Bedroom Tax: How can grinning Coalition MPs defend hated charge with such glee?

Families affected by the hated tax watched the debate over the Government’s ‘spare room subsidy’ with incredulity, and at times in tears

Adam Gerrard/Daily Mirror

Yesterday an army of ordinary people descended on the House of Commons from across Britain.

Mums and dads, parents of disabled children, the long-term unemployed, everyday grafters, the sick and the tired, all arriving at Westminster to lobby their MPs over the Bedroom Tax.

British democracy isn’t watched over often enough by the people whose lives it has the power to build or destroy.

In the gallery, families affected by the hated tax watched the debate over the Government’s ‘spare room subsidy’ with incredulity, and at times in tears.

“They are just a playing a bloody game,” a woman whispered to me.

A woman for whom every single day is a desperate struggle. For whom even the journey to Parliament will cost her weeks of ill health.

“I didn’t think they just wouldn’t care at all,” she said.

Invited to attend by the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Rachel Reeves, severely disabled people had made long and difficult journeys from forgotten estates in Glasgow and from the Welsh coast, from Yorkshire and Cornwall.

But, clearly unable to defend the indefensible, Iain Duncan-Smith, the architect of the Bedroom Tax, wasn’t even there.

Instead, families watched IDS’s junior, the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb – the Work and Pension Minister – defend the tax with relish.

Of all the things people expected, it wasn’t this. They didn’t imagine the government would actually enjoy their misery.

They didn’t expect Esther McVey, the welfare minister to be grinning behind Steve Webb. They didn’t expect the Government to be proud of their policy.

If they had hoped for some small spark of humility, my God, they had come to the wrong place.

"Unicorns don't exist, fairies don't exist, and it doesn't matter how much the opposition says it, the Bedroom Tax does not exist," laughed Anne Main, the Tory MP for St Albans. How the government howled.

It was hard not to feel ashamed, sitting there behind the bulletproof glass of the gallery. The disconnect was more than glass, it was light years.

I found myself unable to look at Paul Rutherford, a disabled grandfather who had travelled many hours on the train from Pembrokeshire to watch the debate.

The story of his grandson, Warren, who I told in the Mirror last week, is just one of 660,000 reasons MPs should have voted against the Bedroom Tax.

Last week I told Warren’s story in this column – how he has a rare chromosomal disorder that means he needs round-the-clock care.

How his home built especially for him – with an extra bedroom for carers to stay in and to store his equipment.

Kate Green MP, Labour’s shadow minister for the disabled, told MPs how Warren’s family is now being punished by the Bedroom Tax for having that very same room.

The twisted truths came pouring out of the front bench – how they were helping everyone adversely affected by the tax, how the country has run out of money. The families watched, exhausted, listening to how it was all their own fault.

Slowly people realised that even though the green benches on the government side were half empty, they’d all be turning up later to vote down Labour’s attempt to end the policy.

Rachel Reeves had spoken movingly to the campaigners in the morning, pledging to abolish the Bedroom Tax as her first action when elected to office.

Adam Gerrard/Daily Mirror

There was huge anger at the meeting as people aired their utter frustration and despair.

"I understand why people are so angry and upset not just about the Bedroom Tax but about all the welfare changes,” Reeves told them.

"We have invited people from all parties to come here and hear your stories.

"But I bet not a single Liberal Democrat or Tory comes here. Don't say that we are all the same because we are not.”

Afterwards one woman told me the meeting was “the most real thing I have seen in Parliament in 15 years of campaigning for disabled rights”.

In the afternoon, the campaigners watched Reeves, MP for Leeds West, and the packed Labour benches take on the Government over the Bedroom Tax.

Reeves called on the government to “come to its senses”, and to consider its consciences. Her pleas fell on deaf years.

Labour MPs paid tribute to the campaigners watching, and told their  constituents’ stories – one sad, outrageous tale after another.

At least Hansard will now record them, and how this policy destroyed so many lives.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats made clever points about taxes and under-occupancy and what Labour did once upon a time.

Paul Rutherford sat in the gallery, exhausted by his journey from Pembrokeshire. On Monday, campaigners from the Wow Petition sent a letter he’d written to every MP in the country, telling of his family’s ‘struggle and fear’.

“To many, £14 a week may seem like a pittance,” he wrote. “To us it is a lot.”

Paul pointed out that “we actually save the Public Purse a minimum of £250,000 a year by caring for Warren. The amount effectively saved by kinship carers such as ourselves is assessed by some charities as well over a billion pounds a year.”

His case made the point quietly and eloquently. The Bedroom Tax is not only morally wrong, it is wrong-headed. It is ideology writ large.

In the late evening, MPs went into the division lobby, into the ayes and the noes.

The record will tell whose consciences will bear the future suffering of hundreds of thousands of families.

 And which MPs are no longer worthy of their constituents’ votes.

Contact Ros Wynne Jones

Have you or your family been affected by the cuts? Or have you been shocked by how your area has been hit?

I want to reveal what’s really happening around the country every week.

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