Let’s give these Kippers a chance to come clean

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abuse, clarify, clarity, domestic, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill, EU, Europe, Gender-based Violence, home, hypocrisy, hypocrite, kipper, marital rape, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, motion, Nigel Farage, Parliament, partner, people, physical, politics, resolution, sexual, UKIP, violence, Vox Political, women

Farage: The UKIP leader voted against an EU motion for laws to end marital rape in 2006 – now that such a law is going through the Welsh Assembly, would he hypocritically support it?

Back in 2006, UKIP’s then-Members of the European Parliament voted against a resolution calling on member states to legislate against violence on women, including marital rape.

According to at least one UKIP supporter, this was done “simply because of their opposition to the EU and all its works”.

How unfortunate for UKIP, to be seen to support the continuation of domestic violence – including marital rape – simply because the idea of making laws against it was put forward by the wrong people.

That isn’t statesmanlike – it’s childish.

Now a UK legislature has taken forward the ideas in that EU resolution; the Gender-based Violence, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill aims to end domestic abuse, gender-based violence and sexual violence.

What a pity UKIP has no Assembly members!

If it did, the party could clarify its position – although this is not without its drawbacks.

If UKIP still opposes such legislation, then we will all know that the party supports a loathsome philosophy – that it is all right to commit physical and sexual abuse against a partner in the home.

If UKIP now supports it, we will all know that it is a party of hypocrites who would think nothing of allowing such abuse to continue, in order to push forward its own agenda.

Without Assembly members voting on the proposed Welsh law, UKIP does not need to clarify its position – but that lets Mr Farage and his friends off the hook far too easily.

Isn’t it time UKIP clarified exactly where it stands on this issue – so we can all be sure to despise that party for the right reason?

(The above article has been sent in letter form to the major national newspapers and the BBC. Let’s see if the mass media can do their job.)

(Note to any readers who are getting bored of all this concentration on UKIP: I promise I’ll write about something else tomorrow.)

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Tory Democrats withdraw Bedroom Tax support – too little, too late?

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adaptation, bedroom tax, benefit, cleansing, Coalition, condemn, conference, cost, Democrat, disability, distort, election, government, housing benefit, Incapacity, Lib Dem, Liberal, living, market, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, motion, people, politics, poverty, problem, sick, social, social security, The Guardian, Tim Farron, Vox Political, welfare

According to The Guardian, the Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron is set to withdraw his party’s support for the Bedroom Tax today (Wednesday), saying it has caused “huge social problems”.

It is too little, too late from the Party that Likes to Change its Mind – and one must question the timing. The newspaper states that “the Liberal Democrat conference agreed to review the bedroom tax” in September last year, but this is inaccurate; the conference passed a motion that official Liberal Democrat policy must be condemnation of the Bedroom Tax.

According to the newspaper: “In a speech that will distance the Lib Dems from the controversial tax, Farron condemns what he describes as attacks on the poorer members of society. ‘The onslaught of divisive rhetoric that demonises the poor can never help us to create a fairer society,’ he will tell the Centre for Social Justice. ‘The bedroom tax causes huge social problems and distorts the market – we as a party cannot support this.'”

But the Tax has already been in place for a year and the damage has been immense. Hardly a day goes by without a new report of victimisation. Why didn’t Farron make his move sooner?

Could it be more likely that, with elections on the way, it now seems like a good idea to get on the public’s side?

Back in the autumn, Vox Political wrote: “The tax was really brought in for several reasons: It is partly a reaction against the increase in the Housing Benefit bill to accommodate people with jobs whose wages are below their cost of living – this is due to greed on the part of employers; it is partly intended to clear housing – not for people on any waiting list but as a form of social cleansing, getting the riff-raff out of attractive parts of our towns and cities; and it is also another attempt to spite people on sickness, incapacity or disability benefits, who must either face the extra cost and inconvenience of removing special adaptations to their houses and reinstalling them elsewhere if they are able to move, or must lose the company of carers who use spare bedrooms when they have to stay over, or must pay the tax and live without food or heat, thereby risking their health.”

