Last week marked over 1,000 days without a power-sharing Executive, yet Monday saw some MLAs come together at Stormont to try to prevent the passage of Westminster legislation decriminalising abortion provision and allowing same-sex marriage. It begs the question, where are the calls to get Stormont back up and running to prevent the current set of social security welfare mitigations coming to an end, in March 2020? Social security is, in principle at least, devolved to the NI Assembly. It is within our representatives’ power to mitigate these cuts.

We are less than 23 weeks away from welfare mitigations being taken away from the most vulnerable in Northern Ireland. Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will replace benefits such as the Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Universal credit will merge six existing benefits into one – replacing the jobseeker’s allowance; employment and support allowance; income support; housing benefit; child tax credit and working tax credit with just one payment. None of this will mitigate the financial loss for those households affected by the bedroom tax, nor the benefit cap which sets a limit on the total amount a household can receive in welfare payments in a year.

What do these changes mean in practice?

Imagine you’re a single man or woman aged 24 receiving the Welfare Supplementary Payment which replaced your carers allowance when your family member was denied PIP (but you still care for them because they are family). You’re on Universal Credit (UC) and renting a two-bedroom property from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive at £350 per month.

Come March 2020 your supplementary payment will stop, so you’re down £66.15 per week and your UC housing costs are cut by 14%, meaning you’re down another £49 per month. All you’re left with is a UC payment of £552.77 per month. Then this is deducted £40 because you needed an advance during the 5-6 week waiting period for your first payment, leaving you with a UC payment of £512.77.

From that you must take your rent of £350, leaving you with a total of £162.74 to pay for electricity, heating, food, and provide care for your relative for the entire month.

Imagine living month to month on £162.47. That’s £37.49 a week.

These are just some of the cruel realities of the so-called welfare reforms which have been coming down the road for some time. Yet we have seen no recall petitions at Stormont to prevent current welfare mitigations coming to an end and people being plunged into depths of poverty not seen since the world wars.

Can the reforms be stopped?
There are already measures being taken by the Scottish Government to soften the impact of these reforms. The Scotland Act 2016 has introduced measures including:

– A £38 Million local Scottish Welfare Fund distributed to local authorities (which has been running since 2013) to provide grants for those most in need

– Continuing to mitigate the financial impact of the bedroom tax via Discretionary Housing Payments

– The Carers Supplement to bring Carers allowance paid at the same rate of Jobseekers Allowance (JSA)

– Replacing PIP with a Disability Assistance Payment where the person is assessed by the government authority and not a private company such as Capita

These are arguably small measures, but they are more than what the Northern Ireland Executive has produced since the Fresh Start Agreement signed in 2015.

It’s no longer enough for MLAs to shout on the BBC’s Nolan Show about welfare mitigations coming to an end. They need to form an Executive and extend the current mitigations or get creative.

What can we do?
People need to let their MLAs know that they aren’t happy watching MLAs appearing at Stormont every 1,000 days to prevent human rights which are granted elsewhere on these islands but not social security reforms which will harm the most vulnerable in our society.

Sometimes it can be hard to imagine change in Northern Ireland, yet it was the efforts of civic society – groups like Alliance for Choice and the Rainbow Project – that helped make the de-criminalisation of abortion provision and introduction of equal marriage possible. With welfare reform due to kick in within a matter of weeks, I would prefer our politicians came together to challenge these decisions rather than watch them be implemented through their inaction.