Rishi Sunak: his football gaffe should lead to questions about whether his honesty can be trusted.
This fascination with football for politicians with no interest in the game is perplexing.
Remember when David Cameron said he was a West Ham fan when in fact he is on record as supporting Aston Villa?
Now Rishi Sunak has added his name to the politicians’ football hall of shame:
Rishi Sunak found the back of his own net with a footballing gaffe, wrongly looking forward to his team [Southampton] playing Manchester United this weekend – when they are in fact facing Leicester City.
Having branded himself an ‘underdog’ in the Tory leadership race, the former chancellor was asked at the Manchester hustings how as a Saints fan how he would get back to winning ways.
‘I’m going to be unpopular for saying it here, starting by beating United this weekend,’ he said.
Southampton, the city of Mr Sunak’s birth, are not due to play Manchester United until August 27.
The blunder came only a day after it was pointed out that his choice of McDonald’s breakfast was taken off the menu more than two years ago.
We know why they do it – they want to make it seem that they are familiar with the things the ordinary people do.
But so many of them fall foul of the facts that one has to ask what there is to be gained by it.
And it leads to more embarrassing questions about whether our MPs even know how to be honest.
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Who’s the most confused? Charlie Stayt, who can’t get a straight answer, or Nadine Dorries – in her natural state?
Nadine Dorries epitomises the Tory dilemma: Boris Johnson proved himself incapable of leading, but all his lieutenants are daft. Who could possibly replace him?
The Culture Secretary, who’s determined to destroy the BBC, was interviewed on that broadcaster’s Breakfast show today (February 5), when presenter Charlie Stayt found her inability to answer basic questions about her boss confusing:
It really does offer validity to a comment on Twitter: “Perhaps No 10 and Parliament does need drug testing after all.”
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— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) July 8, 2021
And the BBC team should have known it.
If they knew Sunak was going to come onto their show and talk about poverty, then they should have done the modicum of basic research required to unearth the figures Peter quoted – and then they should have countered Sunak with the facts.
But they didn’t.
No wonder Peter is so determined to get his other video – you know, the one that shows Boris Johnson lying repeatedly to Parliament; the one that should have had Johnson kicked out of Parliament altogether – shown on BBC Breakfast and the other BBC News outlets:
Now approaching 26 MILLION VIEWS it’s having a huge impact
We must keep going! I will not stop until @BBCNews@BBCBreakfast, as a public service broadcaster we pay for, acknowledge people care about the Prime Ministers rampant lying in Parliament https://t.co/xmQ3u06THr
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) July 7, 2021
Meanwhile, Johnson lies and lies again:
@CommonsSpeaker the 3rd time @BorisJohnson has used this in the last 4 weeks and it’s been fact checked not as misleading but a LIE What and when will you do something It’s embarrassing now https://t.co/54uEq0c6SX
“The Prime Minister and the Minister will have heard the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. If the Prime Minister believes his answer requires a correction, there are processes by which one can make that happen, although he may take a different Toggle showing location of view from the right hon. Member about the facts of the case. In any event, the right hon. Member has put his point on the record, and I am sure he will find other ways of pursuing it. I do not think this is the end of the matter for now, but it is just for this moment.”
In other words: “Shut up.”
That’s Hoyle’s attitude to everything done by Johnson and his government; he bends over and takes it.
And that’s why the rest of us – especially those supine pseudo-journalists at BBC News – need to raise our game and challenge them on their lies wherever and whenever they happen.
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A few facts about Nadhim Zahawi, the current UK business minister: these are from 2016 so it’s a few years since he voted to cut disability benefits but that cut is still in force. I wonder how warm his stables are today?
Naga Munchetty is carving herself a niche as the hard woman of BBC Breakfast.
This morning she made mincemeat out of Tory business minister and twit Nadhim Zahawi over the government’s lack of interest in supporting people who are self-employed:
Naga Munchety is on 🔥 🔥 🔥
Nadhim Zahawi thinks that self employed people are paying themselves dividends & wages🤦♀️
The performance raised a huge amount of support for Ms Munchetty on the social media:
#BBCBreakfast Naga absolutely blasting the business minister for suggesting small biz owners have pots of money they can just tap into and live on in current times. He’s delusional!
