Living Standards
Debate between Anas Sarwar and Glenda Jackson(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Housing Benefit
Debate between Anas Sarwar and Glenda Jackson(14 years ago)
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Glenda Jackson
That is a salient point, which can be replicated in my constituency. I know of a family with two children who are severely disabled and in wheelchairs, and two who are not so severely disabled. There are also a mother, a father and a grandmother, and they are all attempting to live in a four-bedroom property.
The other myth that has been propounded by Government Members today is that these changes are essentially fair. I distinctly remember the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister—who has proved himself to be the Maréchal Pétain of his generation—saying that the changes were not only fair, but made at a time when the Government were having to make extremely difficult choices to protect the most vulnerable members of our society. Throughout the afternoon, it has been clear that Government Members do not regard pensioners as vulnerable. Nor, apparently, do they regard them as being taxpayers. They do not regard people with disabilities as being vulnerable, and they do not regard people on low pay as actually working.
What I say about my constituency and my city of London is not scaremongering. We have been here before. As I said, some of us remember the Thatcherite regime, when people were forced out of their homes and some were sleeping on the streets because they could not afford to find anywhere to live. The bills for bed-and-breakfast accommodation were astronomical. I am sure that Government Members are smiling at that memory, because that, essentially, is what they wish to do.
Glenda Jackson
Let me finish the point. Government Members wish to get rid of social housing completely.
Anas Sarwar
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I promise not to annoy her again. I just want to highlight the fact that Government Members are finding much of this funny. They like to portray this issue as being about workshy or unemployed people taking benefit from hard-working taxpayers across the country. Is it not true that only one in eight people who receive housing benefit are unemployed? Government Members should take this debate more seriously.
Glenda Jackson
My hon. Friend is wishing for the moon. Government Members are not interested in facts; they discount absolutely everything that emanates from this side of the House.