Nothing has changed since then.

Let’s hope the voters see this pathetic display for what it is.

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Housing association speaks out over Bedroom Tax

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advice, advise, arrears, association, bedroom tax, benefit, benefit cap, change, chief executive, Coalition, Conservative, council housing, county council, County Times, cumulative, effect, evict, eviction, final, general dispensation, giant evils, hard work, housing, illegal, Labour, landlord, Mid Wales, motion, no eviction, policy, political statement, poverty, Powys, Reform, regressive, rent, reward, sanction, social, support, tenant, Tories, Tory, ultimate sanction, vulnerable, want, welfare state, William Beveridge, wow petition

It seems the chief executive of a local housing association has taken issue with yr obdt srvt over the Bedroom Tax.

Shane Perkins, of Mid Wales Housing, wrote to the Powys-based County Times after I used that paper to expose an illegal action by the county council’s ruling group, aimed at preventing discussing of a motion for the council to adopt a ‘no-eviction’ policy.

The motion asked the council not to evict tenants who fail to pay their rent because of the Bedroom Tax. Councillors who are also private landlords were forbidden from speaking or voting on the motion as they stand to benefit if social housing tenants are forced to seek accommodation with them as a result of the vindictive policy, and this meant 30 councillors had to leave the chamber.

Members of the ruling group, realising there was a real possibility of the motion being carried, then claimed that any councillors who are social housing tenants should also be barred from taking part – a move that is against the law (to the best of my knowledge). My understanding is that a ‘general dispensation’ allows councillors who are council tenants to take part in debates on, and vote on, matters relating to council housing.

Mr Perkins, writing in the paper’s December 20 edition, suggests that it is almost impossible to establish whether or not a tenant has fallen into rent arrears solely as a consequence of the “pernicious” (his word) Bedroom Tax, and claims that the motion was “a meaningless ‘political’ statement”.

He makes the point that it may be possible to apply the policy where the tenant has never previously been in rent arrears, but this would be unfair on other tenants who are similarly affected now but had fallen into arrears for other reasons in the past. He asks why tenants who struggle to meet their rent payments should not receive a financial subsidy or reward for being a good and conscientious tenant; and also points out that the cumulative effect of other regressive changes to benefits is also likely to affect the rent payments of vulnerable people and, to be consistent, Labour’s motion should encompass them also.

He says all social landlords, including the council, will seek to advise and support tenants who are in financial difficulty, but “in the final analysis, if a tenant fails to pay their rent, the ultimate sanction has got to be eviction.

“To do otherwise would be irresponsible, as ultimately the cost of one tenant not paying their rent is borne by all those tenants that do pay, and spiralling arrears will ultimately affect the viability of the council’s housing, which will serve none of its tenants.”

It would be easy to pick holes in his arguments. The whole point of government policy is to make sure that nobody gets a penny more than the Conservative-led Coalition decides they should have – and this government wants to drive people into poverty – so there will be no rewards for hard work. The Labour Party, and non-political groups, has campaigned ceaselessly to force the government into assessing the cumulative impact of its changes to the benefit system, but the government has refused all such calls, knowing as it does that such research would reveal the monstrous truth about its attack on the poorest in society.

If Mr Perkins is really interested, then he should encourage his own MP to support the call for such an assessment in the debate on the ‘WoW’ Petition, due to take place in the House of Commons in the New Year. I helped write that document, which calls for (among other things) “a cumulative impact assessment of welfare reform”. Labour is supporting the motion. I would suggest, therefore, that any criticism of Labour for making a “meaningless ‘political’ statement” is unfounded.

As for the difference between tenants affected by the Bedroom Tax who have never been in arrears before, and those affected by it who have – this should be something a social landlord can track, especially if they are actively seeking to “advise and support” tenants. This support should include examination of a tenants income and outgoings, before and after the Tax was imposed.

The simple fact is that Mr Perkins would move offending tenants into smaller houses if he had any, but he doesn’t. He would not be talking about eviction if he did. He never built them and we must conclude that he never saw the need. Perhaps he believed that the welfare state would continue to support his tenants.

