Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
“Energy bills up to nearly £2000 a year. Water bills up by 31% in some areas. Basic food prices keep rising – the list goes on. People aren’t fooling around when they say today is the start of “Awful April”. Especially awful for single parents who we know will be hit hardest by these price hikes.
“These spiralling costs come on the back of axing winter fuel payments for pensioners, refusing to remove the two-child benefit cap and cutting benefits for the sick and disabled.
“These are political choices. Rather than making the poorest and most vulnerable in society bear the brunt of the cost of living crisis, Labour could have chosen instead to tax a tiny percentage of the wealth of multi-millionaires and billionaires. They’ve made a choice, to take money off the old, ill and disabled.
“Labour have again and again made the wrong choices, which has left many of the poorest households at breaking point.”
Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
‘The Bill only targets the less well-off. There is no equivalent surveillance of legislators who accept payments to advance the interests of their corporate paymasters.’
Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.
George Orwell’s iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, warns of a dystopian world where The Party or the government undermines people’s rights, independence and autonomy through fear and propaganda. Constant surveillance is a key weapon for disciplining people and shaping their minds.
That world has arrived in the UK, the self-proclaimed mother of parliaments. The new tyranny isn’t ushered in by some communist, socialist or military regime but by a right-wing elected government.
The Bill uses developments in electronic transactions and artificial intelligence to place the poor, disabled, sick, old and pregnant women under surveillance. It gives Ministers and government agencies powers to direct businesses, particularly banks, and financial institutions, to mass monitor individuals receiving welfare payments, even when there is no suspicion or any sign of fraudulent activity. No court order is needed and affected individuals will not be informed. The Bill enables Ministers to make any further regulations without a vote in parliament.
The report mentioned that police were called to the scene, but omitted the scale of the response which, according to details in a Freedom of Information request, included Territorial Support Group riot police and the Armed Response Unit. In total, 48 officers and two dogs attended the scene. Human rights campaigner David Mery who made the FOI request, said he was concerned about the report’s omissions and the way in which “crucial details” were “left out.” He said: “Normally they would make it clear that information has been blacked out. Learning that 48 police officers were deployed for this incident is incredible. What else are they not saying?”
