Welfare burden is unfair

AFTER the election it became clear the UK Government’s austerity agenda and welfare cuts are here for five more years.

More benefit freezing, more budget cuts and more people facing the vindictive sanctions regime for failing to comply with, in many cases, unreasonable requirements.

While the stated aim is to reduce the deficit through saving on public spending, which shows up on a balance sheet, the impact on the lives of those affected is real and it is damaging.

While savings are made in one area, the pressure of dealing with the consequences shifts to another.

You can’t put a financial cost on the price paid by a woman trapped in an abusive relationship because she has no financial independence.

The inability of a woman to move out of a refuge into a flat because the ‘bedroom tax’ has put even greater pressure on the already scarce one-bedroom homes doesn’t show up when the Chancellor makes his budget statement.

These are among the impacts the welfare reform agenda is having on the lives of people already living in vulnerable situations and, far from helping them, it is making life harder.

The last five years has shown that the Government at Westminster considers that a price worth paying. It is up to the Scottish Government and local government to do what it can to ease their burden, even with diminishing resources.

No-one is saying it will be easy.