Even after being told the mental health and suicide stats @nadhimzahawi still chose to ignore the facts Naga Munchetty gave him about the #ExcludedUK 3 million taxpayers, making out we’re all company directors on the fiddle. Him, @RishiSunak and @BorisJohnson simply don’t care.
Well done Naga, you certainly shown the bbc how to question a tory mp. The lack of an answer shows how many people have slipped through The net since march .
Despite being repeatedly pushed by Naga for a proper answer, Nadhim Zahawi just set a new record for finding different ways of avoiding saying 'we're not going to do anything to help them' #BBCbreakfast#ExcludedUK
Well done @BBCBreakfast and @TVNaga01 Naga Munchetty fighting for he 2.9m self employed just a shame he couldn't answer the questions. My beauty business opened Sept 2019 after me being made redundant from my 15 year vocation. Now no payments and no form of income!!!
At this rate, the Tories won’t be able to use the BBC as a mouthpiece for their daft policies any more. Then where will they go?
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The offers in Rishi Sunak’s summer statement were intended to distract you from this.
Of course child malnourishment has doubled in the last six months, because more children are in poverty – and were, even before the Covid-19 crisis hit the UK.
The number of households with hungry children has doubled during lockdown because children reliant on school breakfast clubs and lunches have been deprived of them.
And their parents – already too poor to afford to feed their children in normal circumstances – have been left to support their families on a fraction of their normal pay (if they’re lucky) or on Universal Credit.
But if they’re claiming UC, they’ve had to wait at least five weeks for their first payment – and possibly as long as 11 weeks.
They won’t be able to benefit from the Chancellor’s “meal deal” vouchers because their parents/guardians can’t afford half the price of eating out – which is necessary before the vouchers can be used.
And let’s remember that Boris Johnson wanted to end free school meals for deprived children during the summer holidays, only relenting after a high-profile footballer’s campaign won widespread public support.
The detail that makes this news horrifying, rather than merely appalling, is the fact that fewer than two-thirds of all hospital trusts have provided information.
It means the number of malnourished children in the UK may in fact have tripled – or worse.
What if any – or many – of them die?
Tory voters: did you really want that on your conscience when you voted your beloved Boris Johnson such a huge victory last year?
Almost 2,500 children have been admitted to hospital with malnutrition in the first six months of the year – double the number over the same period last year – prompting fresh concern that families are struggling to afford to feed themselves and that the pandemic has intensified the problem.
Freedom of information responses from almost 50 trusts in England, representing 150 hospitals, show that more than 11,500 children have been admitted to hospital with malnutrition since 2015.
Almost 1,000 under-16s with malnutrition were admitted as inpatients to Cambridge University hospitals NHS foundation trust alone, suggesting the affluent city has wide disparities in wealth.
Collectively the figures reveal 11,515 cases of hospital admissions of under-16s due to malnourishment. Fewer than two-thirds of all trusts responded, suggesting the real total figure is much higher.
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Endangered: People who sleep on the streets are more likely to catch coronavirus, and more likely to have respiratory conditions that make them vulnerable to serious harm if they do catch it.
This may strike fools as foolish but the wise will understand.
People who live on the streets are as likely to catch the coronavirus as anybody – more so, as they have no way of isolating themselves and the virus can be airborne.
They are more likely to have underlying health conditions including respiratory diseases, which could make the effect of coronavirus on them far more serious.
And if they remain on the streets, they are equally likely to transmit the virus to many more people.
Soup kitchens and day centres have been closing with little or no warning.
So the Mayor of London’s office is to be applauded for booking rooms with the Intercontinental Hotels Group to ensure that homeless people have space to self-isolate.
The Big Issue has taken its vendors off the streets; supporters will be asked to provide funding online for the duration of the crisis.
But there are concerns over families who have been placed in temporary accommodation like bed & breakfast establishments by councils that could not find permanent homes for them.
That’s a fault of Tory governments, of course; council houses have been sold off without enough cash being provided for replacements to be built.
And Tory policies are likely to have put people in need of accommodation in the first place – because of the Bedroom Tax or wage depression, or other policies that clamp down on the vulnerable.
So again we see that Tory short-sightedness has endangered people.
