MP: Why I am voting against my Government on benefits cuts
“MyWelshpool readers will have seen that in March, the government published a Green Paper outlining plans to cut disability benefits while encouraging disabled people into work.
The cuts to benefits will pull the rug out from under many of my disabled constituents at a time when the poorest and sickest face awful pressure on their living standards. I will therefore be voting against the government’s plans.
The changes will hit Wales especially hard. There are 275,000 Personal Independence Payment (PIP) recipients in Wales, around one in seven working age people – a higher proportion than England. 7,367 of these are in our constituency. Many disabled people in the Welshpool area will stand to lose their support.
There are some welcome changes in the Green Paper, including abolishing three-yearly assessments for the most severely disabled, proposals on Unemployment Insurance, a billion pounds for helping people get work, no freeze in PIP, the ruling out of the voucher system the Tories desired and a ‘Right to Try’, allowing disabled people to see how they cope with work without losing their support.
Such reforms would be a positive step, given that ever-increasing numbers of people are dropping out of the workforce due to ill health.
I was a secondary school teacher for 20 years and an elected trade union rep since the age of 28. I know that honest work is a source of dignity and pride.
This is true for disabled people as much as anyone else. It is also true that the benefits system helps those who can’t work go about their lives with dignity too.
But by changing the way the points scoring system works, many of my constituents will become ineligible for PIP and face threats to their financial security. This will make it harder, not easier, for them to find and stay in work.
I did not become a Labour MP to vote in ever-deeper austerity measures. In fact, I only joined the party a decade ago having seen the damage Conservative austerity was doing to families, whose children would come into my classrooms hungry.
With the legacy of what is approaching two lost economic decades leading to severe pressure on local public services, heaping more problems on the sick and disabled is the last thing we should be doing.
In under a year, we have seen our air ambulance base threatened with closure, access to cross-border healthcare restricted, the downgrading of community hospitals we rely on, Hafren Dyfrdwy’s water bills skyrocketing, and now plans to close local sixth forms.
This is where you end up if you keep cutting budgets to the bone. The answer to finding yourself in a hole not of your own making is not to carry on digging.
There are alternatives available for the government to meet its fiscal rules, not least taxes on extreme wealth, without which we will simply see the yawning gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else continue to widen.
I will not vote to make my disabled constituents' lives harder. That is why I will be voting against the government over these plans."
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