Protest against Assisted Dying Bill, in Westminster, on Friday

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Assisted Dying Bill, disability, disabled, Friday, health, House of Lords, July 18, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, protest, sick, Vox Political

The next debate on the controversial Assisted Dying Bill is to take place in the House of Lords on Friday – and all those opposed to the Bill are invited to attend a planned public protest outside the House while the debate is taking place.

An online petition has also been raised on the Change.org website. This states:

Lord Falconer’s bill aims to make it legal for doctors to end the lives of those they judge to be terminally ill, if the dying individual requests this intervention. This issue affects everyone, but our experience as disabled people informs our belief that the law should not be changed.

Not Dead Yet UK opposes this because:

• It would be unacceptably dangerous to make it legal for one individual to end the life of another, because statutory safeguards cannot be made effective;
• Clear evidence from other countries, where assisted dying has been introduced, shows that people are being assisted to die when they are not terminally ill. This is not the intention of the legislation, but there is evidence to show that it happens and when it does it is often to disabled people. In the light of this, Not Dead Yet UK takes the view that ‘Assisted Dying’ would be more accurately described as ‘Assisted Suicide’;
• People can be led to perceive themselves as a burden, especially when support services are cut, and this may contribute to their decision making;
• We believe that a positive approach to the lives of disabled people, old and young, should be a priority for society;
• This means appropriate support for living and an accessible environment;
• Disabled people are being hit harder than many by the recession, which gives us the clear message that our rights and opportunities are low priority when times get hard. ‘Assisted Dying’ is often linked with the cost of disability, particularly Social Care and Continuing Health Care, which are becoming increasingly unavailable. We find this a legitimate and relevant cause for concern;
• In a recent poll by the Royal College of GPs, 77 per cent voted against legalising assisted suicide and many doctors acknowledge that it is very difficult to accurately predict when someone will die and they often get this wrong.

If you oppose the Bill and can make it to Westminster, please join the protest.

(Thanks to Mo Stewart for this information.)

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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Will ‘independent’ study whitewash the Bedroom Tax?

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accommodation, authorities, authority, badger, bed and breakfast, bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, bovine, Coalition, complaint, Conservative, council, cull, Democrat, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, DHP, discretionary housing payment, downsize, DWP, evict, evidence, government, Harriet Harman, homeless, House of Lords, housing, housing benefit, Independent, Lib Dem, Liberal, local, local government ombudsman, Lord Freud, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, move, New Labour, Nick Clegg, Parliament, Pensions, people, politics, private, rent, report, small, social housing, social security, Stephanie Bottrill, suicide, tax, tenant, tuberculosis, university, Vox Political, welfare, work, York

Doesn’t he look like a puppet? In fact the correct term is ‘marionette’ – for a puppet on strings, worked from above. But who’s pulling Nick Clegg’s strings this time?

The Government is running an independent study into the impact of the Bedroom Tax, in order to find out if it is really possible for social housing tenants to move into smaller accommodation to escape its effects. The result should more likely be feared than welcomed.

Nick Clegg announced that the study was taking place in response to a Parliamentary question from Harriet Harman – but was immediately undermined by the Department for Work and Pensions. A government spokesman said the DWP routinely commissions research on new policies and an independent consortium was already carrying out evaluation work.

Clegg had to say he was taking action after his own party voted to change its policy on the Tax – the Liberal Democrats now oppose it – but this is not cause for celebration.

Who will carry out this independent study? We are told it is an “independent consortium” but what does that mean? What will be their terms of reference? What questions will they be asking and will they be the questions that need to be asked?

Observers should be raising serious doubts about all of these because this is not a government with a good track record on evidence-led policy.

We all know what this is about – the government’s hugely flawed scheme to claw back Housing Benefit cash from social housing tenants, taking 14 per cent of payments from those with one spare bedroom, and a quarter of the benefit from anyone with two. The Discretionary Housing Payment scheme for local councils was boosted to £60 million in anticipation of extra demand from struggling tenants.

