Debate contribution: Budget (No. 2) Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 9 June 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

9 June 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Question for Urgent Oral Answer

Heading

Budget (No. 2) Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4997740

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Another year, another austerity Budget that fails to deliver the public services that people need and deserve. People are sick to the back teeth of hearing the Executive talk about doing the best that we can with what is handed down from Westminster. It is true that something should be done differently. Not every problem in Health and Social Care, Justice or Education can be solved by more money alone. Injecting a bit of cash into pilot projects here and there without reversing the effects of over a decade of underinvestment in core services is just fiddling while Rome burns. Every Executive party agrees that this Budget does not provide enough money to meet people's basic needs. The obvious question is this: why are Executive parties hell-bent on playing by the twisted rules set by Westminster and ramming the Budget through? Are over a decade of declining living standards and disposable income, stagnant wages, rising homelessness and health inequalities not proof that the way in which we fund and deliver public services is not working? It does not matter whether it is a Tory or a Labour Government: Westminster is clearly capable only of financial cruelty. It should be a source of shame for the Executive that, with each Budget, health and social care workers are left wondering whether they will be granted pay parity with NHS workers in Britain.

The Health Minister is right to prioritise pay in his Department's budget, but fair pay should not be funded by extremely difficult and painful cuts elsewhere in the system or by stealth privatisation in the guise of tackling waiting lists, which will put more pressure on health workers when they are in work.

Executive parties say that they value strong, resilient public services, but, time and time again, their actions prove otherwise. The Budget will have real and serious consequences. Cutting social security means more families trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and destitution without access to well-paid, stable work. Poverty levels are shooting up, most acutely in my constituency of West Belfast. Cutting funding for youth clubs such as Clonard Youth Club that deliver early intervention and prevention programmes means that there are more people on the streets who are at risk of falling prey to paramilitaries, interface rioting, sectarianism or worse. One of the few concrete targets in the Programme for Government is the construction of just under 6,000 social homes by the end of the mandate. The target is 2,000 homes a year, but less than half of that target will be met out of this Budget. All the while, private landlords hike rents and evict tenants at will, while spending on temporary accommodation skyrockets. In all but one council area, at least one in five children is growing up in poverty. In West Belfast, it is one in three children. A small minority, however, are thriving under austerity. The super-rich and the wealthy corporations across the North are raking in profits like never before. This year, the 100 wealthiest companies in the North made pre-tax profits of £2·5 billion, which is an increase of 26% on last year, and the Finance Minister generally supports and applauds that economic approach. Some of those hugely profitable companies pollute our airways and waterways, mistreat workers and abuse animals, yet the Executive reward them with rate relief to the tune of £70 million a year. Last week, it was revealed that nearly 30 employers here, including wealthy hospitality businesses and property management companies, failed to pay the minimum wage to 1,650 workers. Invest NI has handed £19 million of public money to four companies in the North that manufacture parts for F-35 fighter jets, which are the warplanes that are dropping bombs on the people of Gaza. Enabling the rich to get richer while the poor are bled dry is a conscious political choice, but it does not have to be that way. There is plenty of wealth in our society, and it should be properly taxed and used to fund public services and to protect the poorest. This Budget, however, is business as usual, and I will therefore not support it.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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