The Tory Nasty Party are back: Lord Freud and the Bedroom Tax

I could not believe what I was hearing on the B.B.C.  Radio Five Live Victoria Derbyshire morning programme in a discussion with Lord Freud and Radio Five listeners about the imminent new Under Occupancy Act, otherwise infamously known as the Bedroom Tax. This tax comes into effect on Monday 1^st April 2013.

The Bedroom Tax is where people who have a spare bedroom and are on a benefit will have their housing benefit cut.

Lord Freud was asked specific questions by listeners regarding how the tax would affect them.

One had a son in the army and wanted to keep his bedroom for when the son was on leave so he felt he had a home to come back to. Another had separated from his wife and the 3 children stayed with him at the weekend, the school holidays and at other times.  Another had disabilities that affected his breathing and he had to use an oxygen tank and other apparatus to help him breathe. He had to sleep with his head raised on the bed so he slept in a separate room from his wife so they could both sleep without him disturbing her from the noise of the oxygen and his sleeping position in the bed. Another had a daughter going to university.

Lord Freud did not answer the specific questions asked by people on the phone but choose to give the bog standard Government answer such as “difficult times, times of austerity” we need to reform the system to stop the scroungers, [my words], living in luxury (?) with too many rooms that they don’t need.

Here is the solution that Lord Freud gave to the tenants:

To the father who has his children stay at the weekends and various other nights Lord Freud said: “He should move to a one bedroom house then buy a sofa bed so the 3 children could sleep in the living room.”

To the parents of the student at university he said; “Why don’t you take in a lodger.” So what does the daughter do when she returns home for a weekend visit and during the holidays? Sleep with the lodger? Obviously he is not aware that as a student living in student accommodation it is classed as temporary accommodation. The man with breathing and other medical problems he ignored.

It beggars belief that this Lord of the realm, who is the Prime Minister David Cameron’s Under Secretary of State (Lords) for the Department of Work and Pensions, who between January 2008 and February 2009 acted as an advisor on welfare reform to the U.K. government, is ignorant of the tenancy law; that he does not know that under the tenancy agreement between a tenant and the local council or housing association it is illegal to sublet any part of the accommodation. Yet here he is happily telling people to break the conditions of their tenancy agreement.  

Apart from Lord Freud’s lack of knowledge regarding tenancy agreements, I feel it shows the arrogance of members of the Tory party to tell people to say “It is alright, just take in a lodger”. Problem solved, easy peasy. 

Say it did happen. First of all it would lead to complications on any welfare payment they receive whether they are working or not.  Probably any welfare benefit they get would be cut or stopped including their rent and council tax payments. Would the tax man have interest in this extra income?

What about insurance cover? Many insurance companies will not insure you or the house if you have a lodger, or the premium is very expensive. What happens when the offspring comes home from University and the Army? Do they sleep in the living room or the bathroom? Do you want a lodger in your house using all the facilities?

This is rich coming from a man who owns two large houses. One, a country mansion in Kent, which is believed to be one of the oldest in England, has eight bedrooms. The other is a £1.9 million four bedroom house in Highgate, London that he shares with his wife. So that is a total of 12 bedrooms for two people which of eight are only used at weekends, holidays or for entertaining on special occasions.

What a hypocrite Lord Freud is. A man who owns two homes with twelve bedrooms for two people is plunging over 100,000 people into poverty, causing them extreme anxiety and leading to their illnesses becoming acute. 

Is this not a form of “ethnic cleansing,” this time done on a socio-economic scale rather than a race or religious doctrine?

Just to show this multi-millionaire’s arrogance and lack of feeling for the working class communities, vulnerable and people with mental or physical problems, Lord Freud stated in an interview with The House magazine, "We've got the circumstances now where... people who are poorer should be prepared to take the biggest risks - they've got least to lose."

The Tory “Nasty Party” is back with a vengeance.

McTaggart

Council Tax Benefit Changes 2013

How many people know about the change in the way Council Tax Benefit is going to be paid from April 2013?

From April 2013 Council Tax Benefit (CTB) will be re-named Council Tax Support, (CTS), and payments will become the responsibility of the local authority. The Council Tax budget will also be cut by 10 to 15% and will be paid from a “pot” system rather than a CTS budget fund. This means that the local authority will have to take into account every person who is eligible for a CTS payment and decide how much a person may receive in benefit.

