Bennett: What got us into 'this mess' is the fraud, errors and mismanagement of the corrupt and still out-of-control financial sector

Summary of Green Party reactions to the Autumn Statement

·         Caroline Lucas MP on Tax avoidance announcement: ‘This is a small step in right direction - but we urgently need full tax transparency’ 
·         Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett: Problems with Autumn Statement start at foundations - deficit cannot be blamed on government spending and welfare 
·         Lucas on cold homes: No excuse left for the Government’s killer complacency on the cold homes 
·         Lucas on Fracking sovereign wealth fund: ‘It’s a cynical gimmick. The best thing for the economy and the environment is super energy efficiency, properly insulated homes and investment  in renewables,’
·         Lucas on Austerity: ‘The people did not cause the financial crash and they should not be punished for it. It’s time to expose the lie is that there is no alternative to austerity’ 

THE Government has shown what is akin to ‘killer complacency’ on cold homes in its Autumn Statement, Caroline Lucas MP has said.

While she welcomed some announcements, she said the Government’s energy policies had been ‘defined by chaos and contradictions’.

There was no excuse left for the Government’s killer complacency on the cold homes she said.

Lucas, Co-Chair of the All-Party Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency Group, slammed news that none of the Treasury’s planned £100 billion investment in infrastructure over the next Parliament would be allocated to measures to tackle fuel poverty, noting that allocating just two per cent of the Government’s current annual £45 billion infrastructure budget to housing retrofit would allow half a million low income homes to be made highly energy efficient every year.

The Government had displayed ‘wilful ignorance of the overwhelming fiscal, human and environmental benefits of energy efficiency* and the consequences for families and the NHS are plain to see’, she said.

She added:

“People are freezing in their homes, and it’s preventable. Cold homes cost lives and cost our NHS – to the tune of well over £1bn a year. The UK’s woefully draughty and energy-inefficient housing stock is an urgentinfrastructure priority. It makes no economic sense to ignore, but it’s exactly what the Government is doing. The Government has grossly failed the public today.

“A nationwide super energy-efficiency drive would lower household energy bills,hugely contribute to job creation and the economy, as well as being essential for carbon targets. It’s a win-win – the Government’s continued inaction flies in the face of all common sense.”

Meanwhile, responding to the Statement, Leader of The Green Party of England and Wales, Natalie Bennett, said:

 "The many problems with this Autumn Statement start with its foundations. Osborne is continuing the demonstrably false claim that our deficit problems can be blamed on government spending and welfare.

"But what got us into 'this mess' is the fraud, errors and mismanagement of the corrupt and still out-of-control financial sector.

"But to admit that would require George Osborne to explain why after more than four years in government he has not delivered the urgent action needed is to tackle the still out-of-control sector, the still too-big-to-fail banks and its hulking dominance of our imbalanced economy that sucks capital and skilled people into the City and away from places where they could be helping to improve the wellbeing of all."

On the Government’s flood defence announcement, Lucas said:

“Families have been devastated by flooding and investment in proper flood protection is critical. But the Government is offering a disingenuous, feel-good fix – dig just a little, and it’s perfectly clear that this spending falls far short of what’s actually necessary to protect homes and businesses from increased flood risk due to climate change. We also need prevention – we need concrete action and investment to tackle the roots of the issue, including climate change. This is just another example of the Government’s persistent failure to climate-proof the flooding budget.” 

Tax avoidance
Lucas said: 

 “The extent of tax avoidance, tax evasion and unpaid tax in the UK economy is staggering. The Government’s apathetic policies on corporate tax avoidance have smacked of elitist double standards. Corporate tax dodgers are allowed to get away with not paying their fair share in society, while workers and small businesses are left paying the price. Today’s announcement is a small step in right direction, but if we’re serious about stamping out tax avoidance, then we urgently need full tax transparency.”

Small business

The Leader of The Green Party of England and Wales, Natalie Bennett, said:

 "Measures to help small business are in principle welcome. Another way in which we desperately need to rebalance our economy is away from the tax-dodging, low-paying multinationals back towards strong local economies built around small businesses and cooperatives.

"But the plaster of business rate relief won't heal the gaping wound caused by parasitical multinationals. We need to make the multinationals not only pay their taxes - and it is good to see rhetoric on this, although past experience says the detail of action will need careful examination - but also pay their staff decently and give them stable, secure jobs. And we need to stop big business stamping all over small business suppliers with unacceptable payment terms, and ensure their operations obey the law." 

