Last night there was quite a detailed interview with her on ‘Scotland tonight’, where she talked about the effect the benefit reform generally known as ‘the bedroom tax’ is having on the most vulnerable and poorest members of our society.
This particular ‘reform’ is loathed throughout Scotland. It was imposed on Scotland by the Westminster government despite the fact it was vigorously opposed by the Scottish government at Holyrood. The Scottish government is powerless to prevent this legislation being imposed in Scotland, but possibly now the UN are involved the dynamics of the debate will change. Proportionately it has a much bigger effect on the people of Scotland than it does on people in other parts of the UK. This is because proportionately there are far more people in Scotland living in social housing than there are in other parts of the UK.
Her mission was to assess the right to adequate housing against the framework of human rights and because the ‘bedroom tax’ is such a controversial issue, it became an integral part of the investigation. In her preliminary report she has said that literally hundreds of written testimonies have been received from people who are suffering due to this legislation. She recognised the housing crisis within the UK but said it stems from long standing decisions not to increase the available supply of social housing and not to replace the stock of social housing lost by the ‘right to buy’ legislation. On top of that the ‘austerity’ measures imposed by the government impacted on the individuals right to adequate housing.
The response of our political leaders to her ‘literally hundreds of written testimonies’, was to call it anecdotal evidence and not hard data. Which to me, simply confirms that the government cares not a jot about the lives of the real people. It makes me wonder what exactly this ‘hard data’ is that the government expects. Hundreds and hundreds of real case histories presented in written testimonies looks like evidence to me. Alongside the many, many written testimonies she also had access to government data; she consulted with academics and researchers and collected evidence from different parts of the country.
Her specific criticisms of the policy included the absence of any assessment of the impact this policy would have on the individual’s human rights. She made three basic recommendations and asked that the be implemented immediately. These are;
1. Suspend the ‘bedroom tax’ and evaluate it against the framework of human rights.
2. Regulate the private housing market where she saw security of tenure and high rents as specific problems
3. Renew commitment of the government to supply sufficient social housing and affordable housing.
The fact that it takes a UN mission to make any one sit up and take notice is humiliating in the international community, but sadly not surprising given the attitude of this government. Its not as if her recommendations are extreme in any way, these recommendations are so obvious they should have been implemented months ago by our own government without prompting from any one. I mentioned these reforms a few months ago here
http://forgetmenot525.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/welfare-reforms.html
Anything that interferes with affordable housing for workers and pensioners should be a human rights issue. It's clear that reform is needed, but it's hard to do that when you have a government that taxes first and then worries about the consequences later, a trademark of Tory/Republican legislators on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks Loretta.
ReplyDeleteHi Doug and thanks very much for commenting. I have to apologize, I forget that people outside of the UK don't know about this 'tax' and I should have explained it a bit better. The so called 'bedroom tax' is in fact NOT a tax. It is one of the many welfare and benefit reforms introduced by this government.
DeleteIt works like this; as part of a package of 'reforms' introduced by the government it was decided to withhold a proportion of housing benefit to those people in recipe of housing benefit if the government considered they have more rooms than they need. Housing benefit is paid to those on other benefits and also to the low paid ( the working poor) On the face of it this sounds reasonable, until you start reading about cases where the extra bedroom isn’t big enough to legally be called bedroom and is in fact a box room only fit for storage, or where a disabled person need a spare room for a carer, or where an elderly husband needs his own room because his wife is very sick and the marital bedroom is transformed into a sick room, or where an elder child has moved on but where younger children are still at school in the area. In fact there are all sorts of legitimate reasons why some people have more rooms than the government think they should. And that’s only half the problem, often the family or individual want to move and there are no suitably sized houses to move into, The local authority do little if any thing to help a person move, they have virtually no homes available for people to move into and even if these problems were solved, the cost of moving house is impossible for those on benefits or low incomes. The situation gets worse, for those in social housing the local authority charge extra for the rooms they consider additional to their needs, therefore it’s a double whammy. These people are charged extra rent on the extra room AND they are denied housing benefit to pay the rent. Social housing is now in such short supply many more people find themselves in private rented accommodation. We have a situation where there is no where near enough social housing available, private rents are far higher that housing benefit plus housing benefit has been capped ( the cap on housing benefit is in addition to the ‘bedroom tax’). Plus the one thing the government has failed to do is to cap the rents in the private sector to bring them in line with the amount the tenants can claim in housing benefit. Bearing all of this in mind, its easy to see why Raquel Roinik highlighted the need for regulation in the private rental market, affordable rents and secure tenancy in the private market and of course adequate stock of social housing, none of which has ever been addressed by out government.