It is true that evidence about the policy is conflicting. Lord Freud, introducing it in the House of Lords, apparently refused to listen to arguments that there were too few single-bedroom properties into which under-occupiers could downsize. Now he is blaming local authorities for the shortage.

The government said the policy would save £480 million, but the increased cost of DHPs must be subtracted from that, and also the costs of people who do manage to downsize. This could range from just four per cent of the 660,000 affected households to 20 per cent, depending on who you believe – a recent study by the University of York suggested that 20 per cent of households intended to move (which isn’t quite the same as actually doing it), but this was based on evidence from just four housing associations.

It seems unlikely that one-fifth of everyone affected nationally is moving to a different property – but even if they were, this would not create a saving for the government because it would have to pay out, not only increased Housing Benefit for those who have moved into smaller but more expensive private rented housing, but also Housing Benefit for people moving into the now-vacant larger social housing.

And then there are the people who cannot downsize but cannot afford the rent if their Housing Benefit is reduced. Recent reports had 50,000 households facing eviction – around one-thirteenth of the total number affected.

If they become homeless, local councils will have to find temporary accommodation for them – and this is paradoxically much more expensive than putting them in social housing, because they have to go into bed-and-breakfast rooms. Homelessness was already on the increase before the Bedroom Tax was introduced, rising from 44,160 households in 2011-12 to 53,540 in 2012-13.

Not only that, but there has been a sharp increase in complaints about this accommodation, according to the Local Government Ombudsman.

Finally, let us not forget that at least one suicide has been attributed to the Bedroom Tax – that of Stephanie Bottrill.

So definitive research is certainly desirable. There’s just one problem: The Coalition Government is very good at commissioning ‘independent’ reports that say exactly what ministers want them to.

Look at the report on culling badgers to get rid of bovine tuberculosis. A seven-year study during New Labour’s period in office concluded that this would be useless, and in fact could worsen the situation. The Coalition came in and a new study appeared advocating a cull.

With no knowledge of who is carrying out the report it is hard to predict whether its findings will be accurate – or just what the government ordered.

NHS stealth-privatisation – get an email in to the Lords!

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CCG, clinical commissioning group, Coalition, Conservative, debate, health, House of Lords, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, NHS, Parliament, people, politics, privatisation, regulation, secondary legislation scrutiny committee, SI 257, sick, SKWAWKBOX blog, SLSC, Steve Walker, Vox Political

This is a quickie because there isn’t much time.

I just received notification from fellow blogger Steve Walker that today is the deadline for submission of evidence and concerns to the House of Lords ‘Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’ (SLSC) to ask for a full Lords debate on the undemocratic attempt to force privatisation on the NHS via the new Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

Steve has written an excellent analysis of the redrafted SI 257/2013 regulations, explaining why they are a minefield likely to push CCGs further into the privatisation trap than any other outcome. You can read it here.

Rather than waste time trying to do the same job twice, I have emailed the Lords to ask for a debate, referring them to the same articles. Here’s a copy of what I have written. I would suggest that anyone who has strong feelings on the subject could use this as a template to email the Lords themselves. Here’s the email address:

seclegscrutiny@parliament.uk

And here’s the text of my email:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I understand that you are looking for submissions regarding the government’s ‘section 75’ secondary legislation. May I add my voice to those asking for a full Lords debate on this undemocratic attempt to force privatisation on the NHS via the new Clinical Commissioning Groups?

I do not intend to provide supporting arguments myself but instead would like to refer you to an excellent blog article – http://ccgwatch.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/revised-section-75-regs-mire-ccgs-in-a-legal-minefield/ – by Steve Walker, written following a careful reading of the government’s revisions to SI 257/2013.

It identifies serious concerns with the legislation, which does nothing to change the substance of the original instrument – and in fact uses uncertainty as an additional tool to tie the hands of CCGs to include private bidders for health service contracts.

With regards.

Over to you.

We will all pay for the raid on Legal Aid

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benefit, benefits, Benefits Uprating Bill, Coalition, Conservative, Department for Work and Pensions, DWP, House of Lords, legal aid, lord bach, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, people, politics, social security, Tories, Tory, Vox Political, welfare

The House of Lords: The more one hears of the debates there, the more one is impressed by them.