Lucas welcomed the Chancellor’s acknowledgement that the business rates system wasn’t working but said that whilst a review is welcome news, we also need swift, positive action now.
She said:

 “We need policies with teeth - bold plans that deliver real change for small businesses on the ground.  The vast majority of businesses in my constituency are small or micro-level, and they’re are the backbone of our local economy. As well as forming part of community life, they provide valuable services and jobs. The business owners I meet in Brighton Pavilion tell me they’re struggling with business rates. This Government says it’s pro small business, so that needs to be reflected in its policies.

“We need the local business rates relief to be expanded to benefit more small businesses, who are being crippled by high rents and high rates. The Government has dragged its feet on this for years– and a review is welcome. But Brighton’s businesses need action, now.” 

Fracking

Lucas said: 

‘The Fracking sovereign wealth fund is a cynical gimmick. The best thing for the economy and the environment is super energy efficiency, properly insulated homes and investment in renewables.’

IDS's pre-paid cards aimed at creating hostility against the poor and humiliating them

•  

  

  antonynbrit.com

• The Coalition Government are balancing the budget on the backs of the poor
• The Green Party is the only party committed to transforming the economy to make it work for all not just the 1%

 

Work and Pensions Minister Iain Duncan Smith’s announcement on Government plans to introduce payments on pre-paid cards to welfare state claimants has  been denounced as “positively Orwellian” by the Green Party.

 

The party has responded to Iain Duncan Smith’s speech with anger saying that “this move is deliberately aimed at generating  disunity and creating hostility towards the most vulnerable.”

 

Green Party Welfare Spokesperson, Romayne Phoenix said:

The Conservative's  disastrous decision to introduce payments on pre-paid cards for claimants shows how out of touch they are with the realities of life for many people in Britain today. Anyone that is in debt or struggling to earn a living doesn't need reminding to spend their small benefit payments on food for their families. What most people need are better wages and better support. 87% of people claiming state aid are already in work but often in such low paid jobs that leave them  unable to pay their bills and having to look to the state for help. These families deserve support, not retribution and humiliation.

If the Conservative's really want to help people facing problems with gambling and addiction, they should stop promoting the national lottery and stop cutting funding to those vital support services that have been set up specifically to help people in tackling such issues. If the government is really that hung-up on problem gambling, a more socially beneficial approach might be to introduce pre-paid cards for their friends in banking that require them to invest sustainability and ethically rather than speculating away public finances.

The Welfare reforms have so far caused "financial hardship and distress" a committee of MPs found in April.

Greens denounce budget that ignores the needs of ordinary citizens

Responding to the Budget announcement, the Green Party today said the Budget was yet again ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens. With its focus on tax breaks for the rich, lack of concern over climate change, discriminatory childcare policies and economically illiterate housing schemes, the budget is not delivering solutions to problems facing us today, says the Green Party.

Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett, said:

This was not a budget for a resilient economy but for a fantasy economy that exists only in Mr Osborne's head. It does nothing to address the need to transform the British economy for a low-carbon future that ensures everyone has access to a decent quality of life. Instead this budget clings to the dinosaur idea that growth towards a new model of 'Britain 2006' will not lead to even further economic and environmental disaster.

The budget promotes what can only be dead-end smokestack industries, the export loans are likely to benefit most notably the arms industry, and the offerings on ISAs will further expand our already dreadful levels of inequality.

The claim that this would be the 'greenest government ever' has long been a sick joke.

The Green Party is calling for an increase to the amount of social housing and commonly owned housing

  

Green Party Finance Spokesperson, Molly Scott Cato, commented:

A garden city built in a quarry and growth built on a re-inflated housing bubble are hardly reassuring evidence of the economy based on "more economic security and economic resilience" that Osborne claims to be his objective. While on the issue of finance, we should also tell George that his desperate attempt to re-inflate the housing bubble through extending the life of Help to Buy is storing up exactly the sort of catastrophic financial collapse that put us in this economic mess. It also does nothing for those who are most in need of reasonably priced housing, since it will only support mortgages they cannot afford and encourage house prices to rise even further beyond their reach.