I’m pretty sure you see why this dreaded ‘bedroom tax’ which is in fact a benefit reform, is so hated.
I’ve just noticed you replied to the post I wrote way back in January about the welfare reforms, seems like every thing we feared has come to fruition.
I'm looking forward to seeing the white 4x4s with a big UN on them on the streets of Britain sent here to stop Cameron's attack on his own people and halt the assault of the rich against the poor and vulnerable of this country.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the numpties and spivs elected to parliament are by and large a great embarassment to us all Loretta.
I do hope the implementation of this legislation in Scotland against the will of the people and the Scottish Parliament will act as a recruiting sergeant to the independence movement north of the border.
I think it is only fair to point out though that the implementation of the Bedroom Tax, something I have myself demonstrated against here in England is neither a straightforward political party issue, nor a clearly national one either.
Labour councils in Scotland are now preparing to implement this legislation apparently without a peep of dissent.
Also several Scots MPs did not vote against the Bill when they had the chance. These include Labour MP for Glasgow South Ian Davidson and also Scots former Labour front benchers Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, all of whom were absent at the vote which proposed the new legislation and were also absent at a subsequent amendment calling for the legislation to be scrapped.
The problem that Raquel Rolnik has uncovered yet again in her enquiry is another manifestation of the West Lothian Question - whereby elected members in Scotland have no power to stop this tax, but Scottish MPs in Westminster contribute to its passing in England and Wales as well as their homeland by abstaining and failing to oppose the Bill in parliament.
The Bedroom Tax is a symptom of a bigger problem that will onlyl be addressed by big answers like an independent Scotland will help us to start to dismantle the British state and who knows, one day may even result in 'home rule' for England too? The Second Republic of England would be a fine thing indeed.
But the fresh eye of Ms Rolnik unveils the nastiness of the 'ancien regime' and the regressive attack on the life chances of the people of these islands by a globalist establishment and gangster elite whose interests mean we will never prosper until the lines of social and economic divisions have been redrawn in favour of increased equity and self determination.
This investigation by a UN official puts the UK in the same league as Rwanda and Kazakhstan where Ms Rolnik has had previous engagements as the UN's unpaid special rapporteur on adequate housing and looking at human rights violations around the world. Good for her, we have a major task on our hands to overthrow this corporate regime and carve out regional autonomy against a backdrop of a failed atlanticist empire and a failed nation state.
Thanks for posting on this topic Loretta, despite the hatchet job in the tabloids calling Raquel Rolnik a "witch" a "commie" and "loopy" the injustices she has spotlighted could help to deconstruct the imaginary United Kingdom once and for all. Bravo!
Hi Aaron yep I’m liking the idea of the great big 4x4’s lined up outside every benefit office in the country, nice image but don’t really think it will come to that. Actually I think this government has so little regard for the UN that this will completely ignore all of the recommendations. The governments only response will be the occasional contemptuous and derogatory remark aimed at this ‘loony lefty commie Brazilian’. Such is the caliber of todays MP’s. Actually she took written testimonial from lots of different parts of the country; I believe she took testimonials from Manchester and Birmingham as well as Glasgow and Galloway. The main reason it was said to impact more in Scotland than it does in the rest of the UK is simply because Scotland has a higher proportion of its population in social housing than other parts of the country. Although I would have thought the extortionately high rents in the private sector in parts of England would have caused its own set of problems. Neither do I think this is a party issue, I’m quite aware that MP’s from every side of the house voted in favour of this bloody awful policy but then I have said several times before that the political difference between the three main political partiers is negligible, so small in fact its not worth mentioning. Which, as I’ve said before, if one reason I think an independent Scotland offers the best chance possible of breaking free from this type of government, a government that constantly moves to the right. At least in Scotland we have a reasonably healthy socialist party and a green party and with proportional representation, these parties will have a bigger say in how the country is governed. Also, even though I no longer consider the Labour Party to be the party of the people it is the most popular Party in Scotland and the Conservative Party is the least popular party in Scotland, to me that says that the people of Scotland are fundamentally politically to the left of the people of England, which has to bode well for an independent Scotland. I’m not under the illusion that an Independent Scotland will suddenly and miraculously sprout a genuine left wing government which puts its people before its profits. This corrupt money grabbing system is too ingrained in too many people for radical change to come about suddenly, I just think it we will have a better chance and we will be governed by a less right and less conservative government.
