Part of Executive Committee Business – in the Northern Ireland Assembly am 11:45 am ar 7 Mai 2024.
Thank you. I am always ready to speak.
I will not repeat verbatim what I said at the Bill's previous stages, but I will oppose the Bill. As with many promises that have been made by the Executive parties, the Minister and the Executive are rolling back on something that they promised and voted through. They sought votes from and campaigned on the policy and then U-turned and went into reverse gear when they got into the Executive and back into office.
The parking charge is a tax on those who work in our health and social care sector and those who need to avail themselves of those services. I repeat: it is one rule for MLAs and Ministers up here with their free parking and another for everybody else who works in or relies on our Health and Social Care (HSC) services. The Minister mentioned alternative forms of transport — active travel and the like: that is important, but it is not available or accessible to everyone. I urge the Executive to allocate proper resources to infrastructure for cycling, walking and other forms of active travel.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that social workers are due to begin strike action tomorrow because they are overworked and underpaid. The very people who are equipped for early intervention cannot intervene early, because they have too much work to do with too few workers. There is a vacancy rate of almost 50% for family support services in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust area. It seems that the money that should go to those workers will not be made available in the Budget. To add insult to injury, they are also being asked to pay for parking again. What a shame.
During the early stages of the Bill, I raised scepticism about the delays and technological issues that the Minister had cited as the main reason for this Bill's introduction. He has now revealed that the technological issues have been more or less resolved. That confirms my suspicion that it was always about resource: raising money and putting the burden on workers and the public, which was stated by the Minister and in the explanatory memorandum. For those reasons and for the many others that I have previously stated, I oppose this regressive and unfair Bill.