The Cost of Living
The Assembly may be on its summer break but the House of Commons is still sitting. And just because the DUP propped the government up over 42 days doesn't mean its MPs always walk into the same lobby as Labour. Today the party sponsored a Westminster debate on the cost of living, arguing that the government should consider using extra tax revenues generated by higher oil prices to help those on low and medium incomes. Specifically, Gregory Campbell called for a radical overhaul of winter fuel payments.
However the former NIO minister Jane Kennedy, now the Treasury's Financial Secretary, rejected the idea that the "third oil shock" provided the government with a tax windfall. She argued that the global downturn meant reduced taxes elsewhere, because of lower consumer demand and reduced company profits. So, she claimed, the tax take evened out.
The DUP's Sammy Wilson wasn't convinced going back to his old days as an economics teacher to question the minister's arguments. The climate change sceptic also couldn't resist a crack at the government's "slavish" committment to EU targets for bio fuels.
At one point David Simpson and Mark Durkan disagreed over whether consumers here might have weathered the credit crunch better if they had been in an all Ireland economy. This prompted a back handed compliment from the Economic Secretary Kitty Ussher to the Upper Bann MP (initially she called him the Upper Bane MP) for the best mixed metaphor of the debate, when Mr Simpson told MPs "the Celtic Tiger was on fire but is now withering on the vine".
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