red tories

Pathways to poverty: dissecting Labour’s cuts to disability benefits

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pathways-poverty-dissecting-labours-cuts-disability-benefits

A devastating new 44-page report reveals Labour’s cuts will push 400,000 into poverty and cost disabled people up to £10,000 annually, while the government refuses to make savings by cutting spending on war instead, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY

THE Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) has just issued a hard-hitting report entitled Pathways To Poverty, which condemns the government’s Pathways To Work green paper. This well-researched 44-page report totally undermines the many flimsy arguments put forward by the “red Tories” to justify their killer cuts.

The report goes through the effects of restricting Personal Independence Payment (PIP) eligibility, cutting the universal credit (UC) health element and making PIP daily living the gateway to UC health. As the CAB points out, over 1.6 million people, which is nearly half of those currently receiving the daily living element of PIP, stand to lose out with an average loss of £4,500 a year.

Its opening paragraph blasts Keir Starmer and company for their sham consultation over the £7 billion worth of proposed cuts: “By refusing to properly consult on its plan to cut billions from disability benefits, the government is choosing not to ask questions it doesn’t want the answers to.

“The cuts will have a devastating impact on disabled people (and their children), sending hundreds of thousands into poverty, and many more into deeper poverty. This will result from a series of arbitrary reforms that have been designed around savings targets rather than improving outcomes, inflicting hardship on people in ways that the government doesn’t yet fully understand.”

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As the CAB report notes: “A DWP survey of disability and incapacity benefit claimants found that 41 per cent of respondents were on a waiting list for treatment for their health problems, and 50 per cent who were currently out of work felt their ability to work was dependent on receiving treatment.”

Finally, the CAB report makes the point that cutting billions from disability benefits is a false economy as it will merely make many disabled people even more ill, dramatically increasing the demands on the NHS, social services, education and voluntary sector. Besides this, there will be a growing number of disabled people made homeless by these cuts, never mind the increase in the suicide rate which will inevitably follow.

The CAB report concludes with a call on Labour to abandon its cuts, which are a devastating attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society: “The government must reconsider its current approach. We are calling on the government to cancel proposed cuts to disability benefits.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/pathways-poverty-dissecting-labours-cuts-disability-benefits

Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.

Continue ReadingPathways to poverty: dissecting Labour’s cuts to disability benefits

Hidden behind this budget is a terrible bombshell: billions in cuts for disabled people

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Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/tax-and-spend-budget-disabled-people-austerity

The DWP confirms that draconian ‘savings’ are coming down the track. Are we a nation that will repair hospitals, but not help a nurse with long Covid?

In the days after the budget, the headlines were dominated by talk of Rachel Reeves’s “tax and spend” bonanza. The message was clear: austerity is officially over. When there was concern about squeezed incomes, it was solely for workers. As the Mail front page put it: “Reeves’ £40bn tax bombshell for Britain’s strivers”. Almost a week later, there has still barely been a word about the policy set to hit the group long scapegoated as Britain’s skivers: the billions of pounds’ worth of benefit cuts for disabled people.

Making up just a couple of lines in a 77-minute speech, you’d have been forgiven for dozing past Reeves’ blink-and-you’d-miss-it bombshell. With a record number of Britons off work with long-term illness, the government will need to “reduce the benefits bill”, she said, before noting ministers had “inherited” the Conservatives’ plans to reform the work capability assessment (WCA). That plan, let’s not forget, was to take up to £4,900 a year each from 450,000 people who are too sick or disabled to work – a move that the Resolution Foundation says would “degrade living standards” for families already on some of the lowest incomes in the country.

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Much like when George Osborne aimed to cut the disability benefits bill by a fifth, “welfare reform” based on arbitrary cost-cutting says the quiet part out loud: benefits won’t be awarded based on who needs them – just on what they cost. It is social security by spreadsheet, severing the social contract that promises the state will be there in times of sickness and disability, and adding a footnote that says, “but only if we can afford it”. That last week’s budget revealed huge investment for infrastructure at the same time as disability benefit cuts exposes how even the affordability argument is largely fabricated. There is money to fix hospital buildings but not to feed a nurse bedbound with long Covid.

