Editorial: Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have bloated benefits bills which need addressed, but Scotland at least has fiscally prudent voices
There are parallels between Scotland and Northern Ireland when it comes to the politics of welfare.
Both countries have devolved governments and both have huge benefits bills. And in both places government funding from London is so massive that there is muted public criticism of it.
This consensus is perhaps less obvious in Scotland, where there is still an influential Conservative Party, which is more likely to put an emphasis on fiscal responsibility (the Tories got more than 600,000 votes at the last assembly election, resulting in them having dozens of members of the Scottish parliament elected and becoming the main opposition). At Stormont, where there is no obvious party of the economic right, vast expenditure causes barely any concern.
As an example, the Scottish Conservatives are saying that a flagship Scottish policy of child payments should only be given to the first two children in a family. The Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay has said that not allowing low-income families to claim the benefit for more than two youngsters is “fair”. Claiming Scotland’s “bloated benefits bill is unaffordable”, he said that allowing families to claim the payment for all their children has enabled some parents to “quit work”.
While this exact debate does not translate to Northern Ireland, because our benefits payments and many rules align with England and Wales, where in any event the two-child payment limit is being scrapped, the wider issues between NI and Scotland are similar. Stormont has put in mitigations which effectively negate the limited reform of welfare in England and Wales, meaning less money for vital public services. We also have an appallingly high percentage of people of working age who are out of work. Yet MLAs barely debate this, let alone confront it.
Meanwhile, this week’s data on the civil service showed that public sector reform is also neglected.