The presence in Stormont this morning of the new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his ‘productive’ and ‘positive’ engagement with the Northern Ireland Executive parties is a sign of hope for local working people after 14 years of neglect and mismanagement by the vanquished Conservatives.
Speaking today, ICTU Assistant General Secretary Gerry Murphy said he “looks forward to full engagement” with the new NI Secretary of State Hilary Benn,
taking forward discussions we have already had on several occasions with Hilary and his team on a range of policy and financial issues.
These include a new path for sustainable finances in Northern Ireland, identified in our 2023 document Smart Money. While the UK government has finally begun to accept the scale of the problem of underfunding and long-term underinvestment, more is required to address the real needs of working families and their communities.
There are other matters which impact on our devolved administration and can only be properly addressed through Westminster, such as scrapping the Legacy Act with the same alacrity as the announced scrapping of the sordid Rwanda Safety Act. Both are insults to the good name of any democracy and international standards of human rights. Also, the rights of everybody here can be greatly improved if the government honour the commitment made by the last Labour government in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and take to legislative completion a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.
These are the first days of what could be a new progressive politics across the UK and inside the North. We represented the interests of our members under the hostile eyes of Tory NIO ministers who refused to seriously engage with this movement – and that is what led over the past winter to the most comprehensive series of strikes and industrial action ever seen here. We are keen to be constructive partners as well as critical friends with this Labour government and all parties elected to the NI Assembly.
We have much to rebuild, and can do it better working together.
