Red lines from Cameron's welfare changes

So David Cameron wants to ban anyone under 25 for claiming JSA or housing benefit. Well Dave, not every young person is in a benefited position where both their parents are still alive and that work is always going to be available to them, these are red lines over which I will not allow the Conservatives to cross.

When I graduated it was in the middle of the last recession. Banks had been laying off economics graduates who had experience, so how was I along with other economics graduates going to find work immediately. For five months I would have been classified as a NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) but it wasn't because I wanted to be, it was because there was a lack of options.

I needed the then unemployment benefit and housing benefit to be able to stay in the part of the country where I felt I was most likely to get work, London. I'd been to University there and my network of friends was there to help me through those tough times.

But then there were the friends of mine who were orphaned before they had even left secondary education. I know that their grandparents were still around but if they weren't how could they have survived trying to get an education without housing benefit?

There are also a whole range of LGBT young people who are kicked out of the family home as soon as they turn 16, or tell their parents. Again without access to things like housing benefit these young people will either stay at home in the closet living in fear or end up living on the streets. Or the young girls who get pregnant and instead of familial support are kicked out? Or those who get pregnant and leave to live with the child's father only to be abandoned?

Not everyone has the nice comfy start in life that David Cameron would like to have us all believe. Some of those benefits are lifelines to many for all manner of reasons. So unless Dave can guarantee full time employment, or immediate training for ANY young person as soon as they lose their job, for whatever reason, removing these benefits and access to them is wrong. It is enslaving young people to a conformity of expectation of a loving family.

Not every young person has a privileged Witney upbringing, in our inner cities, even in our suburban areas, and to be fair possibly even in Witney, things aren't always so rosy.

This is why the Conservatives cannot be trusted to build a Fairer Society. They are only interested in a Stronger Economy at all costs. Only the Liberal Democrats seek to build a Stronger Economy and a Fairer Society enabling every person to get on with life.

Cameron wrong to take benefit from needy young people

Not every person under the age of 25 has the ability to turn up at home and be welcomed with open homes, Indeed some people under the age of 25 do not have parents or other family at all to turn to. Therefore the decision to scrap all housing benefit to people under the age of 25 is repugnant and should not be allowed to happen.

There are all manner of reasons that someone under the age of 25 may not have a stable household they can live in.

They may have been living in care until the age of 18, when they are turned out into the world, maybe unable to get a job, but needing to find a roof over their head at least to enable them to claim other benefits.

They may have been orphaned themselves in late teens.

They may have been kicked out of the family home, either because they have come out as LGBT or maybe because they have become pregnant or for any other reason.

Or what about those young people who have moved far away from home for the chance to gain employment, even if that is in a low paid job that entitles them currently to housing benefit. Surely Mr Cameron isn't asking them quit their job and return home (if they have one) because they cannot afford to live near their place of work?

The lives of under 25s can at times be hard enough if they are made to fend for themselves for whatever reason, whether above or something else. Scrapping housing benefit for under 25s fails to look at the need and seriously puts many young people in the dangerous position of finding themselves living on the streets.

Cameron said that the Conservatives were now the compassionate party in the lead up to the 2010 General election. That compassion seems to only kick in once you reach 25 or maybe pensionable age.

Illness is no respecter of Government set time limits #WelfareReformBill

Just under five years ago stubborn old me didn't take time off for recovery. I struggled through my working days and often collapsed in a heap in the evenings and at the weekends. Most of those who saw me on a daily basis didn't know I was sick, let alone that when I said see you on Monday I was heading off for a course of treatment every other Friday.

I could have taken a reduction in hours. I may even have qualified for Employment and Support Allowance. I didn't, but what if my reaction to the treatment were worse (and having said that it was bad enough). Suppose I hadn't been in my late 30s and reasonably fit, but in my early 60s, like my father was, and knocked sideways by the same illness the same treatment. Suppose like him it came back after that first course of treatment, not within 12 months as was his case but at the end of that period? What if like that the return of the illness was more virulent, took longer for me to recover, or even required me to take more draining treatment to try and rid me of it?

What would have happened then, if the decision made by the MPs today was in place then and I fond myself in that situation? The reason I'm asking is that I am currently waiting tests to see if that worse case scenario that the illness has returned is the case. But the Government including members of my party, some of whom knew that I disappeared for the best part of a year five years ago, have decided that the ESA that I may well have been relying on would have been cut back. For someone that was willing to work, able to work, maybe even someone who had worked as often as he could have.

There is a golden figure from when the disease has been cleared away that you can really say that you are over it. The MPs today put a timescale on that of 12 months, yet my doctors and specialists won't say that about this disease for a whole 5 years. It can return at any point, either within that first 12 months or at any point from then on. Even after the 5 years are up you are out of the woods completely but merely said to be in remission, it can still return.

This is just one example of why the Lords amendments were right and the commons were wrong to whip through so much opposition against all of them today in the Welfare Reform Bill.

So yeah if you have read this far in this post my name is Stephen and I am a cancer survivor, though the government today seems determined to make it harder for fellow survivors to get by.

And when the press talk about Lib Dem 'rebels' on this welfare reform bill, let us remember that those who were voting to retain the Lords amendments were doing so at the behest of conference on many occasions today. So just who were the rebels?

Contributory Employment and Support Allowance - the Letter from Lib Dem Candidates

You may have read about the letter from over 50 approved Liberal Democrat candidates many of them having stood on the parties manifesto in 2010, urging our party in the Commons to accept the three Lords' amendments, regarding contributory Employment and Support Allowance (cESA) in the Welfare Reform Bill.

