Labour’s plan to reduce welfare spending may or may not come to pass. It has been re-announced this week, yet again, still without much detail or urgency.
But it does raise the question of how much longer Stormont can stand idly by over the largest and most significant field of public policy.
Total welfare spending in Northern Ireland is rising fast, reaching £10 billion in the last financial year, double its level just five years before.
This year’s total will be closer to £11 billion. The Treasury pays the welfare bill separately to Stormont’s £16 billion budget.
About a third of that bill is the state pension, which people tend to think of as untouchable, or not a benefit at all.
They are mistaken: the government regularly changes pension rules and rates, while radical suggestions such as means testing are mentioned today in the certainty they will be needed tomorrow.
The rising bill is a reminder that welfare spending has little direct connection to unemployment, which at 2 per cent is effectively non-existent in Northern Ireland.
Long-term illness, economic inactivity and an ageing population are the main the factors driving up costs. Labour’s initial focus appears to be on disability benefits, which make up a quarter of welfare spending here.
In theory, welfare is almost fully devolved to Stormont, uniquely within the UK.
The Treasury funds it separately only because Stormont chooses to shadow Britain’s benefits system and because the bill varies with demand, so it is difficult to manage under a fixed block grant.
The executive can top up benefits at its own expense, as it has just done with the winter fuel payment, or take charge of any or all benefits and adjust them as it sees fit, as it has done with minor aspects of universal credit since 2015.
In reality, Stormont parties and officials believe they cannot seriously diverge from Britain due to the terrifying scale of the political and financial responsibility.
Agreeing those minor tweaks to universal credit in 2015, currently adding 0.04 per cent to the welfare budget, caused a three-year executive deadlock and almost collapsed devolution.
There would also be a vast administrative burden. The cost of a separate benefits computer system was estimated a decade ago at £1.5 billion.
While all these concerns may be valid, they apply equally to devolving any or all of Northern Ireland’s £22 billion in tax revenues. That has not prevented tax devolution becoming a policy and a general aspiration at Stormont.
Sinn Féin wants taxes devolved as a matter of republican principle, to “repatriate powers from Britain”. Its minister, Conor Murphy, set up an independent commission on the issue in 2021, which recommended partial devolution of income tax, as in Scotland and Wales.
The DUP and Sinn Féin have backed devolving particular taxes for specific goals: long-haul air passenger duty to save transatlantic air routes; and corporation tax to compete with the Republic for inward investment.
Because tax revenues vary, much like benefit costs, Stormont has to negotiate a ‘price’ with London to hand a power over. For corporation tax it was £300 million a year, to be knocked off the block grant, with Stormont then collecting the revenue itself.
Taking charge of a benefit would mean negotiating a sum to be added to the block grant, for Stormont to hand out itself.
If Labour is going to reduce welfare spending, Stormont should consider agreeing a price to devolve certain benefits as soon as possible.
Otherwise, it will simply be a watcher on the shore as the tide of money flowing into Northern Ireland slows down or ebbs away.
Saving people’s benefits might be Stormont’s first concern but there is scarcely any policy where more control over welfare would not be useful or essential.
As an example, a debate has begun in Britain after the Chartered Institute of Housing published a report last month showing government spending on social housing is the highest in history.
But whereas in the past almost all this money was used to build and maintain housing, today 88 per cent goes on housing benefits, with much of that paid to private landlords.
The report contains ideas on how to direct funds back into housebuilding but Northern Ireland cannot join this debate, let alone build more houses, until Stormont takes responsibility for the money.
Realistically, the executive may always find benefits too hot to handle. But when the screaming starts about Labour’s welfare reforms, remember, this is cowardice by political choice.