further pay rise when all is said and done from today. It does not take much to scratch the surface and see the Executive's regressive economic agenda. I say this to MLAs who will speak tomorrow of the need to fund this or that programme or service: think hard about what you are signing up to today. Think of the hypocrisy of bemoaning Tory cuts that your colleagues have agreed to endorse. How can you stand here with a straight face and talk about hospital waiting lists, educational underachievement, poverty and poor pay when you are foisting those very things on people and making them worse? If you truly believe that the money provided by the Tories is not enough, at what point do you stand up to them? Will you stick to the spending set out by the Secretary of State or will you invest in our health service, schools, housing or workers' pay — the future of our people? You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say that you oppose Tory cuts while explicitly saying, as the Finance Minister has, in black and white, that you will adhere to their budget and their economic agenda.

The Member knows that I am not a Minister. Her party is in the Executive. The Member will know, if she listens to my speeches or to my comments in the Finance Committee, that I have repeatedly talked about the bulging corporate profits in the North. I believe that the Alliance Party still wants to cut corporation tax in the North. You do not? You have changed your position. OK, that is positive. We need to make those corporations pay more, but I have not heard your party talk about raising corporation tax. I am talking about your party clamouring for those organisations to pay more in corporate wealth taxes. If you are for doing that, I support you, and I am glad to see that you have changed position, but you are still for cutting corporation tax — you can clarify or challenge that if you want — or maintaining a corporation tax cut.

I will give way again; sure.

The Member knows that that is not who pays corporation tax; it is large organisations. Corporate profits have increased in the past two years, so there is plenty of money to be paid up. If you tackle corporate taxes, increase them, tax corporate profits and put them into public services, there will be plenty of money to fund our services. I note that the party opposite is opposed to that and wants, once again, to give tax breaks to corporations. We will not be endorsing this farce or this farcical economic strategy today. Workers and working-class communities deserve a lot better, and I do not think that we should accept that.

859 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:57 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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