In particular the amendments call for:

• The amount of time a person can receive cESA will be extended to at least 24 months, instead of the Government’s proposed 12 month limit.
• Cancer patients will be exempted from the time limit.
• The ‘youth provision’ of the benefit will be protected, meaning that young disabled people who cannot work will still be entitled to cESA without having made National Insurance contributions.

These eESA is paid for people whose conditions mean that they will at some point make a return to employment, but due to illness or disability are unable to do so at the moment. It is also paid out only to people with sufficient national insurance contributions through there working life.

The Conservatives seem to think that by cutting all benefits they are encouraging people to get back, or into work. They seem to bundle up all people living with some form of sickness or disability allowance as some work-shy, scrounging, non-productive member of society.

Those with a cESA claim are not people that fit that description indeed many will have tried to carry on working as best they could until they were unable to do so. They all for whatever reason need time to heal, maybe learn to overcome a new disability, but mostly to get well enough to return to the job they live. By in large this will be achieved within 2 years hence the higher threshold as amended by the Lords.

The one exception is cancer sufferers. As anyone who knows anyone who has cancer will tell you no cancer survivor will say that they are free of cancer until 5 years after the success of their first treatment all-clear. This medically is the time scale at which Doctors will officially say that the survivor is in remission. At times up to that point the survivor will have high and low periods and may very well at the point of 23 months find that their cancer may scarily enough return. That is the reason for the exception for cancer survivors as not even their Doctors can give them the all clear in two years and the disease can return at any point.

You can read the full letter here, and yes that is my signature second on the list of 2010 candidates.

But as my friend Caron points out, it isn't just enough for people like myself and others who are candidates, former MPs, new MPs, on the Leadership programme, GLA candidates or councillors but we need ordinary members and constituents to add their voices as well. Write to you MP, of whatever party, and urge them to support these amendments.

How About Closing the Loopholes for the Rich George?

First there was the freeze on child benefit and the curbs on housing benefit in the budget. Plus the change in the ways that these will be paid out. Now we hear that there are plans to cut incapacity benefit. But what about the various tax loopholes and avoidance methods that the Lib Dems had highlighted George? Why are all the headline measures to cut taking from the poor like some modern day Sheriff of Nottingham?

Of course having worked in the fraud section of the Social Security Agency I know that there are some benefit claimants who should not be receiving it, but in recent months I've been hearing from people more cases of them being re-appraised and even though they have a genuine medical condition they are finding their incapacity benefit cut.

It is something perhaps that George Osborne should talk to his Equality Minister colleague as Lynne Featherstone has pointed out:

"The previous Labour government tried to get people off such allowances and my experience as a local MP from surgery is that the 're-assessment' of people claiming has been variable at best.

"We need to be sure that there is no perverse incentive to determine that someone can work when they cannot. We also need to be sure that those carrying out the assessment are good at it."

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith added to the debate on Sundaywhen he said unemployed council tenants should to be given incentives to move to areas where there are jobs. Seeing as many of them are living in an area where they have expanded family who may, or may not, be or have helped with childcare in the past, has the provision of moving to a strange part of the country been accounted for into those incentives. Also what about relocation costs? Also what if the unemployed council tenants are a couple and find work in different locations. Is Mr Duncan Smith as a Conservative going to advocating the break up of families?

Of course one of the reasons that leads to such people having a fear of losing their homes when moving, as IDS indicates, is because of the selling off of social housing in such large numbers under the last Conservative government. Oops.

It all seems that the Conservatives had not really thought through the implications of the Social Security measures before they took power, yet somehow it is their policies that are being taken to the front and centre. The Lib Dem policies maintained fairness to the poorest, because it looked at dealing with supplying such benefits to those with need by targeting the tax avoiding tactics of the rich, someone that George is clearly avoiding tackling too much as they vote for him.

So it does beg the question what are those who find themselves in need who have been turning to the Lib Dems in recent years after Labour has failed them get out of the coalition deal? Where is their fairness?

There is Hope For Local LIT

Although the idea of the Scottish Tories was to get an airing for their reformed reformed Poll Council Tax, the vote yesterday in Holyrood for the Abolition of the Council Tax Bill to debate all proposals on the table paves the way for various alternatives to be looked at. It may also be a face saving way for the SNP to not implement a 3p Scottish National Income Tax, which seems to break all sorts of binds to Local Authority accountability, without losing too much face. That is of course if Alex Salmond actually listen to the will of Parliament, which would be a nice change.

Of course there is the Lib Dem proposal for a true Local Income Tax and the Green's proposal of Land Value Tax to be considered in the mix. It may please James @ The Two Doctors to know that over the years at various party conferences I have been at fringe events looking at LVT as well as LIT so I know there are benefits to each, just as everyone will also be pointing out there are disadvantages in both (or for that matter any tax system). However, looking at what is on offer in the essence of fairness the ability to pay has to be paramount LVT is still linked somewhat to the property you live in, irrelevant of when you purchased that, while closing up a few loopholes for acquisition of land and leaving it empty and unused.

One thing that recent Labour shenanigans at Westminster over taxes is clear though is that reform is needed. For years now under Labour and the Conservatives our tax burden has been increasingly borne by those less able to pay it while those most able have been getting greater and greater tax breaks. A friend of my said yesterday that they had overheard an elderly couple out food shopping and putting something back because the price was a mere ten pence higher than previously and outwith their budget.

It's not just the credit crunch that is affecting the worse off though it has been the tax squeeze from Labour stealth taxes and high earner breaks, which they picked up and ran with from the Tories that has been endemic in the system for long enough. We need to sort out the tax and benefit system, make it comprehensible, fair and based on ability to pay and true need.