After 19 years of waiting the Northern Ireland Executive launched their draft Anti-Poverty Strategy on Tuesday 17 June. The document is very disappointing, outlining a list of good intentions and existing commitments but no priorities, specific poverty reduction targets, strategic outcomes, or ringfenced budget to deliver the strategy. A lack of accountability also reinforces our concern that the draft strategy will not make any inroads to tackling the deep levels of inequality and low income here.
The rather uninspiring Anti-Poverty Strategy also relies on very old official data. In the short section on fuel poverty on page 21, most of the data relies on the NI House Condition Survey from 2016, which was run nine years ago. It gives an estimated fuel poverty figure of 27% for 2022 despite three consecutive annual LucidTalk polls, commissioned by National Energy Action Northern Ireland, indicating that fuel poverty figures is likely to be in the region of 40% of all households.
Minister Lyons had stated that targets and specific actions will come with action plans after but these we believe that these plans should at the very least been included in the draft strategy document.
NEA NI will work closely with the Anti-Poverty movement to respond to the strategy but reiterate our disappointment in the first instance of such an important piece of strategy for the health and wellbeing of those most in need. The adage springs to mind ‘a test of our society is how it treats its most vulnerable’ and if we measure our Executive this way then they have well and truly failed.