Osborne claims that more people are in work under the Coalition, but many of these are low paid, low skilled and subject to zero hours contracts

Green Party Welfare Spokesperson, Romayne Phoenix, said:

Where we could have decent properly paid jobs for many thousands of experienced workers and those looking for their first paid employment we have unemployment, under employment, exploitation through zero hours contracts and low pay. The cost of living is rising, there is no genuine social security when job seekers can be sanctioned for minor errors.

Sarah Teather's full personal statement on her decision not to stand in 2015

In just over a week's time, I shall reach the tenth anniversary of my election to Parliament in the Brent East by-election. I took some time off this summer and found myself reflecting a great deal on the last ten years.
It has been an enormous privilege to serve as an MP in Brent. Indeed, for me personally, so much of the last decade has been both rich and surprising. I am not sure that I would ever have expected to be elected so young, and I certainly never expected that I would have had the opportunity to serve in Government.

The greatest privilege of my work both as a constituency MP and as a Minister has been the gift of being able to share in the private joys and struggles of so many people's lives - many different from one another and very different from my own. I shall always be inspired by the profound courage and dignity I have witnessed in people I have worked with, often in the face of the most extraordinary difficulties.

Of all my parliamentary work, the campaign I remain most proud of is the campaign to get my constituent released from Guantanamo Bay. I shall always count the moment my constituent walked back in through his own front door and picked up his five year-old daughter for the first time in her life as one of the most precious of my life.

In Government, the moment I count as my proudest is the one where I listened to Nick Clegg announce our intention to end the routine detention of children in the immigration system - something I worked hard to deliver, in what, at times, felt an almost insurmountable battle with the Home Office. I feel humbled too to have been able to play my part in delivering the pupil premium to schools and to extend free early education to two year olds, and perhaps the work dearest to my heart, that of reforming the system of support for children with special educational needs.

There have been so many rewards to this work -- too many to list here. But having taken the summer to reflect on the future, I feel now that at the General Election, the right time will be right for me to step aside. I wanted to explain why I have decided not to seek re-election in 2015.

I first joined the party almost exactly twenty years ago, during fresher's week at university. It was then -- and still is now - absolutely inconceivable that I could ever join any other political party. As with most party members, there have always been a few issues where I have disagreed with party policy. But over the last three years, what has been difficult is that policy has moved in some of the issues that ground my own personal sense of political vocation - that of working with and serving the most vulnerable members of society. I have disagreed with both Government and official party lines on a whole range of welfare and immigration policies, and those differences have been getting larger rather than smaller. Disagreements with the party on other areas of policy I have always felt could be managed, but these things are just core to my own sense of calling to politics. I have tried hard to balance my own desire to truthfully fight for what I believe on these issues with the very real loyalty and friendship I feel to party colleagues, but that has created intense pressure, and at times left me very tired. I don't think it is sustainable for me personally to continue to try and do that in the long term.

I want to reassure people in Brent that I shall continue to work very hard to represent them over the next 18 months until the next General Election. My constituency office will remain open five days a week, just as it has always been. I shall be out campaigning for the local elections with my local LibDem team over the forthcoming months and will campaign to get my Liberal Democrat successor elected to Parliament in the General Election. In Parliament I shall continue with my work as Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Refugees and will carry on making the case for a fair and humane immigration system as Parliament considers a new immigration bill in the coming months.

I hope that I have been able to support and represent the people of Brent well as their MP, but I feel rich beyond measure to have been able to do this work here. I shall always count myself indebted to those who gave me this opportunity to serve - to the thousands of constituents who voted for me and to the many Liberal Democrat supporters and members who campaigned and walked the streets for me over three elections. I hope that, over the last 10 years, I have at least gone some way in repaying the faith that so many have shown in me.

Sarah

Natalie Bennett delivers a dose of reality on welfare

 Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader, posted this article on the Huffington Post yesterday:

The government's stated aim in introducing the bedroom tax, in slashing of council tax benefit that forms a new poll tax, in ending of Disability Living Allowance and making a host of other benefit cuts is to 'make work pay'. That's utterly detached from the reality of the lives of the people that this cabinet of millionaires is airily playing with - and it's time to end this fantasy land politics.

Just start with the fact that the smaller social homes that the bedroom tax sufferers are supposed to move into simply don't exist. And as many have pointed out, the jobs that the government is telling benefit recipients to 'go out and get' also don't exist - 2.5 million people, 7.8% of the workforce, are looking for jobs, and there are about half a million vacancies.

