Coun Jon Trickett: We are better than this as a country
The British are fair-minded people. They believe we should help people in difficulty. At any time on any day, any one of our family might fall into need. That’s why we have a welfare system. Equally, as a nation we don’t like it if people cheat the system which should be stamped out.
Jon Trickett MP writes: But that is not what the government is proposing. They are saying that they will cut the welfare bill by £5bn a year. This can only mean that many truly vulnerable people will lose their benefits. Maybe it is your mum, your son, a neighbour or a friend.
Ours is a working class area. Those of us who are old enough to have lived long enough know that our economy has never fully recovered since the closure of the mines.
We have large numbers of people suffering from ill physical and mental health, in no small part due to the difficult working conditions many people have faced around here over many years. I will not vote to make my constituents poorer.
Cuts to welfare for the sick and disabled will make life miserable for millions; it’s a cruel way to treat people. It is wrong both morally and economically. I will vote against it.
We’ve all just lived through 14 years of cuts under the Conservatives. The nasty party created a cold, cruel and punitive benefits system that punishes the poor and the sick.
Nobody can defend this heartless model, which denies vulnerable people the dignity they deserve.
However, the disability charity, Scope, has said that this government’s plans “will be catastrophic for disabled people’s living standards” and “should shame the government to its core”. Many third sector organisations are warning that Labour’s reforms will make a bad system worse. Most trade unions have already condemned these attacks on the working class and demanded a rethink. The government would be wise to take these criticisms on board.
We live in a deeply unequal and unjust society. There is great wealth in our country but there are also huge amounts of poverty. This is not by chance. Our economy is designed to make the wealthiest richer at the expense of making working class people poorer.
According to the Office for National Statistics, the richest ten per cent of households in the UK control nearly half of the wealth. The poorest 50 per cent of households control just nine per cent of the wealth.
The richest 50 families, alone, control nearly half a trillion pounds in wealth. The wealth of UK billionaires rose by £35 million each day last year. We have not seen inequality on this scale for centuries.
It’s Labour’s historic job to put this right, not to make it worse.
Yet the government refuses to even contemplate taxing the wealth of the super-rich. Instead they take money from the poorest in society. We are better than this as a country.
I know that many people will be feeling frightened right now, for themselves, their families and their friends who might be at risk of losing some of the support they rely on.
However there is a small crumb of good news. The government is consulting the country on its proposals. This means that we can change their direction of travel. Make your voices heard and I believe we can win this battle.