William Beveridge, the architect of that system, in the report that bears his name, said the British government should fight what he called the “giant evils” of society, including Want.

How could Beveridge know that, 70 years later, the British government would be actively increasing Want, wherever it could. That is what the Bedroom Tax, and the benefit cap, and all the other cuts brought in by this spiteful Conservative-led Coalition are about.

These measures are crimes against the citizens of this country – citizens who have paid into the State, generation after generation since the 1940s, believing that it would look after them if the spectre of Want cast its shadow at their door.

Mr Perkins describes the changes as “pernicious”, but if he allows a single tenant to be evicted then he will be a willing accomplice.

That is what he is saying when he tells us he is prepared to use this “final sanction”.

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Are landlord councillors resorting to illegal antics to enforce Bedroom Tax evictions?

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bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, block, Brecon, corrupt, council, county, dispensation, financial, general, House of Commons, housing, housing benefit, human right, Interest, Labour, landlord, Landlord Subsidy, library, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, motion, no eviction, particular, pecuniary, people, politics, Powys, Radnorshire, Raquel Rolnik, Shires Independent Group, social security, special, special rapporteur, Standards Committee, un, united nations, Vox Political, welfare

Taking no notice: Councillors appear to be breaking the law in order to enforce Bedroom Tax evictions. [Picture: The Guardian}

It seems the ruling group of Powys County Council, here in Mid Wales, has challenged the law in its attempts to block a ‘no-eviction’ motion on the Bedroom Tax.

The Labour motion was put forward at a meeting of the full council on October 24. It called on councillors to note the comments of Raquel Rolnik, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Housing, who said that the Bedroom Tax policy could constitute a violation of the human right to adequate housing, and asked them to pledge that Powys will not evict tenants who fail to pay their rent because of it.

Councillors who are also private landlords were forbidden from speaking or voting on the motion. They have a financial (or pecuniary) interest in the matter as they stand to benefit if social housing tenants are forced to seek accommodation with them as a result of the policy. This meant around 30 councillors had to leave the chamber.

It seems that members of the ruling Shires Independent Group, realising that there was a real possibility that the motion would be carried, then called for any members who are themselves social housing tenants – or have friends or family who are social housing tenants – should also be barred from taking part.

This made it impossible to continue the debate. The matter has been passed to the council’s Standards Committee, whose members have been asked to judge whether landlord councillors should receive special dispensation in order to debate the motion.

It seems that this decision is wrong in law.

According to Essential Local Government, a journalistic textbook from the Vox Political vaults, “In some cases, the Secretary of State for the Environment or Secretary of State for Wales can issue either a general or particular dispensation entitling members with declared interests to take part in debates and to vote. An example of this is that councillors who are council tenants may take part in debates on, and vote on, matters relating to council housing.”

That book was published in 1993 but there is no reason to expect such a general dispensation to have been removed and therefore it seems that any call for councillors who are tenants – or who know tenants – not to be able to take part in a debate can have no basis in law.

The motion should have been debated by councillor-tenants and members with no interest, and a decision made on the day, nearly a month ago. The delay means social housing tenants in Powys (and VP knows of 686 affected households in the Brecon and Radnorshire constituency alone) may have been subjected to an unnecessary month of evictions or threats of eviction.

It has been suggested that the decision to block the motion may have been prompted by figures from the House of Commons library which suggest that as a result of the Bedroom Tax the amount of Housing Benefit paid to private landlords (remember, HB is a landlord subsidy and does not enrich tenants at all) will rise from £7.9 billion to £9.4 billion.

If the Standards Committee decides to allow them to debate the motion, it is likely that the decision will therefore be corrupt.

The matter went unreported by the local press because none of the newspapers had sent any reporters to cover the meeting.

How many other councils, across the UK, have voted on ‘no evictions’ motions under a false understanding of who can take part? VP knows that Bristol City Council has debated the matter with a controversial result.

Meanwhile, for tenants up and down the country, the agony goes on.

Why do private companies in the NHS get commercial confidentiality?

