Ministers at the Department of Work and Pensions repeat ad nauseam their mantra: "It is not fair for taxpayers to be asked to pay for the cost of spare bedrooms, or housing benefit which is high in central London because rents are high etc, etc." Therefore the poorest citizens are thrust into unmanageable debt by caps and cuts in housing benefit, possible eviction, forced migration, undue stress and misery. As a citizen who pays income and council tax, VAT and the excise duty on my evening glass of wine, I steam with indignation each time I am used by ministers to justify such draconian measures making people poorer.
I am glad my taxation is used to enable my fellow citizens, both in and out of work, to buy enough food, clothes, fuel, transport and other necessities, to pay council tax and the rent of secure homes, when they have no other means to do so; and bewildered by the short-sightedness of a policy which deliberately reduces the totally inadequate adult JSA of £67.50 a week by creating rent arrears, with debt-related mental health problems and high extra costs for a hard-pressed NHS.
The self-evident unfairness is the current policy of dumping national debt and deficit reduction on the incomes of the squeezed middle and poorest citizens, while the higher-paid taxpayers experience no financial inconvenience. Meanwhile the OECD reports that £11.5 trillion, including bonuses, is parked in overseas accounts and the Treasury is aware that £100bn of property in central London alone is registered overseas – both out of reach of the taxman. That really is unfair. I hope thousands will join Taxpayers Against Poverty, TAP, to say so loud and clear. All we need is an email.
Rev Paul Nicolson
taxpayersagainstpovertyTAP@gmail.com
• A year ago this week the prime minister gave a speech to explain what he meant by the "big society". Apparently we were to understand that the "big society" as all about mending the broken society. So where are we a year later? I can only say that the exact opposite has come about. In my town, society as we knew it is being broken down. Because of the reduction of money from government, the local authority has had to make swingeing cuts in social and welfare services. Last week it was announced that grants would be withdrawn from at least 10 groups which support the homeless and most vulnerable in society. Because of this the Salvation Army will have to close its doors to those who have no shelter and food.
The Salvation Army's officers are the people David Cameron said we needed: those who take "responsibility". He also said local authorities can make choices. No, they cannot. They have nowhere to go. There is no money. But there is money in other budgets. This same prime minister, his coalition colleagues and the Labour party leadership are quite prepared to spend public money on the UK's four nuclear-armed Trident submarines.
These cost us £2bn a year to "maintain", and their replacement will cost upwards of £100bn in total. In the same speech, Cameron was very keen on "a culture change". So here is a fine example. We show our young people that money is no object when it comes to threatening the whole world with genocide, but if it is health and welfare in our own town then the most vulnerable in society have to bear the brunt of the cuts.
Rae Street
Littleborough, Lancashire
• Welfare minister Lord Freud gives the misleading impression that spare rooms are currently costing the taxpayer "around half a billion pounds every year" (Lords vote down plan to cut housing benefit, 15 February). This is false precisely because the rent and amount of housing benefit payable do not vary according to how many people live in the home, and this is, of course, what the government wants to change. The most effective way to reduce the housing benefit bill would be increase poor people's income and reduce their housing costs. This is easily achieved by legislating against excessively low wages and excessively high rent, which would cut the taxpayer's subsidy to low-paying employers and profiteering landlords.
Brendan Gillen
London