Tory MPs call for benefit cuts rethink – but as usual discovered their consciences too late
![Part of the ESA application form. A House of Commons debate has called for a pause to the planned £29-a-week cut to ESA [Image: Alamy].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/161117-ESA-form.png)
Part of the ESA application form. A House of Commons debate has called for a pause to the planned £29-a-week cut to ESA [Image: Alamy].
If the Tories who called for a “pause” in the planned cuts to ESA and Universal Credit had simply voted against them in the first place, they would not be about to take place.
Work and Pensions minister Penny Mordaunt said proof that the Tory government has listened and understood will be in its actions.
If so, then I predict that the Tory government will do…
Nothing.
And the cuts will go ahead.
This is about torturing the poor and nothing else.
Conservative MPs have called on the chancellor to reconsider welfare cuts ahead of the autumn statement, after a backbench motion to pause the planned cuts passed unanimously in the House of Commons.
No MPs voted against the motion to stop the planned cuts to employment support allowance (ESA) and universal credit, with 127 voting in favour. However, the motion is purely symbolic, intended only as a method of sending a message to government.
During the debate, called by the SNP’s Neil Gray, MPs across the house called for Philip Hammond to pause a planned £29-a-week cut to ESA, which applies to those not in employment through illness or disability but who have been judged fit to prepare to return to work.
The universal credit cuts will also mean a reduction in the amount people are able to earn before their benefits are withdrawn.
Source: Tory MPs call for welfare cuts rethink after pause motion passed | Politics | The Guardian
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to little to late, the tories had a chance to vote with this early in the year and if they have a pang of conscience now, why , because maybe they realised there policies are not working, because people like me are going to stand up to their wca assessment and there assessors and decision makers that make wrong decisions, put in complaints, if necessary take it to the professional bodies, or have they suddenly realised that there policies are helping to break the nhs mental health budget, sadly this is not good enough, now they need to look at who was behind there policies, freud, ids, patel, and the rest of them and decide were they as well as the wca assessors and decision fit for purpose, they also need to bring in a rule of acccountability, so that when a coroner make a section 28 recommendation, it does not mysteriously disappear to emerge later, it is acted upon, but what they need most of all to do is to put the perpetrators of the suicides and self harm policies into the hands of the justice system as well as the assessors that cannot be bothered to assess properly and if there found gullty jail them, not hide behind parliamentary privilege and any other excuse you can find and if the contracting companies make mistakes that lead to self-harm/suicide attempts fine them massively and part of that fine goes towards the care and support of the families, then that way you will stop this greedy culture of making excuses and weed out the corrupt and lying deadwood and maybe you might even begin to get people trust in you, though for the dwp you will have your work cut out, because who is going to trust a bunch of people who thrive and get of on the word sanction,it certainly is not me, i can well assure you of that
If you have not “been judged fit to prepare to return to work” do the cuts not affect you?
Dave –
The cuts (so far) only apply to those in the WRAG, who it is intended will have the same amount as other job seekers, to encourage them to get better and find work, even while that group already have a disproportionately higher death rate.
But the government have recently produced a green paper, up for consultation (supposedly), where everyone – however ill or disabled or terminal – in the Support Group will regularly have to have contact with a work coach; and from that we can guess they will be looking for any excuse to remove benefit for some sort of invented non compliance.
So a big public statement about how they aren’t going to keep reassessing those with conditions that won’t get better, to look good; and then quietly proposing more ways of harassing those persons into the grave.
So the b’tards would bevhappy with some “extra funding” in the Work and health programme, to.make those cold & hungry ill ppl more “resourced” on their job searches? Just as well the DWP had already thought of that, the fig leaf was already part of the plan! What part do they not get?
I thought Maudant was 1. sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting.
2. burning; corrosive. which just about sums up the DWP at the moment then discovered it was spelt differently. I would suggest that the reason the mp’s suddenly thought it might be a bad idea to cut the payments is that their interests in all sorts of companies could see their own incomes going down because the great unwashed will not have as much to spend. In fact the idea of cutting the payments will make no difference to over 600,000 people who receive nothing because of the draconian system that that pays dwp workers bonus’ for every person they sanction.
I guess the Con merchants MPs are now getting some real flack from the middle ground reminding them of their responsibilities to their human constituents rather than worry gutting about paying off their inhuman Bankers pals debts who were the main reason for this austerity disaster. These same Bankers still do not give a poo about the mess they created and are still carrying on their ways as if nothing had happened with all the potential rules about learning from their mistakes chucked in the bin with all the other Con pledges to clean up.
Welcome to a Tory Christmas!