SDLP 'plan for change' aims to halve childcare costs in five years

Cutting the cost of childcare by at least 50% in five years and the removal of the two-child cap on benefit claims are among proposals in a new SDLP blueprint for Stormont.

The Assembly's main opposition party set out the issues it would prioritise if it was in the Executive ahead of the formal publication of the powersharing administration's programme for government.

The document was launched by Opposition leader Matthew O'Toole and SDLP leader-in-waiting Claire Hanna in Belfast.

The Executive has recently introduced a scheme to cut childcare costs for children not yet at school age by 15%.

If the two-child limit on claiming benefits such as Universal Credit is maintained by the UK government at Westminster, any move to axe it at Stormont would have to be funded from its own coffers.

At the event on Monday morning, Mr O'Toole was pressed on the relative lack of financial costings detailed within his party's document.

He insisted the plan was not an alternative programme for government, as the SDLP did not have "thousands of civil servants" on hand to develop such a strategy.

"We don't have the vast machinery of government at our beck and call," he said.

"We haven't had, unlike the Executive parties, literally hundreds of meetings over the past two and a half years to discuss a detailed programme for government, but it is important for us as a constructive opposition to set out what we think should be headline targets, aspirations and interventions that an executive should make in what is left of this curtailed mandate."

The Plan for Change contains commitments to "rescue" Northern Ireland's public services and restore the environment, as well as the introduction of a "robust and standalone" hate crime bill.

In terms of the stability of powersharing, the plan also calls on the main Executive parties to commit formally to not collapsing the institutions for the remainder of this term.

The SDLP says it would develop a costed strategy to cut Northern Ireland's spiralling health service waiting lists by 50% in five years.

By 2030, it also seeks to secure at least 80% of the region's energy requirements from renewable sources and create at least 17,500 "green jobs".

The party aims to lift 64,000 children out of poverty by that date and also build 13,000 new social homes.

Mr O'Toole insisted the plan was "realistic".

"In terms of costings, we've never come out and said 'deliver the moon on a stick' because we don't think that's plausible," he told reporters at the Stormont Hotel.

"It wouldn't be responsible in opposition. But what I haven't seen from the Executive is any sense of making meaningful choices and explaining to people how they're going to deliver these aspirations."

South Belfast and Mid Down MP Ms Hanna, who is set to replace Colum Eastwood as SDLP leader at the party's annual conference next month, said sightings of the Northern Lights were more common in Northern Ireland than programmes for governments. The last was agreed in 2011.

"The time has passed for aspiration, for talking about hope and possibility and for long documents with lots and lots of places to hide, we've had enough of that before," she said.

"We need targets. We need timelines, we need priorities and we need choices, because that's what politics is really about. Crucially, we need a culture change.

"We do hope that the Executive's plan starts with a commitment not to collapse itself, to give people that assurance that politics and politicians are going to stick around and help them solve their problems.

"And we need to move to a time when leadership isn't just an image, it's a practice as well."