In gross terms there are around five people chasing each job. Of course on the ground it is often much worse than that - when a new Tesco opened in Tynemouth there were more than 70 applicants for each of a handful of posts; when a new Costa opened in Nottingham, there were 1,700 applications for about eight jobs.
But even for those lucky enough to beat odds like these, the government is undercutting its stated aim - for it emerged yesterday that it is considering cutting the already seriously inadequate minimum wage. This at a time when inflation is again continuing to slash away at the already limited spending power of those at the bottom of society.

That's not 'making work pay'. In fact it's making living even less viable for millions.

And of course lots of those jobs being advertised are only part-time - not enough hours to satisfy Iain Duncan-Smith, who is pushing on with plans to 'force' low-paid workers to work more hours, ignoring the fact that one in 10 workers want more hours, but are unable to get them.

More than that, many of the jobs, particularly with larger companies, don't even offer regular hours. The cancer of zero-hours contracts is spreading fast - workers being treated like robots on a production line - machines to be switched on and off at the convenience of corporate profits. But robots don't need to pay the rent, to buy food, to heat their homes - and zero-hours contracts offer no guarantee of the ability to do any of those essential things - to make work liveable, let alone make it pay.

It's past time to say enough. To point out that, after Hans Christian, this is a Cabinet that is wearing no clothes. (Apologies to anyone eating while reading for that image.) David Cameron, George Osborne and Iain Duncan-Smith seem determined to ignore reality. In their fantasy world the economy is recovering, a few handfuls of multi-national companies, mostly employing minimum-wage workers on zero-hours contracts, can be the basis of a healthy economy around which communities can be built, people with severe long-term disabilities and illnesses can find jobs and live without public support.

It's time to deliver a dose of reality. A good start's been made by the more than 350,000 people who have told Iain Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week. UK Uncut is also planning action on April 13 that will bring home to reality of eviction to more Cabinet ministers. But we need to go further. We need to deliver a message to every Cabinet member, every member of this fantasy land government. These are real lives they are playing with - real lives they are destroying.

We do need to make work pay, but we need to do that by ensuring every job pays at least a living wage, is stable and secure - is a job that you can build a life on, a job you can pay the rent and pay the bills on. And we need to provide benefits - decent benefits - that allow those who don't have their jobs to have a decent life.

London Councils calls for London to be treated as a'special case' on benefit reform

London Councils released a report yesterday  that tracks the impact of benefit reforms and suggests Londoners will be hardest hit by the changes.

The report indicates that up to half-a-million working age people could be touched in some way when the changes take effect this year. It estimates that 27,000 households in London will be affected by the benefit cap alone, due to be piloted in four boroughs from April.

An additional 456,000 Londoners will pay more council tax as a result of council tax benefit payments moving to council control, with reduced funding. And up to 80,000 homes could be adversely affected by the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ designed to deal with under occupancy in social housing.

Mayor Sir Steve Bullock, London Councils’ Executive Member for Housing, said:

While we recognise the need for reform, councils across London have concerns about the speed this is being implemented and the effect on families of so many changes taking place at once. I want to see London treated as a special case as the process moves forward.

For some ordinary families with two children looking for work their benefit could drop £183.00 per week, while an identical family unit in Manchester would be unaffected.

London Councils supports a fairer, more accountable system of welfare that encourages work. But since changes to housing benefits in April 2011 the number of households claiming housing benefit for private rented housing in London rose by over 32,000. Rents went up by nine per cent for the most basic housing in that period and this is increasingly a London issue.

The report, Tracking Welfare Reform, is available on the London Councils website LINK  along with a wide range of research and background materials.

Natalie Bennett rounds on the 'real shirkers'

From the New  Statesman LINK

Natalie Bennett

Shirkers versus strivers – those have been the terms of this week’s biggest debate, over the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill.

Many important points have been made about the ridiculousness of the government’s various claims about the closed blinds or curtains of those who they identify as the “shirkers”, the unemployed – which will presumably include many of the employees of Jessops, who on the government’s account this week are strivers but will soon be “shirkers”. (Not to mention the fact that closed blinds in the morning might well indicate a night-shift worker…)

Many of the progressive side have, rightly, been rushing to say that people trapped in unemployment are not shirkers. It’s a term that, in the usual terms of the debate, rightly has a bad name.

But shirkers there are.

