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Carla Denyer, Green MP for Bristol Central, has condemned the government’s planned cuts to disability benefits, which the MP labelled “cruel and unnecessary.”
In the House of Commons Carla Denyer confronted the Prime Minister over his choices to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners, keep the two-child benefit cap in place, and now remove support from hundreds of thousands of disabled people.
Carla Denyer asked,
“We have a deeply unfair, unequal economic system where vast numbers of people are struggling, yet billionaires are getting richer and richer. Does the Prime Minister really think that the way to tackle this is to put the onus onto older people, children, and now sick and disabled people, rather than on the shoulders of the super-rich with a wealth tax?”
She continued,
“And if the Prime Minister uses the phrase ‘difficult choices’ in his answer, will he please specify, difficult choices for whom?”
The Green Party also took this message directly to the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, posing outside the Treasury with a set of scales representing the unfairness of the government’s plan to save £5 billion with deep cuts to disability benefits, while refusing a wealth tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires which could raise up to £24 billion per year.
Later, Carla Denyer joined figures including Gary Stevenson of Gary’s Economics; the General Secretary of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union; anti-poverty campaign War on Want; and public ownership campaign group We Own It at a mass rally to call for a wealth tax.
Commenting on the government’s planned welfare cuts, Carla Denyer said:
“Hundreds of people in Bristol have written to me in horror at the impact that the government’s cruel, unnecessary welfare cuts will have on them, their loved ones or their community.
“It’s absolutely sickening that this government is making the choice to plunge hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty, when they could raise nearly five times as much money by taxing the wealth of multi-millionaires and billionaires.
“I will do everything I can to stop these cuts from going through.”
Watch the video here:
Photo © House of Commons