Shame on you for tax credit cuts, Minister
TV blast mum ‘betrayed’ 1m single parents hit
A SINGLE mum whose TV tirade against looming tax credit cuts made a Tory minister squirm says the party betrayed her.
Michelle Dorrell skewered hapless Energy Secretary Amber Rudd on the BBC’s Question Time as she told how she would struggle to stay afloat.
She spoke out as figures for the Mirror show mums will bear the brunt of the £4.4billion Tory raid in April.
A million single parents in work will be £1,000 a year worse off and 1.5 million married mums, £600 worse off.
Tearful Ms Dorrell, 35, who voted Tory in May’s election, told Ms Rudd on Thursday: “You’re about to cut tax credits after promising you wouldn’t.
“I work bloody hard to provide for my children and you’re going to take it away from me and them.
“I can hardly afford the rent; I can hardly afford the bills and you’re going to take more from me.”
When Ms Rudd refused to look her in the eye, Ms Dorrell, of Folkestone, Kent, said: “Shame on you.”
The mum-of-four, who runs a nail salon, said yesterday she would now consider voting for Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: “He is listening to the people.
“I run a household of five on less than £400 a week. Day-to-day costs are covered by tax credits, child benefit and maintenance. I voted Tory and feel I was lied to,” she told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Cutting working tax credits will leave around three million families £1,350 worse off.
The analysis, by the Resolution Foundation for the Daily Mirror, shows 70% of savings will come from working mothers.
Those whose partner works will lose £1,200 a year between them.
A single parent working full-time on the new living wage will get £700 more in 2016, still £1,500 worse off overall.
But the Treasury insisted: “Our reforms are fair and necessary. Most working households will be better off once they are all in force.”
DAVID Cameron has a tin ear if he can’t hear the mounting fury against Tory pay cuts for millions of middle and low-earning strivers in Britain.
The party’s wage-packet emptying scandal will explode in this Government’s face when the Prime Minister and his similarly insensitive Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, slash tax credits worth thousands of pounds.
It is, of course, another broken promise by the Conservatives who conned their way to victory in last May’s general election after Mr Cameron himself pledged not to touch tax credits.
Yet Tory voter Michelle Dorrell crying on BBC1’s Question Time, after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had raised the plight of nursery manager Kelly Ward at Prime Minister’s Question Time, should sound alarm bells for Messrs Cameron and Osborne.
If the two posh boys weren’t so arrogant and aloof, they would scrap the pay cuts now – not announce a review, spin a few tweaks in next month’s Autumn Statement or keep their heads buried deep in the sand, pretending nothing is wrong.
Nothing short of axing the cuts will do. An apology would be nice but what Kelly, Michelle and millions of workers like them want to hear is that their wage packets are safe.
We’re not surprised the Tories are hurting working people. It has happened so often you wonder whether it is in the party’s DNA.
Mr Cameron is wrong to want people to work for peanuts and if enough people protest even he will eventually get the message.