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10-minute rule, advisor, Coalition, commercial confidentiality, Conservative, Freedom of Information, Freedom of Information (Private Healthcare Companies), government, Grahame Morris, health, Labour, level playing field, lobbying firm, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, motion, National Health Service, NHS, Parliament, politics, privacy, private, Private Members Bill, privatisation, privatise, scandal, ten minute rule, Tories, Tory, Transparency of Lobbying, Vox Political

Let us hope Grahame Morris’s 10-minute rule motion – on the unfair advantages enjoyed by private healthcare firms working in the NHS – does not get swamped by the coverage of the Transparency of Lobbying Bill that resumes its unwelcome journey through the Parliamentary process after it.

Vox Political does not have the exact wording of the motion, but it seems likely it will follow a similar line to the Private Members’ Bill that Mr Morris put down last December, winning the support of 111 fellow MPs.

You will notice that it is relevant to the Lobbying Bill in several ways. Here is the wording of the Private Members’ Bill:

That this House notes

• that the most significant development that has followed from the Government’s healthcare reforms has been the £7 billion worth of new contracts being made available to the private health sector;
• further notes that at least five former advisers to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are now working for lobbying firms with private healthcare clients;
• recalls the Prime Minister’s own reported remarks prior to the general election when he described lobbying as `the next big scandal waiting to happen’;
• recognises the growing scandal of the procurement model that favours the private health sector over the NHS, by allowing private companies to hide behind commercial confidentiality and which compromises the best practice aspirations of the public sector;
• condemns the practice of revolving doors, whereby Government health advisers move to lucrative contracts in the private healthcare sector, especially at a time when the privatisation of the NHS is proceeding by stealth;
• is deeply concerned at the unfair advantages being handed to private healthcare companies;
• and demands that in future all private healthcare companies be subject to freedom of information requests under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in the same way as existing NHS public sector organisations.

The active part is at the end – that private healthcare companies be subject to FoI requests in the same way as existing NHS public sector organisations. That’s why this 10-minute rule motion is entitled Freedom of Information (Private Healthcare Companies).

The aim is to have a level playing field for both private and public organisations providing NHS services. Do you remember the level playing field? The Tories were constantly banging on about having a level playing field, back in the 1980s and 90s when they were privatising left, right and centre, but they don’t seem to be quite as interested in it any more.

The other parts of the original bill are just as interesting in relation to the Transparency of Lobbying Bill. What will it do about people who are employed by the government but who take all available opportunities to push forward a particular private company’s interests (above those of the taxpayer?) and then quit to take a position with that company once their work is done? Nothing, most likely.

The sad part is that this 10-minute motion is unlikely to get very far. Here’s how they work (taken from Wikipedia, which we can use as a reliable source on this subject):

“Whichever MP has reserved the slot presents their bill and is entitled to speak for 10 minutes to convince the house of its merit. After the 10 minutes have passed, another MP may speak for a further 10 minutes to oppose the bill. The Speaker then calls a voice vote to decide whether the bill should be allowed a second reading, which is when the bill is debated at a later date. The Speaker will divide the house for a recorded count of votes if there is some opposition. However, the majority of Ten Minute Rule motions are not objected to,[2] and are allowed to proceed without any debate at this stage. This is because MPs have not yet had time to review the bill’s content.

“When a Ten Minute Rule motion passes, the bill is added to the register of parliamentary business. It is scheduled for debate along with the other Private Member’s Bills, but at a lower priority. The MP presenting the bill must tell the Speaker the date for this second reading debate. The bill is generally printed and published shortly before the second reading.

“Bills introduced under the Ten Minute Rule rarely progress much further, since the Government usually opposes Private Member’s Bills in the later stages and, given their low priority in the schedule, there is often insufficient time for the debate to be completed. Most Ten Minute Rule introductions are instead used to stimulate publicity for a cause, especially as the debate follows the media-popular question time and is usually broadcast live on BBC Parliament, or to gauge the opinion of the house on an issue which may later be introduced in another bill.”

“To stimulate publicity for a cause”. Let us hope that this one does not get swamped by coverage of the Lobbying Bill.

