- and - It's the poor who are being clobbered

Two letters from the Rev Paul Nicolson, Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust - in The Guardian  

Saturday 27 November 2010

The savings accounts and health in pregnancy grant bill had its first reading in the House of Lords on 23 November. The Speaker of the House of Commons ruled, after the third reading in the Commons, that it was a money bill. This means that out of the 21 cuts to the poverty incomes of welfare claimants proposed by the coalition, any amendments to the three of them proposed by the bill cannot be debated in the House of Lords. This approach could be used to prevent the Lords from discussing other money-related changes in legislation.

The bill has been strangled without thought to the consequences. Our greatest concern is that incomes that in all government and independent measures are substantially below the poverty line will suffer cuts – of which the health in pregnancy grant is one – without any assessment of the impact on the health of women of child-bearing age, their foetus or their offspring; or the cost of the consequential mental and physical ill health to the NHS or the economy at large.

The NHS has announced that mental illness already costs the economy £105bn a year, including days lost at work – far more than heart disease, cancer or obesity. The Government Office for Science has shown there is a relationship between debt and mental ill-health. Cutting poverty incomes creates the need to borrow, normally at high interest, for necessities like food and to pay bills like utilities. Claimants of welfare already owed the state £3bn last year due to errors by them and officials in the delivery of benefits.

Lord Bassam's motion enabling amendments to the bill to be debated and decided in committee in the House of Lords should be supported by peers on Monday 29 November.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

I am astounded by Simon Jenkins's suggestion that David Cameron's policies are leftwing in that they are having a detrimental effect on the upper middle classes. What he is not recognising is that there is one sector of society that will escape virtually unscathed from the worst of the cuts, namely the aristocracy and super-rich business leaders.

The rises in tuition fees will make university education inaccessible for all but the rich, and the proposed welfare reforms will have a devastating impact on the poor and disadvantaged. It is also true that the well-paid middle classes will suffer as well. None of this will matter to the Eton-educated millionaires at the heart of government. The ruling class are now in charge of Britain and working hard to protect their position. They have no more in common with the high-income middle classes than they do with minimum-wage factory workers.

Far from "the most leftwing British government since the war", this is surely the first government since the early 20th century to take protectionism of capitalist advantage to its logical conclusions.

Rev Paul Nicolson, Chairman, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust 

http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=paul+nicolson&search_target=/search&fr=cb-guardian