Stormont 'should set up new welfare payments'

Stormont should spend about £420m on new welfare mitigations for Northern Ireland over the next three years.

That is according to an expert review commissioned by the Department for Communities Minister Deirdre Hargey.

The new measures include offsetting the two-child limit on some benefits, higher winter fuel payments and a recognition payment for carers.

The review said that without unpaid carers the "health and social care system would collapse".

But there is at present no Stormont budget or a Northern Ireland Executive to implement the measures the experts have recommended.

The Department for Communities said it was considering the expert panel's report and its recommendations.

In February, Stormont assembly members backed a proposal to extend some welfare mitigations in Northern Ireland indefinitely.

That ensured people who would have been affected by the bedroom tax, or spare room subsidy, got top-up payments.

However, the New Decade New Approach deal, which restored power-sharing at Stormont in 2020 after three years of deadlock, promised a wider review of welfare mitigation measures for Northern Ireland.

Ms Hargey then appointed an expert panel to carry that out in November 2021.

It was headed by Les Allamby, the former chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

In his foreword to the just-published Welfare Mitigations Review, Mr Allamby said changes to the social security system have had "a major impact on the living standards and quality of life" of many people in Northern Ireland.

"Those changes have been particularly damaging for low-income families with children, those with caring responsibilities and the disabled," he said.

"The executive's first welfare mitigations package, by offsetting the impact of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap, has played a vital role in alleviating those impacts."

But the review suggests a range of other new welfare mitigations, especially targeted at helping those on lower incomes, the disabled, children, women and carers.

However Mr Allamby said no funding had been agreed in advance to implement any of the mitigations the expert panel had suggested.

The two-child limit restricts child tax credit and universal credit to the first two children in a family, with few exceptions.

The review said that could cost families with more than two children up to £54 a week per child.

More than one in five families in Northern Ireland has three or more children.

The review has recommended that a "Better Start Larger Families" payment is introduced in Northern Ireland to offset the two-child limit on benefits.

It said that would cost about £39m in 2022-23, rising to £46m in 2023-24 and £53m in 2024-25 but would be the "most cost-effective way" to reduce child poverty and help low-income households.

"Our analysis shows that the two-child limit bears particularly hardest on the poorest families and, unchecked, would lead to a further damaging rise in child poverty," Mr Allamby said.

"By preventing this, our proposals will ensure that thousands of Northern Irish children are shielded from the most damaging impacts of this policy."

Among the other mitigations the review panel recommends are a yearly grant for young carers and a cost-of-work allowance to help those in "in-work poverty".

The review said that would cost about £35m a year but could help about 40,000 households with children and 17,000 households without children.

It would aim to help more people into work and help with the cost of childcare.

"Recommendations here are designed to acknowledge that Northern Ireland remains significantly behind the rest of the UK in terms of childcare support outside of the social security system," the report said.

The expert panel also recommend a new winter heating assistance payment of £50 to those on a range of income-related benefits, and an additional heating payment to households with a disabled child.

"The Department for Communities has recently reported that fuel poverty in Northern Ireland stands at 22% based on the proportion of households spending more than 10% of their income on energy costs," the review said.

It also said that carers saved the Northern Ireland economy more than £4bn a year, and one in eight adults was a carer for a family member.

The expert panel recommended introducing a carer's allowance recognition payment of £231.40 twice a year, which it said would cost about £25m annually but benefit about 50,000 carers.

Implementing all the mitigations the experts recommended would cost about £140m a year.

But their report said spending that would save public money elsewhere.

"We believe that such a package is an investment and by helping to tackle hardship and disadvantage it will save on expenditure elsewhere within government," it said.

However introducing the measures would need executive agreement and due to the collapse of the administration in February no Stormont budget has been set.