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Now you see it: An image from yesterday’s commemoration service, at which Boris Johnson showed contempt for our Armed Forces by laying his wreath face-down.
Now you don’t: An image from the BBC’s coverage today, showing Mr Johnson laying a wreath in 2016.
Remember a few years ago, when Jeremy Corbyn laid a wreath at his first Remembrance Day as leader of the Labour Party? The BBC revelled in criticism of his behaviour (which was in fact impeccable) and his manner of dress.
Fast-forward to this year, and we all saw Boris Johnson looking scruffy and disshevelled, stepping out of line at the wrong time and laying the wreath upside-down.
That’s unless we watched BBC coverage of the event after it happened, of course.
Because the BBC decided to look for images of Mr Johnson at a previous Remembrance Day event – in 2016 – and use them instead, in what is a clear breach of reporting rules and election impartiality; this was an attempt to hide information that – properly – makes Mr Johnson look bad.
Why on Earth did anybody at the BBC think they would get away with it?
The substitution has sparked a wave of outrage which began with this tweet:
Slide One is Boris Johnson, yesterday, laying a wreath upside down on the Cenotaph
Slide Two is the footage BBC News are rolling with this morning – bizarrely, it's from 2016. pic.twitter.com/8BrOyA9Kyr
… as was the BBC’s ridiculous claim that this was a “production error”:
You're liars and we know you are. You lie about things big and small, but always to Tories' advantage. We don't believe a word you broadcast, because we have no reason to. You're corrupt, rotten and dishonest, and everyone knows that now. Labour will reform you. Bring it on.
Let’s have a few other comments. Here‘s Matt Bailey: “A production mistake… Where you mixed up yesterday’s VT with one from 2016 that you had to search for in the archives? Yes, that’s very plausible. Thank you for making it clear…..”
Author and scriptwriter Stephen Gallagher offered this: “Editorial policy of ‘Since what actually happened doesn’t make him look good, we’ll substitute something that didn’t but does’.”
And ex-BBC/Sky/Reuters/PA journo Julian Shea weighed in with: “‘Footage from less than 24 hours ago? Where am I expected to find that? What’s that you say, three years ago? Easy, it’s saved on my desktop.'”
The BBC’s claim to have made an innocent mistake is risible. As Evolve Politicsnotes:
“The BBC would have needed to search through their archives to find the 2016 footage – making the excuse that it was simply a “mistake” highly implausible.
“In addition to BBC Editors ‘mistakenly’ searching through their archives to use footage from 2016, they also appear to have overlooked the fact that the video also showed numerous politicians in attendance who have long since left their positions:
Theresa May – who is no longer PM
Angus Robertson – who is no longer the SNP Westminster leader
Tim Farron – who is no longer the Lib Dem leader
David Gauke – no longer a Cabinet Minister
Michael Fallon – no longer a Cabinet Minister
Amber Rudd – no longer a Cabinet Minister
Liam Fox – no longer a Cabinet Minister
Chris Grayling – no longer a Cabinet Minister
“Clearly an easy ‘mistake’ to make.”
It seems likely the BBC will be deluged with complaints like this:
The written complaint, sent to https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint states: “I cannot accept that this was a ‘production mistake’ not least because it is clear in the 2016 footage that Theresa May and not Boris Johnson was the Prime Minister. Additionally, it surely takes some ‘skill’ to mix up footage from yesterday with footage from three years ago. I, and I know many others, can only conclude that your intention was to present the PM as more statesmanlike, more respectful, than yesterday’s performance showed him to be.
“Bias.”
As this is a clear breach of impartiality, I hope the same people complaining to the BBC are sending their complaints to Ofcom, which is still (as far as I know) conducting an inquiry into whether the BBC has breached its own rules on this.
This Writer missed the BBC Breakfast coverage. So I watched Politics Live in the hope of seeing an apology and explanation.
Did anybody else see one? I didn’t.
So I sent a tweet to the show’s editor, Rob Burley:
@RobBurl I was looking for the #PoliticsLive apology for BBC Remembrance Day coverage showing images from 2016 rather than yesterday, which someone clearly had to go and find, to use it instead of the shots of @BorisJohnson showing contempt for our veterans. Where is it please?