The financial impact of such “reform” on those relying on benefits is well established but the psychological toll should not be underestimated. Since gaining power, Labour has drip-fed the rightwing press sound bites and op-eds on potential benefit cuts, leaving news outlets to speculate wildly for clicks. The budget’s half-announcement has only added to the confusion and fear, issuing vague dog whistles of “fraud” and high “benefit bills” while forcing millions of people to wait months to find out if they will lose the money they need to live.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/05/tax-and-spend-budget-disabled-people-austerity

Continue ReadingHidden behind this budget is a terrible bombshell: billions in cuts for disabled people

Over 50,000 demand wealth tax as alternative to austerity in Autumn Budget

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Rachel Reeves says that there are difficult choices ahead, that the poor have to make sacrifices and thanks for her new clothes.
Rachel Reeves says that there are difficult choices ahead, that the poor have to make sacrifices and thanks for her new clothes.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/over-50000-demand-wealth-tax-as-alternative-to-austerity-in-autumn-budget

THE Labour leadership faced demands today to tax the rich instead of inflicting more painful spending cuts in its Budget on Wednesday.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has warned that her fiscal announcement will involve “difficult decisions” because of a £22 billion “black hole” left by the Tories in the nation’s finances, which has since led her to talk of finding £40-50bn in spending cuts and tax rises.

Today Labour MP Richard Burgon presented a 50,000-strong petition in Parliament calling for wealth taxes as an alternative.

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The petition calls for a 2 per cent wealth tax on assets over £10 million, which could raise £24bn a year.

It also suggested equalising capital gains tax with income tax rates and ending state subsidies for fossil fuel giants, which could raise another £21bn.

Ms Reeves stated that the upcoming Budget will focus on “strivers,” invoking the rhetoric of austerity architect George Osborne, though a speech by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer today stressed Labour would raise taxes to invest in public services.

Labour MP John McDonnell tweeted: “Simple request to whoever is now running Labour’s communications strategy, drop the ‘strivers’ language as it inevitably has led in the past to reference to ‘skivers’ prefacing attacks on welfare benefit claimants and cuts in social security support.”

Over 120 charities under the End Child Poverty Coalition have called on the Chancellor to use the Budget to finally ditch the two-child benefit cap.

The coalition says that doing so would lift 300,000 children out of poverty.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/over-50000-demand-wealth-tax-as-alternative-to-austerity-in-autumn-budget

Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
Continue ReadingOver 50,000 demand wealth tax as alternative to austerity in Autumn Budget

Tories Praise Wes Streeting’s Plans For The NHS

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https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/tories-praise-wes-streetings-nhs-plans

Conservatives have praised Wes Streeting at their annual party conference, saying the Labour Health Secretary has shown “political courage” by recognising that “the NHS model isn’t working properly”.

George Freeman, the Tory MP for Mid Norfolk who has twice served as science, innovation and technology minister, was asked about the Labour government’s healthcare plans at a Monday fringe event on life sciences research.

“The new government have made very clear there’s a lot of continuity. I’m pretty cheered,” the Conservative MP replied.

He said that he had been in discussions with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Science Secretary Peter Kyle about life sciences research and the health innovation economy. 

“I’m talking to Keir and Peter Kyle and others. They have been kind enough to say this is one of the areas they don’t view as part of the broken inheritance.”

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https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/tories-praise-wes-streetings-nhs-plans

Continue ReadingTories Praise Wes Streeting’s Plans For The NHS

Morning Star: Labour’s zombie economics must be challenged in Liverpool

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-zombie-economics-must-be-challenged-liverpool

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a reception in 10 Downing Street, London, to mark 40 years of London Fashion Week, September 16, 2024

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Starmer has worked to undo the steps taken by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn to empower Labour members, reducing conference to its status under Tony Blair, an extended rally for loyalists to cheer the all-powerful leader.

The crackdown on members’ democratic rights was welcomed by right-wing MPs who resented efforts to make them accountable to the grassroots under Corbyn, but now extends to MPs themselves. They are cast from the back benches for defying the whip — unprecedented authoritarianism in a parliamentary party and one that has left it so cowed that just one MP dared to side with the labour movement and the public in voting against winter fuel cuts.

MPs will only find the courage of their convictions when pressure other than that of the whip’s office is brought to bear — pressure from the trade unions which founded their party and from the constituents who can kick them out.

Defeating Reeves on winter fuel payments at conference might not change government policy right away — but it will encourage the gathering revolt we need.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-zombie-economics-must-be-challenged-liverpool

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Labour’s zombie economics must be challenged in Liverpool