Debate contribution: Committee for Communities: Report on Engagement with Local Government on the Draft Anti-poverty Strategy

Debate contribution by Mr Gordon Lyons on 26 May 2026.

MLA

Mr Gordon Lyons

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

26 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Committee for Communities: Report on Engagement with Local Government on the Draft Anti-poverty Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5582599

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you very much, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker. I thank the Committee for the work that it has done on taking forward and developing the report. I broadly agree with the core finding of the report that local government is essential to tackling the problem of poverty — not just local government but all our delivery partners across society. Work will be required from the voluntary and community sector, churches, faith organisations, businesses and communities to make a real, lasting, long-term change. I fully recognise the importance of local government in this area. Indeed, my officials have already taken steps to involve local government in the consultation on the anti-poverty strategy. Dedicated engagement sessions were undertaken with the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) to provide an opportunity for direct discussions between officials and local government representatives. It is important that I put that on record, because some of the comments today, particularly from Mr Durkan, would make you think that there has been no engagement with councils, and that was certainly not the case during the consultation process. As I outlined, we had many events and engaged with representatives from nearly all the councils. We had written responses to the consultation from all the councils, and we have engaged on the report. It is unfair to say that there has been no involvement. Many organisations, including local government, will be essential to the delivery of the strategy, and it is important to acknowledge that. We have a strong track record of delivery in partnership with councils, and we have well-established relationships with councils through the community planning partnerships so that we can develop housing, regeneration and employability services. We will continue to work in partnership through the community planning partnerships and other fora to deliver the anti-poverty strategy. Work has also been undertaken with other key partners during and after the consultation, because we know that tackling poverty and its root causes requires system changes that nobody in the world has been able to fully achieve, but it is clear that, if we work together, we can make a lasting difference, and that is what I intend to do. We have already made a start on that. We did not wait for the anti-poverty strategy to be in place before we progressed some of the issues, including some that the co-design group asked us to take forward, and that is what we are doing. I welcome the report, and I will certainly recommend to my Executive colleagues that we take the recommendations forward. I am grateful to the Committee for its work. I will refer to some of the comments that were made during the debate that are worthy of note. Pam Cameron rightly acknowledged that councils do significant work. She also highlighted an important issue that Sian Mulholland mentioned as well, and that is the importance of employment and ensuring that employability programmes are in place. Sian said that we needed to make sure that we help those who are in work, and I absolutely agree with her. One of my most pressing concerns is that we have people who are in employment and are going out to work and doing their best but feel penalised. They feel that they are not getting the support that they require. Not for one second have I said that work will be the silver bullet that fixes everything, although it is a very important step. The evidence shows that work can help, but it is also important because getting people off welfare and into work frees up huge sums of money for the targeted interventions that we need. Many in the House are fed up with hearing me talk about the importance of getting people into work and dealing with our welfare system. There has been opposition to my approaches to tackling fraud and error in the welfare system. I make no apology for focusing on that and on the huge numbers of people in Northern Ireland who are economically inactive. Ten years ago, the working-age welfare bill in the UK was £75 billion in today's money. Today, that has gone up to £136 billion, which is an 80% increase. If we get people into work, it frees up billions of pounds that we can use in more targeted ways to help those who are most in need.

I will give way.

Of course it is the case that all those issues need to be addressed. There is a myriad of reasons why we have so many people who are economically inactive. For some, it is by choice because of caring responsibilities or other issues; for some, it is because barriers are in place. Why are we not spending some money to tackle those barriers?

