Letters: Protests grow over benefit cuts | Society | The Guardian

'The benefit justice campaign intends to do for the bedroom tax what we did for the poll tax.' 

Protest against outside Camberwell magistrates court, October 2013. Photograph: Martin Godwin

We are the two protesters pictured on the steps of Camberwell magistrates court in Amelia Gentleman's piece (400 in protest at clampdown on council tax arrears, 19 October). As part of the Southwark Benefit Justice Campaign, we have been trying to persuade Southwark's Labour council not to do the government's dirty work by threatening to evict tenants or remove their benefits through the courts. Southwark has a choice – 14 councils have adopted some kind of no evictions policy over the bedroom tax, others have absorbed the council tax benefit cut. :

The real aim of "welfare reform" is not to tackle the deficit – it won't do that – but to make life so unbearable on benefits that we will be desperate to take any job, however low the pay, however poor the conditions, just to put food on the table. The growth of food banks shows how the bedroom tax and brutal sanctioning of benefits are literally starving people. That's why we have managed to gather a coalition of our own in Southwark, including not just claimants but tenants, pensioners, disability campaigners and six local trade union branches representing the organised working class in the borough. We are part of a national benefit justice movement that intends to do for the bedroom tax what we did for the poll tax. We will be demonstrating in Southwark on 25 January 2014 and we invite our councillors to join us. It's time they swapped sides. 

Shaun O'Regan and Tanya Murat
Southwark Benefit Justice Campaign

• The hardships faced by single mother Lisa Whitman, who is "short every week", are shared by many mothers and children. Instead of getting support for our caring work, single mothers are targeted as "workless", ie worthless. How else to explain Newham council forcing the eviction of the Focus E15 mothers from their hostel by cutting funding, or that a single mother in the legal challenge to the £500 benefit cap has been left with £1.92 per child per day after rent?

Both Hilary Benn and the debt charity Zacchaeus 2000 condemn the threatening of sick and disabled people with summonses, bailiffs and prison. But for claimants, benefit deductions cut in before bailiffs and prison do. The council hands a printout of names and addresses to a magistrate who makes a global liability order – our individual circumstances and suffering conveniently hidden.

In Camden, 2,569 people were summonsed in three months, bypassing wheelchair-user discounts and discretionary help. A woman behind by £2.59 had to pay the year's council tax to avoid court fees. Another had her weekly benefit reduced to £63.10, as she already had crisis loan repayments. She goes without food. That is the policy.

When the community urged Camden councillors to join Brighton, Fife and Leeds in opposition to council and bedroom tax, they responded with eviction notices and food banks.

Claire Glasman
WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities)
Kim Sparrow
Single Mothers' Self-Defence

• Tens of thousands of social tenants are being forced into rent arrears because they cannot afford to pay this unjust levy. Local authorities acknowledge that, across Wales, there are more than 37,000 households deemed under-occupied, with just under 400 available one-bedroom homes, and some of those struggling to pay are being forced to subsist on £7.50 a week – 14p over the UN poverty threshold of $1.50 per day.

We call upon Welsh social landlords to:

1: Follow the lead of Labour and SNP councils in Scotland and desist from evicting families for bedroom tax arrears.

2: Re-designate properties in line with the Fife rulings on bedroom size and part X of the 1985 Housing Act, following the lead of councils such as Wrexham. Grant tenants with disabilities the dignity of a spare bedroom for respite as ruled by the first-tier tribunal.

3: Extend the housing association moratorium on mandatory eviction for rent arrears. We also call upon housing associations to work, both with one another, the Welsh government and their tenants, to model more imaginative ways of balancing financial risk.

4: For Wales' national and local elected representatives and social landlords to unite with tenants and supporting organisations to defeat the bedroom tax, taking the campaign back to Westminster.

The Most Revd Dr Barry Morgan
Archbishop of Wales
Steve Clarke Managing director, Welsh Tenants
Jennie Bibbings Shelter Cymru
Adam Johannes & Jamie Insole Cardiff and South Wales Against the Bedroom Tax
Mick Antoniw AM
Bethan Jenkins AM
Linsey Whittle AM
Mark Serwotka General secretary, Public & Commercial Services Union
Owen Jones 

Guardian