- 23/04/2013
- Posted by: Hillingdon Labour
- Category: Leader's Blog
Saturday 6th April 2013 was Tory Millionaires day when David Cameron gave a tax cut worth an average of £100,000 to 13,000 millionaires while hard working families bear the brunt of the austerity programme.
David Cameron’s strivers tax means that tax credits and benefits will be cut in real terms. Only a third of the families affected by this are out of work, two thirds are in work and struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.Council Tax benefit has also been scrapped and replaced with a local discount scheme, with a 10% reduced budget which means that in Hillingdon, those that can least afford it are seeing their council tax rise whilst council tax is frozen for everyone else.
The Bedroom tax has now also become a reality with the least wealthy socially renting tenants losing 14% of their housing benefit for one spare room and 25% for two or more spare rooms.
Cameron’s Mummy tax means that (from 6th April) we have seen a real terms cut in maternity & paternity pay worth up to £180 and on the same day, child benefit was frozen for the third year running.
If you are a pensioner, you probably think you have escaped all these Tory stealth taxes and benefit changes, but, oh no, Cameron and Osbourne have hit you with the Granny Tax, by using a sleight of hand trick with the tax allowances of pensioners, meaning that 4.4 million pensioners will lose an average of £83 per year and people who become pensioners this year will lose up to £322.
The Tory led government has tried to demonise the whole welfare state, and all those that need it. So it’s worth remembering that 54% of the welfare bill is spent on the state pension, pension credit, and winter fuel payments. A further 16% is spent on the disabled and their carers. This really is robbing from the poor to give to the rich because whilst pensioners, new mothers, social housing tenants, the disabled, carers, the unemployed and families working in low paid jobs are all having to pay more, the wealthiest in our society, those earning over £1 million a year are paying £100,000 less tax each year.
This is nothing to do with what the country can afford; it’s a spiteful and deliberate attack on the poor and the vulnerable.
Cllr Peter Curling
Leader of the Labour Group
London Borough of Hillingdon