One side of them, at least.

For example the debate on the Benefits Uprating Bill, that took place on Tuesday, including a fascinating interlude by Lord Bach, in which he made explicit the meaning of the government’s planned withdrawal of Legal Aid for benefit claimants.

The government claims the intention is to save money, but Lord Bach (pictured) made it perfectly clear that there will be no saving at all, in the end.

One is left with the only possible alternative – that this vindictive government of millionaires intends to make it impossible for the poorest and most vulnerable in society to seek legal redress against cruel and unwarranted decisions that will withdraw from them the money they use to keep themselves a hairs-breadth away from destitution.

It is a decision to attack the poor for the fun of it.

Don’t take it from me; here’s how Lord Bach put it:

“What is so often left out of the arguments about welfare reform… is what potential real remedy the citizen will be left with if the department’s [of Work and Pensions] decision is wrong. Surely the fact that it is wrong in many cases is not in question. We all know that, with the best will in the world, decisions made by the department are often wrong and very much to the disadvantage of those who want to claim them.

“For a long time, this has not been a pressing problem. For those requiring legal advice on their benefit entitlements, Legal Aid has been available – if, of course, these people came within the criteria for Legal Aid, and many did.

“For a small amount of Legal Aid, quality advice has been available, having the effect of both stopping – this is important in cost terms – hopeless claims and establishing good claims where appropriate. It is a system that worked. Putting it at its highest, it has allowed access to justice for all.

“At a slightly lower level, it has meant that tribunals have not been faced with an impossibly large number of cases, many of which should never have been brought in the first place.

“It has cost a fraction of the total Legal Aid budget and is paid to lawyers who are not by any standards well paid. Yet from April 1, as a deliberate act of government policy, this legal help will no longer be available for anyone in cases relating to welfare benefit entitlements.

“Thus, people will not be able to get the advice to which they are entitled. Their access to justice will be gone. The department will get away with wrong decisions and tribunals will be overburdened with what I can only describe as rubbish cases – all to save £25 million per year on welfare benefit advice.

“That is one-tenth – I repeat, one-tenth – of the amount set aside by the Department for Communities and Local Government so that there can be weekly rather than fortnightly collections of rubbish. Is this really a proper sense of priorities for a time of austerity?

“Further, everyone who knows anything about this agrees that this is not likely to be a saving at all in the end.

“The state… will eventually have to pick up the pieces when things get much worse than they need to. How can the Minister or any government justify this either in terms of common decency, which should appeal to this House and normally does, or even under the rule of law?”

We all thought the Tories would be left heartbroken after the Hunting Act took away their favourite extracurricular pastime.

It seems they have found another blood sport to replace it.

Who is this overprivileged loon who thinks senior citizens are a burden on the state?

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"burden on the state", benefit, benefits, community work, government, House of Lords, Lord Bichard, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, Parliament, Pensions, people, politics, Vox Political

So some gangrenous cadaver calling himself Lord Bichard reckons pensioners should do community work or lose their benefit, does he?

He thinks this will stop them from being a “burden on the state”, according to the BBC website.

If I were a pensioner, I would have got straight on a bus for the House of Lords to demand that he be de-throned, de-frocked or dis-ennobled – whatever it takes to strip him of the title he so clearly doesn’t deserve.

These “burdens on the state” have contributed something like a quarter of their earnings to the state, throughout their entire working lives!

They have helped build up the state, maintained it, and defended it.

They receive a pension – and a meagre sum it is, too – because the state owes it to them in return for all that they have contributed to it!

Now, who wants to talk about how much the state should pay to useless life peers who only turn up at the House of Lords to pick up their allowance and spend the rest of their lives with their heads up their own backsides?

The worm(tongue) turns – and not a moment too soon

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Alternative Vote, backbencher, backbenchers, boundaries, boundary, Cameron, Coalition, Conservative, constituency, David Cameron, Democrat, Grima Wormtonge, House of Lords, JRR, Labour, Liberal, Lord of the Rings, LOTR, minister, Nick Clegg, Party, Prime, Reform, Saruman, Sauron, Tolkien, U-turn, U-turns

I would like to apologise in advance to fans of JRR Tolkien’s epic fantasy Lord of the Rings for the content of this blog.

