“The election campaign has barely kicked off and already the Tories are showing their true colours. Conservative plans for £12bn worth of welfare cuts means £1,500 cut for 8m households. To build a stronger economy and a fairer society, the welfare system should be designed to help people get on in life.
“But, surprise, surprise the Tories are hell-bent on punishing disabled people and working families with crippling welfare cuts.”
Hear, hear, I thought, assuming that only someone like raving Communist ‘Red’ Ed Miliband, as the Daily Hate Mail might say, would come up with. But no. It was said by the Lib Dem campaign chief Lord Scriven.
Of course, what he said was absolutely spot on, but it seems that he is suffering from some form of memory loss because it was the Lib Dems who enabled this extreme right wing government to impose its vicious austerity on the working poor and the sick and disabled.
The cuts have been leaked from the Tory Party but already Iain Duncan Smith’s taxpayer funded spin machine is at work. The proposals were prepared by civil servants on government instructions but already there is a non denial denial from Duncan Smith’s office.
“This is ill informed and inaccurate speculation
“Officials spend a lot of time generating proposals – many not commissioned by politicians. It’s wrong and misleading to suggest that any of this is part of our plan.”
So, the proposals, prepared by civil servants on the instructions of politicians, are “ill informed and inaccurate speculation”. I’m glad that’s clear, then.
So what are these Tory proposals to punish disabled people and working families?
Well, they want to abolish the Industrial Injuries Compensation Scheme which companies would have to pay for instead.
Scrapping Carer’s Allowance for all apart from those who don’t work.
Scrapping the contributory aspect of JSA and ESA, the unemployment and sickness benefits, presumably only paying those who haven’t paid into the scheme. I paid in for 40 years but wasn’t entitled to a penny of the so-called contributions based JSA.
Taxing the main disability allowances, including for pensioners who need personal care. Will this include those with terminal illnesses?
Scrapping Council Tax benefit.
Further cuts to Child Benefit which normally benefits only working families.
Scriven has clearly forgotten that his Lib Dems have enabled a government that has already removed tax credits from many working families and cut it for all the rest. He cannot blame it all on Cameron since the Tories couldn’t have cut the tax credits without the Lib Dems’ say so. And don’t get me started on his absurd comments about the Tories being “hell-bent on punishing disabled people”. Remind me: which government presided over the chaotic introduction of Personal Independence Payments (PIP), leading to colossal delays and many terminally ill claimants not receiving their desperately needed support before they died? The one in which Nick Clegg holds the vainglorious title of Deputy Prime Minister.
The swingeing cuts proposed don’t even include what they would almost certainly do to the working poor, slashing still further working tax credits or, and I would not put it past Osborne, abolishing them entirely. We’re all in it together, you see. Some more than others.
Cutting welfare is popular with the public since most people don’t totally rely on it. The narrative from the government, and its media friends, is that anyone on benefits is a scrounger or an immigrant or preferably both. That the vast majority of welfare is consumed by pensioners is not always made clear by the government and its friends, since pensioners vote. Why do you think Osborne has been throwing money at the grey vote in recent months? No one seriously believes that the middled aged man with terminal cancer or the elderly woman with Alzeimers are scroungers who should be sent to work in reconstituted Poorhouses, but when you think about the benefits bill, these are not the sort of people you are supposed to be thinking of.
The right wing likes to use the term “hand outs” when it comes to benefit payments, a term which has entirely different connotations to allowances pensions. “So and so gets X amount in hand outs”, the Daily Scum will say. Benefit has become a dirty word because of the Lib Dems and the Tory government they enabled and encouraged, but for many reliant on help and support, it’s the mark of a civilised society that we look after people in their lowest moments.
The truth is the Tories have not recently begun to show their true colours: we knew their true colours all along. It’s the unprincipled opportunists of the Liberal Democrats who have shown their true colours since 2010 and you only have to check their House of Commons voting records to see that’s true.
