Northern Ireland will not receive any extra finance to cushion the impact of welfare reforms that could destabilise power sharing in the region, a cabinet minister has warned, ahead of separate trips to Washington this week for two politicians with opposing views on the province’s economic future.
In advance of a trip aimed at winning support in Congress for reforming Northern Ireland’s welfare system, secretary of state Theresa Villiers said on Monday that the British government “will not finance a more generous welfare system in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK”.
Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP) have threatened to bring down the devolved power sharing coalition in Belfast if the government insists on massive cuts and reforms to the province’s welfare system. Unionists and the centrist Alliance party have accused the two nationalist parties of being fiscally irresponsible and putting devolution in peril.
Villiers is travelling to Washington and New York this week to persuade Congress members and key figures in the Irish-American establishment to support the Stormont House agreement. The accord which all the Ulster parties initially agreed to sign up to last winter commits the power sharing executive at Stormont to implement cuts and reforms to welfare.
Villiers said on Monday evening: “My message over the next three days is clear. The Stormont House agreement remains the best hope for building a brighter, more secure future for Northern Ireland. But for that to happen, the agreement needs to be implemented in full. I will be looking for continued US support for that.
“Without a workable budget and sustainable finances the credibility of the executive will increasingly be questioned. The Stormont House agreement provides an additional £2bn of spending power for the executive. It now needs to manage its resources responsibly, including implementing the welfare reforms which formed part of the agreement.”
Later this week Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, will deliver a different message when he crosses the Atlantic.
McGuinness is expected to tell the Friends of Ireland lobby group in Washington that the Conservative government’s insistence on deeper austerity is sending the institutions set up under the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and subsequent accords into a state of crisis.
The Sinn Féin chief negotiator during the peace process said on Monday: “This is an extremely grave situation and I would urge all those with a stake in this process to make every effort to find a resolution which secures the power-sharing administration.
“In order to redress this crisis, we require an imaginative and innovative solution which recognises the particular challenges faced by our administration. That means ensuring the institutions are politically and economically viable and able to meet the needs of a society emerging from a long and bitter conflict. To date, that has not been forthcoming from the British government and they need to be persuaded that a new approach is required.”
McGuinness went on: “It is my hope that the US administration – which has been a key ally since the inception of the peace process – can help convince the British government of the gravity of the current situation and to end their current approach which threatens to undermine the incredible progress we have made.”
At the heart of this latest crisis is a link between massive reforms to the welfare system in return for £2bn from the UK Treasury. The government in London is demanding that the devolved administration make cuts to the huge state sector workforce in return for the additional cash needed to run public services in the region.
Sinn Féin, fearing an accusation of double standards by its political opponents in the Irish Republic where it opposes austerity cuts, is now opposed to the cuts-for-cash deal for Northern Ireland currently on offer from London.
