‘I am terrified of what’s happening’
Corbyn’s tax credit mum slams Cam on cruel cuts
THE single mum whose plight shamed David Cameron says the prospect of losing £40 a week in April has left her petrified.
Nursery manager Kelly Ward, 39, will be clobbered in the Tories’ looming £12billion assault on social security.
After Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighted her predicament to MPs on Wednesday, she said the PM’s arrogant response made her blood boil.
Kelly, one of three million families to be hit in April, has a disabled son and told the Mirror: “I feel terrified.”
Her £14,500 salary is topped up with tax credits. She also has £300 a month in disability living allowance because of her son’s severe hearing difficulties.
Her household budget “is not too bad at the moment” - monthly bills include £460 rent, £75 council tax, £85 gas and electricity, and £60 a week food.
But, set to lose about £40 a week, Kelly, of Darwen, Lancs, will be forced to make painful economies, including ending treats for her 13-year-old lad when he does well at school.
She said: “I want David Cameron to tell me why my son and I going without will help this country. He makes my blood boil. He says they’re a party for the working people. Rubbish.”
Kel ly, a Labour Party member, thought voters’ questions that Mr Corbyn asked at his debut Prime Minister’s Questions were made up.
So she submitted her own to test the theory – and returned from work to find the Labour leader had name-checked her. He told the PM: “Kelly writes, ‘ I’m a single mum to a disabled child. I get £7.20 per hour, so in April the Prime Minister is not putting my wage up but taking tax credits off me.’” He said that Kelly would be £1,800 a year worse off.
But Mr Cameron said Kelly would benefit as the national living wage rises to £9, and from an increase in tax-free allowance and other changes. But Kelly’s son is in full-time
education so new child- care arrangements won’t help; she is in a privately rented house with no state support, and she earns £7.20 an hour – equal to the new minimum from April, which is only set to rise to £9 by 2020.
Ministers were accused last night of hiding the impact of the tax credit changes in a report which flagged up future income-boosting steps.
Work and Pensions Select Committee chairman Frank Field said: “George Osborne simply won’t come clean about the impact of these cuts in April on Britain’s lowest-paid.”