Excluded from this are people of pension age and over.

For example a local council which has a CTS budget of say £10 million has to first pay the people of pension age and over, which may come to £2 million leaving only £8 million left for everyone else applying for CTS.  

The main bulk of people that are going to be affected by this change are those of a working age i.e. those below the pension age. If you fall into the working age bracket the amount of help you receive under the CTS scheme may be less than you currently receive on the current Council Tax Benefit scheme. 

The new system may mean that people who currently receive a full CTB payment will have their payment reduced and possibly have to pay 10 – 20% of their Council Tax.

This will inevitably lead to pushing people further into poverty and debt. (There is currently about 1 in 4 adults living below the poverty line, 13 million approx., and 1 in 3 children about 4 million). 

I feel this will lead to higher crime, a possible increase in the sex trade and a greater use of illegal drugs.  One benefactor may be the “One Stop” or “Pay Day” loan shops that are currently increasing in number in the local High street. These loan “sharks” charge very high interest rates, it is reported as much as 800% Annual Percentage Rate (A.P.R.).

McTaggart   

TUC Anti- Austerity March Saturday 20th October 2012 London

Are you going to be at the Anti-Austerity march leaving from the Embankment, London at 12.00 p.m.to Hyde Park?

If not, why not?

There will thousands of people from all over U.K. arriving by coach, train and motor car to demonstrate against the Tory led Coalition government austerity cuts and the Tory dogma that it is the poorest who have to suffer for their austerity programme to work.

There is definitely a hollow ring to the Prime Minister David Cameron’s slogan “that we are all in it together”. Little or no pay rises cuts to social welfare funding and changes to how benefits such as Housing Benefit will be paid whilst cutting the tax threshold that the highest earners in the country have to pay.

The disabled, sick and the terminally ill being passed as fit for work by a biased and disgraceful medical assessment procedure.

Cuts to the N.H.S. budget meaning less staff, ward closures and worst of all hospital closures.  This week it was announced in several counties in England that ambulance stations will be closed in local areas and main “hubs” will replace them. This will mean an ambulance travelling many miles further to an emergency taking a longer tome which is often crucial in saving a person’s life.

Let us make it clear to the Government that we, the people are very unhappy with this Government’s policy on the economy and their programme for austerity cuts.

Join the march on Saturday 20th October at 12.00 p.m. at the Embankment London.

Remember, “We are many but they are few”.

Pass The Hot Water Bottle

Photo by David Ritter.
Photo taken from http://www.sxc.hu/

So much for the much heralded Energy Summit where, we were promised by Head boy Cameron, the Power Supplier would be brought to book over their rocketing prices and excessive annual profits. These have spiralled from fifteen pounds per household to an electrifying one hundred and twenty-five pounds in the last six months, when wholesale energy costs have, in fact, been steadily falling.

According to Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, it’s our fault for not shopping around to get the best deal and not paying by direct debit. So much for coming to the aid of the hard-pressed consumer then.

With over forty different tariffs available, all based on an unintelligible formula which would baffle even the brightest maths graduate, selecting the best option for you is nigh-on impossible, whilst people on pre-pay meters are out of this savings loop altogether.

As for paying by direct debit, some twenty percent of the population – principally the elderly and low paid – do not have access to a bank account that enables them to take advantage of paying in this way.  What’s more, if they are largely reliant on the vagaries of Government benefit payments or have a shaky credit history, no matter how many years ago, banks are generally reluctant to accept them as a customer.

Photo by Graham Briggs.
Photo taken from http://www.sxc.hu/

If you do succeed, the maximum seven and a half percent annual saving you can expect pales into insignificance against the eight hundred percent profit trousered by suppliers from your payments.

So where to now? Update your heating system and improve home insulation.  Fine, if you are an owner or rent from a responsible local authority. But private landlords, even if they let property through a local authority, are not obliged to carry out these improvements: Nor are they likely to unless they are allowed to hike rents to unacceptable levels to pay for these costs.

So, for several million of the most vulnerable in our “Big Society” its time once again to pull on another sweater, blow on your hands and move further to the back of the queue.