Deletesorry...............didn't have enough space to write whole thing in one
DeleteYou are right……………Scottish councils are implementing this legislation without complaint. I suspect this is because they have no grounds for complaint. As things stand, we are part of the UK, subject to UK laws and Scottish local authorities are obligated to work within the framework of the law and unfortunately this hated policy IS law, so they have to implement it. Even the SNP politicians are saying they will not implement this particular law in an Independent Scotland and that’s music to my ears.
Re politicians, I don’t know a lot about Ian Davidson but its no surprise to me that Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, did not vote against the bill, knowing their history and their track record, that’s not at all surprising. However…………….they are Westminster MP’s and I do wonder what, if any, part they would play in an Independent Scotland.
And I like the idea of an UN-united kingdom, that sounds good to me, lets just be this little collection of small republics that happen to inhabit the same small island. Actually, joking aside, I don’t really understand why there is no English National Assembly, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had their devolved governments for quite a while now so why has no one bothered to demand on for England??
You know the thing that struck me most about Ms Roiniks recommendations, is that they are just so much common sense. Our Government shouldn’t need someone to come in from the UN to say………….hey you need to regulate the private sector rental market, you need to provide secure tenancy agreements and…. oh yeah… by the way……..you haven’t replenished your social housing stock after 40 years of ‘right to buy’.
God how bloody simple is that to work out??
I think we are both saying the same thing here Loretta, the fact that local authorities in Scotland can't do anything but implement this unpopular legislation would increase the pressure for independence I would imagine, forcing people to do things they voted against is not the way to a conflict free future for Westminster whoever is supposedly in charge there.
ReplyDeleteSo far as the English National Assembly is concerned the British government considers itself to be the government of England (hence the West Lothian Question) which is a logically unsustainable claim in the context of devolution and possible independence for Scotland.
There is a movement for an English parliament but it isn't widely promoted in the mainstream British media, it still has a lot of support. For example an ICM poll commissioned by the Daily Telegraph found 58% of the population in favour of an English Parliament with only 20% saying 'No'......The Campaign for an English Parliament has been around since 1999. Indeed there has been something of a renaissance of English nationalism over the past few years on both the political right and the political left. While all responsible English nationalists would disassociate themselves with hooligan organisations like the English Defence League, they are part of what is actiually a nationwide re-awakening of an English national identity. On the left we have celebrities like Billy Bragg and born-again Labour MP Jonathan Cruddas, but the entire accoustic and folk roots music movement in England has a new green nationalist agenda too. Its a cultural identification too that is separate from anything British and to some large degree is in opposition to both Britishness and the notion of the UK. Because English electors have had no parliamentary voice some have supported Labour, some (ironically) UKIP, a few the Tories and quite a lot the Lib Dems and middle-of-the-road independents. T
here is one (brilliant) Green MP Caroline Lucas on the new national left as well. http://www.thecep.org.uk/
At present there are currently 90 non-English MPs making laws that are often exclusive to England in the Westminster Parliament...the support for English devolution is one of the most rapidly developing political movements in 21st century England. Obviously with around 83 per cent of British subjects residing in England home rule for this country would spell the final deathy knell to the concept of a United Kingdom. The pundits are presently predicting that neither Labour nor Conservative parties could obtain a majority in the 2015 general election if trends continue the way they are going. The Lib Dems are already discussing changing sides.
I think there are some interesting dynamics in both Scotland and England, with encouraging movements in Wales too....perhaps not so much in N. Ireland where they remain embroiled in historical emnities and clashing nationalisms but on mainland Britain things are about to change significantly I think.