Bedroom tax is not the way to cut the housing benefit bill

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arthritis, bedroom tax, benefit, benefits, Coalition, Conservative, David Cameron, Democrat, Department, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, dishonest, DWP, encourage, eviction, George Osborne, government, housing benefit, Liberal, Lorraine Fraser, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, motion, Parliament, Pensions, people, politics, review, scoliosis, social security, Tories, Tory, unemployment, Vox Political, welfare, wheelchair, work

They’ve started: Vox Political has spent the last year warning the UK that the bedroom tax will lead to unfair evictions – now they are starting to happen.

Before you all hit the ‘comment’ button to say the headline is stating the blindingly obvious – of course it is. But some of our public servants just don’t seem to get it!

Today we have learned about the first eviction directly caused by the bedroom tax making it impossible for a person to pay their rent.

Mother-of-two Lorraine Fraser, who has scoliosis, arthritis and is a wheelchair user, is being kicked out of her home by Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council, for failing to pay £248 in arrears.

The event will be considered a double victory by the Department for Work and Pensions. The eviction will be blamed on a council run by an opposing political party, even though it is being forced to push through changes imposed on it by the Conservative-led Westminster government (the majority of people will not see this). And it will remove another disabled person from the benefit books in a way that will not be blamed on the DWP (even though disabled people were supposed to be protected against the effects of the bedroom tax).

This is the sort of dishonesty that will go down in history as the Coalition government’s trademark.

It may also be the reason why grassroots members of the Liberal Democrats have tabled a motion to go before their party’s conference, demanding a review of the policy.

The motion states that most areas outside large cities do not have the diversity of social housing necessary to make moving into a smaller property, locally, a viable option. In the words of Lib Dem councillor Robert Brown, it is “damaging and unfair”.

It is.

It was always meant to be.

And it’s a little late for Liberal Democrats to be reconsidering their part in making it happen.

However, there are constructive arguments to be made. For example, the government has always said the aim is to get the housing benefit bill down. If that’s the case, then it should be encouraging people to get off it – and the best possibility for that lies with working people.

Indeed, government policy is to encourage working people to seek more hours of work, or higher pay, at every opportunity – and if they achieved these aims, it would be possible to wipe huge amounts of spending off the housing benefit bill.

But that isn’t happening. Instead, we have an environment in which top bosses pillage their companies, taking home 133 times as much as the average wage while their workers have to supplement the pittances they earn with taxpayer-funded benefits.

That isn’t right.

After all, the economy is said to be improving and – while that has nothing at all to do with any efforts of the Coalition government; George Osborne is a fool – every working person should benefit from the increased wealth that we are told is now available.

Perhaps it’s time to ask comedy prime minister David Cameron when he’s going to ‘encourage’ (he likes that word) business bosses to pass the benefits of their success down the line.

When Hell freezes over, perhaps?

Part-time Chance(llo)r and towel-folder to explain how impoverishing people makes work pay.

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38 degrees, age, authority, avoidance, band, bedroom tax, below, benefit, benefits, boo, break, campaign, cap, Chancellor, change, Coalition, Conservative, council, credit, cut, Daily Politics, demonstration, Department for Work and Pensions, disability, disabled, DWP, Employment and Support Allowance, ESA, exploit, fair, games, George Osborne, Gideon, government, Grant Shapps, Iain Duncan Smith, inflation, Interest, legislation, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, living wage, local, make work pay, Mandatory Work Activity, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, money, mortgage, motion, Olympic, online, paddock, Parliament, people, petition, politics, poverty, rally, retrospective, social security, Tatton, tax, taxpayer, top, Tories, Tory, unemployment, unfair, Vox Political, WCA, welfare, work capability assessment, work placement provider, Workfare, working

Not fair at all: We love this shot of George Osborne because it clarifies perfectly that, as with Michael Howard before him, there is “something of the night” about him. Will YOU believe him when he says it is fair to punish the poor for an economic recession they never made, while rewarding the rich who did the damage?

You know the Tories are scraping the bottom of the barrel when they wheel out Gideon George Osborne to defend benefit changes as “fair”.

