A new 'bedroom tax' introduced under the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill will force some of the poorest social housing tenants to give up their homes.

Council and housing association homes which are identified as having a “spare” bedroom have been described by Conservative and Lib-Dem politicians as an “extravagance” to which poorer families are not entitled.
 
The proposals, due to come into force in April 2013, reveal the contemptuous attitude of Cameron’s Coalition towards those who are unable to mount the property ladder, and a complete lack of empathy for the problems they face in securing suitable accommodation.
 
Social housing tenants deemed to be 'under-occupying' their homes by one bedroom now stand to lose up to 15% of their housing benefit and those considered to have two or more (even if they are in use) will lose up to 25%. This will force thousands of families into making the agonising choice between staying put and living in hardship, or downsizing to a smaller property. Many tenants, in fact, will have no option but to live off a lower income because research shows there is a lack in availability of smaller homes.
 
To add insult to injury, despite the severe hardship that many families will suffer as a consequence of the reforms, it is unlikely that the new benefit rules will, in reality, deliver the financial savings claimed by the Government. Due to the general shortage in social housing, many of the tenants forced out of their homes will have to move into the private rented sector where rents are higher; thus increasing the housing benefit bill in the longer term.
 
Pleas by more than seventy family, disability and housing groups for MPs to accept an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill which would allow families with just one additional bedroom (where there are no smaller properties available) an exemption from the “bedroom tax” fell on deaf ears.

As did the warning from the National Housing Federation that the under-occupancy rules will mean that grandparents who share the care of their grandchildren, families in which two same-sex teenage children have their own bedroom and disabled tenants who need an adapted room to live independently, will see their incomes cut.

In a display of blatant disregard for the realities of family life, Cameron’s compassionless Coalition rejected this small compromise which, for many, would have made the difference between making ends meet and living in poverty.
 
Despite the fact that poorer families will be unfairly punished for no probable gain in public spending savings, the Welfare Reform Minister, Lord Freud, stands by his Government’s view that in the current austere economic climate “under-occupancy” in social housing is a 'luxury the country cannot afford.'
 
In respect of extravagancies this country can’t afford, in Nick Griffin's view, it is absolutely disgraceful that the bankers responsible for the current financial crisis continue to live in luxury, courtesy of an enforced taxpayer bail-out, while Joe Public is abandoned to endure the economic turmoil they caused.
 
Although it was the reckless financial mismanagement of the banking sector that caused the crisis and consequent ruthless reduction in public spending, their lives remain largely unaffected while the most vulnerable people in our society are being made to suffer the consequences of the cut-backs.
 
As a British National Party MEP, Nick believes that there are numerous far more justifiable areas of public expenditure where savings could be made:

Ending the £billion payments associated with our membership of the European Union;

The £millions squandered on questionable foreign aid projects (described by the Indian Finance Minister as 'a  peanut'; and

The financing of immoral wars in the Middle East would significantly reduce public spending.
 
Such wasteful expenditure should be stopped before there can be any justification in rushing through hastily devised, inconsistent and unfair welfare reforms which, in theory, are supposed to rationalise expenditure and prevent fraudulent claims by the undeserving but which, in practice, serve to penalise the genuinely deserving poor.