Osborne’s budget cuts will devastate low-income households
Photo Dan Moyle (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
Socialist Party member Mary Jackson contested the last general election as a Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate in Doncaster North and is a well-known community activist.
Mary comments on the Tory Chancellor’s budget of £12 billion extra welfare spending cuts and its expected impact on low income households.
By the time you read this the budget cuts may already have been announced – but Osborne had already let it be known that in-work benefits will be cut. These are in addition to cuts and caps on all welfare benefits.
If the government was serious about cutting the benefit bill it would immediately raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour. This would cut working tax credit at a stroke.
Around £11 billion in benefits are claimed by low-paid shop-workers – it’s a supplement to employers of £2,087 per employee. Tesco alone costs taxpayers £364 million in benefits!
Bring in rent control, instead of housing benefit caps, to stop the sky high rents that are being used to drive workers out of major cities.
That of course will not happen under this super-rich friendly government. Instead it will take money from people who work but do not earn enough to live. There’s talk of every household losing between £20 and £30 a week. Workers on tax credits and housing benefit haven’t enough to live on now!
In our local community run food bank, we see people who struggle to have enough money to keep the lights on. Gas for heating is a luxury that they simply manage without. £20 a week cut will mean electricity becoming an unaffordable luxury.
Some food banks already have different food parcels for people who have no method of cooking. It is outrageous that this is already the ‘norm’ before these new savage cuts come in.
We’re coming up to the long school holiday, already a very difficult time for parents because of a lack of free school meals. £20 less a week means many more children will go to bed hungry.
An extra million children fell below the poverty line in the five years of the Con-Dem government how many more will follow if we let them get away with this?
Many groups of workers are having to consider strike action or are balloting for strikes to address the cost of living crisis. The Trades Union Congress has called for a lobby of the Tory Party conference to protest against austerity.
We need a one-day general strike as a starting point to reverse the whole austerity package.
The Great Money Trick: Another World Is Possible by Mary Jackson (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
The Great Money Trick: Another World Is Possible
by Mary Jackson
£10 + £1 P&P
Available from Left books
PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD
020 8988 8789
Make cheques payable to ‘Socialist Books’