It’s hilarious (unintentionally, I’m sure) that they’re wheeling out a man whose appearance in last year’s Olympic Games prompted an international crowd in a full-to-capacity stadium to ‘boo’ him – in order to try to popularise their unjustifiable crimes against the poor.

This is a man whose only proper job was folding towels at a department store, if I recall correctly!

He’s due to make a speech at 12.30pm today (April 2, so it can’t even be defended as an April Fool) in which he is expected to say the Tory cuts mean “this month we will make work pay”, and nine out of 10 working households will be better-off.

They’ll be better of than the remaining one-tenth of households, maybe, but the Tories are never going to convince intelligent people that they’re making work pay by cutting anything! Common sense tells us that, in a country where wages are deeply depressed (such as the UK – oh yes they are) the only way to make work pay is to offer a living wage!

But what can we expect from a political organisation that is now focusing its efforts on redefining the dictionary?

The lexicon here at Vox Political gives multiple definitions for the word “fair”, so I’ll pick out those that may be applied, as follows:

“1. Reasonable or unbiased.” The changes include a below-inflation cap for people on working-age benefits and tax credits, meaning they will become worse-off, year-on-year, while the cap remains in place. Meanwhile, people in the top tax band – who therefore take home the most pay – are getting a £100,000 tax break. Reasonable? No. Unbiased? Not a chance in hell.

Let’s also remember that Osborne is the Chancellor who thought it was a good idea to promote tax avoidance schemes on the Daily Politics TV show, on January 9 this year.

“2. According to the rules.” The Tory-led Coalition is the government that changes the rules to suit itself. Let’s all remember that when Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions was found, by a court, to have been breaking the law by imposing sanctions against people who refused to take part in the ridiculous ‘Mandatory Work Activity’ schemes that take more than a billion pounds out of the economy every year (almost £900 million for companies offering placements, along with hundreds of millions more for ‘Work Placement Provider’ companies), this administration’s answer was to introduce retrospective legislation to wipe away its guilt.

“3. Describing light-coloured hair or skin, or somebody with this.” Let’s widen this definition a little; a person who is “fair to look at” would be deemed attractive, so let’s go with that. Are these changes attractive? Most definitely not. They are designed to make the claiming of benefits unattractive.

“4. Sizeable, as in ‘a fair number of responses’.” This is accurate – the changes will affect millions of homes, throwing many of them into abject poverty.

“5. Better than acceptable.” If they were acceptable, then we would not have seen thousands of people demonstrating against the new Bedroom Tax, in towns and cities across the UK. Nor would we have seen the huge amount of campaigning against the benefit changes online and via petitions. And there will be motions against implementing the tax in local authorities up and down the country. The people responsible for them don’t think these changes are acceptable; nor should you.

“6. No more than average.” It could be suggested that Grant Shapps has been saying the more stringent application of the Work Capability Assessment to applicants for Employment and Support Allowance has created a more representative average number of claims by ensuring 878,000 people dropped their claims when faced by those changes – but, wait a moment, this has been exposed as a lie, hasn’t it? In fact, the number of people dropping their claims has been revealed – by official DWP figures – to be the natural wastage you get from people getting better or finding work they can do while ill, and the number of people receiving the benefit has, in fact, risen.

“7. Not stormy or cloudy.” Clearly the storm of protest around these changes renders this definition irrelevant.

Osborne, who not only advocates tax avoidance but allegedly participates in it himself – he was the target of a campaign by 38 Degrees, early in the life of this Parliament – also seems a strange choice to talk about fairness and making work pay, because of his involvement in a ‘get rich quick’ scheme which was extremely unfair and had nothing to do with work.

Readers of this blog may remember that Osborne used taxpayers’ money to pay mortgage interest on a farmhouse and associated land that he claimed to use for Parliamentary purposes in his Tatton constituency (this has not been proved), and then sold the properties for around £1 million, pocketing the lot. He didn’t work for the money, and this exploitation of the taxpayer can hardly be considered fair – but he got away with it because his privileged position as an MP, apparently, allows it.

Fair? No.

Corrupt?

This seems more likely.