The injustices and indignities of a tax so cruel it could’ve been dreamed up on a drunken night out by the Bullingdon Club were well aired
By Kevin Maguire
Poulet Iain Duncan Smith suddenly discovering a conference in Paris to save
him from trying to defend the indefensible Bedroom
Tax saved the most useless minister in a pretty poor Government from a
mauling.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves didn’t need to break sweat to expose the grotesque unfairness of Tory charge making life worse for, in particular, the disabled and sick and children in poorer families.
The injustices and indignities of a tax so cruel it could’ve been dreamed up on a drunken night out by the Bullingdon Club were well aired by Labour MPs raising individual cases.
Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, had a rougher ride at an early rally in the House of Commons than she received from Tories and Liberal Democrats, Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery skillfully chairing a volatile meeting as victims of the tax (and the obligatory few noisy Trots) demanded to be heard.
Duncan Smith’s Liberal Democrat leg man, Steve Webb, made a better fist of justifying the unjustifiable than his runaway master ever could, but he was on a hiding to nothing and at times it felt as if his heart wasn’t in it.
Webb had the good grace to look uncomfortable when Ealing’s Stephen Pound revealed his brother, receiving kidney dialysis, risks losing his home of 20 years because of the grotesque tax.
Reeves pledges that her first act as Work Secretary if Labour wins the election would be to abolish the bedroom tax.
But the ConDem coalition will win tonight’s vote with, perhaps, half-a-dozen Lib Dem MPs rebelling to vote for decency.
IDS might even return in time from France to vote for what he was unable to defend publicly.
Between now and May 2015 tenants will be pushed further into arrears with evictions threatened and, tragically, imposed.
The human toll will be enormous for a charge unlikely to save much if any money for taxpayers while ruining hundreds of thousands of lives.
Cameron, when he relaxes in grace-and-favour Chequers, a 10-bedroom country pile free of the tax, should remember Maggie Thatcher and the poll tax.
It finished her off.
The words “Bedroom Tax” will be high on his political obituary.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves didn’t need to break sweat to expose the grotesque unfairness of Tory charge making life worse for, in particular, the disabled and sick and children in poorer families.
The injustices and indignities of a tax so cruel it could’ve been dreamed up on a drunken night out by the Bullingdon Club were well aired by Labour MPs raising individual cases.
Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, had a rougher ride at an early rally in the House of Commons than she received from Tories and Liberal Democrats, Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery skillfully chairing a volatile meeting as victims of the tax (and the obligatory few noisy Trots) demanded to be heard.
Duncan Smith’s Liberal Democrat leg man, Steve Webb, made a better fist of justifying the unjustifiable than his runaway master ever could, but he was on a hiding to nothing and at times it felt as if his heart wasn’t in it.
Webb had the good grace to look uncomfortable when Ealing’s Stephen Pound revealed his brother, receiving kidney dialysis, risks losing his home of 20 years because of the grotesque tax.
Reeves pledges that her first act as Work Secretary if Labour wins the election would be to abolish the bedroom tax.
But the ConDem coalition will win tonight’s vote with, perhaps, half-a-dozen Lib Dem MPs rebelling to vote for decency.
IDS might even return in time from France to vote for what he was unable to defend publicly.
Between now and May 2015 tenants will be pushed further into arrears with evictions threatened and, tragically, imposed.
The human toll will be enormous for a charge unlikely to save much if any money for taxpayers while ruining hundreds of thousands of lives.
Cameron, when he relaxes in grace-and-favour Chequers, a 10-bedroom country pile free of the tax, should remember Maggie Thatcher and the poll tax.
It finished her off.
The words “Bedroom Tax” will be high on his political obituary.
Mirror