One of my biggest concerns is the fact that we have the highest welfare bill of any part of the UK and the highest disability rate of anywhere in the UK. We spend huge sums of money, and have done so for decades, and guess what? There has been no noticeable change or difference. We have to ask ourselves whether it is really working: are the billions and billions of pounds that we are spending actually making a difference? Are we paying people to stay unwell rather than investing in making them well? That is one of the big issues that we should be grappling with. That is the real scandal. It does not take up time on the airwaves or space in the pages of our newspapers, but it is a train that is coming down the track at us. It has been a problem for a long time, and we need to address it if we want to address all the other issues that come from it. Absolutely, let us invest and make sure that we spend money on getting people better; getting people into a fit state to get into employment; and breaking down barriers, be they in childcare or access to jobs because of rurality or whatever else. We need good jobs. We will have the opportunity to talk about the 'good jobs' Bill. We need to make sure that that is fully investigated and that we achieve what we set out to do, because there are a lot of concerns in the business community as to whether the Bill will make that happen or make things worse. That brings me on to another comment that Sian made. She is absolutely right that this cannot only be tackled from a desk in Stormont. I am glad that that message is starting to get across — I have heard it from a few Members today. As Sian said in response to an intervention from Mr McMurray, it requires a cross-departmental strategy. I have said that repeatedly, but not because I am trying to share this around or share the blame or criticism. If we want this to be effective, we have to have everybody buying into it. It is right that that is realised and that all the things that need to be in place are in place. Issues about targets and outcomes were also raised. It is critical that we have in place measurable and effective actions and targets to measure them against, because we need to show that we are making progress. There is further debate and discussion to be had about the usefulness of an overall poverty target when we have limited levers to deal with it in the Assembly and through the work of the Executive. The UK Government, local government, the voluntary and community sector and businesses have a role to play, and individuals have a big role to play. I am more than happy to be held to account for the things that we have promised, and for the things that we can deliver on. There is a wider discussion to be had on an overarching anti-poverty target, but I am more than happy to explore that and to take the views of Executive colleagues on it. What are the next steps? We have taken on board what has been said by partners in local government. Late last year, I shared the results of the consultation with all Ministers so that they could consider further actions that they could undertake to push the strategy forward. Officials in my Department have been engaging with their counterparts on how best to reflect consultation results in light of departmental priorities and available budgets. I was pleased to see that a number of stakeholders in the sector welcomed the report that we produced as being honest and open, and I take seriously the views of everyone who responded to the strategy. I have been clear from the outset that the strategy will change. I briefed the Communities Committee earlier this month, and I was clear that there will be substantive and substantial change. For example, the strategy needs to better reflect the fact that well-planned routes to employment can be a route out of poverty. We are taking forward significant new work to tackle economic inactivity. That work is core to reducing poverty. The draft strategy does not fully reflect the scale of our intent and ambition on fuel poverty reduction. As Members know, officials in my Department have been working on the development of a new warm healthy homes strategy, which will modernise and, I hope, expand on the work of the affordable warmth programme. Given the exposure of the poorest households in Northern Ireland to a highly volatile energy market and, in particular, the cost of home heating oil, I believe that the final version of the strategy can be more ambitious in setting out the interventions that we will take in relation to fuel poverty.

I have therefore requested urgent and ambitious action to maximise all opportunities for collaboration and shared delivery across government, local government and broader partnerships; to exploit fully effective measures to prevent entry into and support exit from poverty; to deliver refreshed funding approaches in order to explore opportunities to achieve greater value from public money for existing programmes in my Department, with a view to releasing capacity to fund new anti-poverty measures; to put in place targets and indicators that are within our ability to deliver and that will measure progress and keep us accountable; and to deliver and develop a costed, detailed delivery plan in due course. We share an ambition to alleviate poverty in our society and an understanding of the complexity of the challenge, which is increased by our highly constrained funding environment. I genuinely believe that this is among the most important work that we can do, but we will succeed only by working in partnership. To that end, I had a meeting with the Chair of the Communities Committee to set out the way forward and to make him an offer to have genuine engagement, which I have now extended to other parties in the House. I am happy to engage. I want to hear ideas and to put in place something that is affordable, can be delivered, is costed and can make a real change to people's lives. I am committed to doing that, and I look forward to working with others in the Chamber and outside it in the interests of people across our communities who require our focus and hard work on the issue the most.

1,910 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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