Lord Empey:

The amount of spending that is happening in the public sector, despite the rhetoric about austerity from the George Osborne era, so to speak, is that, looking at the figures, public sector spending has actually gone up. Northern Ireland’s slice of it has been doing as well as anywhere else. What has happened is that the Government has cut at things which has actually slowed economic growth. That has been part of the cause of people finding themselves in difficulties. The era of austerity and cutting back on public spending is long past by now.