Conservatives accused of planning to decimate North's economy
The Conservative Party was today accused of planning to decimate the North's economy just when it was beginning to recover from the global recession.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward claimed Conservative Party leader David Cameron did not care about the future of the region after the Conservative leader said it received too much state funding and British government spending must go down.
Mr Cameron said he wanted to focus on promoting the private sector and providing what he called a “bigger, richer society”.
His comments have been backed by his electoral partners in the North, the Ulster Unionists, but attacked by other parties.
Labour election candidate Mr Woodward said: “While Gordon Brown and Labour have stood by the people of Northern Ireland, David Cameron and the Tories have been secretly planning to decimate the economy just when it’s beginning to recover from the global recession.
“David Cameron and (Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary) Owen Paterson should come clean and set out what their plans really are. They should stop pretending they care about the future of people across Northern Ireland and be honest with people.
“Today we know the Tories just don’t care about the future of Northern Ireland.”
In an interview with Jeremy Paxman on BBC1 on Friday, Mr Cameron said in some parts of the UK the “state accounts for a bigger share of the economy than it did in the communist countries of the old eastern bloc – it is clearly unsustainable”.
Asked by Mr Paxman which part of the UK he was referring to, Mr Cameron said: “I think the first one I would pick out is Northern Ireland.
“In Northern Ireland it is quite clear, almost every party, I think, accepts that the size of the state has got too big, we need a bigger private sector,” he said.
When Mr Paxman said that it was “clear” Mr Cameron was planning on cutting public spending in the North, the Conservative leader replied: “I think you are looking at this in a very strange way if I might say so.”
Mr Cameron added that “almost any party leader sitting in this chair” would say that over the next parliament there needed to be a “faster growing private sector” and a “rebalancing of the economy”.
Mr Cameron’s comments have been attacked by the SDLP, with its South Belfast candidate Alasdair McDonnell accusing the Conservative leader of singling out the North for “special treatment”.
“The weak, the marginalised, the vulnerable and the low-paid public sector workers who keep our services ticking over are being lined up for sacrifice and sectarian head-counting will not save them,” he said.
Mr Cameron has also been criticised by Alliance MLA Anna Lo, who said that he had shown his “true colours”.
However, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) deputy leader Danny Kennedy came to the defence of Mr Cameron, arguing that his comments were an “honest assessment of the Northern Ireland economy” and that all of the parties in the North were agreed upon it.
He added: “In fact, even the executive in its programme for government acknowledges that there is an over-dependence on the public sector in NI and the economy needs to be rebalanced.”
The North’s main public sector union, Nipsa, hit out at Mr Cameron.
Its general secretary Brian Campsfield said: “His faith in the ability of the private sector to provide sufficient jobs to replace thousands of jobs that would be lost to the public sector is sadly misplaced.
“The private sector in Northern Ireland relies heavily on public subsidy and yet its ’entrepreneurs’ have failed to create sufficient high-value employment.”