You see, it occurred to me today that – in Nick Clegg and David Cameron – we can see a real-life parallel with the relationship between Grima Wormtongue and Saruman, the evil wizard who plots to be a dark lord.

Can Clegg be compared to Wormtongue? I think he can. For much of LOTR, Grima spends his time telling the people of his country that the best policy is to put themselves at Saruman’s mercy and let him ride roughshod over them, their homes and their livelihoods – much as Clegg has advised us to let Cameron ruin the UK.

Can Cameron be compared to Saruman? I think he can. In LOTR, Saruman plots to be a Dark Lord, as powerful as Sauron (who, as everyone knows, is the principle villain of the piece, portrayed memorably in the film version by a flaming, computer-generated eyeball). However, it turns out that Saruman just doesn’t have the ability to be a successful Dark Lord. He’s bad – but he isn’t very good at it.

In reality, Cameron wanted to be the Prime Minister because he thought he’d be “good at it”. After two years, we can look at his back catalogue of failures and U-turns and see how wrong he was.

As the novel has it, Grima finally turns on Saruman and stabs him in the back, killing him – which brings me to this week’s events concerning House of Lords reform.

Clegg has long cherished the idea of delivering constitutional reforms to the British Parliamentary system. Deprived, by referendum, of the opportunity to change the voting system to the Alternative Vote (which would have improved his party’s chance of getting Parliamentary seats), he fell back on reform of the House of Lords – a scheme which, his party claimed, had nothing whatsoever to do with Cameron’s plans to change constituency boundaries, cutting the number of of seats in the Commons down to 600 (which would have improved HIS party’s chance of getting seats).

This week, that idea was dealt a fatal blow – more because Conservative backbenchers refused to support it in principle than because Labour took issue with the scheduling of the debate. Lords reform has been dropped.

In retaliation, Clegg has announced that he will be instructing his MPs not to support boundary changes when the vote takes place – stabbing Cameron in the back, just as Grima stabs Saruman.

And the parallel can be drawn closer still, because both incidents hinge on side-issues. In the book, Saruman is causing trouble in the heroes’ homeland, out of nothing but spite, when he is killed. In reality, the boundaries issue is about making it harder for Labour to win Parliamentary seats – a spiteful attempt, by the Conservatives, at punishment for being kept in Opposition for 13 years.

But will the wound prove fatal? Cameron was doing his best to play down its significance immediately after, claiming that both Coalition parties would continue to work together to rebuild the nation’s economy. That’ll be a hard slog, because it is under the Coalition that the economy has slipped back into a recession that has grown deeper with every month that passes – fuelled, as we saw demonstrated in the Workfare case (see the immediately preceding post), by Coalition policies.

Commentators have already suggested that one way out for Cameron would be if Scotland secedes from the Union. That would deliver a cut in the number of Parliamentary seats and an increased likelihood of Conservative victory, given the current state of voting intentions in the seats that remain. So it seems unlikely that the Conservatives will fight very hard to keep Scotland in the UK.

Even then, though, what will the voters do? We’ve had a little more than two years of the Coalition and already the vast majority of the population are feeling the pinch, while having to watch the Coalition’s leaders and their big-business friends getting their snouts in the trough.

Future developments could be stranger even than fantasy fiction.

Carving up the NHS is Cameron’s vanity project

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Andrew George, Andrew Lansley, British Medical Association, Cabinet Secretary, Coalition, Conservative, Craig Barrett, David Cameron, Downing Street, Egremont, Faculty of Public Health, government, health, Health and Social Care Bill, Health Secretary, House of Lords, Jon Trickett, judicial review, Labour, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Lords, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, National Health Service, NHS, NHS privatisation, Parliament, peers, people, PMQs, politics, Polly Toynbee, Prime Minister, Prime Minister's Questions, privatisation, Royal Assent, Royal College of GPs, Royal College of Nursing, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, Sir Jeremy Heywood, The Guardian, The Times, Tories, Tory, undemocratic, Wales

The more we find out about Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill – his bid to privatise the NHS – the more childish it all seems.

