Debate contribution: Autumn Statement 2024: Impact

Debate contribution by Mr Jonathan Buckley on 8 April 2025.

MLA

Mr Jonathan Buckley

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

8 April 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Autumn Statement 2024: Impact

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4919856

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank the Member for his intervention. As always, he is filled with contradictions. He is the very Member who would have us tied to the European Union and at risk of retaliatory tariffs, so he is in no place to lecture about regulation. The Member is in no place to lecture about taxation. He is a wealth denier and a job denier, so I take no lectures from the Member for Upper Bann. Let us go on, because the point is clear, and Mr Tennyson set it out. If you follow the Alliance Party's approach and, indeed, that of the Labour Party, what do you do? If you target wealth creators, what do you expect to happen in the economy? I welcome the approach of the Committee for Finance and the Committee for the Economy to the matter. Listening to the round-table discussion was an extremely interesting and useful exercise for members. We got live, real-time data on how hospitality, retail, manufacturing, the voluntary sector and public services are being affected. We heard on the radio and TV this morning about how our GPs and pharmacies would be affected. I will focus on business. Regarding the increase in contributions from 13·8% to 15%, we have to remember that Northern Ireland is an industry of small-business owners. Their margins are tight, and they struggle to absorb the costs, so what do they do? They have to pass the costs on. Inflation takes money out of the pockets of all our constituents. It increases prices on the shelves and reduces the take-home pay of parents who are working hard to feed their families. Businesses are taxed to death. You cannot keep shaking the money tree of a small business and expect a return. The strategies that we have seen are anti-growth and go against what Labour argued for. Reduced investment, job losses and price increases limit hiring. My colleague Paul Frew is absolutely right: a rise in the living wage or the minimum wage is not much good, if you do not have a job at the end of the week. We have to get real. At the Committee recently, we heard from the manufacturing sector and, in particular, from Denroy Plastics, which talked about hundreds of thousands of pounds to foot the bill for the employers' National Insurance contributions. I asked, "How do you pay for it?". "We have to make efficiencies", was the answer. That means looking at automation, which reduces the workforce and the number of jobs in the community. The company does not want to do that, but it is being forced down the inevitable route. How can businesses pay for the increase? The money tree has been shaken so hard that they can only pass the cost on to the consumer. Businesses are against the wall. When it comes to taxation, they face a situation that is peculiar to Northern Ireland. Corporation tax is 25% in the United Kingdom, compared with 12·5% in the Republic of Ireland. VAT on hospitality is 20% in the United Kingdom, compared with 9% in the Republic. People will say that I am making a pretty good case for unification, but I will tell you this: if members of Sinn Féin had articulated those low-tax policies in the Assembly, perhaps we would be in a better place today. They are happy with this quagmire, however, because it suits their position. We must understand that, if the Government's expectation is that, by increasing those levels of taxation, they will, in some way, generate additional revenue, they are wrong. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has already poured cold water on the Government's suggestions of the revenue that the increases in employers' National Insurance contributions will generate. It is clear that the anti-growth strategy employed by Labour and by the Tories before that will not break the vicious cycle. We must cut regulation, target specific industries for growth, reform our planning system and cut tax in order to grow.

We must trust businesses. We need a spirit of entrepreneurship in this country that encourages people to get into business and employ people. If we do not and we continue in this vein, we are essentially stifling our economy, creating stagnation and leaving our constituents vulnerable to the high winds of the open sea. I say to Members —

— that I agree, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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

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