MPs CAN VOTE TO SCRAP THE BEDROOM TAX ON TUESDAY

BEFORE I became a fulltime councillor and then elected as MP, I saw first-hand how people struggled to make ends meet in my profession as a welfare rights officer.

It was a job that could be hugely satisfying but it was also a role which could be quite emotionally draining, as you saw for yourself how people learn to live in the most desperate circumstances.

I dread to think how draining it must be for people in equivalent roles today, as the Tories endless attacks on the poorest continue to drive more families into poverty.

What is all the more galling is that many of the Government’s policies which are causing these difficulties are actually fundamentally flawed.

Take the bedroom tax.  Not only is it causing insufferable hardship for those affected, but far from helping to reduce the country’s deficit it will actually cost more than it saves.

You don’t have to listen to politicians for proof of that.

Even the National Housing Federation believes that those forced to move to the private rented sector because of the bedroom tax will cost the state more in housing benefit.

Then there are the tens of millions likely to be lost through the build-up of arrears – a claim made by various housing associations.

The National Audit Office has said that the Government’s costing does not take account of the full scale of potential impacts and does not include the additional costs faced by local authorities.

And research by the University of York suggests that any potential savings to balance against those costs are likely to be some 39 per cent less than the DWP predicted.

Unfortunately, the Government’s short-sightedness with the bedroom tax is not untypical given that it is has been ill-though out.

The Tories’ economic policy at large is unworkable because it is based on the fundamental misconception that an economy can recover by being shrunk.

A misguided belief that the private sector will ride to the rescue of a scaled back public sector is undermined by a failure to understand that the private sector relies upon local authorities for much of its business.

But what makes the bedroom tax stand out above many other Government policies is the widespread and unfair impact it has had on real people in just about every village, town and city up and down the land.

It is a policy which has attacked around 660,000, including more than 400,000 disabled people.  That includes 40,000 people, and 25,200 disable people, in the East Midlands.

It is a policy designed to drain most those who can least afford it, and which has been described by the National Housing Federation as “an unfair, ill-planned disaster that is hurting our poorest families”.

And it is a policy which the next Labour Government will not hesitate in repealing.

But our belief that the bedroom tax is causing more harm than good is not about making an election pledge.

We belief that it is so damaging that it needs to be removed even earlier – and that’s why an Opposition Day debate is planned for the House of Commons on Tuesday to call for just that.

The bedroom tax is leaving families up and down this country with nowhere to go and on the edge of spiralling debt. These people simply can’t wait until the next Labour government in 2015 for it to be repealed.

They need it repealed now, and that’s why I will be voting in support of that tomorrow.