Group one of the shirkers are the employers who’ve shirked their responsibility to provide decently paid, secure, reliable jobs on which their staff can build a life, and that can be the foundation of the a secure, stable economy – which the future of their businesses must ultimately depend on. The CEOs and CFOs and their henchpeople have certainly shirked their responsibility to look beyond the next quarter’s profit-and-loss accounts, and their own annual bonuses.

We can offer excuses for some employers – the small retail businesses struggling to compete against the multinational giants who’ve been enjoying tax-dodging and monopolist benefits on a huge scale, the small wholesalers, farmers and manufacturers who’ve seen their profit margins squeezed by the same giant customers.

But there are no excuses for the profitable multinational giants, which have privileged the position of their shareholders and top managers at the expense of their staff – and their own long-term future, for ultimately they need customers who can afford their products, and staff on a minimum wage well below the level of a living wage, on part-time contracts and short shifts to maximise company convenience, and on the obscenity of zero-hours contract can’t do that. It’s the old Henry Ford story – he knew he needed to pay his production workers enough to buy their own Model Ts.

And there’s a second group of shirkers: the leaders of successive governments. The former Labour government has to bear a large share of the blame – how could it be after 13 years of their regime that the minimum wage was significantly, in the South East hugely, below a living wage, that people working in a full time job needed significant benefits – housing benefit and family tax credits – simply to survive?

Of course, the blame lies with more than just the single figure of an inadequate minimum wage. Labour did nothing against job insecurity, short-hours shifts and zero-hours contracts – indeed cut further the already Thatcher-slashed ability of the unions to fight for better conditions.

And it swallowed hook-line-and-sinker the neoliberal line about Britain being able to abandon food growing and manufacturing – importing essentials from developing nations, plundering their water and soils, exploiting their grossly underpaid workers – while relying on the “genius” of bankers and the luxury industries servicing them and their friends as a foundation for the British economy, a foundation that it turns out was built on shifting sands of fraud, incompetence and incomprehension of risk.

Further, it ignored the fact that in the low-carbon world we need to be moving towards fast supply chains must be shortened – the distance from field to plate for food cut to a minimum (for reasons of cost as well as carbon emissions), that most goods need to be made much closer to where they are needed.

What a shirking of responsibility that was.

But beyond the blame, we can look to the positive green economic shoots, the small signs of the future, the small businesses, cooperatives, social enterprises and community groups - the true strivers, who against all of the odds, against the efforts of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition to intensify the neo-Thatcherite policies in Blair-Brownism, are trying to start to rebuild a sustainable British economy.

Whether it is the Transition groups up and down the country, promoting food growing, jam-making, baking and encouraging crafts, innovative small co-operatives like Who Made My Pants? or The People’s Supermarket who are building a new model of business, or groups setting up new community-owned generation schemes, there are strivers who are now trying, from the grassroots, working to build the new British economy.

And then there’s the countless other individual strivers – the parents struggling to give their children a decent life with inadequate funds, going without meals themselves so their children eat properly; the carers who for the measly sum of £58.45 labour huge hours, with inadequate chances for relief, for their loved ones; the unemployed who battle on for employment, completing courses, putting in applications, even in the face of multiple knockbacks and government insults.

So maybe we can rescue the terms shirkers and strivers. Let’s highlight the real shirkers – most of whom fit in the Occupy classification of the 1% - and celebrate the many strivers, the 99%. With those ratios, the future of Britain can only be bright.

Greens call on MPs to vote against 'mean and miserable' Welfare Bill

Together we shout (We are Spartacus)

As the Commons debate welfare benefits and ex Coalition Sarah Teather wields her new found conscience the Green Party has called upon all MPs to reject the coalition’s Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill. 

The Bill, which has its Second Reading in Parliament today, would raise benefits by 1% per year until April 2015. The current policy sees benefits rise in line with inflation, and so welfare recipients will have a real-terms cut. 

In the debate Caroline Lucas said that this was 'mean and miserable legislation' by a 'mean and miserable' government.

Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party, said::

MPs are being asked whether they are prepared to deliberately, with all of the facts before them, choose to significantly reduce the living standards of millions of their voters.

 

We can start with the one in five UK workers paid less than a living wage – who either as parents, or as householders, will have been receiving state support to enable them to continue to live. The responsibility should being lying with their employers - if they all paid a living wage the net benefit to the government would be about  £7.5 billion - but the government is showing no inclination to lift the minimum wage to a liveable level, ending the past decades of corporate welfare payments. 