This has been a week of shocks for the architects of the Bill, starting with the revelation that a Conservative ‘insider’ had described Mr Lansley as “a disaster” who, far from winning over critics of the Health Bill, has managed “to further annoy and alienate NHS staff”, and that a Downing Street briefing had called for him to be “taken out and shot”.

“Health reform should have been carried out by stealth,” said one strategist, according to an article in The Times.

It seems that many of Mr Lansley’s changes could have been carried out without primary legislation, thereby avoiding the glare of the public spotlight and all the adverse publicity that has come with it. Nevertheless, the idea of fundamental changes to our greatest national institution taking place covertly is outrageous and Jon Trickett MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, has written to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, seeking reassurance that “there will be no such covert attempt to bring about fundamental change in the ethos or the care offered by our National Health Service”.

In fact, changes have already been implemented by the government – at considerable cost to the taxpayer – without waiting for the Bill to finish its passage through Parliament and get Royal Assent. Apparently these things are mere formalities for our Coalition leaders (who, let’s not forget, are composed of members of two political parties who could not win the confidence of a majority of the electorate on their own).

But a judicial review, to establish the legality of these moves, is now a distinct possibility.

The decision to implement as much as he has without waiting for the bill’s royal assent is a “flagrant flouting of parliament”, according to Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. But while a U-turn would be embarrassing, failing to do so would be worse, she argued.

Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP and member of the health select committee, put it like this: “It will now cause havoc either way, but going ahead is even more catastrophic”.

Even Tory commentators have turned on the Bill. Craig Barrett, writing in Tory blog Egremont, said: “The fact that many of the reforms do not even require primary legislation makes the resulting headache look embarrassingly self-inflicted. Without a proper mandate, it looks undemocratic.

“For the good of the NHS, Andrew Lansley must admit defeat and head to the backbenches.”

Hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, midwives and others have called for the government to abandon this proposed legislation before it does great harm to the NHS. The British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing have voiced concerns, and the Royal College of GPs wrote last week to Mr Cameron to ask for the bill to be scrapped. The Faculty of Public Health became the latest healthcare body to call for the Bill to be dropped, “in the best interests of everyone’s health”.

Downing Street has insisted that Mr Lansley and his reforms have the Prime Minister’s full support, though.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Cameron said his government was increasing its spending on the NHS, while the Labour administration in Wales was making cutbacks. It is easy to dismiss this criticism, though – the cutbacks in Wales are entirely due to cuts in funding from Mr Cameron’s own Westminster government.

The government has offered more than 100 concessions in an effort to get the Bill passed, but this did not stop the House of Lords passing another amendment when peers discussed it on Wednesday.

So – as one can see – there’s a huge amount of opposition to this Bill. It is seen as undemocratic. Only a tiny minority of healthcare professionals want to see it implemented, and they tend to belong to the administrative side – the bean-counters and pen-pushers, rather than the medical practitioners themselves. And Mr Lansley’s time as Health Secretary has been a “disaster”.

Why, then, do both he and our comedy Prime Minister persist with it?

Well, it’s their vanity project, isn’t it?

It’s their attempt to write their names into the history books – the biggest change to the National Health Service since it was created in 1948 and, they hope, the blow that will lead it into a long-drawn-out death, to make way for private health companies and block millions of people from receiving health care of any kind in the future. You just won’t be able to afford it.

In short, they want to graffito “David and Andrew were here” across the face of Britain’s biggest and best-loved national institution, and they’ll do it at any cost.

Childish.

