Iain Duncan Smith was the architect of the hated Bedroom Tax.

Was the so-called Bedroom Tax a tool to attack people with long-term illnesses and disabilities?

That seems to be the conclusion we reach from an answer to a Parliamentary question by minister for welfare delivery Will Quince.

He said by April 2019, 240,350 households had been affected by the State Under-Occupation Charge – the penalty inflicted on Housing Benefit claimants who have a spare bedroom.

Of these, a staggering 170,360 households – 71 per cent of the total – included a person in receipt of sickness or disability benefit.

Figures for Universal Credit claimants – whose Housing Benefit is included in the amount they receive under this benefit – were not available.

It seems clear that the penalty disproportionately affects people with long-term illnesses and/or disabilities, and we may speculate that this is what it was intended to do.

We know the United Nations has ruled that this discrimination is a “grave and systematic violation” of the human rights of those affected.

And we know that the government has had to re-write the laws governing the bedroom tax, to exempt couples who cannot share a bedroom due to a physical disability and families who need an extra room for a disabled child’s carer.

We are told that the Bedroom Tax, together with other changes to benefits, has left sick and disabled people four times worse-off than their able-bodied equivalents.

And the hardship caused by the withdrawal of 14 per cent of their housing benefit (for one “spare” room; 25 per cent for two) has forced some disabled people to go without food while others went without medicine.

This Site, and others like it, have reported the deaths of a large number of disabled people that may be directly connected to this withdrawal of funds.

The Department for Work and Pensions refuses to admit that there is anything wrong.

But the evidence mounts up further every day.

Source: Disabled people still disproportionally affected by the ‘bedroom tax’

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