We can also add in the hundreds of thousands of people surviving – not living, but surviving - on the measly sum of £71/week or less in job seekers’ allowance.

And we can add in millions of children. As the Child Poverty Action group says, the Bill can “only increase absolute child poverty, relative child poverty and material deprivation for children”.  Its figures show that having slowly got the rate of child poverty below 20%, the rate is set under this regime to leap back to 25% in a decade.

Not only is the cut immoral, but it is economically illiterate - facing the clear risk of a triple-dip recession, the government is planning to pull millions of pounds out of the pockets of people who, had they received it, would certainly have fed the money back into the economy in buying food, buying energy, and buying services.

The Green Party argues that the only ethical and effective way of reducing social security costs is to create jobs - not slash budgets. 

Natalie said: 

What we need to do in the longer term is change the direction of the British economy – bring manufacturing and food production back to Britain, restore strong, diverse local economies built around small businesses and co-operatives paying decent wages on which their staff can build lives and communities.

That’s a longterm project – but today we can think about the British people – the nurses, the soldiers, the teaching staff, the local government workers, and yes, the unemployed – and say no to the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill.

That’s what Green MP Caroline Lucas will be doing in Westminster today. What’s your MP doing?

Greens give 'shambolic' Coalition a fail for mid-term review

The Green Party has criticised the government’s mid-term review today for failing to acknowledge the coalition’s mistakes after two years of shambolic policy making - or to offer a coherent vision for a better future.

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, said:

 The unsightly spectacle of Cameron and Clegg renewing their political vows for the cameras today can't mask the reality that this is a government dangerously bereft of ideas.

With its reckless austerity programme having failed miserably to get the economy moving or reduce the deficit, and the harsh consequences of unfair and incoherent cuts to welfare and services being felt in communities across the UK, the only grade possible for this mid-term report is 'fail'.

Serious measures to address climate change and the environmental crisis remain conspicuous by their absence. The government is ignoring the huge opportunities for job creation and economic security that a nationwide investment in new green infrastructure would create.

Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said :

With many pensioners living in poverty, what we need to do is institute a ‘citizen’s pension’ of £164 for single pensioners and £289 for couples, which would immediately lift all pensioners above the government’s poverty line.

We have sufficient resources, if multinational companies and rich individuals pay their fair share of tax, to ensure all of our older residents have a decent quality of life. We owe it to the people who’ve contributed throughout their lives through paid and unpaid work.

On the childcare funding proposal, Natalie said:

The cost of childcare is a huge problem for parents, with the cost burden weighing far more heavily in Britain than it does across the rest of Europe.

An acknowledgement of the problem this presents is welcome; we’re going to have to wait to understand the detail of how this system will work to see if it will fairly help parents without undue paperwork and complications.

However, there’s cause for concern in proposals to reduce the quality of childcare by reducing caring ratios and loosening quality regulations – children need good quality care for their health and development, and parents need to be confident that their children are being well looked after.

Misconceptions about welfare

McDonnell: Let's form a national coalition against poverty

John McDonnell MP has sent the following open letter to his Labour colleagues:

Dear Colleague,

Proposed Welfare Benefits Bill

As you know, Osborne announced that the Coalition is to bring forward before Christmas a Bill to sanction the cuts in welfare benefits set out in yesterday’s autumn statement.

We all know that there is no need for primary legislation to implement these cuts and that this is his crude and blatantly cynical attempt to lay what he considers will be a political trap for Labour.

In his crude political terms, his obvious aim is to be able to claim that if Labour votes against or abstains on his Bill then we are on the side of the so called skivers whilst the Tories are the champions of the strivers. If we do vote for the Bill he will then cite our vote as support for his attack on benefits.

Like many right wing politicians over the years, when their policies are demonstrably failing they reach for a scapegoat. It’s often the poor simply because they haven’t the power to defend themselves.

I believe that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be dragged into the gutter of politics by Osborne’s exploitation of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

Instead of falling for this grubby trap us let’s take them on, on this issue.

If we have the courage and behave astutely, we could turn this cynical ploy by Osborne into an opportunity for us to transform the debate on the issues of welfare, poverty, unemployment and fairness in our society.