The BBC has outed itself as a propaganda arm of the Conservative Party. Its election coverage – and other news output – should therefore be avoided on the basis of prejudice, and should be reported to Ofcom.
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Do you remember the Tory housing revolution back in the 1980s? I do.
Margaret Thatcher told us she wanted the UK to be a “nation of home-owners”, and I’m sure she also told us it would be cheaper on the nation as councils would no longer have to build and maintain social housing.
Nearly 40 years on, what has happened?
The UK is a nation in thrall to private landlords whose prices are unaffordable to most people – especially after more than nine years of Tory wage depression and benefit cuts.
Result: Councils spent nearly £100 million providing bed-and-breakfast accommodation for homeless households (it is their statutory duty).
That money could have been spent on council services instead. Next time you get angry at your council for failing to provide, put the blame on Mrs Thatcher!
Provision of social housing has always been the cheapest option for dealing with poverty and homelessness.
It cuts crime – both by and against people who don’t have homes, meaning our police forces are less stretched.
It cuts strain on the health service – there is less violent crime against the homeless, and there is less likelihood of homeless people falling prey to disease.
And it provides income to local authorities that otherwise have to pay out increasing amounts to private landlords to put a metaphorical sticking-plaster over this wound on our society.
The Tory government response to this crisis (see below) is derisory; it wants councils to put themselves in debt in order to provide new housing, meaning they’ll be starved of even more cash.
There’s only one way to end the housing crisis – and that is regime change.
We need a radical change of government.
And we’ll get it soon, if enough people see past the anti-Corbyn propaganda and vote Labour.
Remember: Jeremy Corbyn is the only leader who said his ambition is “a home for everyone”.
Spending by councils on housing families in bed and breakfast accommodation has surged by 780 per cent in a decade, prompting renewed calls for urgent action to mitigate the housing crisis.
An analysis of official data by the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed cash-strapped local authorities had to spend £93.3m on B&Bs for homeless households last year, up from £10.6m in 2009-10.
Campaigners said families were “paying the ultimate price” for successive governments’ failure to build social homes, and urged ministers to adapt welfare reforms to protect families at risk of becoming homeless.
Councils only use bed and breakfasts as a last resort, but the continued loss of social housing was leaving many with no alternative in which to house homeless families, the LGA said.
There are currently 7,040 households in bed and breakfast accommodation – up from 2,450 a decade ago, an increase of 187 per cent.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: “Everyone should have somewhere safe to live and to support those most in need we have removed the borrowing cap, freeing up councils to double housing delivery to around 10,000 new social homes a year by 2021/22.
“We’ve also targeted funding to reduce the number of households in temporary accommodation and in two years we’ve helped councils to reduce the number of families in B&Bs for more than six weeks by 28 per cent.”
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Mad McVey: The fact that she thinks she can get away with such insolence is evidence of an unsound mind.
This is shaping up to be the summer of straight-talking. Maybe it’s the sunshine but people are coming out with exactly what they think of the Tories.
Hugh Grant delivered a pearl earlier this week when he said the current Westminster administration was
The most f**k awful government in the history of f**k awful governments.
He was responding to a tweet in which Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey appeared to taunt benefit claimants by advertising a fast food breakfast outlet that charges more per meal than people on Universal Credit can afford to spend in a week.
Sundays aren’t Sundays without a Full English Breakfast & by far the best is the Big Breakfast @KnutsfordChaBar
Her comment was taken up by the author of the Life of a Universal Credit sufferer blog, who wrote:
Now Esther isn’t known for compassion or discreet but, after the news of the past few weeks that Universal Credit is driving more and more people to foodbanks, her tweet really was just plain callous.
She’s bragging about “the big breakfast” that the Cha Bar in Knutsford sell. The cost of that particular meal is a staggering £8.50 but for just £1 you can add an glass of orange juice too!
My entire fortnightly food budget is about £10.50 (click here to see)and, many others on Universal Credit are in the same situation. How she has the gall to flaunt so openly I do not know.
Damning evidence, there.
So you can see why Mr Grant got straight to the point, and why we’re all so happy to see Ms McVey impaled on it – if only metaphorically.
