The estimated number people in Northern Ireland set to lose between £4,000 and £6,000 per year under benefits cuts announced by the UK Labour Party can now be revealed.
Earlier this week, the UK Work and Penisons Secretary Liz Kendall announced a series of welfare reforms which the Government say will save them £5bn by 2030.
The Resolution Foundation estimates that, across the UK up to 1.2 million people are set to lose between £4,200 and £6,300 per year from changes to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) by 2029.
Read more: The 6 major benefit changes announced by the Government explained
Read more: Stormont benefits mitigation would cost over £150 million, Minister warns
Using the figures from the Resolution Foundation, combined with a budget estimate given by a Stormont Minister, analysis by Belfast Live suggests the number of people in Northern Ireland set to lose out could be in excess of 37,000.
Among the raft of reforms announced by the Labour Party are major changes to Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit.
While the majority of the changes won't directly be enforced in Northern Ireland where these matters are devolved, the Department for Work and Pensions has said that they will work with the Executive at Stormont to implement similar measures here.
While the Stormont government currently runs a number of mitigations against previous benefit system changes - such as the bedroom tax and benefit cap - it appears likely the cuts announced by Liz Kendall will apply.
The Communities Minister Gordon Lyons, speaking to media at Stormont on Tuesday, said any mitigations for the new changes could cost as much as £150 million.
"We will take time to analyse this, but we do have to keep in mind as well, we're talking about significant sums of money," he said. "If these are savings of around £5 billion for the UK as a whole, on population basis alone, we're talking over £150 million for Northern Ireland."
He added: "Those aren't resources that we have at our disposal so we will continue to engage with the government to see which of these changes will apply in Northern Ireland and continue to make the case to make sure that those in need are protected at the same time as protecting tax payers as well."
The Resolution Foundation say the bulk of the £5 billion UK-wide savings are set to be achieved through restricting entitlement to PIP.
The Foundation says that if the Government plans to save £5 billion from restricting PIP by making it harder to qualify for the ‘daily living’ component, this would mean between 800,000 and 1.2 million people losing support of between £4,200 and £6,300 per year by 2029-30.
Taken with the budget estimate of £150 million quoted by Gordon Lyons, that suggests around 37,000 people in Northern Ireland are set to lose out.
Louise Murphy, Senior Economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: "Around one million people are potentially at risk of losing support from tighter restrictions on PIP, while young people and those who fall ill in the future will lose support from a huge scaling back of incapacity benefits."
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