Debate contribution: Cost-of-living Increase: Impact

Debate contribution by Mr Mark Durkan on 17 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Mark Durkan

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

17 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Cost-of-living Increase: Impact

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5245815

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The cost-of-living crisis is a term that has slipped from our daily lexicon not because it has gone away but because people have become so accustomed to hardship that it no longer shocks in the way that it did and still should. I remember looking on in horror as welfare reform was rolled out across the water and warning here that it would drive families to food banks. Today, food banks are no longer a rarity but a staple in all our town centres. Trussell's work tells us what that means in human terms. Some 520,000 people across the North are food insecure, including 130,000 children. The arithmetic of everyday life is now almost surreal. A block of cheese costs a fiver, and a bottle of red sauce costs about £6. Even small, formerly cheap and cheerful family treats are beyond affordability for many. That is the small, humiliating cruelty of the crisis: the things that used to bring comfort are now priced out of reach.

Certainly.

I thank the Member for his intervention. I think that he means "decreased in size", but, yes, I see the role that shrinkflation plays. Food just does not go as far. The motion also:

"commends the Executive on their firm refusal to impose unfair taxes and charges on ... workers and families".

You what? Rates have increased, with no effort being made to cushion our poorest councils and, by extension, poor families from those costs. Public transport fares have increased three times in a 15-month period. Then, let us look at our public-sector workers: our poorest staff are being penalised by Executive decisions or, in many cases, Executive indecision. We have heard today of the thousands of care workers, who are the backbone of the social care system, being locked out of a pay award that would deliver a real, living wage. From EA support staff to health workers, thousands of workers in receipt of universal credit (UC) will not benefit from a backdated pay award. In fact, they will be worse off, left for one or maybe two months without a UC payment. My pleas to all Ministers to fix that oversight — it can be done, because a mechanism was found to do it for COVID payments — remain unheeded. Meanwhile, staff continue to be penalised for being poor. Band 2 healthcare staff received an additional 8p uplift this year to bring them up to the minimum wage, but that money is now going to be absorbed into the upcoming pay award. In other words, the uplift that was designed to correct low pay will disappear once the new award lands. That is not progress but stagnation. On the subject of disappearing, the First Minister happily stood alongside the Communities Minister to welcome the draft anti-poverty strategy but disappeared when the fallout from it came. I fear that the motion is another attempt to deflect responsibility. Every Executive party signed off on the strategy. Disappearing when the going gets tough is not leadership, however. To the party with the Finance and Economy portfolios and the top office, my question is this: what are you doing to tackle the crisis? At least that party sees the glaring flaws in the draft strategy, however. "Gaslighting" Gordon says that it is grand. Community and voluntary organisations, as the motion correctly identifies, remain an absolute lifeline, and they have my deepest gratitude, but they are tired. I spoke to representatives of the Focus Project in Creggan recently. They are under unbearable pressure as they try to meet soaring demand in a community in which thousands of households would now be considered vulnerable, working families included. Poverty is a political choice. The irony of the motion's calling for action while Executive parties continue to implement policies that deepen poverty is not lost on anyone. This week, the cost of school meals increased by 20%, which will primarily have an impact on the working poor. That decision was taken alongside the failure to raise the threshold for school meals support. A decade ago, the criteria were more generous than they are today, which is utterly preposterous in the context of soaring inflation. Some 3,000 fewer children receive support now than did in 2023. That is not an accident but, rather, the consequence of bad decisions by the Government. The motion delivers motherhood and apple pie but not bread and butter. Poverty is not just for Christmas, and it is frankly insulting to see such a motion tabled by the party with the most power to change things. The reality is that the Executive need a Scrooge-like epiphany. They hold the purse strings and the power, but they continue to deliver a bad deal for all the Bob Cratchits: the underpaid and undervalued workers. It does not have to be that way, however. If we spend less time arguing about the past and more time in the present delivering positive policy rather than debating meaningless motions, we can change the future.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:58 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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