An attack on our pensioners

Earlier this month, the Scottish Government launched a £50 million fund to help boost town centres and support councils to ensure their high streets are more diverse, sustainable and successful in the face of changing and evolving retail patterns.

Stirling Council received £1.077 million that will enable them to stimulate and support a wide range of investments to encourage town centres to diversify, flourish, and create an increase in footfall through local improvements and partnerships. I have written to Stirling Council to find out more about how they plan to use this funding to benefit the wider area – in particular in Bridge of Allan and Dunblane which are part of my constituency.

This £50 million fund is part of a wider boost to the economy, delivering more than £5 billion of capital investment to grow and modernise Scotland’s infrastructure, and a wider package of support to businesses which includes maintaining a competitive business rates package, and providing the most generous package of non-domestic rates reliefs anywhere in the UK, which saw businesses across the Stirling area benefit to the tune of £5.498 million in 2017/18.

In a recent meeting of Holyrood’s Social Security Committee, I suggested that the committee should write to the leader of all parties asking if they would commit to continuing to mitigate Tory welfare policies such as the“bedroom tax”. Astoundingly, the Tory Social Security spokesperson Michelle Ballantyne MSP demonstrated that she was completely out of touch with the impact of Tory welfare policies when she replied that there was“no such thing as a bedroom tax.”

This is a shocking dismissal of the Tory policy which affected 80,000 Scots and drove thousands into poverty but it is not the first time the MSP has denied reality – she also rejected the overwhelming evidence that her party’s welfare cuts have caused a surge in foodbank demand which has since been admitted by DWP boss Amber Rudd.

But unfortunately, she is not alone. Her fellow Tory MSP Brian Whittle also recently made the claim that the“rape clause”does not exist.

These comments were outrageous, and her disregard for the real-life consequences of the hated “bedroom tax”cannot be ignored.

The Scottish Government has been mitigating the bedroom tax since it was introduced to protect people from this shocking policy that puts people at risk of rent arrears and homelessness.

Instead of dismissing the two-child cap, or suggesting that the poor shouldn’t have children, perhaps the Tories should be congratulating the SNP for mitigating these harmful policies, and supporting those families affected by them.

The most recent meeting of the Social Security Committee discussed the proposed Tory cut to Pension Credit that could see around 10 per cent of individuals in Scottish households claiming pension credit face a cut in income of up to £7000 a year.

Currently, couples are able to claim pension credit if one of the partners is over the state retirement age of 65 but from May 15, the Tories will force mixed-age couples to apply for Universal Credit instead.

This could see them lose up to £7000 a year and impact on other forms of assistance such as cold-weather payments, housing benefit, and Council Tax reduction.

This is a devastating attack on our poorest pensioners and just the latest harmful and unnecessary Tory cut that will punish older people simply for having a partner younger than them and I welcomed the agreement of the committee to write to the UK Government urging them to reverse this attack on low-income pensioners.