Debate contribution: Cost-of-living Increase: Impact

Debate contribution by Ms Kellie Armstrong on 17 November 2025.

MLA

Ms Kellie Armstrong

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

17 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Cost-of-living Increase: Impact

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5245848

Read the official Assembly record

Text

As my colleague Sian Mulholland said, Alliance will support the Sinn Féin motion and the Ulster Unionist amendment. The motion highlights the stark reality that inflation in the UK stands at 3·8%, nearly double the Bank of England's target and higher than the EU average. That is not an abstract figure; it is a daily burden on workers, families, carers and the wider community. The amendment adds an equally urgent dimension: the sharp rise in food prices, growing levels of food insecurity and the unacceptable pressures being placed on household budgets by increases in, for instance, the cost of school meals and the cost to heat a home. It is becoming more difficult, given that you need to have a smartphone to access benefit apps and online portals. It is all costs. The motion and the amendment recognise the vital role of voluntary and community organisations and call for stronger and more coordinated action from Ministers. We just heard Mr Kingston say that the anti-poverty strategy is an Executive strategy, so we should be seeing something in that from all Ministers, but we do not. How many times must the Assembly debate poverty and the cost of living before we see a completed anti-poverty strategy and that strategy being put into action? How many speeches must we give before families see relief in their bills, children are guaranteed access to affordable food and communities feel the impact of a plan that is not just drafted but delivered?

I will.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Hopefully, I will not need that. I agree: the two must go hand in hand. In the past, for instance, the House agreed to mitigations to protect people, but mitigations alone are not a strategy. I acknowledge the draft anti-poverty strategy and its limitations, but I also acknowledge that it alone is not an action plan. Families cannot heat their homes with words; children cannot be nourished by debates; and communities cannot be sustained by motions alone. The amendment is right to call for "measurable poverty reduction targets". That is what we need to see for the multi-year Budget. We need to see a clean Programme for Government with clear objectives, and one of those would be to reduce poverty. The motion is right to demand a revision of the draft anti-poverty strategy. No more Ministers should be making decisions that exacerbate the effects of poverty. For example, others have mentioned the Minister of Education, but the cut in holiday hunger support is the type of action that is contrary to ending poverty. What we need now is urgency, clarity and delivery. We need Ministers to work together — the Communities, Education, Finance, Health and Economy Ministers have all been mentioned today — to align decisions with the objectives of a strengthened cross-Executive anti-poverty strategy. We need timelines and accountability, and we need to know when households will feel the difference. I support the motion and the amendment because they reflect the real concerns of our constituents. Recently, as many of you have done, I have been working through the energy scheme. The vouchers allocated to me were gone in a day. That is how much pressure we face in our constituency offices, and the community and voluntary sector and advice sector face that all the time. Unless we move beyond speeches to strategies and from those strategies to implementation and from implementation to measurable outcomes, we will be back here in a few weeks talking about the families who continue to struggle. I hope that this will be the last debate that we will have in the House without an anti-poverty strategy. Let this be the moment when we stop talking about poverty and start tackling it.

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

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

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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