Tim Farron has shown great self discipline. In an article for the Mirror about this week’s tax credits showdown in the Lords, he turns his fire, rightly, on the Tories. He only slips in one sly dig at Labour:
Sadly Labour wouldn’t support our move to scrap the cuts altogether, but we joined with them to force a delay.
It isn’t ideal, but it is a chance to tell the government it should improve its plans.
If Labour wouldn’t support the move when they are led by a proper leftie, you wonder if they ever would.
Tim looks at why these tax credit cuts are so bad:
These cuts to tax credits hit people exclusively on low pay .
People who are doing the right thing- who are working- but in low paid work.
People who find themselves having to plan their spending carefully- who get to the end of the month and are having to watch where every penny goes.
These are simply the wrong people for the Conservatives to be taking money from.
He explained why we’d taken the action we did in the Lords.
Trying to pin them (the Tories) down on that was like a twisted version of Deal or No Deal, but with the income of millions of people on low wages.
What we are now seeing is the true extent of how dangerous this pure-Conservative government is.
Funnily enough, you can’t cut £12bn from welfare without hurting some of the most vulnerable people.
Liberal Democrats will not stand by and let the Conservatives pass measures that are targeted on the poorest in our society.
That is why I make no apology for using our power in the House of Lords to block these cruel plans.
He also said he had asked Alan Milburn, the Government’s social mobility chief, to assess how this measure would affect children in poverty.
You can read the whole article here.
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2 Comments
Is restraint and a ‘sly dig’ enough I wonder? Surely we learned at the last election that being nice doesn’t help when your opponents are knocking lumps out of you.
We should be saying, I feel, ‘red tories supported the government’s cuts to hard working families’ tax credits’ or some such!
If politicians really wanted to construct a tax and benefit system that was fair and had no poverty traps, then they would start by drawing a graph of what they want to achieve. Such a graph showing income against tax/benefit would be a line of, I would say, constant slope intersecting the zero income point at some level to avoid destitution.
To implement this in the most efficient way would imply: tax all income, make all benefits universal. Some hope.
Details added for the general contempt of the politically active, of all shades:
http://www.atkwanti.co.uk/tax/tax.htm