Over 100 Labour MPs are threatening to vote against the government to stop cuts to welfare benefits. They seem to think that taking away Personal Independence Payments (PIP) from around one million sick and disabled people is not what they were elected to do.
But not our MP. No, the very ambitious new MP for Hastings and Rye, Helena Dollimore, decided to add her name (or maybe she was the lead author?) to a public letter urging the government to go ahead with these cuts, even before they were officially announced.
If a million people don’t get PIP anymore, how many low income carers will then also lose their entitlement to carers allowance? Who benefits from increasing poverty, stress and isolation for vulnerable people and their families? Who will pick up the bill when people who are already struggling are pushed to a crisis point? Even if all people cared about was saving money, this will likely be a failure if it only pushes new costs onto other public services. Even if it was going to save money, it is a deliberately cruel political choice. Why not cut military spending? Or royal family handouts? Or cut ‘corporate welfare’ to the private investors that seem to profit from every kind of ‘public’ service in this country from water and energy, to bins and buses.
Dollimore’s letter talks about ‘a moral duty’ to cut benefits to get people back to work. Many people already use PIP payments to help with the extra costs of being disabled at work, but what about people who can’t work, and will have their benefits cut anyway? What kind of morality says that people who can’t work shouldn’t also be able to live decent lives? And maybe if more jobs were socially useful and fulfilling, and if more employers were not so shitty to people when they need a rest or time off, then more people might be able to cope better with working too.
Any of us, at any time, could find ourselves too sick or disabled to work. When we are very young, or very old, or when we get sick, we all need help and support – it’s not a personal failure or a flaw, it’s the human condition. It’s the basis of any decent society.
Email our MP today asking her to vote against the cuts: helena.dollimore.mp@parliament.uk. And join local groups including Unite the Union and Acorn Hastings, who are prepared to defend the many people who will be unfairly hit if these cuts go ahead.