PEOPLE Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin has branded the decision not to restore the £20 Universal Credit uplift as “shameful”.
Said Cllr Harkin: “Sinn Féin Finance Minister Conor Murphy announced additional funding to Stormont’s departments through the October monitoring round late Friday in an attempt to avoid public scrutiny.
“The details of what the funding allocations will mean need clarification but the call for Stormont to take responsibility for the £20-a-week cut to Universal Credit has been ignored.
“In failing to prioritise funding to restore the Universal Credit cut, the Executive has once again deemed it acceptable to turn its back on the least well-off. This is utterly shameful.
“Point scoring and divisive squabbling from Executive parties won’t do anything to defend those among us facing a winter of pain.
“Genuine resistance, not lip service, is the only way to push back against spiralling inequality.
“That’s not happening with this lot on the Executive.
“Derry has the highest deprivation levels in the North.
“Thirty per cent of the population are below the poverty line.
“Our child poverty levels are criminal.
“Yet, there are more super rich people than ever before.
“This hasn’t happened by accident but because the Executive parties emulated the Tories over the last 20 years in prioritising elites by encouraging privatisation, lobbying for tax cuts for corporations, greenlighting cruel welfare reforms and promoting food banks.
“The cut to Universal Credit alongside rising energy costs, new tax burdens and below inflation wage increases for most workers is going to put many more people and children into hardship.
“It’s urgent we organise a fighting people power response.
“If we do that a real alternative will become possible.”
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