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Calls for a ‘commission of inquiry’ into the impact of the government’s changes to social security entitlements on poverty have won overwhelming support from Parliament.
The motion by Labour’s Michael Meacher was passed with a massive majority of 123 votes; only two people – David Nuttall and Jacob Rees-Mogg – voted against it.
The debate enjoyed cross-party support, having been secured by Mr Meacher with Sir Peter Bottomley (Conservative) and John Hemming (Liberal Democrat).
Introducing the motion, Mr Meacher said: “It is clear that something terrible is happening across the face of Britain. We are seeing the return of absolute poverty, which has not existed in this country since the Victorian age more than a century ago. Absolute poverty is when people do not have the money to pay for even their most basic needs.”
He said the evidence was all around:
There are at least 345 food banks and, according to the Trussell Trust, emergency food aid was given to 350,000 households for at least three days in the last year.
The Red Cross is setting up centres to help the destitute, just as it does in developing countries.
Even in prosperous areas like London, more than a quarter of the population is living in poverty.
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for the first time, the number of people in working families who are living in poverty, at 6.7 million, is greater than the number of people in workless and retired families who are living in poverty, at 6.3 million.
Child poverty will rise from 2.5 million to 3.2 million during this Parliament, around 24 per cent of children in the UK. By 2020, if the rise is not stopped, it will increase to four million – around 30 per cent of children in the UK.
The use of sanctions depriving people of all their benefits for several weeks at a time, had increased by 126 per cent since 2010 and 120 disabled people who had been receiving jobseeker’s allowance had been given a three-year fixed duration sanction in the previous year.
There are now more than 2,000 families who have been placed in emergency bed-and-breakfast accommodation after losing their homes.
The per cent rise in the overall homelessness figures last year included nearly 9,000 families with children, which is the equivalent of one family losing their home every 15 minutes.
A third of families spent less than £20 a week on food and that the average spend on food per person per day was precisely £2.10. That is a third less than those families were able to afford three months before that.
The proportion of households that had to make debt repayments of more than £40 a week had doubled and the average level of debt was £2,250.
A third of families had council tax debt.
2.7 million people had lost out through the Government’s changes to council tax benefit – many of them disabled people, veterans and some of the most vulnerable in our communities.
Households were having to spend 16 per cent more on gas and electricity.
There are 2.5 million people who have been unemployed for the best part of two years, and there were 562,000 vacancies when the debate took place (Monday), so four out of five of those who are unemployed simply cannot get a job whatever they do.
Cuts to local authorities mean many home care visits are limited to 15 minutes.
The 10 per cent of local authorities that are the most deprived in the country face cuts six times higher than those faced by the 10 per cent that are the most affluent.
60 per cent of benefit cuts fall on those who are in work.
Mr Meacher said the biggest cause of absolute poverty was the huge rise in sanctioning, often for trivial reasons such as turning up five minutes late for a job interview or the Work Programme:
A dyslexic person lost his Jobseekers Allowance because his condition meant that in one fortnightly period he applied for nine jobs, not 10. He was trying to pay his way and already had work, but it provided only an extremely low income.
The jobcentre didn’t record that a claimant had informed them that he was in hospital when he was due to attend an appointment and he was sanctioned.
A claimant went to a job interview instead of signing on at the jobcentre because the appointments clashed – and was sanctioned.
A claimant had to look after their mother who was severely disabled and very ill – and was sanctioned.
A Job Centre sent the letter informing a claimant of an interview to their previous address, despite having been told about the move. The claimant was sanctioned.
A claimant was refused a job because she was in a women’s refuge, fleeing domestic violence and in the process of relocating, but I was still sanctioned.
Mr Meacher also quoted what he called a classic: “I didn’t do enough to find work in between finding work and starting the job.”
The latest DWP figures suggest that more than one million people have been sanctioned in the past 15 months and deprived of all benefit and all income. “Given that the penalties are out of all proportion to the triviality of many of the infringements, and given that, as I have said, four out of five people cannot get a job whatever they do, the use of sanctioning on this scale, with the result of utter destitution, is — one struggles for words — brutalising and profoundly unjust,” said Mr Meacher.
Other reasons for the rise in absolute poverty included:
Delays in benefit payments.
