When spending cuts come to fund UK defence budget will Northern Ireland be hardest hit?

By Ben Lowry, Belfast News Letter, March 8th, 2025

For years, indeed decades, Stormont financial populism has been a looming crisis. MLAs have shown themselves totally incapable of fiscal responsibility.

They support almost every demand for more money, and reject almost every demand for NI to pay for some of the services it gets. So it is no surprise that Stormont struggles to fund childcare and cannot properly fund policing, or multiple other commitments.

Spending money is no object to Stormont. Its MLAs support demands for almost all spending, but reject all revenue raising

Spending money is no object to Stormont. Its MLAs support demands for almost all spending, but reject all revenue raising

Bear in mind that no matter how great the crisis in care or hospitals or schools, tens of millions of pounds will certainly be found for legal costs in legacy investigations, the great bulk of which will be into historic allegations against the security forces (see below). In these cases junior barristers will be paid more than consultant physicians earn on the NHS.

And there will be millions of pounds spent on contentious culture, things such as the West Belfast Festival which pretty much always ends up in a concert in which a crowd chants the provo chant Ooh ah up the Ra, and millions on the Irish language.

Meanwhile Stormont politicians have neglected the basics of our finances. Not only have they rejected water charges, so that our water and waste systems are in crisis, last year they only increased the regional rate by 4%, in line with inflation. They could have said that we are not bringing in water charges but instead we have to increase the rate by 10% to compensate for that refusal, or even by 7% to help raise hundreds of millions of urgently needed pounds. But no, the small 4% increase was touted as a triumph.

Low Tax, High Spend model

Stormont believes in low tax and high spend. Unionists join with nationalists, who want to imply that the UK is a mean and failing state, to blame London for the shortfall, thus alienating our paymasters.

There is barely an issue that MLAs don’t support extra demands. They supported the public sector strikes, leading to massive pay rises with minimal or no reform to working practices. They support grossly expensive public sector pensions that the 70% of people in NI who work in the private sector will never be able to enjoy, yet help to fund through their taxes. They support almost untouched welfare. When there are tentative steps towards reform, huge mitigation packages are demanded and agreed.

Essentially no-one argues against this. I tried for a while, almost a decade ago, to write articles and go on broadcasts that pointed out that having almost 12% of the Northern Ireland population on Disability Living Allowance could not be blamed on the Troubles, and was unsustainable. I got no support from any quarter, only abuse. Now the situation, in disability benefits, is far worse post lockdown. There was even greater uproar when I cited the evidently unsustainable huge increase in demands for children to be diagnosed as having Special Educational Needs.

Is it any wonder that there is no money to repair potholes? The simple, unglamorous things get neglected in the endless parcelling out of money to new groups of demands. Have you tried to make a right turn on a busy road when you can’t see clearly because the grass or hedges are not cut? These are elementary public services that used to always be provided.

I hardly need write another word about the health crisis, it is so obvious, except to repeat that we have now had almost a quarter of a century of expert reports saying that Northern Ireland needs a smaller number of better hospitals.

A massive crisis is coming in Europe in which we will all have to pay more money for defence. There will be huge cuts to waste such as cited above. And NI is one of the most wasteful.

Comment

Ben Lowry comments about increasing water charges (we already pay for water just not in the way Mr Lowry wants us to pay for it) and increasing property rates, have been raised by others on the Right, as the solution to our failing public services.  It's important however to point out that both water charges and, to a lesser extent, property taxes, are actually regressive taxes.  In other words they negatively affect those most in need rather than those most able to pay for public services.  In reality, outside of these individual (regressive tax) charges for public services, advocated by those on the Right, MLAs have limited ability to raise revenue for public services, since the vast majority of taxation powers are still controlled by Westminster.  

As we know our income and profit taxes are collected by Westminster who then decide how much of our taxes to spend on weaponry or public services/benefits.  Our MLAs get our 'share' for public services, in the main, via the block grant.  If powers of taxation on income and profit, and expenditure on weaponry, were delegated to the Executive at Stormont, Mr Lowry and others would of course have an argument.  

Of course then the problem would be how to get agreement between Right and Left in this mandatory coalition, designed more to keep the peace, rather than run the place.  Majority rule of course didn't work in the past for a large section of the population (and I would actually say a majority of the population suffered).  I know that there have been ideas to reform the Executive, notably those put forward by the Alliance Party, but whether such reforms would actually lead to more progressive policies, particularly in the absence of real control over taxation and expenditure, is open to question.  However, maybe that is where the debate should be focused at the moment?

Le gach dea-mhéin/ Best wishes,

 Féilim Ó hAdhmaill

One way to factor a progressive element into the consumption of public services would be on the basis of usage. This was attempted in the South with the installation of water meters, but it only increased the public backlash against any charges. Instead, universal credits were given to all households regardless of their income or how much they benefitted from the service.

Certainly the current power sharing system in the North seems to be a process that copper fastens paralysis. There are no incentives for any form of change, but there are certainly risks for anyone attempting innovation.

Padraig Yeates