Show your contempt for this arrogant dictatorship

Tags

benefits, benefits cap, cancer, child, Child Benefit, Child Support Agency, Child Tax Credits, Chris Grayling, Conservative, consultation, contributory, CSA, David Cameron, democracy, dictatorship, disabled, DLA, electoral register, Employment Support Allowance, ESA, falsified, financial privilege, government, Health and Social Care Bill, House of Commons, House of Lords, Iain Duncan Smith, judicial review, legal aid, Lib Dem, Liberal Democrat, mandate, means test, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, money bill, NHS, penalties, penalty, people, politics, tax, Tories, Tory, undemocratic, under-occupancy, Welfare Reform Bill

Does anybody reading this still think the UK is a democracy?

I dare say most people are aware that the government, in the House of Commons, has reversed all seven amendments made by the Lords to the Welfare Reform Bill. This means the new benefits cap of £26,000, per family, will include Child Benefit.

The Bill will also:

• Require cancer patients to undergo a means test for Employment Support Allowance – if they fail, they have to look for work
• Reduce the lower rate of the ‘disabled child’ element of Child Tax Credits
• Means test other ESA claimants every year
• Stop young disabled people who have never worked from claiming ‘contributory’ ESA
• Impose ‘under-occupancy’ penalties on social tenants with one spare room
• Force single parents to face Child Support Agency charges, even if they have taken steps to reach a settlement

There is no mandate for these changes, or any of the other changes in the Welfare Reform Bill. The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition does not have permission from the electorate to do this, because it was never part of either of their manifestos. This is undemocratic.

The House of Lords, in amending the Bill to prevent the measures I mention above, had been contacted by many people on benefits, and made their decision in the knowledge of the financial trauma it will cause if allowed to go ahead unchanged. This was the only opportunity the people affected by the Bill had to plead a case, and the government’s pig-headed refusal to pay attention (let’s call it a ‘not-listening’ exercise, in recognition of the sham that was carried out in respect of the Health and Social Care Bill, which is likely to cause even more harm to the honest people of the UK). The reversal in the Commons therefore flies in the face of the will of the people. This, too, is undemocratic.

Furthermore, the government has announced it will use a rule known as ‘financial privilege’ to prevent the Lords from sending the same amendments back to the Commons when they consider the Bill for the final time.

Now, Parliamentary convention has long stated that the Lords do not deliberate on “money” Bills, such as the Budget – but such legislation is never introduced to the Lords in the first place. As the Welfare Reform Bill was, there is a strong argument that this rule does not apply.

It is highly unusual for a government to introduce a Bill to Parliament with the intention of it being considered by both Houses, only for it to declare the Bill beyond the auspices of the Lords at this relative late stage in proceedings – and for this reason the whole process could end up in a judicial review.

In other words, for this to happen, it must normally be decided before a government is humiliated over its unsound policies – not after. This, again, is undemocratic.

Let’s not forget that the government falsified the results of its own consultation process about this bill. More than 90 per cent of those taking part opposed the changes in the bill but this was ignored in the report, which was intended to show that the public supported the change. It does not. This, yet again, is undemocratic.

This break with precedent could have further implications for other major government bills going through the Lords, including the Legal Aid and NHS Bills, both of which are highly controversial. Need I point out how undemocratic all of this is?

Finally, none of these measures are necessary. If the government taxed big businesses properly, instead of excusing them from paying the vast sums of money they owe, then there would be enough in the Treasury to keep benefits as they are and pay off some of the national debt. This is what the majority of the people in my country want and their refusal to do it is totally undemocratic.

If you’re not living in a democracy – and if you’re in the UK, you are definitely not living in a democracy any more – then you’re living in a dictatorship.

It is a dictatorship ruled by two parties that did not even gain a majority in the last General Election.

We have another three years of this agony, as matters stand at the moment.

All I can suggest right now is that we make our contempt for this arrogant cartel known at every opportunity. If any of the above makes you angry, make sure you’re on the electoral register and then get out and vote against them every chance you get.

There are elections in May. They’ll be a good place to start.

Benefits v bonuses – everybody’s a loser!

