Debate contribution: Budget Bill: Final Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 25 February 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

25 February 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Budget Bill: Final Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4815502

Read the official Assembly record

Text

An underwhelming and vague draft Programme for Government with no clear objectives went through a period of public consultation that ended four months ago, and still there is no sign of a final draft. Yet, we are here to debate a Budget Bill without a Programme for Government. It is worth taking a second to reflect on the utter pointlessness of a Bill that authorises spending in the absence of agreed spending priorities. We still wait for multi-year Budgets to address the systemic, chronic issues in our society: waiting lists, health inequalities, the housing crisis, a childcare offering that does not meet the basic needs of families, crumbling school buildings, inadequate public transport and climate breakdown, to name but a few. Next year, we might get a two-year Budget, if we are lucky, but, until the Executive muster the political courage to break with never-ending UK austerity, our public services will continue to fail every one of us. Today, in the absence of anything concrete to debate, I will focus my remarks on the state of our public services and the draft Budget. The upcoming Budget looks set to fail everyone. Languishing on our health waiting lists, which are by far the worst in these islands, record numbers of people are using private healthcare. Winter pressures in our emergency departments are now year-round pressures. The morale of Health and Social Care (HSC) workers has plummeted almost as low as their pay in real terms, and the upcoming Budget looks set to fail everyone who is struggling to pay their rent. Some £100 million was allocated for social housing, but it is highly unlikely that that will be enough to build at least 2,000 new social homes. Of course, there are far cheaper ways to prevent homelessness, including freezing and reducing private rents, but, yesterday, the Executive and the official Opposition showed that they cannot bring themselves to upset profiteering landlords. The Budget looks set to fail women and girls impacted by violence. Just £2 million has been earmarked to tackle violence against women and girls. That will not fund the transformative, radical changes that are needed to create a society where women are free from all forms of violence, abuse and harm. The Budget looks set to fail people in receipt of social security. Just £47 million has been allocated for welfare mitigations, and, obviously, that is not enough to mitigate the two-child limit. Families with more than two children who are living in poverty will fall further below the breadline, and children will be punished for being born into a larger family. Today, I met representatives of community and voluntary sector organisations that are losing core grant funding from the Department of Health. Those organisations are already running tight budgets, while providing life-saving and life-enhancing services for people in the community. They support our unpaid carers and people who live with chronic conditions or learning disabilities, as well as vulnerable babies and children and many others. They step in to provide services where the state fails to do so. When contracting services out to private companies, Departments often cover the full costs incurred by those companies. Ministers and Departments would not expect a private company to deliver services if they did not cover the full cost, but, when it comes to the community and voluntary sector, it is a completely different story. Not only are those charities and organisations operating at a loss when delivering services, they are not given support to pay staff and keep the lights on. By denying core grant funding to 94% of the organisations that applied for it, the Health Minister, the Finance Minister and the wider Executive fail those organisations and the thousands of vulnerable people whom they support. Earlier this month, when I proposed a motion to support unpaid carers, every Executive party talked about the invaluable contribution that carers make to our society and to the economy. Not even two weeks later, the Department of Health has denied core funding to Carers NI, stripping the organisation of its ability to support and advocate for unpaid carers. I want to ask this: are those actions those of an Executive who value unpaid carers? Are those the actions of an Executive who value early intervention, prevention and support for our most marginalised communities? I would say no. Budget cuts are a political choice, and the Executive are acting as a handmaiden to deadly UK austerity. It is a political choice, and, earlier this month, despite the Executive's relentless attempts to copy and paste harmful UK economic policy across our public services, the Secretary of State complained that Executive parties were not doing austerity correctly or enough. He should be told where to go. The Executive are making a truly half-hearted attempt at functional governance, waving through a Budget Bill to authorise spending without knowing what the money will be spent on. I will vote against it for that reason.

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

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:02 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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