Social Security

Alasdair McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Commons Chamber

The last point is, of course, that this will all be devolved back to Northern Ireland at the end of this year. I trust that we will have learned from the debacle that brought the Assembly and politics into disrepute, and that we will learn that sometimes, there are hard choices to be made and that we should at least be prepared to face up to those hard choices and find ways of dealing with the consequences of legislation that comes from this place.

[Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman not honestly accept that, really, the whole debacle was more about him and his party not wanting to troop through the Lobby in a love-in with Sinn Féin to inflict poverty on people in Northern Ireland?

[Sammy Wilson]

This is the amazing thing: I know there are all these attempts to rewrite history, but it was a DUP Minister who actually brought the legislation to the Assembly—who was prepared to walk through the Lobby and to vote for it. However, because a petition of concern was introduced by the SDLP, even if a majority of Members in the Assembly had voted for the legislation, it would still not have become law. Once that petition of concern was triggered and the legislation was turned down, we could not have any welfare reform Bill. That is the truth of the matter—not that we ran away. We faced up to things. I can remember doing interview after interview where we even faced flak from people who said, “You’re going to hurt individuals because of part of this legislation.” We argued, “At least we’ve done something to mitigate it. We have got the best possible deal.”

Can I just say that we did get changes and allowances made by the Department for Work and Pensions? I want to give credit to Ministers in the Department. When we were negotiating on welfare reform, they accepted that Northern Ireland could make changes, albeit that we had to accept the financial consequences of those changes. However, flexibility was demonstrated by the Department, although it was rejected by those who wanted simply to be able to say, “We are purer than everyone else on this issue. We have stood on our principles”—regardless of the consequences of that.

We have the legislation that we have today. Those who are most vulnerable in Northern Ireland have been safeguarded by the changes that have been made and by the resources that have been devoted to this issue by the Northern Island Assembly, and that has been a painful choice, because, of course, it means that there is less money to spend on other things.