 

This means stop all hesitation on this matter and making it clear now that we are not voting for this cynical attack on the poorest, which includes cutting benefits to many people in work and struggling to survive on low pay and often poverty wages.

It means saying now that we are taking the Tories on, on the issue of fairness. Nobody, especially ordinary working people, likes a skiver but there are mechanisms that can deal with this and if they need improving well let’s have that debate. The fact is that it is becoming increasingly obvious to our people that it is the rich and wealthy, who are ripping us off with tax dodging. It is equally becoming obvious whose side the Tories are on.

Let’s seize upon this opportunity to highlight the real facts about the hardship that so many of our people are facing. Most of our community are under pressure. Many are only a couple of pay packets away from a life on the edge. Many others have tipped over into debt and poverty.

Let’s turn the tables on Osborne and use this opportunity to expose this reality and offer our alternative of a fair tax system and investment for growth led employment.

Let’s get out there and build the coalition of all those people and organisations who are willing to speak out on what is happening to our people. That means nationally and locally bringing together not just all the charities and campaigning organisations that take an interest in poverty and welfare but all the churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras, community organisations and anyone with a conscience on this issue.

Let’s lead in forming a new national coalition against poverty and those who attack the poor.

Let’s enlist the support of people from all walks of life, including artists and performers, in the same way we did in the fight against the prejudice of the Nazis against black people and ethnic minorities.

In many ways it’s the same struggle against prejudice mobilised by cynical politicians.

It should start though by making it clear immediately that we are not playing Osborne’s cynical political games. We are not voting for his cuts to the poor.

Yours ,

John McDonnell MP

Butt paints gloomy picture for Brent residents

Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt has posted his second blog on the Council website. He cites the current state of the economy as causing 'terrible' problems for Brent residents. Clearly it is the Coalition's austerity policies that are worsening the economic situation but it is also the deliberate attack on the welfare state and targeting of the disabled, women, large families and single parents that hit people in a very personal way. Added to that are the cuts local councils are making as their budgets are slashed by central government. The question that must be asked is, how long can the council continue to implement cuts that they know are damaging an already vulnerable population?

Muhammed Butt's blog posting:

...we face big problems which mean making the changes we believe in isn't easy. As a borough, as a council and as a community, we face some grave long-term challenges.

I think it is important to be open and honest with residents about these challenges, as not everyone realises just how bad a situation we are in. This gives some perspective to some of the difficult decisions we have already made, and others we will have to make in the coming years.

Unemployment and the economy

The current state of the economy is causing terrible problems for many Brent residents who are struggling just to keep above the breadline. Wage levels in Brent are significantly below the London average and are declining, even while they are rising in the rest of London.

For a family with two children to have an acceptable standard of living in London they need an annual joint income of £37,000.The median household income in Brent is £27,500, and in our poorest areas it is as low as £15,000. This means many of our residents often have to choose between food and warmth.

Over the last decade, unemployment in Brent has remained above both the national and London levels, with a particularly sharp rise over the past year. Our residents are really struggling to find work. Long term unemployment can devastate communities and in some areas of the borough child poverty is as high as 50 per cent as a result.

The make-up of our community

As well as our economic problems, we also face a huge demographic crisis due to our disproportionately aging population. By 2030 the number of people over the age of 65 in the UK is set to increase by 50 per cent. On top of this the continued downward trend in the economy means more people are relying on council services. 

This is such a dramatic change that it is predicted that by 2030 it will cost more than 100 per cent of our current budget just to pay for social care to support the elderly. This creates a huge dilemma. We will need to make difficult decisions and radical changes if we want to continue to provide other services that residents rely upon.

Budget pressures

The budget crisis we face as a council is unprecedented. As a result of Government cuts, we have to reduce our spending by 28 per cent by 2015. We have to find £100 million in savings, that means less to spend on helping residents and providing services.

If you can imagine having to cut a third from your weekly household budget, this raises impossible decisions. We will have to make tough choices every day to prioritise the most essential services that protect the most vulnerable people in the borough and to maintain the everyday services that keep Brent up and running.

Hope

All this paints a gloomy picture, but there is hope.

Through relentless focus on our priorities and innovation we can continue to improve resident's lives, even in these impossible circumstances. We are on your side during these tough times.

Over the coming weeks I will be blogging about some of the things we are doing to ensure that we continue to make Brent a fairer place, create more jobs and growth and strengthen our community.