The fact that it is impossible for many poor and vulnerable people to comply with new rules – for example a jobseeker who asked to downsize to a smaller flat who was told he must pay two weeks’ full rent upfront before getting housing benefit. He does not have the funds to do so and is stuck in a situation where his benefits will not cover his outgoings due to the Bedroom Tax.
The Bedroom Tax, which applies to around 667,000 households, and two-thirds of those affected are disabled. More than 90 per cent of those affected do not have smaller social housing to move into.
The Benefit Cap, imposed on a further 33,000 households.
Mistakes by the authorities; up to 40,000 working-age tenants in social housing may have been improperly subjected to the Bedroom Tax because of DWP error (although Iain Duncan Smith claims a maximum of 5,000).
Mr Meacher said: “The Chancellor’s policy of keeping 2.5 million people unemployed makes it impossible for them to find work, even if there were employers who would be willing to take them, and the 40 per cent success rate of appeals shows how unfair the whole process is.”
Responding to a comment from David TC Davies (Conservative) that those who are not looking for work must realise there will be consequences, particularly when a million people have been able to come to the UK from eastern Europe and find work, Mr Meacher said, “Those who come to this country are more likely to be employed and take out less in benefits than many of the indigenous population.”
He asked: “Is all this brutality towards the poor really necessary? Is there any justification in intensifying the misery, as the Chancellor clearly intends, by winding up the social fund and, particularly, by imposing another £25 billion of cuts in the next Parliament, half of that from working-age benefits?
“After £80 billion of public spending cuts, with about £23 billion of cuts in this Parliament so far, the deficit has been reduced only at a glacial pace, from £118 billion in 2011 to £115 billion in 2012 and £111 billion in 2013. Frankly, the Chancellor is like one of those first world war generals who urged his men forward, over the top, in order to recover 300 yards of bombed-out ground, but lost 20,000 men in the process. How can it be justified to carry on imposing abject and unnecessary destitution on such a huge scale when the benefits in terms of deficit reduction are so small as to be almost derisory?”
Suggested alternatives to the punitive austerity programme of cuts came thick and fast during the debate. Challenged to explain what Labour’s Front Bench meant by saying they would be tougher on welfare than the Tories, Mr Meacher said: “As the shadow Chancellor has made clear on many occasions, is that we need public investment. We need to get jobs and growth. That is the alternative way: public investment in jobs, industry, infrastructure and exports to grow the real economy, not the financial froth, because that would cut the deficit far faster than the Chancellor’s beloved austerity.”
He asked: “How about the ultra-rich — Britain’s 1,000 richest citizens — contributing just a bit? Their current remuneration — I am talking about a fraction of the top 1 per cent — is £86,000 a week, which is 185 times the average wage. They received a windfall of more than £2,000 a week from the five per cent cut in the higher rate of income tax, and their wealth was recently estimated by The Sunday Times at nearly half a trillion pounds. Let us remember that we are talking about 1,000 people. Their asset gains since the 2009 crash have been calculated by the same source at about £190 billion.
“These persons, loaded with the riches of Midas, might perhaps be prevailed upon to contribute a minute fraction of their wealth in an acute national emergency, when one-sixth of the workforce earns less than the living wage and when one million people who cannot get a job are being deprived of all income by sanctioning and thereby being left utterly destitute.
“Charging the ultra-rich’s asset gains since 2009 to capital gains tax would raise more than the £25 billion that the Chancellor purports to need. I submit that it would introduce some semblance of democracy and social justice in this country if the Chancellor paid attention to this debate and thought deeply about what he is doing to our country and its people.”
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley, Lab) suggested that the Government might save a lot more if its members “showed the same energy and enthusiasm for getting those who evade their taxes and run to tax havens as they do for going after the poor, the sick and people on the dole”.
Against this, David TC Davies offered insults and distortions of the facts, quoting the Daily Mail as though it provided an accurate account of current events: “Members of the shadow Cabinet might need a boxing referee to sort out their disputes at the moment, as we read today in the Daily Mail.”
