NI set to stave off ‘bedroom tax’ seemingly indefinitely – and other benefits may likewise follow

Sinn Fein MLA Deirdre Hargey made the declaration in a press statement yesterday, saying the move “will continue to safeguard more than 38,000 of the most vulnerable households in our society from harsh Tory welfare cuts”.

The Department for Communities (DfC) said the predicted cost of this move around the bedroom tax is £23m annually.

But when the News Letter asked how long the extension will last the DfC replied: “There is no end date to this mitigation measure.”

Ms Hargey’s statement also said: “There are also other mitigations which need to be looked at as we review the mitigation measures we committed to in ‘New Decade, New Approach’. I will continue to work with stakeholders in moving forward with that important piece of work.”

In a press conference accompanying her written statement, Ms Hargey told reporters: “Mitigations [have] no end date to them. They will run until the Assembly change legislation.

“So that is my proposal. The bedroom tax legislation piece is moving first, because we need legislation in order to change the bill. I will be moving on regulations around the benefit cap in the next few weeks and I’ll be presenting that urgently to the Executive.”

The “bedroom tax” was first brought into effect in GB in 2013. The government does not call it a “tax”; rather it describes it as a cut in housing-related benefits for people who are “under-occupying a social rented home”.

Working-age people get a cut of 14% if they have one spare bedroom, and a cut of 25% if there are two or more.

The saga around the “tax” dates back years.

The Stormont House Agreement contained a vague pledge to implement welfare reform, but political deadlock continued.

Then a year later, the Fresh Start agreement contained a pledge to proceed with welfare reforms, and it was also agreed £585m would be spent over four years to mitigate the effects of them.

The bedroom tax formally came into force in NI in February 2017.

But the pot of mitigation cash was used to spare benefit claimants from the impact of it – allowing Sinn Fein to claim that, effectively, “the bedroom tax will not be introduced in the North”.

The most recent political pact, the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ deal, pledged “the Executive will extend existing welfare mitigation measures beyond March 2020 when they are currently due to expire”.

The News Letter asked the DfC if the money for the “bedroom tax” extension would come from its existing departmental budget. The department said minister Hargey is “working closely with Executive colleagues, particularly the Minister of Finance [Sinn Fein’s Conor Murphy], to ensure that funding for the existing mitigation package is available”.