R. A. E.

The Hobo and the Hound

I got Sky when she was a year old. She was an abused dog. I was living with my brother and he took her from some drug dealers.She was in a really bad way when we got her. When my brother lost his flat, we all ended up on the street together. We stayed anywhere we could. At one point we were living in a dustbin shed and that was the worst place ever, with the smells, the noise, the rubbish and used needles where we slept. We even had rats as ‘house mates’ in the night time. We eventually got moved on by the police from there After that I lived on the streets around Finsbury Park, just me and Sky as my brother had gone to prison. We had tried a few homeless shelters but when you’ve got a dog it’s hard to find somewhere. There was the odd night shelter that used to take us in on a Sunday but apart from that we had to fend for ourselves.

Loads of people said to me ‘why don’t you get rid of the dog to get a place?’ But it wasn’t her fault that we were homeless, why should she suffer? If you give up a dog, most of them get put down. I couldn’t do it. I would rather have stayed on the streets than get rid of her. She is part of the family and she was my only company. When you are on the streets no one talks to you. That’s why a lot of homeless people have got dogs. It’s comfort because you’re on your own. At night she’d sleep in the bottom of my sleeping bag, keeping me warm. When I was younger, I used to walk past a lot of homeless people on the street and I did not realize how hard it is until I went through it myself. It took a couple of pounds a day to feed Sky and people would see her and give us money; some people even gave her dog food.  Then finally it looked like we could have a home of our own.

We came straight from the streets to the SHP Ashley Road project. Apart from Sky, all I had was a sleeping bag. I found out about the project through The Pillion Trust and they were amazing. An outreach worker there found out that this particular project accepted dogs. It’s one of the only places that do and I couldn’t believe it when they said yes. I had tears in my eyes. After  five years sleeping rough on concrete, and surviving the hazards of such a life, Sky and I had finally found our creature comforts. The rules are that the dog has to be well behaved and doesn’t mess up the room and that I take care of her properly. Sky is a very well behaved, friendly dog so this is not a problem, and she is well liked by my fellow residents.

Finding a home at Ashley Road has made a huge difference to my wellbeing. If I hadn’t got in somewhere I probably would have ended up dead through heroin addiction after 25 year of injecting. But now I’m back on track. It’s so important that hostels take in people with dogs. Everyone needs a home, even with pets. At the end of the day, they could be saving someone’s life.


Martin

Opposing the cuts

I have been greatly upset to read in the press that the rent for Council and Housing Associations might be doubled under the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government and that a council flat wouldn’t be for life anymore.

The new Government have put a cap on the amount of Housing Benefit that can be claimed depending on how many rooms are in your home. For a one bedroom flat, which most people from SHP would be moving into, the cap is £250 per week. I think this is reasonable as the average rent is around £100 per week for council accommodation in this area. However, if Councils and Housing Associations double their rent, it may go over the limit to housing benefit currently in place.

I recently moved  on from the SHP project and into a one bedroom council flat. I am worried that when I eventually start paid employment I won’t be able to afford to pay the rent, as I may no longer be eligible for housing benefit, and that I will be priced out of keeping a council flat in Islington. I might have to move to a deprived area on the outskirts of London and away from friends and a familiar community. I have been living in Islington since 1991/1992 and I came here to study drama. I have no contact with my family and Islington is now my home so I want to stay living here.

The Government claims that the housing benefit cuts will save the country £270 million per year. But over 50,000 claimants will, on average, lose £93 per week.

It’s not just the council and housing association sector that is affected by the cuts. A lot of people on housing benefit rent private accommodation. Jeremy Corbyn says, “ I am very concerned about the changes in housing benefit. Under the new levels of local housing allowance, I am fearful that the private sector will be too expensive for many and they will be forced to move out of the area. We need rent controls and more council housing being built to give everyone a secure home.”

I don’t know how things will pan out and whether there will be so much opposition and protest against the changes that the Government will back down or whether the cuts will go ahead, and may even be deeper than they are currently being proposed, but I hope that’s not the case. I think the public should oppose all the welfare cuts because they affect us all. No matter how much money you have, you never know when you might need the state to help you.

K