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The Budget : taking more from those who have least

By Bernadette Meaden
March 19, 2015

As George Osborne did the rounds of media interviews about the Budget this morning, I read about a 59 year old man, previously a ‘hardworking taxpayer’, unable to walk or talk properly after a stroke, who had been forced to sell his home because the Department for Work and Pensions had removed his Disability Living Allowance.

The man’s story was reported in the Northern Echo. He did not wish to be named, but his daughter Mrs. Anna Hewison, spoke eloquently about what had happened to him, saying, "It has made me so angry. He has worked his whole life and has never claimed benefits before. It is as if they have picked him out and said we are going to strip him of everything he has got. It is hard to see somebody who has been financially independent and who has worked their whole life have everything stripped away.This will be happening all over the country to people who haven’t got anyone to fight for them. If we hadn’t been here for him, they would have effectively been leaving him homeless.’

Mrs. Hewison’s father had been receiving Disability Living Allowance: the benefit David Cameron claimed for his son Ivan, and promised to make easier to access if he was elected Prime Minister. What Mr. Cameron’s government actually did was abolish DLA, and replace it with Personal Independence Payments, (PIP) cutting the budget and making it much more difficult to access. Mrs. Hewison’s father was refused PIP, forcing him to sell his home and move in with his daughter.

So this morning, when George Osborne refused to say where future welfare cuts would come from, other than saying that pensioners would be protected, it was a very ominous sign for working-age people who need benefits. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that there will need to be "unprecedented" cuts to welfare for Mr. Osborne to achieve his plans. It is hard to imagine where the axe will fall when the poorest people in the country have already had so much taken away from them. There may be a great deal more suffering to come.

As 32 year old Anna Hewison said, having seen her father lose his support, "I feel a bit frightened about my future. I always thought you would be looked after as long as you paid in, but that doesn’t seem to be the case."

Meanwhile, sounding ever more detached from reality, the man who presides over all this misery, Iain Duncan Smith, was writing in The Telegraph: "Our welfare reforms have been about making sure that no one – whatever the difficulties they face – should be left behind in their ambition to shape their future."

To many people at the sharp end of welfare reform, surviving from one day to the next currently takes precedence over shaping their futures.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. You can follow her on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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