Member's statement: Welfare Mitigations: Extension

Member's statement by Mrs Ciara Ferguson on 9 December 2024.

MLA

Mrs Ciara Ferguson

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

9 December 2024

Type

Member's statement

Business

Members' Statements

Heading

Welfare Mitigations: Extension

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4697911

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I rise to welcome the announcement by the Minister for Communities that he has secured Executive agreement to extend welfare mitigations until March 2028. As Members know, the welfare mitigations were initially secured in 2016 to protect the most vulnerable in our society against Tory austerity. The welfare supplementary payments were automatically paid to anyone who would otherwise have been impacted by cruel welfare changes such as the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the roll-out of the personal independence payment (PIP). The Welfare Supplementary Payments (Amendment) Act 2022, which was brought forward by previous Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey, extended most of the mitigations until March 2025. It also extended the bedroom tax mitigation indefinitely, which ensured that over 37,000 social housing tenants were permanently protected. Those mitigations are vital for so many people. In many cases, they are the difference between having enough food to eat and going to bed hungry. In many cases, they are the difference between being able to afford the rent and falling into housing stress or homelessness. The cost-of-living crisis has had a devastating impact on households across the North, with many people being plunged into poverty by rising costs. Letting the mitigations collapse at a time when so many people are struggling to make ends meet would be unconscionable. The Communities Committee discussed the issue at length, and there was broad agreement that the mitigations should be extended and a creeping concern that time was running out to have the extension in place before the 31 March deadline. It was in that context that the Committee for Communities agreed to table a motion calling on the Minister to extend the mitigations. The announcement last Thursday that the Executive had agreed to extend the mitigations at their current levels will have come as a huge relief to the individuals and families who rely on them. I call on the Minister to work at pace to ensure that all the required steps are completed as quickly as possible and the 31 March cliff edge is averted. In addition to extending the existing mitigations, the Minister must outline the long-term plans for the existing welfare mitigations and consider what new mitigations might be needed. It is simply unsustainable to continue moving the deadline into the future without any plan on how to protect people permanently. That way, we will all be back here in 2028, trying to avert the next scheduled cliff edge. Last week, the Committee received a briefing from the Cliff Edge Coalition, which presented its three key asks: removal of the five-week wait for universal credit; removal of the two-child limit; and support for private renters affected by the local housing allowance. The Scottish Government recently took a positive step by announcing their intention to remove the two-child limit. That is the sort of radical action that we need here. The British Government need to follow suit and abolish the two-child limit.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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