Tags

allowances, benefits, benefits cap, Child Benefit, co-operatives, Coalition, Commons, Conservative, constituency, Disability Living Allowance, DLA, earnings, economy, FT350, government, health, homelessness, House of Commons, House of Lords, inflation, Labour, Liberal, living wage, Lords, Margot James MP, match-funding, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, MP, MPs, MPs' allowances, Parliament, people, politics, RBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, salaries, salary, Tories, Tory, wage, wages, workers' co-operatives

As I type these words, this has been a day of defeat for the government. Its bid to cap benefits at £26,000 – forcing some families to face the prospect of losing their homes – has been defeated by the Lords, while in the Commons, MPs totally failed to cap the spectacularly high amounts paid to (for example) bankers.

The link between the two is the average amount of pay earned by workers in the UK today. The government says this is £26,000, which Tory MP Margot James seems to think is a large amount of money. I wonder how she describes the current average salary for an MP like herself, which is £65,738, two-and-a-half times as much. In addition, MPs receive allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, having somewhere to live in London and in their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency – and we all know that no MP has ever – ever – abused those allowances, don’t we?

The fact is that on a day when the Royal Bank of Scotland has been asking the government to allow it to pay bonuses worth £500 million to staff who have put that firm into the red by £750 million in the last six months, £26,000 is not a high figure. It is a derisory figure. A pittance.

People on benefits, and those speaking for them, have argued that this figure will not be enough to keep many of them in their homes. That is why the Lords voted to exempt Child Benefit from those included in the cap – in order to offer children a stable environment in which to grow up.

The question arises: If it isn’t enough to keep families on benefits in their homes, how do working people who are earning less than this amount manage to make ends meet?

My own experience colours my answer to that: Very badly. When I was last in a full-time job, the salary did not cover all my outgoings and I had to give it up for that reason. Simple as that. Fortunately my partner finally succeeded in a years-long battle to claim Disability Living Allowance shortly afterwards and I became a carer – and we’re better off that way. That’s not an indictment of the welfare and benefits system; it’s an indictment of the way wages have been depressed below the rate of inflation for the last 30 years or so.

I’m told the firm lost business after I left. To me, that indicates a lapse of judgement in allowing me to go, and that bosses might have been better off if they had offered me a sum that would have allowed me to go on living comfortably, rather than worrying about a long, slow slide into debt (to the bank! where the bonuses happen).

I would rather be in a paying job than a carer. I don’t believe I’m betraying my partner, who needs the care, by saying that. But I don’t believe I can earn the amount we would need, in order to get a better quality of life, for her or both of us.

What’s the solution? Obvious, really: pay working people the living wage they deserve!

If the average wage was a reasonable amount (and I feel no need to bind anyone’s thinking here, so I won’t suggest one) then, firstly, the poor working man or woman would not feel so hard-done-by, with people on benefits pulling down as much as them or more yet having done no work for it, and bosses taking home obscene amounts generated by the efforts of other people.

Those on benefits would have less reason to feel victimised because the average amount at which their benefits will be pegged would be high enough for them to survive, and possibly even enough for them to think about how to get back into work and earn more money for themselves and their families (if they have them), rather than focusing solely on survival.

All this hinges on the bosses who, as we know, are extremely reluctant to share out the profits they haven’t earned for themselves. I have no sympathy for those on obscenely large salaries and bonus schemes – those in FT350 companies whose salaries have multiplied seven times in the last 20 years, while the firms’ performance has improved by only 23 per cent and the wages they pay their workers has risen by just 27 per cent (less than the rate of inflation). They can take a smaller slice of the cake and put up with it.

But what about the bosses of smaller firms who might be struggling to keep their heads above water? They might not be taking very much more than their workforce. What’s the solution for them?

To my way of thinking, they need to be competitive, and a demoralised workforce does not make a business competitive. Also, they need the tools to do their job properly and I can foresee a time when the economic situation will mean their equipment will be out of date.

Perhaps this is a time for the government – either local or national – to come forward with a match-funding scheme of some kind to keep these firms on their feet; but with one major condition. The companies should re-form into co-operatives, in which every worker has a stake in the profits. This would re-fire their enthusiasm and, hopefully, improve performance, leading to a knock-on increase in wages and bonuses that are not unearned drains on resources but based on real profit.

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