He said: “We took office with a deficit of £160 billion and a debt that was rising rapidly to £1 trillion. That was after years of overspending in good times, as well as in bad, by Labour, a cheap money supply and lax banking regulation under the former Government.” Labour’s spending, up until the financial crisis, was always less than that of the previous Conservative administration; Gordon Brown and Tony Blair both ran a lower deficit than John Major and Margaret Thatcher, and at one point actually achieved a surplus, which is something that the Conservatives had not managed in the previous 18 years. While Mr Davies here complained about the “lax banking regulation”, Conservatives supported it at the time and in fact demanded more DE-regulation, which would have made the financial crisis worse when it happened.
“We had disastrous economic decisions, such as that to sell gold at a fraction of its real rate,” said Mr Davies. Yes – the UK lost around £9 billion. But compare that with the disastrous economic decision by George Osborne to impose more than £80 billion worth of cuts to achieve a £7 billion cut in the national deficit. The UK has lost £73 billion there, over a three-year period.
And Mr Davies said: “Worst of all and most seriously, we had a welfare system that allowed people to get into a trap of welfare dependency, leaving them on the dole for many years, but at the same time filling the consequent gap in employment by allowing mass and uncontrolled immigration into this country, which completely undercut British workers.” The first assertion is simply untrue; the second is a legacy of previous Conservative administrations that agreed to the free movement of EU member citizens, meaning that, when the eastern European countries joined in 2004, citizens migrated to the UK in the hope of a better life. Labour has admitted it should have negotiated for a delay in free movement until the economies of those countries had improved, making such migration less likely, but the situation was created before Labour took office.
Challenged on the Coalition’s record, Mr Davies fell back on the Tories’ current trick question, which is to counter any criticism by asking: “Is he suggesting that we are not doing enough to pay down the national debt? Is he suggesting that we should cut further and faster? If so, and if we had the support of other Opposition Members, that is exactly what the Government could do and, indeed, possibly should do. I look forward to seeing that support for getting the deficit down.” This disingenuous nonsense was batted away by Labour’s Hugh Bayley, who said “investing in the economy, creating jobs and thereby getting people off welfare and into work” was the way forward.
Mr Davies’ Conservative colleague Jeremy Lefroy took a different view, agreeing that increasing numbers of people are finding it impossible to make ends meet, and that job creation and apprenticeships were a better way out of poverty than changing the social security system alone. He agreed that sanctions were applied to his constituents “in a rather arbitrary manner”. He spoke against George Osborne’s suggested plan to remove housing benefits from people aged under 25, saying this “would have a drastic impact on young people who need to live away from home and who have no support from their families”. He spoke in favour of councils increasing their housing stock. And he admitted that disabled people faced severe problems when unfairly transferred from ESA to JSA: “A lady in my constituency says, ‘I am simply not fit for work, but by signing on for JSA I have to say that I am available and fit for work.’ She does not want to tell a lie.”
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool Walton, Labour) spoke powerfully about the effect of being on benefits: “Lots of people in my city are on benefits for the very first time. Far from being in clover — it beggars belief what we read in the right-wing press — they are struggling to make ends meet, and the problem that thousands of Liverpudlians are facing is new to them. For many, the idea that they might miss a rent payment is totally alien. They have not done that in the past 20 years, but since May 2010, their individual household incomes have been on such a downward trajectory that they now find themselves in rent arrears, seeking advice on debt management and unable to afford the daily cost of travel, food and energy. Figures suggest that 40 per cent of the adult population in Liverpool are struggling with serious debt problems.”
And he said poverty had health implications, too: “David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool and his fellow academics have highlighted the doubling of malnutrition-related hospital admissions nationally since 2008.”
John Hemming (Birmingham Yardley, LD) raised concerns about “the interrelationship between the welfare cap and victims of domestic violence, and whether there are situations that need more attention. I believe that people can get discretionary housing payment to leave a violent home, but it is important that we ensure that there is a route out of domestic violence for women. I am worried about that issue, just as I am about some wrongful sanctioning that I have seen. That does not help at all, because it undermines the whole process.” He also called for “a substantial increase in the minimum wage, because as the economy is improving the Government should look at that, rather than maintain things as they are”.
The vote gave huge endorsement to the call for an independent inquiry into poverty under the Coalition.
But with an election just 15 months away, how long will we have to wait for it to report?
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